BBC Knowledge Jul 2013

A Megatsunami is Inevitable p38

Saving the Unicorn p62

Global History Questioned p54

THE SCIENCE OF

Volume 3 Issue 5 August 2013 `100

www.knowledgemagazine.in

PLUS Other Monsters of the Dark p30

Asks Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger p28CAN WE TRUST THE INTERNET?


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On the cover




THE SCIENCE OF






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he half-man, half-beast minotaur,

the fire-breathing dragon, the

werewolf and its corrupting

bite… all the stuff of utter fiction. Surely

the monsters of campfire stories and

Hollywood horror can have no basis in

reality? That would be ridiculous. This

is what we have deluded ourselves into

believing but it is, astonishingly, wrong.

While there never was a real werewolf

that could curse others by biting deeply

into their flesh, this is not how our

ancestors saw things. Once upon a time,

diseased wolves ran rampant across

the European landscape. Countless

souls were mauled and the pain of

such attacks was far greater than the

mere tearing of flesh. Just a single

bite from these beasts would spread

their infection and, within months,

a contaminated person would be

stripped of their humanity, snarl, hiss

and ultimately be driven to bite others

around them. Today, our understanding

of epidemiology allows us to see this

hideous transformation as the result of

the rabies virus. But long ago it was the

curse of the werewolf.

Make no mistake, monsters are

fictional creatures, but they did not

emerge from nothingness. Our very worst

nightmares have their origins firmly

rooted in reality, taking form from

terrifying phenomena that our ancestors

were seeing but could not understand.

So here, armed with today’s scientific

knowledge, we’ll shed light on the birth

of these horrific beasts.

Even the creatures of your nightmares have a logical

explanation… well, we hope so anyway

PLUS MORE MONSTERS EXPLAINED44Matt Kaplan discovers that the beasts of piercing stare and hooked claw that walk your nightmares are based on science fact

T

THE SCIENCE OF

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SCIENCE MONSTERS

Why have Homo sapiens proved so overwhelmingly successful?

What is ‘global history’?

uld travel by water. s likely that our forebears’ maritimells developed incrementally, but at this knowledge spread fast. Our cestors could communicate throughguage, and it is quite possible that the a of a boat may have been familiar to ople who had never even seen one.Some historians claim that even in r early history similar tools appear in ferent population groups, with the owledge of how to build these toolsead via word of mouth rather thanough hard-and-fast experience.But could all humans communicate?

e do not know when language

ferentiation appeared (‘very ly’ is most people’s guess), hough we know a bit aboutw languages developed. It’s abject complicated by the factat our immediate ancestorsre not the only humans und in the new ritories they colonised. Eurasia, at least one of r genetic cousins was eady resident. Recentvances in human DNA earch have deeply influenced

our view of – and our debates about – early humanity. We know that Homo sapiens and humans of what we broadlycall Neanderthal groups interbred – upto four per cent of our own DNA is of Neanderthal origin. But was such intermingling also common with other groups, whose identity we still cannot trace for certain?

It will take a bit of time before we cadetermine where and with what resultsdifferent groups of humans interbred after our ancestors left Africa. This is one of the most exciting fields of prehistorical research and one that isgoing to have great consequences for ounderstanding of humans living today.

After the Neanderthal genome wasmapped a couple of years ago, it becamclear that some of the most important disease-fighting genes humans now caroriginated from outside our own sub-species. Some researchers think thvery fact that we could interbreed with other human groupscontributed massively to the peopling of the Earth, because itprovided ‘hybrid vigour’ to help us become ubiquitous on

all continents save Antarctica.

What do we mean wheen we say ‘global history’ – or inddeed ‘worldhistory’, ‘transnational history’ or ‘international historyy’? These are surprisingly tricky tterms topin down.

Here’s what historia do agree ns do agree e dealing wupon: we are dealing wwith issues

that are bigger than thothat are bi ose contained within one state or onee nation. In most cases, we’re alsoo talking about issues that havee participantsfrom different societiess.

To be more specific,, globalhistory has come to meean anemphasis on comparattive aspects

of human activities in thesense. World history is ohistories that take a partas to what connects hum

Transnational over time. Transnatioabout how ideas, moneyabout hotravel, and about how coare constituted outside tworks of empire, state oInternational history cenrelations among commupeoples and states.

These are vague and cdefinitions. But it is at leato know a little about whstarting from in these de

Why havWso overws

e story of humankindat root the tale of clever apes spreading across the globe. We know that the first humans of our own species, Homo sapiens or anatomicallymodern humans, walked out of their African homeland around 65,000 years

ago. What we know less about is what appened to them ring the first few ennia of their odyssey. peed with which theyspread is astonishing.

Within less than 20,000 years they

had reached ustralia, which

began to explore d the same time pread to mostpe. t accounts for our nd almost instant? Our capacity tos, of course, at the the size of our brains,

not enough in itself to ened. Diet most ole. The first humans protein-rich foods of d it’s quite likely that

of the world was ary needs (or xplains why theyeverywhere and why before they began to iors.ch certainly pushedction of life on the ong its edges. Withinenerations or so of rst venturing outsidesimple boats had

e their appearance, hough historians

disagree over how far the first humans

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THE FIVE BIG QUESTIONS IN GLOBAL HISTORY

Odd Arne Westad introduces five major

themes in humanity’s wider story that

strongly divide academic opinion Some

of the most important

disease-fighting genes we now carry

evolved outside our own sub-

species

his Cro-Magnon skull, which datThm c28,000 years ago, was foundfrom

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HISTORYHISTORY OF THE WORLD

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August 2013 August 2013

NATURECONSERVATION OF INDIAN RHINO

UNICORNSAVING THE

The Indian rhino is one of two ‘unicorn’ species (the other is the Javan). Here, a mother and calf are pictured next to a stand of elephant grass 4–5m high in Kaziranga National Park

In the fertile floodplains of Assam,

men risk their lives every day to poach

– or protect – the few surviving Indian

rhinos. Andrew Balmford reports

from conservation’s front line

ecent events in Japan and southeast Asia have ensured we are all too aware

of the tsunami-triggering potential of enormous, submarine earthquakes. Less well known, however, is the fact that volcanoes are also very effective tsunami generators, with ‘flank collapse’ – when a sizeable chunk of a volcano collapses into the sea – spawning tsunamis that have taken close to 20,000 lives in the last 400 years.

In 1979 a tsunami caused by the collapse of Indonesia’s Iliwerung volcano took several hundred lives. And in 1792, the failure of part of Japan’s Unzen volcano launched a tsunami that battered coastal villages, resulting in 14,000 deaths. Now scientists say a collapse of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands could create a tsunami that would devastate the East Coast of the USA and batter the UK’s western shores. More often than not, volcanoes are not solid, unmoving bastions of strength, but wobbly piles of ash

MEGAMEGATSUUNAMIand lava rubble just looking for an excuse to collapse. The evidence for this is all around us, with many hundreds of massive landslides now identified at volcanoes right across the planet. Typically, these leave behind enormous collapse scars, such as the great rocky amphitheatre torn from the east flank of Mount Etna and, most recently, the 3km-wide bite taken out of the north flank of Mount St Helens by the landslide that triggered its 1980 eruption.

Slippery slope Once a volcano’s flank has become

unstable, it can be shaken off by an earthquake, pushed off by an injection of new magma, or sometimes just fall off as the flank becomes too steep. It doesn’t even need an eruption to start things moving. As the extraordinary footage of the collapse of Mount St Helens north flank reveals, once a volcanic landslide gets going, there is no stopping it. The mass of moving rock hurtles downslope at velocities matching those of a Formula 1

Are we in danger of a giant tidal wave causing mass

destruction worldwide? Bill McGuire reveals how it’s

only a matter of time before such a surge is unleashed

A tsunami triggered from a volcanic landslide could send a colossal wave crashing into

the American coast

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August 2013

MEGATSUNAMINATURE

54 Questions In Global HistoryJoin in in the debate that tries to answer the

most pertinent questions in global history

62 Saving The UnicornWill the Indian rhino survive the next wave of

onslaught by poachers?

38 Megatsunami Can calm waves be perpetrators of mass

destruction? Bill McGuire finds out

28 Comment and Analysis Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger says that we should question the verity of information we receive on the web

30 The Science Of ZombiesWe bring out the underlying facts behind the

tales of Zombies and other monsters

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82-83 SUBSCRIBE TODAYEvery issue delivered direct to your door


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SCIENCE F

Volume 3 Issue 5August 2013 `100

PLUS onsters of the Dark p40

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3August 2013

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FEATURES

ON THE COVER

30 The Science Of Zombies Matt Kaplan discovers Zombies and other monsters of the dark that existed long before fictional stories made them popular

ON THE COVER

38 MegatsunamiFind out how the intensity of an off-shore earthquake could trigger a series of tsunamis that would wreck havoc across the world

44 Portfolio: Canada’s Wild Nature Award-winning underwater photographer Thomas P Peschak travels deep within Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest to capture the diversity of its marine life

52 Opposites AttractWhat governs attraction in nature? Daphne Fairbairn acertains upon a delightful chemistry in the oddest couples found in the animal kingdom

ON THE COVER

54 History Of The WorldWe answer some of the most debatable questions in world history that have lasted over a thousand years

60 Jewels Of The NizamJewellery historian Usha Balakrishnan selects pieces from the Nizam of Hyderabad’s collection that are rich in history and value

ON THE COVER

62 Saving The UnicornHunted for its horn, which is believed to have mythical healing powers, the Great Indian Rhino battles for its survival against man

68 Inside The PagesIn this excerpt from Oscar Wilde’s gothic masterpiece The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Basil realises that Gray’s soul is trapped in the portrait, leading him to commit debauchery without repenting

72 The Big Idea: CatastrophismRobert Mathews speaks of ‘Catastrophism’ and the devastation it has caused on the planet

Contents AUGUST 2013

38 MegatsunamiAre we waiting to be swept off by a giant tidal wave?

54 History Of The World

Is the conventional literature on global history correct?

44 PortfolioCanada’s Great Bear Rainforest

is home to the world’s most exotic crustacean

n

hicay, ed inebauchery

hismhism’ and

planet

AUGUST 2013

60 Jewels Of

The NizamNot just diamonds, the Nizams also had an affinity for emeralds


WorldMags.net



REGULARS

8 Puzzle Pit A veritable buffet of brain teasers guaranteed to test your mind

12 Q&AOur panel of experts answer the questions you’ve always wanted to ask

20 SnapshotOutstanding photographs to entertain and engage you

77 Principal Speak Padma Negi, Principal of Billabong International High Juhu, Mumbai believes that teachers have to aid students in overcoming daily dejections

80 Gadgets MP3 players in the market that are sure to get your tunes playing

UPDATE24 Latest IntelligenceAn analysis of the cosmic fireball that hit Russia

ON THE COVER 28 Comment & AnalysisLarry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, asks whether we can trust whatever we read on the web

RESOURCE86 Web ClicksOur picks offer the best of science, history and nature on the web

87 Games ReviewWe review the latest video games in the market

88 The Last WordAstrophycist Dibyendu Nandy talks about the inescapable thought of the Sun dying out

12 Q&A Does the cuckoo clock beat the digital watch

when it comes to keeping time?

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Contents AUGUST 2013

4 August 2013

Q&Acloc

watces tme

AUGUST 2013

A ck ch to e?

62 Saving The UnicornWill our grandchildren see the Great Indian rhino in the wild?

72 Big IdeaCan mass extinction

be a good thing?

24 Update Are scientists closer to finding the origins

of the meteor that crashed in Russia?

inescapable thought of the Sun dying out

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8 Puzzle PitPuzzles, brain teasers and

more that will entertain and boggle your mind

30 The Science

Of ZombiesYou might want to look under your bed before you go off to sleep tonight


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WorldMags.netg www.knowledgemagazine.in I 0 Knowledge Magazine India A Worldwide Media Publication

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I am all for the supernatural and the paranormal. Love the scary movies, the horror stories and the real life tales of unexplained phenomena. What is it about the creatures of the dark that tug our fascination? Perhaps the same reason why God is so popular the world over? A

Scientists studying evolutionary history used to talk about a God Spot, and now rather a series of locations in the human brain that form the biological foundation for spirituality. It is an interesting thought, that our brain could have evolved, sensitised towards stimulants that we feel increase our chances of survival. And by proxy, raise our curiosity about that which could really challenge the odds… a.k.a. evil spirits, monsters, zombies, etc. Read our cover story about some of such enduring mythical creatures, about the facts behind their existence on page 30.

Another engrossing feature is on the Five Big Questions in Global History (p54). Discover why the Chinese never conquered the world and more. This month’s edition is packed with the good stuff. From Megatsunamis to a lost continent found under the Indian Ocean. And nature throws up more proof that opposites really attract and why natural catastrophes may have been essential in the shaping of our planet.

Happy reading.

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FROM THE EDITOR

ENJOY YOUR FAVOURITE MAGAZINE WHEREVER YOU AREINDIA Editor: Preeti Singh www.knowledgemagazine.in UK/USA/CANADA Editor: Sally Palmer www.knowledgemagazine.com ASIA Editor: Ben Poon www.regentmedia.sg/publications_bbc.shtml BRAZIL Editor: Cáren Nakashima www.revistaconhecerbbc.com.br BULGARIA Editor: Hristo Dimitrov www.knowledge.bg SWEDEN Editor: Jonas Berg www.bbcknowledge.se TAIWAN Editor: Hui-Wen Lan

SCIENCE HISTORY NATURE FOR THE CURIOUS MIND

August 2013

knowledgemagazineindia KnowledgeMagIND

Download this current issue from

Experts this issueMatt Kaplan is a science journalist living in

London. He regularly contributes to various

publications like National Geographic, New

Scientist, Nature, etc. He is the author of the

book Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite: The Science of

Monsters, which explains through facts, the origin and

evolution of monsters. In this issue, he underlines the

science behind Zombies and other monsters of the dark. See page 30

Bill McGuire is a science writer and the

Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at

UCL. He has authored various books on climate

change leading to catastrophes, his latest one

being Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers

Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes. In this issue, he

reveals how destruction can approach us in the form of a

giant tidal wave. See page 38

Usha R Balakrishnan is an art historian,

specialising in Indian jewellery. She has

evaluated and catalogued the jewellery

collection of the Nizams of Hyderabad and has

documented it in her book The Jewels of the Nizams. In this

issue, she picks some pieces from the collection to give an

insight into the art and history of one of the richest dynasties

in India. See page 60

� SEND US YOUR LETTERSHas something you’ve read in BBC Knowledge Magazine intrigued or excited you? Write in and share it with us. We’d love to hear from you and we’ll publish a selection of your comments in the forthcoming issues.

Email us at : [email protected]

We welcome your letters, while reserving the right to edit them for length and clarity. By sending us your letter you permit us to publish it in the magazine. We regret that we cannot always reply personally to letters.

Preeti Singh

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PICTURE SEARCHIn the jumble below, the words represented by each of the 16 pictures are hidden either horizontally, vertically or diagonally forward or backwards but always in a straight line. See how many of them you can find? Look out for descriptive names.

Puzzle pitSOLUTIONS:

Picture Search: Antelope, Africa, Baby, Balloons, Cabbage,

Cage, Cyclist, Dog, Eraser, Feather, Football, Giraffe, Gun,

Handbell, Harmonium, Helmet

Q1 Chain Words: Archer, Herbal, Ballad, Laddie,

Diehard, Hardhat, Hatred, Redden, Dental, Talent, Entrap,

Rapport, Portend, Endpoint, Pointless, Lesson, Onrush,

Rushlight, Lighthouse, Housecoat, Coattail, Tailgate,

Gatepost, Postcard

Q2 Deductions: Lamprey, Amiss, Tip

Q3 Go Figure: Easy: 3 x 2 x 8 + 3 = 51

Medium: 5 x 3 – 4 + 6 = 17

Hard: 6 x 3 – 6 x 6 = 72

Q4 Mensa Puzzle: K. Add the numerical value of the top left

and centre letters to give the lower left letter, similarity with

the top right and centre letters to give the lower right letter

Kalidasa, Caracas, Concerto,

Siddaramaiah, Babble, Taciturn

Q6 Head & Tail: Now-Playing-With-Care-Package-Deal-

Out-Come

Q7 Double barrelled: Post

Q8 Enigma Code: Linger, Engine, Ginger, Grille, Lining,

Niggle, RingerMAZING Find your way out.


WorldMags.net



Q1 CHAIN WORDSForm a continuous path of words from START to FINISH by connecting the word parts given in the boxes. There are two parts to each word and the second part of one word is the first part of the next. You won’t necessarily need to visit every box to achieve your aim.

START

ARC LAD DIE RED DEN

HER BAL HARD HAT TAL

LIGHT RUSH POINT END ENT

HOUSE ON LESS PORT RAP

COAT TAIL GATE POST CARD FINISH

Q5 PICK AND CHOOSE Solve the six clues by choosing the right combination of letter sets given below. Each of the letter set can be used only once and only in the order given. The number at the end of the clues specifies how many sets of letters are used in the solution.

1. Renowned Sanskrit poet (3)

2. Capital of Venezuela (2)

3. A classic music piece (4)

4. Karnataka’s new Chief Minister (4)

5. Talk incoherently or irrelevantly (2)

6. Reserved and uncommunicative (3)

At movies theatres currently

—— —— Fire

Gingerly or lovingly

Parcel containing necessities

Bundled good value

Hand cards evenly to players

Result

BLE

CARA

CO

SA

TAC

SID

AMA

NC

CAS

IAH

DAR

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URN

BAB

KAL

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IDA

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3 2 8 3

Easy

3 4 6

Medium = 17

6 3 6 6

Hard =72

The operators: ÷ X + –

Q3 GO FIGURE Place the four numbers in the first, third, fifth, and seventh boxes and whatever operators you care to use in the second, fourth and sixth boxes in the correct order to get the answer. Use the numbers only once.

Q4 MENSA PUZZLE Which letter goes in the emty square and completes the puzzle?

Questions and challenges guaranteed to give your brain a workout

9August 2013

Q2 DEDUCTION You are given a nine letter word. Your job is to break up this word into nine separate letters and place them on the dashes to spell a seven letter word, a five letter word, and a three letter word. You can use each letter only once.

PALMISTRY

A P E

M S

I

Q8 ENIGMA CODE Each colour in our code represents a letter. When you have cracked the code you will be able to make up seven words. The clue to the first word is given to help you get started.

The Clue: Hang around.Q6 HEAD AND TAIL Look at the clue to solve the answer in the form of a compound word. The second part of the next answer is the first part of the next answer.

C

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Q7 DOUBLE BARRELLED What word can be placed in front of the five words shown to form in each case another word?

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Q8 ENIGMA CODE Each colour in our code represyou have cracked the code yomake up seven words. The cluis given to help you get starte

The Clue: Hang around.D AND TAIL

G

G

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Q7 DOUBLE BARRELLED


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Q12 TODAY’S TEASER

1. There is one in a minute and two in a moment, but only one in a million years. What

are we talking about?

2. Your clock has gone haywire. At 2:41 am itread 6:17, at 6:17 it read 9:53, whilst at 9:53 it read 1:29 pm. What time will it read at 1:29 pm?

3. What food is it that you throw away theoutside of, cook the inside of, eat the outside of, and throw away the inside of?

4. If one red rose equals three purple roses, andone purple rose equals four white roses, how many red roses are in 24 white roses?

5. What expression is represented here?

I hear: “It, It, It, It, ...”

You hear: “I_, I_, I_, I_, ...”

Q11 SUSPENDED SENTENCEEach of the words at the top of the columns has to be placed in one of the boxes directly below, but not necessarily in the same order as they appear. When you’ve got them correctly arranged, they will form a quotation, which can be read line by line from left to right.

IT AND IS SUCCESS FAILURE SECRETS TO WORK FROM LEARNING THE OF NO PREPARATION RESULT THERE ARE HARD

Q9 SCRAMBLE Solve the four anagrams and move one letter to each square to form four ordinary words. Now arrange the letters marked with an asterisk (*) to form the answer to the riddle or to fill in the missing words as indicated.

Now arrange the letters marked with an asterisk (*) to form the answer to the riddle or to fill in the missing words as indicated.

SETAE

BARSS

TOLSON

UPHANG

When________________ fight, it is the____________that suffers -African proverb (9,…,5)

SOLUTIONS:

Q9 Scramble:Tease, Brass, Stolon, Hang. When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.

Q10 One Letter Crossword: Toy, Cow, Fax, Cat, Pin, Pig, Hat, Jar

Q11 Suspended Sentence: There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation,

hard work, and learning from failure.

Q12 Today’s Teaser: 1 The letter M

2 5.05 p. m. The clock is 3hrs 36 mins fast

3 An ear of corn.

4 2 red roses

You will never hear the end of it.

Q13 Hidato:

Quiz: 1c, 2b, 3a, 4b, 5a, 6c, 7b

Puzzle pit

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

* *

Q10 ONE LETTER CROSSWORD

C

W

T Y

P

G

P N

C

T

F X

J

R

H T

Q13 HIDATO The goal of Hidato is to fill the grid with consecutive numbers that connect horizontally, vertically or diagonally from the first to the last number in the grid. The first and last numbers of the puzzle and some others are already filled in.


WorldMags.net



11August 2013

SOLUTION OF CROSSWORD NO. 15How to enter for the crossword: Post your entries to BBC Knowledge Editorial, Crossword No.15 Worldwide Media, The Times of India Bldg, 4th floor, Dr Dadabhai Navroji Road, Mumbai 400001 or email [email protected] by August 10, 2013. Entrants must supply their name, address and phone number.

How it’s done: The puzzle will be familiar to crossword enthusiasts already, although the British style may be unusual as crossword grids vary in appearance from

country to country. Novices should note that the idea is to fill the white squares with letters to make words determined by the sometimes cryptic clues to the right. The numbers after each clue tell you how many letters are in the answer. All spellings are UK. Good luck!

Terms and conditions: Only residents of India are eligible to participate. Employees of Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. are not eligible to participate. The winners will be selected in a lucky draw. The decision of the judges will be final.

Neha Binwal Thane

Lakshmi Mirra Kannan Kolkata

Rajath.B Cochin

ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS OF CROSSWORD NO. 15

ACROSS1 What appellation was given to Bhagat Singh

after he was executed (7)

2 In this region of Bihar, Mahatma Gandhi

fought for the rights of landless farmers (9)

5 The burning of a police station in this town

in Uttar Pradesh, led to the end of the first

non-cooperation movement (6,6)

8 Poem composed by Bankim Chandra

Chattopadhyay which was given the official

status of the National Song in 1950 (5,7)

12 Police officer murdered by Bhagat Singh to

avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai (8)

15 Tilak famously proclaimed that “Swaraj is my

_____” (10)

18 Freedom fighter who went on to become the

first Prime Minister of India (5)

19 Subhas Chandra Bose contracted tuberculosis

in this prison in Myanmar (8)

21 Freedom fighter who is widely credited for

transforming the Independence Movement

from an elitist struggle to a national one (6)

22 Princely state in which Nehru was imprisoned

(5)

23 What Vallabhbhai Patel was popularly known

as (6)

24 The Dandi march started from Mahatma

Gandhi’s ____ Ashram (9)

25 Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy which means

“Insistence or devotion to truth” (10)

DOWN1 Newspaper started by Subhas Chandra

Bose (6)

3 South African city in which Mahatma Gandhi

was thrown off a train for refusing to leave

the first class compartment (16)

4 Philosophy which means non-violence (6)

6 Brahmabhandav ____ : First martyr to die

in British custody in the 20th century

freedom struggle (8)

7 Mahatma Gandhi was held for two years in

this palace in Pune (3,4)

9 ___ Massacre: What the Jallianwala Bagh

massacre was also known as (8)

10 Movement started by the Indian National

Congress in 1942 (4,5)

11 Viceroy who ordered the partition of Bengal

in 1905 (6)

13 Practice of boycotting British goods (8)

14 Philosopher whose works influenced many

freedom fighters (11)

16 Founder of Servants of India Society and

Gandhi’s mentor (7)

17 The number of years Mahatma Gandhi spent

in South Africa (6,3)

19 The 1857 Sepoy Mutiny started in this

town (6)

20 Brigadier General who ordered the shooting

at Jallianwala Bagh (4)

See how you fare in the general knowledge quiz given below.Ratings: 1-3 Poor, 4-5 Fair, 6-7 Excellent

1) According to the Bible, who was the first person on earth after Adam and Eve?a) Sethb) Ablec) Cain

2) Which form of carbon is most likely to be found in a lead pencil?a) Diamondb) Graphitec) Plumbago

3) Who wrote Discovery Of India?a) Pandit Jawaharlal Nehrub) Rabindranath Tagorec) Swami Vivekananda

4) In which language were the ancient Vedic texts writen?a) Prakritb) Sanskritc) Pali

5) Which communist country is physically closest to the United States?a) Cubab) Venezuelac) China

6) In 2001 he became the first wildcard entry to ever win the Men’s Singles title at Wimbledon.a) Thomas Musterb) Goran Pipricc) Goran Ivanisevic

7) By what name is solid carbon dioxide known?a) Fullereneb) Dry Ice c) Cold Ice

QuizCrossword NO.16

YOUR DETAILS

NAME:

AGE:

ADDRESS:

PINCODE:

TEL:

SCHOOL/INSTITUTION/

OCCUPATION:

EMAIL:

Think n Win

SOLVE CROSSWORD & WIN GIFT VOUCHERSFROMwww.hitplay.in

Our Independence Day crossword will test your knowledge about our country


WorldMags.net



12 August 2013

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[email protected]& YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

EXPERT PANEL

Susan Blackmore (SB)

A visiting professor at the University of Plymouth, UK, Susan is an expert on psychology and evolution.

Alastair Gunn

Alastair is a radio astronomer at Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, UK.

Luis Villazon

Luis has a BSc in computing and an MSc in zoology from Oxford. His works include How Cows Reach the Ground.

Robert Matthews

Robert is a writer and researcher. He is a Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, UK.

Gareth Mitchell

As well as lecturing at Imperial College London, Gareth is a presenter of Click on the BBC.

ASK THE EXPERTS?Email our panel at

[email protected]

We’re sorry, but we cannot

reply to questions individually.

HIGHLIGHTS �Are all fermented drinks alcoholic? p14 � Do whales have belly buttons and nipples? p16 �What causes the ‘heavy’ sensation of a dead arm? p17 � Could a new species of human evolve? p19

It appears that new-born galaxies are

alive and well in the Universe. Most

galaxies formed very soon after the

Big Bang and astronomers have

known for some time that the rate of

galaxy formation has steadily

declined through time. When the

Universe was young, galaxies were

forming regularly, but over time fewer

and fewer were born as these babies

grew up into adult galaxies much like

our own Milky Way.

Recently, however, astronomers

have found evidence that both dwarf

galaxies and their more massive

cousins are still forming in the

Universe. Some may be younger than

1 billion years. These galaxies seem

to have remained in an embryonic

state as cold clouds of hydrogen and

helium gas for most of the Universe’s

history. Why they took so long to

form into galaxies, and what it was

that made them do so, is currently

unknown. AG

Are new galaxies still forming?

Pictured here by the Hubble

Space Telescope, I Zwicky 18

is thought to be the youngest

galaxy ever seen, at only

about 500 million years old

VITAL STATS

decibels was the loudestever recorded burp.A car horn is 110dB

107.1


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13August 2013

1 billion

Smoke is unburned particles of carbon released when the hydrocarbon chain of candle wax breaks down. When the candle is alight, most of the carbon gets burned to carbon dioxide, but some escapes. If you hold a plate above a candle flame, you’ll see the carbon accumulate as a sooty smear. When the flame goes out, the glowing wick has enough heat left to break up the wax molecules for a while, but not enough to burn the carbon, so you get a trail of smoke until it cools. LV

Are digital clocks more accurate than analogue clocks?

A planet’s size is determined by how

much material it was able to

accumulate during its formation. The

inner parts of the proto-planetary disc

around the new-born Sun, from which

the planets formed, were too warm for

lighter molecules (like water and

methane) to condense, giving rise to

rocky planets with heavier elements.

The gas giants formed further out

where these lighter (or volatile)

materials could condense more easily.

Since volatile compounds were more

abundant than heavier elements, the

outer planets grew much larger. AG

In fact analogue clocks are more precise than digital ones. But they are not necessarily more accurate. That might seem contradictory, but the sweep of the hands on an analogue clock is continuous, whereas a digital clock is

governed by fixed values. Therefore, an analogue clock can show a precise time. A digital timekeeper approximates to an interval determined by the number of digits on its display. So it can be more accurate, but it is less precise. GM

What determines how big a planet is?

The release of the wrist-cuckoo clock was a watershed moment for

retro watch enthusiasts

Are digital clocks more accurate than

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111 bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiioooooooooooonnnnnnnnnoooonnnn

l locks more accurate than

The release of the wrist-cuckoo clock was a watershed moment for

retro watch enthusiasts

Why do candles only smoke after they’ve been extinguished?

This chap clearly

doesn’t understand

the physics of

proto-planetary discs

Most Wi-Fi networks

operate on variants of

IEEE 802.11, an

internationally agreed

standard for carrying

digital data wirelessly.

The first widely used type

was 802.11b, offering a theoretical speed

of 11 megabits per second (Mbps). One

megabit is 1,000,000 bits of data a

second. At that speed you could transfer

a 1GB movie across your network in just

over 12 minutes. My own router supports

the later 802.11g standard allowing

speeds of up to 54Mbps, or a 1GB movie

to be transferred in two and a half

minutes. However, interference and

physical obstructions can interrupt the

speed of the network. GM

The hottest place in the Solar

System is in the core of the

KNOW SPOT

How fast is a Wi-Fi network?

Why do our fingers wrinkle in the bath?It used to be thought that wrinkling

was a purely passive process,

caused by your fingers absorbing

water so that the skin swelled up and

became too big for the tissue it was

anchored to. In fact, recent research

has shown that it’s the other way

around: the tissues of the fingertips

contract and pull the surrounding

skin into wrinkles. This is an active

mechanism controlled by the

nervous system. Since your body

is deliberately wrinkling your fingers,

that suggests there must be a

reason for it and a recent study at

Newcastle University showed that

wrinkled fingers are better at

gripping wet objects. As well as

allowing our ancestors to grapple

with wriggling fish, this would have

helped them to keep their balance on

wet rocks because our toes get

wrinkly too. LV

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YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

[email protected]&

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14 August 2013

Why do planes appear to travel so slowly in the sky?

How do infrared TV controls work?

Infrared remotes send a binary signal

encoded with a command. Instructions

to change the channel or adjust the

volume are usually encoded in a

seven-bit code. Added to that is a

device identifier so that the commands

act on the television rather than, say,

your set-top box. The command is

converted into the invisible flashing of

your remote’s LED in one of three ways:

pulse, space or shift-coded. In the

former, the duration of the light pulse

represents the binary bit. For instance,

a long pulse could be a ‘1’ and a short

pulse, a ‘0’. Space-coded is the same,

only the space between pulses carries

the binary bits. Shift-coded is where the

television detects what the pulse is

doing at regular intervals in time. The

LED going from off to on during one of

those intervals, or on to off, carries the

desired bit of code. GM

Yes, by definition, fermentation is the process of turning sugar into alcohol by the metabolic action of yeast, or sometimes bacteria. However, the alcohol can be removed after the fermentation process.

Alcohol boils at 78.3ºC, rather than 100ºC for water, so you can remove the alcohol by heating the drink – distilling it essentially, except that you keep the part that is left behind, instead of the vapour that boils off. Vacuum evaporation is usually used to create alcohol-free beer and wine, rather than heating, to avoid cooking the drink and affecting the desired taste. LV

Are all fermented drinks alcoholic?

Exposure therapy is probably the

most successful. Arachnophobia

(from the Greek for spiders and fear)

affects roughly half of women and

one in 10 men. It may even be an

instinctive response, evolved among

our ancestors to avoid dangerous

species. Arachnophobes often think

about spiders and avoid situations

where spiders may lurk, or even

where they may see pictures or

videos of them. This strategy only

increases their fear.

Effective treatment begins with

information about how spiders

behave, how fragile they are, and

facts about the very few that can

harm us and the majority that

cannot. Relaxation training helps the

patient learn to relax before they are

gradually exposed to ever more

realistic spiders. They may begin

with webs and very distant photos of

spiders, gradually progressing to

closer and more realistic ones.

Virtual reality spiders in different

settings can help, until finally the

arachnophobe is introduced to the

real thing. They may even end up

able to handle enormous tarantulas

and forget their fear completely. SB

What’s the best way to beat arachnophobia?

Fermentation tanks

brew man’s greatest

invention: red wine

Our brains judge the speed of objects passing by us through the time taken

for them to cross our field of view. Those taking a long time could either be

nearby and travelling slowly or faster and further away. And in the case of

planes, our brains know that the second interpretation is the right one. RM

Arachnophobia must

be horrible when you

turn a page to see

life-like spiders…

The need for a

third runway

became paramount

ppear to

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Arachnophobia must

be horrible when you

turn a page to see

life-like spiders…

a?e behobi

est way tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo beat a?


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Two arrays of electrodes are implanted in the motor cortex and pick up signals

from individual neurones before passing them to a connector on the skull

Mind-controlled robotic arm

The robotic arm can be moved in real-time by simply imagining doing so. It took Jan Scheuermann just weeks to be able to pick up and manipulate objects with the arm

CONNECTOR

The signals from the brain are translated into a corresponding movement of the robotic arm by a computer

MICROELECTRODE ARRAY

4mm

HOW IT WORKS

It may sound like a concept from a science fiction film, but in December last year researchers at the University of Pittsburgh pulled off a remarkable feat: the operation of a robotic arm with mind control alone. Two tiny arrays of 96 electrodes were implanted just beneath the surface of the brain of 52-year-old quadriplegic Jan Scheuermann. The electrodes fed information from her brain to a robotic arm, which she could manipulate in real-time by simply thinking about doing so.

To give Jan control of the arm, doctors first recorded her mental activity using an fMRI scanner as she imagined moving her arm. This enabled them to place the electrodes on the part of the brain that was active when thinking of arm movement, in the motor cortex. The electrodes penetrate into the brain and are able to pick up the activity of individual neurones. Computer algorithms were then used to identify the different patterns of firing neurones associated with various imagined arm movements. When the system was connected to the robotic arm, these movements were then translated into a corresponding action.

VITAL STATS

is the largest known prime number, this large may have a future application in cryptography

257,885,161–1

BRAIN-MACHINEINTERFACE

15August 2013WorldMags.netWorldMags.net

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They do indeed. Whales and dolphins

are mammals, which means that

although they live in water, they are

warm-blooded, breathe air, give birth to

live young and have mammary glands

producing milk. Young whales are born

underwater and have an umbilical cord

just as we do. When the cord is broken

after birth the scar left behind becomes

the belly button. The calf then drinks

milk from its mother’s nipples which are

usually hidden within a ‘mammary slit’.

Do whales have belly buttons and nipples?

What’s the fastest helicopter in the world?

In some species the mother squirts

the milk into the calf’s mouth. This

is possible underwater because

whale milk is very thick, having a

fat content of between 35 and 50

per cent and a consistency

like toothpaste.

Mother killer whales have been

seen feeding their young in captivity.

The mother glides in a horizontal

position and the calf swims on its

side as it sucks from her nipple. SB

Officially, the world’s fastest chopper is the Westland Lynx, a multi-purpose military aircraft that has seen naval and battlefield use. In its record-breaking flight in 1986, a Lynx helicopter flew a 15km course in Somerset near the Yeovil factory where it was manufactured. Over two legs, the aircraft managed an average of 400.9km/h.

However in July 2010, the Sikorsky X2 helicopter beat the Lynx, achieving 417km/h in a test flight. The Sikorsky is a distinctive beast with an inverted tail and coaxial rotors. There are two rotors, each with four blades mounted one above the other, rotating in opposite directions. There is also a six-bladed propeller at the rear. This configuration is designed to increase speed and to usher in the next generation of super-fast military and civil helicopters. However, there was no observer from the National Aeronautic Association to witness the Sikorsky flight, so the Lynx’s record still stands. GM

The life aquatic:

a baby killer

whale enters its

watery world

TOP TENDISTANCES TRAVELLED ON OTHER

PLANETS BY ROVERS

1. Lunokhod 2

37km1973, USSR

2. Apollo 17 Lunar Rover

35.8km1972, NASA

3. Opportunity

35.5km2004-present, NASA


27.7km1971, NASA


26.5km1972, NASA

6. Lunokhod 1

10.5km1970, USSR

7. Spirit

7.7km2004-2010, NASA

8. Curiosity

0.7km2012-present, NASA

9. Sojourner

0.5km1997-1998, NASA

10. Prop-M

0km (crashed)1971, USSR

MOON MISSIONMARS MISSION

16 August 2013


[email protected]&

a test flight. The Sikorsky is a distinctive beast with an inverted tail and ors. There are two rotors, each with four blades mounted one above the ng in opposite directions. There is also a six-bladed propeller at the rear. uration is designed to increase speed and to usher in the next generation st military and civil helicopters. However, there was no observer from the ronautic Association to witness the Sikorsky flight, so the Lynx’s recordGM

What’s the fastest helicopter in the world?

just as we do. When the cord is broken

after birth the scar left behind becomes

the belly button. The calf then drinks

milk from its mother’s nipples which are

usually hidden within a ‘mammary slit’.

Mother killer whales have been

seen feeding their young in captivity.

The mother glides in a horizontal

position and the calf swims on its

side as it sucks from her nipple. SB

Looking like something

the A-Team would fly, the

Westland Lynx is

officially the world’s

fastest chopper


WorldMags.net



How do we know the age of the Universe?

Currently, the best estimate for the

age of the Universe is 13.772 billion

years, with an error of plus or minus

59 million years. We’ve arrived at this

figure by measuring the current rate

of expansion of the Universe and then

extrapolating backwards. In practice,

however, we also have to know how

that expansion rate may have

changed through time and this is

dictated by the matter composition

and energy density of the Universe.

Fortunately, this information is

embedded in the tiny temperature

fluctuations found in the Cosmic

Microwave Background, the faint

glow of light that fills the Universe

and which is the residual heat left

over from the Big Bang. NASA’s

WMAP satellite measured these

fluctuations to an unprecedented

accuracy, enabling astronomers to

narrow down the age of the Universe

to within 0.4 per cent. The WMAP

results agree with other completely

independent means of estimating the

age of the Universe. AG

Does asparagus help a hangover?While alcohol in your blood can make

you feel good, the breakdown

products give you a hangover. When

you drink alcohol (ethanol), the

enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase in

your liver converts it to acetaldehyde

(ethanal). Then acetaldehyde

dehydrogenase takes over and

turns the ethanal to acetate, before

it’s broken down into carbon dioxide

and water.

Asparagus contains compounds

that more than double the speed of

both the alcohol and acetaldehyde

dehydrogenase enzymes. If you took

asparagus before you went out for the

night, this would reduce how drunk

you felt because the alcohol would be

processed more quickly. Taken the

morning after, it would also help to

mop up any remaining ethanal in your

blood. The downside is that a

bottleneck is created that will increase

the levels of acetate. This causes the

chemical adenosine to accumulate

in your brain, which lowers the activity

of your brain cells. This is why a

hangover also makes you feel

sluggish. Luckily, caffeine binds to the

same receptors as adenosine, so a

cup of coffee prevents the adenosine

from slowing you down. LV

What causes the ‘heavy’ sensation of a dead arm?

We like to take

things literally here

at BBC Knowledge

Usually it’s restricted blood flow.

This often happens during sleep if

you turn into an awkward position

and squash the arteries running

down your arm. When the flow of

blood is reduced, muscles, nerves

and other tissues are deprived of

oxygen and nutrients. When nerves

are affected this causes numbness

as well as tingling or burning

sensations that can wake you up.

If you then try to move, your arm

feels heavy. This is because the

muscles are weakened by lack of

blood. So even if you make a big

effort, the arm does not move

normally. The same effect can be

caused by wearing a rucksack with

the straps not properly adjusted or

indeed by anything that stops

adequate blood flow to the arm.

If you have persistent ‘dead

arm’ this may be due to injury

or disease and needs

medical advice. SB

The Cosmic Microwave

Background has enabled us

to slap a date on the Universe

The oldest island is

Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

It broke off from the Indian

subcontinent about 80-100 million

years ago.

KNOW SPOT

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[email protected]&

Room with a view: enjoy

a sunset or sunrise every

45 minutes on the ISS

How do the brains of intelligent people differ from others?

When Albert Einstein died in 1955, doctors couldn’t resist opening up his brain and looking for clues to his brilliance. And what they found backed claims that really smart people have different brains. The most recent study, published last November by a team led by Prof Dean Falk at Florida State University, suggests Einstein’s brain had a relatively large prefrontal cortex – the region linked to the highest functions of consciousness, like imagination. He also had unusually shaped parietal lobes, known to be linked to visual-spatial skill and mathematical ability. These were combined with a high density of so-called glial cells, which feed the neurones needed for thought. So Einstein’s brain seems well-suited to making amazing discoveries.

Studies searching for similar differences among the general

population have come up with intriguing results too. For instance, brain scanning research has shown a link between intelligence and the quantity of brain cell nuclei, known as grey matter. RM

International space station crews experience a

sunset or a sunrise every 45 minutes. New

members arrive acclimatised to Kazakhstan

time, having departed from the Baikonur

Cosmodrome. With so much scope for

chronological confusion, it’s no wonder that the

ISS needs to be locked to a consistent time.

The zone of choice is Coordinated Universal

Time (UTC), which is equivalent to GMT. GM

What time zone do they use on the International Space Station?

e University, tein’s brain had a

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Einstein’s grey stuff was preserved for posterity

When you sleep, your muscles lose tone and

fluid tends to pool along your back. Stretching

helps to massage fluid gently back into the

normal position. Also, your muscles protect

themselves from over-extension by inhibiting the

nerve impulses as they approach their limit. Over

time, this safety mechanism becomes

increasingly restrictive. Stretching briefly takes

your muscles outside their normal range. This

recalibrates the feedback mechanisms that

determine their normal amount of motion. LV

Why do we stretch when we wake up?

Reset your

muscles’ limits

with a stretch

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45 minutes on the ISS

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Modern medicine and the comforts of

civilisation have changed the way that natural

selection affects us, but we haven’t yet

wriggled entirely free of its grasp. But no

matter how the human race continues to

evolve, it will still be the same species. For

humanity to split into a new species, we would

need to become reproductively separated.

Otherwise, the genes just get mixed back in

again. Earth is too small for geographical or

cultural barriers to prevent different nations

and races from interbreeding. We’d need to

colonise Mars or another planet with a

community that remained separate for

hundreds of generations before a separate

species formed. LV

Could a new species of human evolve?

Why does looking at a bright light help you sneeze?It’s called the ‘photic sneeze’ but only about one in three people

experience it. The exact mechanism isn’t known, but it may be

that bright lights stimulate the branch of the large trigeminal nerve

that runs to the eye and that some of this stimulus crosses over to

the branch that connects the nose. LV

“I need my

glasses to read

this article

on sneezing”

The inhabitants of a

future Mars, terraformed

to make it habitable,

could become an entirely

separate species to

us Earthlings

Mix some cornflour with water until it’s like single cream, and you’ll find that if you jab it with a finger, it turns solid, but goes gooey again when treated more gently. Called ‘dilatancy’, it’s the result of the sharp-edge grains of cornflour piling up like speeding cars in busy traffic, which don’t give themselves time to manoeuvre round each other without colliding. RM

Why does cornflour suddenly turn solid when poked?

September 2003 saw the discovery of the most

distant moon from a planet. S/2003 N1 orbits

staggering 26 years to complete an orbit.

KNOW SPOT

VITAL STATS

minutes is how long it takes the International Space Station to orbit the Earth

92


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Crimson tideGREAT RIFT VALLEY, TANZANIA

This aerial photograph is of Lake Natron, a salt lake fed by rivers and volcanic springs

in northern Tanzania. Its vivid colouration is caused by single-celled ‘extremophile’

microorganisms called archaea. They contain a red pigment and are able to tolerate the high concentrations of sodium carbonate

in the water. The lake’s water also quickly evaporates, as air temperatures often top 40°C.“Extremophiles like this are of interest because

they are living remnants of the first organisms on Earth,” says University of Leicester

ecologist Dr David Harper. Current research is looking into the ecology of flamingos in Lake

Natron. Salt crystallises out in the heat to produce thin white islands where the birds can

raise chicks safe from hyenas.

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22 August 2013

NA

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Space-age materialsINTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

What looks like an artist’s palette is actually a test bed for new materials in the harsh environment of space, where exposure to ultraviolet radiation and atomic oxygen can cause damage. The open box is attached to the outside of the International Space Station for a year, then returned to Earth for analysis.

“We want to devise materials that will last longer in space,” says Dr Robert Walters of the US Naval Research Laboratory, who leads NASA’s eighth Materials International Space Station Experiment programme (MISSE-8).

This particular tray was flown to the ISS by Space Shuttle Atlantis in July 2011 to testing whether strong yet lightweight silicon carbide could replace heavy ground glass in future space telescope mirrors. The tray returned to Earth in February this year and results are awaited.


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SNAPSHOT SCIENCESNAPSHOT


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24 August 2013

Update THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

� Is there a new continent under the Indian Ocean? p25 � Do humans really have a four-sided DNA? p25

� How are locusts helping in making robots? p26

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n 15 February, early morning drivers around the Russian

city of Chelyabinsk were startled by the biggest meteor strike in more than 100 years. Appearing literally out of the blue after sunrise, this cosmic missile became a fireball brighter than the Sun before exploding into thousands of fragments over the Urals. Since then, planetary scientists have been studying videos of the space rock’s final moments and analysing its remains.

The task of tracing the meteor’s final moments was made easier by a network of CCTV cameras in and around Chelyabinsk, plus footage of the brilliant fireball from the ‘dashcams’ commonly fitted to Russian cars to record accidents.

O By analysing seven different videos, Dr Pavel Spurný and his team at the Ondrejov Observatory near Prague were able to triangulate key points in the rock’s path and from that, calculate the meteor’s orbit before it ran into our planet. Spurný says the rock orbited the Sun on an elliptical path that stretched from Venus to the centre of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

“Our main contribution was to determine its atmospheric trajectory,” tells Spurný. “We proved that the main piece landed in Lake Chebarkul and that two or three large fragments and thousands of smaller, coin-size meteorites originated from the two biggest flares.”

Spurný’s analysis also shows the rock first became visible at

a height of around 92km above ground before exploding at a height of 32km, 11 seconds later. The resulting shockwave damaged buildings and injured over 1000 people. As it entered the atmosphere, the rock would have been about the size of a

house and would have weighed in the region of 9000 tonnes.

Many fragments of this behemoth have been found lying scattered around Lake Chebarkul. Prof Viktor Grokhovsky of Ural Federal University has collected more than 50 pieces himself, and found the asteroid was stony with a little iron, classifying it as a ‘chondrite’. The fragments contain glassy veins that would have been generated by collisions with other asteroid belt objects. This battering is likely to have led to weaknesses within the rock, which resulted in the spectacular explosion in our atmosphere. Rocks that were less flawed might have hit Earth’s surface intact.

Spurný is working to further refine his calculations of the rock’s orbit using more observations. The meteorite chunks will also be analysed in greater detail to reveal what they contain.

Space rock’s death throes provide a window into its past

Secrets of Russian meteor revealed The largest meteorite

fragment landed in frozen Lake Chebarkul

Some of the damage caused by the meteor explosion and (right) a fragment of meteorite

e meteor meteorite


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After more than 100 years of looking, scientists have finally tracked down a strange, four-stranded form of DNA. Our genetic code is usually incorporated in two strands of genetic material that wrap around one another, forming the famous ‘double helix’ struture. The discovery shows some of our genes are actually incorporated in a ‘quadruple helix’.

These quadruplexes have been spotted in microorganisms before, but it’s the first time they’ve been seen in humans. It’s thought they may be involved

in the development of some cancers, providing new avenues of research into treatments.

Professor Shankar Balasubramanian at the University of Cambridge, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Chemistry, describes the quadruplexes as ‘exotic knots’. Regions of DNA rich in the compound guanine, one of the four chemicals that makes up the genetic code, are particularly prone to forming the four-stranded DNA.

Balasubramanian and his team conducted a computerised survey to search for guanine-rich

sequences. They found them all over the human genome.

Research is already under way into how to use synthetic molecules to trap and contain quadruplexes – stopping cells dividing and therefore preventing cancer. “The research indicates that quadruplexes are more likely to occur in genes of cells that are rapidly dividing, such as cancer cells,” says Balasubramanian. “For us, it strongly supports the idea of investigating the use of these four-stranded structures as targets for personalised treatments.”

Found in humans: four-sided DNAFluorescent markers

reveal the presence of the four-sided DNA as

pink blobs in cells

25August 2013

elow the Indian Ocean, a continent has lain hidden for millions

of years, but now its presence has been revealed by grains of sand lying on a beach. What’s more, geologists believe there could be lots of these ‘ghost continents’ scattered around the globe waiting to be discovered.

When an international team of geologists analysed sand from the beaches of Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, they found zircon crystals ranging from 660 million to nearly two

billion years old. But Mauritius is a much younger, volcanic island – its oldest rocks are no more than 8.9 million years old.

These zircon crystals (‘zircons’) are also much older than any sea floor crust on the planet, so the researchers suggest the zircons were dragged up from an ancient landmass that once linked India and Madagascar – volcanic activity bringing them to the surface, where they mingled with the island’s sands.

To test this idea they

looked at maps of the Earth’s gravitational field, which reveal the thickness of the Earth’s crust. They identified a banana-shaped sliver of unusually thick crust under the Indian Ocean. This crust, they say, could be the remnants of the microcontinent they have named ‘Mauritia’, which broke apart when India and Madagascar started to go their separate ways 85 million years ago.

“Lots of other oceanic islands could be sitting above

drowned microcontinents,” says Dr Hans Amundsen, a geologist who runs the Norwegian company Earth and Planetary Exploration Services and who was involved with the research. “The Canary Islands and Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean are two possible candidates. To find out, scientists need to look for old zircons that have survived their travels to the surface,” says Amundsen. “I think we’re going to find more.”

Lost ‘continent’ found under Indian OceanB

The island of Mauritius sits where a much larger, much older landmass once lay


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Scientists at the University of Calgary in Canada have found a way to reduce bat deaths from wind turbines by up to 60 per cent – by slowing the turbine blades. The blades are slowed to a standstill during low wind periods, which coincide with the times when the bats are most likely to fly. Most bats killed at North American energy facilities are migratory tree bats, including silver-haired and hoary varieties. Bat deaths from turbines have lately outstripped bird fatalities.

�� ROUND UP

KEEPING ABREAST OF THE TOP SCIENCE, HISTORY AND NATURE RESEARCH FROM AROUND THE WORLD

WILDLIFE

GENETICS PLANT PHYSIOLOGY TECHNOLOGYAERONAUTICS

The differences between the silky curls of a cocker spaniel and the shaggy mop of a sheep dog are down to just three genes. Scientists in the US and France made the discovery by analysing the genes of 80 dog breeds. They found that a dog’s coat can be split into three traits – length, curl and texture – and each of these is controlled by one major gene. So different combinations of different varieties of these genes leads to the vast majority of coat types of all the purebred dogs in the world.

Pruning the main shoot in a plant encourages lower branches to grow because of the flow of the hormone auxin. Scientists in the UK, Canada and Sweden have discovered that for a side branch to grow, it must be able to export the auxin to the main shoot. So cutting off the tip of the main stem, or another side branch – where the auxin is also produced – will increase the chances that the side branch can export and grow.

The movement of locust wings will help engineers develop tiny flying robots for military reconnaissance. Scientists in the UK and Australia used high-speed photography to watch locusts fly in a wind tunnel (below). The insects were chosen for the study because they are efficient fliers and it appears that this is down to the complex way their wings fold in flight. The next task is for engineers to try to mimic the wing movement in small robotic aircraft – fixed wings are inefficient in tiny craft.

A new piece of software can reveal whether one piece of music is a copy of another. Currently experts are called in to give their subjective opinion if one musician takes another to court claiming work has been copied. But, using complex algorithms, the software developed by experts in the UK and Germany can analyse the similarity of the melodies. Music plagiarism court cases from the US have been used as a test bed for the software and 90 per cent of the decisions were predicted correctly.

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCEUpdateD

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KNOW YOUR STUFF.

THERE’S MORE TO EVERYTHING.EVEN POTATOES.


WorldMags.netg www.knowledgemagazine.in I () Knowledge Magazine India A Worldwide Media Publication

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28 August 2013

he internet is profoundly shifting how we getinformation. Whether

it’s through Web 2.0 services like social networking sites and wikis or through blogs and discussion groups, it is increasingly the resource of choice. And one of its key features is that it is unedited and devoted to open contribution.

So the net has become – and is growing ever more so – the main way we interact with the world when we’re not face-to-face with it. But if it’s so unedited and wide-open, surely it must output vast amounts of garbage? Well, it does.

This problem matters. It cannot be waved aside by saying, as so many do, that we merely need to become our own editors and think more critically. Our decisions are only as good as the information behind them, and no amount of cagey scepticism will defeat

misinformation if we wind up acting on it, or use it to justify our deepest beliefs. Nor can it be dismissed by saying that perhaps a little misinformation is the price we pay for introducing democracy to the politics of knowledge. According to this attitude, when assorted experts, professional journalists and encyclopaedia-makers are deposed from their elite positions over us, the people are empowered. Perhaps.

Neither of these replies grapples with the problem. When confronted with the quite sobering fact that we are ingesting more and more mental junk food, the reply appears

to be: “But the internet is fantastic!” I agree, it is amazing. If I did not think so, I would not have spent so much time helping to create it.But, in awe of our shiny new digital toys, are we supposed to ignore how they might tend, perhaps subtly, to undermine the value we place on such things as deep personal reflection, painstaking research, careful rational inquiry and, quite simply, the earnest concern for the truth? I certainly hope not, because those are intellectual values on which the entire edifice of our civilisation is built.

I do not trust what I ingest on the internet because I know how the digital sausage is made. I have been building and participating in internet communities, in the trenches, since 1994. This has taught me that most communities are set up not to ensure pristine accuracy of information, but instead

“I do not trust what I ingest on the internet because I know how the digital sausage is made”

The internet has two competing

purposes: communication

and information

Larry Sanger asks whether we can trust what we read on the web

Comment & Analysis

With all the answers seemingly at our fingertips, what future do libraries

have in our modern world?

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to provide a fair playing ground for elaborate information-based games. The freedom and equality of participants are deeply valued because this is really the only way to build a large, active group. The needs of the community as a community strongly outweigh any countervailing requirements of information quality.

To put it another way, the internet has two competing purposes: communication and information. What works excellently as a communication game frequently outputs a rather poor information resource. Examples of misinformation online are legion. Earnest bloggers feel no more pressure to check their facts than they do in face-to-face conversation. Why should they? It’s just a conversation.

We are shaping for ourselves a brave new world in which we increasingly depend on freely-donated information that has never properly been checked for accuracy or fairness, one in which we increasingly form our opinions on the basis of discussions dominated by the loudest, most persistent, most motivated voices, not necessarily the most reasonable and well-informed ones. I do worry that what we value, and how we form beliefs that deeply guide our lives, might be changing without our being adequately aware of its happening – at least, so far as we increasingly plug ourselves into a group mind that does not have the truth, rationally arrived at, as its uppermost value.

In 2005, newspaperman John Seigenthaler Sr called me up to complain that he had been dreadfully libelled by his Wikipedia biography. The experience of a confrontation with this distinguished gentleman mortified me. This is part of what led me to start Citizendium, a new

WHAT DO YOU THINK?Have we become lazy as a result

of the internet? Or does it help us

to better understand our world?

Email: [email protected]

300,000people are killed annually by climate change, according to a report by the Global Humanitarian Forum led by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan. By 2030, the number of victims will be 500,000, it predicts.

60,000 yearsis the age of a piece of Neanderthal skull found in the North Sea. Discovered off the coast of the Netherlands, it’s the oldest human bone recovered from beneath the waves.

4600m(15,000ft) is the height of a volcano discovered off Indonesia’s western coast. The phenomenon – about half the height of Everest – was spotted by scientists carrying out a survey of the Indian Ocean floor.

385body lengths per second is the speed of male hummingbirds performing a dive during their courtship ritual – making them the fastest vertebrates relative to their size.

200milliseconds are all that’s required for the brain to gather most of the information it needs to determine someone’s emotional state from their facial expression, according to a study at the University of Glasgow.

112is the place on the periodic table that has been officially filled by a newly recognised element, tentatively known as ununbium.

COUNT DOWN

Most communities are set up

not to ensure pristine accuracy

of information

wiki which requires real names and allows a modest role for experts.

I would like to see more such projects, but they may never be more popular than the faceless information

engines of the world. More effective would be a system that allows people to rate websites and automatically post their ratings publicly for general use. Search engines would be able to aggregate these ratings, giving users much more guidance on the accuracy of what they are reading. Not only that, we could instruct search engines to seed rankings with data from those sources we trust.

The internet really is astounding, but that’s old news. It’s time we dropped the hype, faced up honestly to its limitations, and sought better ways of organising ourselves.

Larry Sanger is an American philosopher who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001. More recently he created another free encyclopedia, Citizendium.

Can we trust what sites such as Wikipedia tell us, given the lack of editorial control?


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he half-man, half-beast minotaur,

the fire-breathing dragon, the

werewolf and its corrupting

bite… all the stuff of utter fiction. Surely

the monsters of campfire stories and

Hollywood horror can have no basis in

reality? That would be ridiculous. This

is what we have deluded ourselves into

believing but it is, astonishingly, wrong.

While there never was a real werewolf

that could curse others by biting deeply

into their flesh, this is not how our

ancestors saw things. Once upon a time,

diseased wolves ran rampant across

the European landscape. Countless

souls were mauled and the pain of

such attacks was far greater than the

mere tearing of flesh. Just a single

bite from these beasts would spread

their infection and, within months,

a contaminated person would be

stripped of their humanity, snarl, hiss

and ultimately be driven to bite others

around them. Today, our understanding

of epidemiology allows us to see this

hideous transformation as the result of

the rabies virus. But long ago it was the

curse of the werewolf.

Make no mistake, monsters are

fictional creatures, but they did not

emerge from nothingness. Our very worst

nightmares have their origins firmly

rooted in reality, taking form from

terrifying phenomena that our ancestors

were seeing but could not understand.

So here, armed with today’s scientific

knowledge, we’ll shed light on the birth

of these horrific beasts.

PLUS MORE MONSTERS EXPLAINED4Matt Kaplan discovers that the beasts of piercing stare and hooked claw that walk your nightmares are based on science fact

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Even the creatures of your nightmares have a logical

explanation… well, we hope so anyway


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The island of Haiti is rich with legends

of the dead being brought back from

the grave, but these were thought to

be nothing more than myths until a

remarkable story started to unfold. In

May 1962, a man turned up at an

American-run hospital in Haiti sick

with fever, spitting up blood and

suffering terrible body aches. His

condition deteriorated and he was

declared dead several hours later. The

doctors noted that he had very low

blood pressure, hypothermia,

respiratory failure and numerous

digestive problems. His sister identified

the body and made arrangements for

his burial.

In 1981, the sister was approached

by a man at her village market who

introduced himself using the boyhood

name of her dead brother. She was

stunned. This was a name that only

she and a few family members knew.

The man said that he’d been made

into a zombie and forced to work on

a plantation until his zombie master

died. The media went crazy over

the story and Dr Lamarck Douyon,

director of the Psychiatric Institute in

Port-au-Prince, made up his mind to

test whether this zombie tale could

possibly be true.

Extensive psychiatric tests proved

that the man really was the brother.

This led Douyon to conclude that there

had to be something real about zombie

mythology – something must have

made the man appear dead when he

actually was not. So he contacted the-

then Harvard ethnobotanist Edmund

Wade Davis – currently the explorer

in residence at National Geographic

– to investigate what it was that these

zombie masters were actually doing.

Deadly ConcoctionsHaving carried out numerous

interviews with the masters, Davis

discovered that they were developing

complex poisons from local ingredients

(see ‘Zombie chemistry’, opposite),

which the victim inhaled or absorbed

through their skin. This brought them

to the brink of death; actually feeding

the poisons to victims would have

meant they were dead rather than just

looking it, so they would have been of

no use to their masters.

These poor souls were then buried

alive and later dug up. The zombie

masters told Davis that they then had

to beat the zombie to drive off its old

spirit, tie it to a crucifix, feed it a paste

made from hallucinogenic cucumbers

and then baptise it with a zombie name.

Davis realised that after this ordeal,

victims were so mentally damaged that

they would do whatever they were told.

And while they were not the undead,

they might as well have been.

On a Caribbean island, zombies walk the streets

ZOMBIES

Funeral home workers in the Colombian city of Cali got the shock of their lives when an apparently dead 45-year-old woman being prepared for burial started breathing again. Noelia Serna had been admitted to hospital after suffering a heart attack and was declared dead. After coming back to life in the funeral home, she was duly transferred back to hospital.

This apparent miracle, back in 2010, is an example of the Lazarus syndrome, where a patient’s circulation returns some time after attempts at resuscitation have failed. But

far from being animated corpses like the zombies we often imagine, these patients are very much alive.

At least 25 incidences have been reported since 1982, and why it happens is far from clear. One suggested mechanism is a delay in adrenaline administered by medical staff reaching the heart.

In a report on one incidence of the Lazarus effect in the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia, doctors in Pittsburgh say it makes the timing of organ harvesting for transplants more ‘problematic’.

WHEN PATIENTS RISE FROM THE DEAD

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The poison that creates the undeadZOMBIE CHEMISTRY*IE CCHHHHHHEM

*A warning to all would-be witch doctors – creating a zombie-inducing cocktail is dangerous and illegal. We have not listed all of the ingredients here.

Frying, stewing, boiling and baking do not denature the tetrodotoxins within the zombie-inducing brew

So potent is the concoction that witch doctors wear face masks and cover exposed skin with an oily emulsion to ensure they do not succumb to the toxins themselves

If anyone offers you a hallucinogenic

cucumber, say no, unless you want

to end up like this

MIXING

The animal components are heated together with human remains before

being placed in a mortar with the plant components and pounded to

a granular consistency. The concoction is then sifted to produce

the final product.

APPLICATION

Give someone the poison to drink and it “kills them too completely,”

a witch doctor told Harvard ethnobotanist Edmund Wade Davis.

Instead, the poison is applied repeatedly to the victim’s skin, an

open wound, or it is blown across the victim so they inhale it. Some witch

doctors add broken glass to the brew, so if it is placed on a doorknob

the skin will be broken and the poison is more likely to take effect.

INGREDIENTS

Toxins from the toad known as Bufo marinus. It is known for being something of a chemical nightmare, producing both numbing agents and

hallucinogens.

Puffer fish have toxins that cause paralysis, depress respiration, reduce circulatory activity, and

cause patients to believe they are floating over their own bodies. The fish are a critical component of a

zombie potion.

Some species of plant used, such as Albizia lebbeck are unstudied and

their chemical effects are unknown. Others are better understood –

Mucuna pruriens, for example, has hallucinogenic effects.

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DID YOU KNOW?

The god Poseidon was responsible for creating the

bull that inseminated the queen of Crete, leading to the birth of the minotaur. Known as the god of the ocean, Poseidon was also

the god of earthquakes. Mere coincidence? Doubtful.

A half-man, half-bull that tore its quarry to pieces

MINOTAUR

At first glance, the minotaur seems absurd.

A half-man, half-bull creature? The idea is

as ridiculous as it is biologically impossible.

However, writings from the 3rd Century BC

hint that the fears behind the myth were

real enough. While most descriptions of

the minotaur’s physical form are vague, its

bellows were described as so terrible that

they could be heard for miles emanating

from the labyrinth on the Greek island of

Crete where it was imprisoned. Bellows

coming from an underground maze…

might the rise of the minotaur be linked

to earthquakes?

Subterranean roarCrete is tectonically active, but so are many

locations around the globe that do not have

minotaur myths associated with them. Yet

a 2007 study by an international team of

researchers published in Nature Geoscience

hints that Crete has had earthquakes of

truly epic proportions. The study analysed

the carbon isotopes of fossilised marine

organisms along the island’s coast to work

out when they died and through this analysis

the team discovered something staggering.

Countless animals died at precisely the

same moment in 365AD.

As the team looked closer, it became clear

that the animals perished because they dried

out when Crete was pushed nearly 10m out

of the ocean in a single moment. Ten metres

of uplift from a single earthquake… that

really is the stuff of nightmares. But 365AD is

long after the days when the minotaur came

to be. Crucially though, this tectonic incident

wasn’t just an isolated event.

A 2008 paper published in Earth And

Planetary Science Letters by an international

team of scientists identified boulders along

the Greek coast with shelled marine animals

attached to them. The boulders had been

thrown out of the sea by earthquake-induced

tsunamis, and the animals attached to

them quickly desiccated. Carbon analysis

of these animals allowed the team to date

the moments when the tsunamis took

place. As expected, some boulders dated

to 365AD, but many had been thrown from

the sea thousands of years earlier when the

minotaur was only just emerging as

a monster.

Could subterranean bellows be the result of

geothermal activity or a demented man-bull? If you’re reading BBC Knowledge you know

the answer

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It was a horrid sea monster

of incomprehensible size with

‘rows of shields tightly sealed

together’ on its back and smoke

that poured from its nostrils. This

beast in the pages of the Bible

sounds terrible. But the elements

of the natural world that led to the

imagining of the Leviathan of the

Mediterranean are easy to identify.

While the image of an animal

with shields for skin is vivid, it

is hard for a biologically-trained

mind not to wander to thoughts

of reptiles, or more specifically, to

think of the large and hard scales

of crocodiles living in the Nile.

Smoke pouring out of nostrils

had to have emerged from people

seeing whales blasting air out of

their blow holes and this goes

along with the description of the

beast rising up out of the water

and thrashing about – it’s typical

whale-breaching behaviour.

Familiar sea creatures or Biblical beast?

LEVIATHANThe Leviathan would eat Jaws as an appetiser

Dragons of medieval legend are

not described much physically. It

was their fiery breath that drew

attention. The tales of the historian

Geoffrey of Monmouth, who lived

in the 12th Century, hint that there

might be some truth behind this.

In Monmouth’s writings, ancient

British King Vortigern was forced

to flee to Welsh hills as the Saxons

invaded. Near Snowdonia, he

demanded that a fort be built.

Yet every time his men began

constructing the walls they fell

over. Vortigern sought advice from

his wise men who told him he

needed to spill the blood of a child

not born from the union between

man and woman.

Vortigern sent them off to find

such a child and, when they came

to Carmarthen, they discovered

two boys arguing. One of the

children insulted the other as a

bastard with no father. Bingo! The

wise men grabbed the kid and ran

for it. Upon meeting Vortigern, the

boy told him it was the dragons

below the ground that were

responsible for the tumbling walls.

Vortigern ordered his men to dig into

the ground and, sure enough, they

found dragons ‘panting’ flame.

People assume Monmouth made

this up, but there is science here.

Wales has many regions where coal

gas collects in underground pockets.

People who went digging into them

with tools that sparked against

the rocks would have caused

explosions. We understand this

as mere combustion today, but

back then, the blasts of foul

smelling fire belonged to the

deadly breath of a monster.

A fire-breathing beast that rises from the ground DRAGONS

DID YOU KNOW?

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, there really are

whales in the Mediterranean. And some of the whales living there are really big animals, including fin whales and the carnivorous

sperm whales responsible for the tales surrounding

Moby Dick.

DID YOU KNOW?

Some of the earliest dragons of mythology were constrictors

from Assyrian legend. A 2011 study may show why, revealing that over

the last 100 years pythons have eaten more than nine per cent of people born to each generation

in hunter-gatherer tribes in the Philippines.

Ah, so that’s what all that liquid molten rock is – of

course, it’s the fiery secretions of a gigantic reptile


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Given the trends of the past 100 years,

people in the future will likely be scared

witless by a monster spawned from

science. Books like Frankenstein and

The Island Of Dr Moreau were only the

beginning, with people fearing what

transplants and blood transfusions

were capable of bringing into our world.

Now films like Jurassic Park, Species,

and Splice scare us with genetically

manipulated horrors and it appears to

be a recurring nightmare.

Genetic horror A team of scientists at the University

of Tokyo is already raising mice that

have been genetically altered to carry

the pancreas of rats. This might not

sound like much of a feat, but mice

and rats are more distantly related than

humans and chimpanzees.

So how would people view a human

grown with several organs belonging to a

chimpanzee or some other mix of animals?

Or worse, how might a chimpanzee grown

with a human brain be viewed? Certainly,

such a creature would have to be given

the same civil rights as a human being,

but what would a mind placed in such an

environment endure?

Thankfully, this is still just the stuff

of science fiction but, in the next 100

years, it might not be. As these areas of

science march ever closer to reality it is

only natural for our fears of how such

experiments might go very wrong to make

their way into literature and film with ever-

increasing frequency.

Indeed, this is why monsters are so

valuable. They provide a face for our fears,

allowing us to see them more clearly, and

perhaps most importantly, understand

what it is about the world that truly

terrifies us.

THE FUTURE OF MONSTERSWhat new horrors will our imaginations create?

You’d be annoyed too if you woke up to find that they’d

transplanted your brain into the body of a gorilla

Matt Kaplan is a science journalist living in

London. He is the author of the book Medusa’s

Gaze and Vampire’s Bite: The Science of

Monsters, which explains with help of facts,

the origin and evolution of monsters.

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ecent events in Japan and southeast Asia haveensured we are all too aware

of the tsunami-triggering potential of enormous, submarine earthquakes. Less well known, however, is the fact that volcanoes are also very effective tsunami generators, with ‘flank collapse’ – when a sizeable chunk of a volcano collapses into the sea – spawning tsunamis that have taken close to 20,000 lives in the last 400 years.

In 1979 a tsunami caused by the collapse of Indonesia’s Iliwerung volcano took several hundred lives. And in 1792, the failure of part of Japan’s Unzen volcano launched a tsunami that battered coastal villages, resulting in 14,000 deaths. Now scientists say a collapse of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands could create a tsunami that would devastate the East Coast of the USA and batter the UK’s western shores. More often than not, volcanoes are not solid, unmoving bastions of strength, but wobbly piles of ash

and lava rubble just looking for an excuse to collapse. The evidence for this is all around us, with many hundreds of massive landslides now identified at volcanoes right across the planet. Typically, these leave behind enormous collapse scars, such as the great rocky amphitheatre torn from the east flank of Mount Etna and, most recently, the 3km-wide bite taken out of the north flank of Mount St Helens by the landslide that triggered its 1980 eruption.

Slippery slope Once a volcano’s flank has become

unstable, it can be shaken off by an earthquake, pushed off by an injection of new magma, or sometimes just fall off as the flank becomes too steep. It doesn’t even need an eruption to start things moving. As the extraordinary footage of the collapse of Mount St Helens north flank reveals, once a volcanic landslide gets going, there is no stopping it. The mass of moving rock hurtles downslope at velocities matching those of a Formula 1

Are we in danger of a giant tidal wave causing mass

destruction worldwide? Bill McGuire reveals how it’s

only a matter of time before such a surge is unleashed

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A tsunami triggered from a volcanic landslide could send a colossal wave crashing into

the American coast


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the planet as often as every 10,000 years or so, it may not be too long before we find out.

One prime candidate for the next big collapse is the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma, which has been behaving in a rather disturbing manner since an eruption in 1949. Then, the eruption was accompanied by some particularly strong earthquakes beneath the volcano’s western flank, together with the opening of a 3km-long line of fractures along the crest of the volcano, down which part of the west flank dropped seawards by a few metres. This might have been no big deal but for the results of a survey of the volcano, undertaken by my research team between 1994 and 1997. It hinted that the west flank of the Cumbre Vieja might still be on the move, albeit extremely slowly.

More than a decade on and we are convinced that something a bit special is going on. Comparisons between GPS readings undertaken in 1997 and 2007, designed to monitor relative displacements, reveal some astonishing results. Not only is the entire west flank of the volcano deforming independently of the rest of the edifice, but over the intervening decade it moved westwards and upwards by more than 10cm. This may not sound like much, but it means that Cumbre Vieja’s west flank qualifies as the most recently activated giant landslide, albeit moving at an incredibly slow speed… for now.

Atlantic alarm

While the current rate of seaward movement is tiny, all the evidence points to the likelihood that at some time in the future, the west flank of Cumbre Vieja will fail, plunging into the North Atlantic. No one has ever observed the formation of a megatsunami as a consequence of such an event, but we can build a realistic picture of what it might look like.

For a terrifying worst case, which envisages 500km3 of rock sliding into the sea at 100m/s, a computer model built by Steve Ward at the University of California, Santa Cruz predicts

“In the future, the west flank of Cumbre Vieja will fail, plunging into

the North Atlantic”

racing car, typically travelling many kilometres before coming to rest and obliterating anything and everything in its path.

With a volume of a couple of cubic kilometres, the Mount St Helens landslide was just a tiddler. Compare this with the 45km3 prehistoric flank collapse at neighbouring Mount Shasta, or the staggering 5,000km3 volume of the Nuuanu landslide, which took an enormous bite out of Hawaii’s Ko‘olau volcano a few million years ago.

But the Nuuanu landslide is just one of around 70 mammoth collapses whose debris is scattered about the sea floor surrounding the islands of Hawaii. Another, known as the Alika 2 slide, formed about 100,000 years ago when a monumental chunk of the Big Island’s Mauna Loa volcano fell into the Pacific, sending a towering tsunami surging throughout the archipelago. Marine shell deposits now stranded up to 60m above sea level on the flanks of neighbouring Kohala volcano testify to colossal waves, but this is only half the picture. Over the last hundred millennia, the Kohala volcano has actually been subsiding, so that the true height of the tsunami looks as if it was nearer 400m. That’s a quarter as high again

as London’s Shard – Western Europe’s tallest building.

It’s difficult to grasp the impact such an event happening today would have on our world’s crowded coastlines. But with major collapses of ocean island volcanoes taking place somewhere on

Geologist Dave Tappin examines fossilised shells on Hawaii; evidence that a tsunami struck 120,000 years ago

On 11 March 2011, Japan was hit by a huge tsunami triggered by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake, resulting in a death toll of over 15,000

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Below is a worst-case collapse scenario based on the rapid entry of 500km3 of rock into the North Atlantic from the Cumbre Vieja volcano. It predicts an initial bulge of water close to 1km high. As the bulge subsides, waves race outwards that, within 10 minutes, inundate the shores of La Palma and neighbouring islands to a height of several

hundred metres. An hour after collapse, waves 60-100m high crash onto the West African coast.

As the tsunami spreads outwards like a series of giant ripples, it encounters the UK after about six hours, with wave heights of 10-20m. To the west, a huge ‘train’ of widely dispersed waves heads for North America. Arriving first in

Newfoundland, it works its way down to low-lying Florida, which faces the prospect of waves 20m high or more.

For a smaller collapse of rock of, say, 150km3, predicted wave heights are scaled down, but would still be extremely destructive. Along the coast of North America, for example, they would perhaps be 3-8m high rather than up to 20m.

Below is a worst-case collapse scenariobased on the rapid entry of 500km3 of rock into the North Atlantic from the

hundred metres. An hour after collapse,waves 60-100m high crash onto the West African coast.

Newfoundland, itlow-lying Florida,prospect of wave

THE ULTIMATE WAVE MACHINEA massive landslide in the Canary Islands is set to cause a devastating tsunami

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Two minutes after the collapse of the Cumbre Vieja a huge

tsunami forms, with a wave cresting at nearly 1km high

A quarter of an hour after the landslide, the front of the

tsunami is nearly 100m high, while the trough is close to

300m below sea level

The tsunami spreads out across the Atlantic with

peak wave heights of 60m, with Spain and the UK

hammered by 7m waves

Five minutes after collapse, the trough of the wave

reaches a staggering 1.3km below sea level

Half an hour after collapse, and the tsunami forms a

devastating ring of waves around the Canary Islands

Six hours after the landslide, Newfoundland is hit by

10m waves before larger 15-20m waves strike the

north shores of South America

As it spreads out into the Atlantic the crest of the wave is

still hundreds of metres high

Just one hour after the collapse of Cumbre Vieja and 50-

100m waves crash into mainland Africa along the coast of

Western Sahara

Florida then takes the brunt of the tsunami, with wave

after wave hitting the coast, some reaching 20-25m

in height

The Canary Islands

Cumbre Vieja La Palma

The Canary Islands

Western Sahara


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an initial bulge of water close to a kilometre high, subsiding into waves merely hundreds of metres high. This may sound like something from a science fiction film, but tsunami deposits identified more than 180m above sea level on the neighbouring island of Gran Canaria show that something similar has happened before. A wave of this size would have been unleashed after one of at least 14 collapses of volcanic flanks that occurred in the archipelago during prehistoric times.

Of course, it’s perfectly possible that the future collapse, when it comes, will be smaller than the worst case, as a consequence of which the resulting tsunami will be reduced in

“The waves will remain big enough to cause major destruction as

far away”

reach distant shorelines. The original tsunami model for

a future collapse of the Cumbre Vieja, published in 2001 by the aforementioned Steve Ward and University College London’s Dr Simon Day, supports the idea that sufficient energy is conserved as the tsunami spreads out across the North Atlantic so that the waves remain big enough to cause major destruction as far away as the UK, West Africa and even the east coast of North America. Other experts disagree, suggesting that a future megatsunami would lose energy more rapidly as it travelled, resulting in waves along the east coast of North America that were just a few metres high.

Ward and Day, however, stick to their guns. As Steve Ward observes: “The 2011 Japan tsunami struck a few hundred kilometres of coast.

height. Certainly, marine geologist Dr Russell Wynn and colleagues at the UK’s National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton have provided evidence for at least one ancient collapse in the Canaries occurring in a piecemeal manner. If the Cumbre Vieja were to fail in the same way, with the rock making up the flank sliding into the sea bit by bit over a period of hours, then although there would be more tsunamis, each would be smaller and less destructive.

However, everything we know about past volcano collapses points to the fact that when a volcano sheds a part of its flank, it usually does so very quickly, with most of the material sliding off in one go. While we can’t be certain, the weight of evidence suggests that when the west flank of the Cumbre Vieja eventually plunges into the North Atlantic, the resulting tsunami will be prodigious and unprecedented in the historical record.

UK: Disaster zone

This news is not good for the Canary Islands, but what about further afield? One of the controversies about tsunamis is just how well they conserve their energy as they travel further and further from the source, and how high they will be when they

A US Navy airman surveys the devastation in the Indonesian city of Meulaboh after a tsunami hit in 2004

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The destructive power of tidal waves laid waste to the city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in December 2004


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FLU VACCI N EEFLU VACCI N

MEGATSUNAMI WATCHAround the world, huge landslides are set to wreak destruction on coastal settlements

SUMATRAA segment of the Sunda Megathrust Fault off the coast of Sumatra (Indonesia), which has not ruptured since 1797, is fully primed and ready to go. When it does, it’s predicted to trigger a massive earthquake – as high as magnitude 8.8 – as well as a 5–6m-high tsunami. The devastating waves will reach the Indonesian city of Padang – population close to 1 million – within 30 minutes. While some preparations are being made to counter the threat of this sleeping giant of a disaster, the chances are that the level of death and destruction will be very high.

close to 1 msome prepacounter thedisaster, thedeath and d

CASCADIA SUBDUCTION ZONEThe Cascadia Fault extends northwards

for more than 1000km along the west coast of North America, from northern California to midway along Vancouver

Island in Canada. In 1700 the fault ruptured, generating an earthquake of

around magnitude 9, which triggered a massive tsunami that was destructive even

as far as Japan. A major earthquake of a comparable size has a fair chance of

happening within the next 50 years or so, leading to a potentially devastating

tsunami striking the Pacific coastline of the United States and southern Canada.

The Californian coast sits on the Cascadia Fault, which could generate a devastating tsunami

hquake of a ir chance of years or so, devastating coastline of ern Canada.

tthe Cascadia FFault, which ccould generateaa devastating ttsunami

THE PUERTO RICO TRENCHThe Puerto Rico Trench marks the join between the Caribbean Plate to the south and the North American Plate to the north. With a maximum depth of more than 8km, it forms the deepest part of the Atlantic Basin. Submarine imagery reveals numerous giant landslides in the trench that were triggered by ancient earthquakes. It is now more than 200 years since a major quake struck the region, and there is some concern that a future combination of a huge quake and a resulting landslide could trigger a tsunami that could be destructive across much of the Caribbean.

Off the coast of Sumatra, an unstable undersea fault could cause disaster

Imagine the same level of damage spanning shores 10,000km long – from Nova Scotia to Brazil, from Casablanca to Keflavik.”

Ward and Day do have some independent support for their predictions. Far out in the middle of the Atlantic, the island of Bermuda sits bang in the path of any tsunami heading west. In addition to its eponymous shorts, the island is also known – among geologists, at least – for some enigmatic deposits exposed along its coastline. These take the form of shell and coral debris resting 20m above sea level. Gary McMurtry of the University of Hawaii and Dave Tappin of the British Geological Survey are of the opinion that this material was dumped by a passing tsunami hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The obvious source is an ancient collapse of one of the Canary Island volcanoes. Should this prove to be the case, then it will go a long way towards supporting the idea that a future collapse of the Cumbre Vieja could present a serious threat to the entire Atlantic Basin.

The waiting game

But when is this all going to happen? Unfortunately, we don’t know. The average frequency of flank collapses in the Canary Islands is about every 100,000 years, but given that the Cumbre Vieja’s west flank is already on the move, it is likely to meet its watery grave much sooner. We might well have to wait thousands of years, but the collapse could happen at any time. As Dr Simon Day points out, this is most likely to happen during an eruption, “when the volcano is subjected to the additional forces imposed upon it”.

In theory, there should be warning signs in the form of an acceleration in the rate of sliding. Provided the volcano is being monitored, this should allow an alert to be raised, ensuring the evacuation of threatened coastlines. In the meantime, don’t be dissuaded from visiting the beautiful island of La Palma. Soak up the Sun and visit the volcano. You’d be very unlucky to get caught up in a megatsunami-forming landslide.

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GREENLANDEight thousand years ago, an earthquake

caused by melting of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet triggered the great Storegga

landslide, off the coast of Norway, spawning a tsunami that inundated the Shetlands and the east coast of Scotland. As Greenland’s

2–3km-thick ice cover melts at an increasingly rapid rate, the faults beneath,

which have been locked under the weight of the ice for tens of millennia, will be able to move more easily. Resulting earthquakes

could, in turn, trigger submarine landslides similar to Storegga, capable of sending

tsunamis surging across the Atlantic.

Greenland’s melting ice could release powerful tsunamis across the Atlantic

The Caribbean islands sit precariously on the

edge of the Puerto Rico Trench

Cuba

Puerto Rio

Virgin Islands

Puerto Rico Trench

Bill McGuire is professor of

Geophysical & Climate Hazards at

University College London. XX

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44 August 2013

CANADA’S WILDEST WATERS


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NATUREPORTFOLIO

Unique images of the Great Bear

Rainforest showcase the diversity and

fragility of its wild inhabitants.

Photographs by Thomas P Peschak

The Great Bear Rainforest on British Columbia’s north-west coast

is one of the few remaining places where a wild land meets a wild

ocean: a marine biodiversity hotspot that is home to many unique

species. This sunflower sea star – the world’s largest, growing up

to 1m across – is endemic to the eastern Pacific. But coastlines are

magnets for development; wilderness is constantly pushed further

and further into remote areas of the interior. Now this wonderful

natural realm may be at risk: a proposed oil pipeline across the

rainforest raises the prospect of tanker traffic in these waters and

the environmental threats that could bring. My aim when creating

these images was to illustrate how interconnected the sea and the

land really are. This split photo perfectly illustrates the point.


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46 August 2013

� One of the most striking aspects of these waters

is the incredible array of rich colours. I spotted this

contrasting scene of purple sea star and green surf

grass (above) from far away, and fought the incoming

tide to reach them.

The fish-eating anemone (left) is among the largest

in the world. Growing up to 30cm across, this

dinner-plate-sized predator carpets the rocky reefs of

exposed outer coasts, using its crown of tentacles to

catch small fish and shrimp.

PORTFOLIONATURE


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47August 2013

At the estuary’s mouth, where the river meets

the sea, I came across a massive swarm of jellyfish

trapped by a strong tidal flow. The seas of the Great

Bear Rainforest are home to more than 75 species

of these gelatinous creatures; this dense fluther

was made up of lion’s mane and moon jellyfish. To

capture this photograph I had to descend through a

tannin-stained freshwater layer and then a 2m thick

crowd of jellyfish before reaching the colder, clearer

water just above the seabed.

NATUREPORTFOLIO


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48 August 2013

� The dungeness crab has been described as the

most delicious crustacean in the world. The local

stocks of these tasty creatures are an important food

source for the Gitga’at First Nations people, who

have lived in harmony with the ocean here for many

generations, taking only as much as they need from

the marine and freshwater realms to feed themselves

every year. These crabs are not found clumped in

large swarms, but spread out across the seabed.

Most flee when approached but a few stand their

ground; this one even leaped all the way over my

underwater camera housing.

Salmon are the keystone species of this

region. Every summer they return to spawn in

the rivers in which they were born. I found two

deep pools at the base of a small waterfall alive

with pink salmon preparing to leap the cascades

and continue their upstream migration. Here

I wedged myself into a crevice – the only

way I could hold my position in the freezing,

fast-flowing water. Salmon bring life, not just

to seals, bears and wolves but also to the

rainforest trees, which assimilate nutrients from

the fish once they have died after spawning.

PORTFOLIONATURE


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49August 2013

NATUREPORTFOLIO


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� Two different races of orca feed in

the coastal waters off the Great Bear

Rainforest. So-called ‘residents’ prefer a

diet of fish, feeding exclusively on salmon

during the summer months. ‘Transient’

individuals have slightly more pointed

dorsal fins, but the real difference lies in

their behaviour: they prefer to eat marine

mammals, including sealions, porpoises,

dolphins and even grey and minke whales.

They are also much less vocal than resident

whales, probably because travelling in

silence enables them to sneak up on prey

– essential for a successful co-operative

hunt. A planned pipeline through British

Columbia would transport some 5,25,000

barrels of petrol each day from Alberta’s

tar sands across the Great Bear Rainforest.

Supertankers would navigate treacherous

coastal waterways to reach this pristine

region. The proposed routes for these

vessels would traverse the habitat of many

species of cetaceans, notably humpback

whales and orcas.

Any oil spills from tankers would

threaten all of the creatures pictured here

and, by extension, the livelihoods of the

Gitga’at First Nations.

FIND OUT MORE

� www.thomaspeschak.com

Thomas Peschak’s official website

THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Thomas P Peschak is a fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers and spends most of each year documenting marine conservation issues.

51August 2013

NATUREPORTFOLIO


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OPPOSITES

YELLOW GARDEN SPIDER ARGIOPE AURANTIAThis orb-web spider is commonly found across much of the USA. The plump, brightly patterned females are about 2cm long (not counting legs) – more than five times longer and 50 times heavier than their diminutive mates. They spend their lives hanging in the centre of their webs, capturing prey and producing batches of hundreds of eggs, which they pack into globular silk cocoons. By contrast, the tiny males are thin and drab and abandon their webs as soon as they mature. They scramble through the vegetation in search of a mate, not eating and risking both predation and starvation. The few that do find a mate and succeed in mating will die in the act. After inserting the second of his two palps (his copulatory organs) the male’s heart simply stops, leaving his lifeless body hanging from the copulatory duct. The giant females live on and often reproduce again, but for their dwarf partners, life ends with a single mating.

The males and females of this graceful denizen of the open ocean are strikingly different to one another, more so than in any other octopus species. Females reach lengths of more than 2m and weigh up to 40,000 times more than males. The tiny males, which grow to no more than a few centimetres long, drift in the surface currents and sometimes catch rides on the bells of floating jellies as they search for a mate in the vast expanse of the open ocean. The males carry their sperm at the

end of a long, specialised arm called the hectocotylus, and mating involves depositing this inside the female’s mantle. Loss of the hectocotylus is fatal for males, so like the yellow garden spider, mating is their final act. Females, in contrast, often accumulate several hectocotyli before spawning hundreds of thousands of eggs, and it is thought that they need to indulge in multiple matings before they achieve full fertility.

ATTRACT

MALEFEMALE

BLANKET OCTOPUS TREMOCTOPUS VIOLACEUS

Size matters, or at least it does in the animal kingdom. Daphne Fairbairn

looks at some of nature’s oddest couples

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GIANT SEADEVIL CERATIAS HOLBOELLIOut of all the vertebrates, the males and females of deep-sea anglerfish are the most different from each other. Females reach lengths of up to 1.3m and can be 500,000 times heavier than their mates. The tiny males never develop the distinctive anglerfish form. Once they reach adulthood, they abandon feeding and devote themselves to searching for a female in the gloomy depths. If successful, they latch onto the female’s belly and metamorphose into permanently attached parasites, obtaining all their nutrition from the female’s bloodstream. From then on, their only function is to fertilise the eggs of their giant mate.

BONE-EATING WORM OSEDAX RUBIPLUMUSThis tubeworm colonises the bones of whale carcasses that lie on the ocean floor. Female bone-eating worms have delicate red palps, thin transparent tubes about 4cm long, and branching, greenish roots that extend deep into the bone. The males, in contrast, are only about 0.1cm long and never develop this tubeworm morphology. They settle out of the plankton as larvae, attach themselves to the inner wall of a female’s tube and immediately begin to make sperm. They never feed and simply convert the nutrients in their yolk, simultaneously digesting yolk and making sperm. A single male could not possibly produce enough sperm to fertilise all of a female’s eggs, nor could he sustain himself long enough to do so. Females therefore collect new males continually and typically have tens to hundreds of males in their tubes at any one time.

BURROWING BARNACLE TRYPETESA LAMPASInside the calcium-rich shells of large marine snails lurk these burrowing barnacles. Female T. lampas reach diameters of 1cm, which is large for a

burrowing barnacle, and weigh up to 500 times more than their males. The females settle on shells as larvae, attach themselves and then gradually

burrow into the shell wall as they grow, forming snug, protective burrows. Male larvae follow a very different path. They settle on the mantle sacs of the

females and rapidly metamorphose into stripped-down dwarfs consisting of little more than a large testis and an enormous penis. To fertilise the female’s

eggs, the penis elongates and snakes its way into the mantle cavity, a journey many times the male’s body length. The males never feed, fuelling all

of their reproductive activity with the yolk provided to them in the egg. The giant females clearly need multiple mates to ensure full fertility with older,

larger females typically hosting harems of 7-15 males.

IF THESE MALES WERE HUMAN, THEIR FEMALE COUNTERPARTS WOULD BE THE WEIGHT OF...

Average adult male = 70.8 kg

Yellow Garden Spider 3.5 tonnes= Large Ford Transit van

Burrowing Barnacles 35 tonnes = Mechanical digger

Bone-Eating Worm 14,160 tonnes = The Shard

Blanket Octopus 2,832 tonnes = Saturn V rocket

Giant Sea Devil 35,400 tonnes = Tanker ship

50x heavier

40,000x heavier

500x heavier

200,000x heavier (est)

500,000x heavier

Daphne Fairbairn is professor of biology at the University of

California, Riverside and author of Odd Couples: Extraordinary

Differences Between The Sexes In The Animal Kingdom.

53August 2013

NATUREANIMAL EXTREMES


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What is ‘global history’?What do we mean when we say ‘global history’ – or indeed ‘world history’, ‘transnational history’ or ‘international history’? These are surprisingly tricky terms to pin down.

Here’s what historians do agree upon: we are dealing with issues that are bigger than those contained within one state or one nation. In most cases, we’re also talking about issues that have participants from different societies.

To be more specific, global history has come to mean an emphasis on comparative aspects

of human activities in the broadest sense. World history is often about histories that take a particular view as to what connects humankind over time. Transnational history is about how ideas, money and people travel, and about how communities are constituted outside the frame-works of empire, state or nation. International history centres on relations among communities, peoples and states.

These are vague and contested definitions. But it is at least helpful to know a little about where we’re starting from in these debates…

e broadestoften aboutticular view

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THE FIVE BIG QUESTIONS IN GLOBAL HISTORYOdd Arne Westad introduces five major

themes in humanity’s wider story that

strongly divide academic opinion

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HISTORY HISTORY OF THE WORLD


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Why have Homo sapiens proved so overwhelmingly successful?

The story of humankind is at root the tale of clever apes spreading across the globe. We know that the first humans of our own species, Homo sapiens or anatomically modern humans, walked out of their African homeland around 65,000 years

ago. What we know less about is what

happened to them during the first few

millennia of their odyssey. The speed with which they

spread is astonishing. Within less than 20,000 years they

had reached Australia, which

they began to explore at around the same time as they spread to most of Europe.

What accounts for our massive and almost instant

success as a species? Our capacity to learn and to adapt is, of course, at the bottom of this. But the size of our brains, historians agree, is not enough in itself to explain what happened. Diet most certainly played a role. The first humans chanced upon the protein-rich foods of the coastal zone, and it’s quite likely that their colonisation of the world was linked to their dietary needs (or preferences). This explains why they followed the coasts everywhere and why it took a long time before they began to penetrate the interiors.

Life on the beach certainly pushed humans in the direction of life on the

water, not just along its edges. Within a hundred generations or so of

them first venturing outside Africa, simple boats had

made their appearance, although historians disagree over how far

the first humans

could travel by water. It is likely that our forebears’ maritime skills developed incrementally, but that this knowledge spread fast. Our ancestors could communicate through language, and it is quite possible that the idea of a boat may have been familiar to people who had never even seen one.

Some historians claim that even in our early history similar tools appear in different population groups, with the knowledge of how to build these tools spread via word of mouth rather than through hard-and-fast experience.

But could all humans communicate? We do not know when language

differentiation appeared (‘very early’ is most people’s guess), although we know a bit about how languages developed. It’s a subject complicated by the fact that our immediate ancestors were not the only humans around in the new territories they colonised. In Eurasia, at least one of our genetic cousins was already resident. Recent advances in human DNA research have deeply influenced

our view of – and our debates about – early humanity. We know that Homo sapiens and humans of what we broadly call Neanderthal groups interbred – up to four per cent of our own DNA is of Neanderthal origin. But was such intermingling also common with other groups, whose identity we still cannot trace for certain?

It will take a bit of time before we can determine where and with what results different groups of humans interbred after our ancestors left Africa. This is one of the most exciting fields of prehistorical research and one that is going to have great consequences for our understanding of humans living today.

After the Neanderthal genome was mapped a couple of years ago, it became clear that some of the most important disease-fighting genes humans now carry originated from outside our own sub-species. Some researchers think the very fact that we could interbreed with other human groups contributed massively to the peopling of the Earth, because it provided ‘hybrid vigour’ to help us become ubiquitous on

all continents save Antarctica.

e story of humankind at root the tale of clever apes spreading across the globe. We know that the first humans of our own species, Homo sapiens or anatomically modern humans, walked out of their African homeland around 65,000 years

ago. What we know less about is whatappened to them ring the first few ennia of their odyssey. peed with which theyspread is astonishing.

Within less than20,000 years they

had reachedustralia, which egan to explorethe same time

pread to mostpe. t accounts for our nd almost instant Our capacity tos, of course, at the the size of our brains,

not enough in itself to ened. Diet mostole. The first humansprotein-rich foods of d it’s quite likely that

of the world was ary needs (or xplains why theyeverywhere and why before they began toiors.h certainly pushedction of life on theong its edges. Withinenerations or so of rst venturing outsidesimple boats had

e their appearance, hough historians

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This Cro-Magnon skull, which dates from c28,000 years ago, was found in

the Dordogne region of France

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2 Why did we swap hunter-gathering for farms and villages?

The first humans were all hunters and gatherers. There is no doubt that our steadily increasing abilities to hunt large animals – based on our tool-making and communication skills – contributed significantly to the increase in our intake of nutrients. We therefore became bigger and this also enabled our brains to develop to their full potential. We probably became healthier too, because we had a more regular intake of food. But did the next step in human food production, agriculture, which started about 10,000 years ago, also lead to improvements in human health?

Agriculture has been seen by historians in the past as possibly the biggest breakthrough ever for humankind. In terms of civilisation, this is undoubtedly true. In order to sustain agricultural gains, a large number of people had to congregate in villages. They co-operated and innovated. Out of this process arose states and empires.

However, historians have recently found that a move to agriculture did not necessarily improve human health. On the contrary, the first villages or towns, like our cities today, were not very healthy places. Hunter-gatherers were, in many areas, likely to have longer and healthier lives than farmers.

This raises two big questions. The first is, of course, why on Earth did people embrace agriculture if it didn’t improve their chances of survival? The answers here vary. Some historians stress the push factor: lords and nobles forced the farming population together by

using authority and force. And life in the wild was, after all, a pretty brutal kind of existence. Another group could easily attack you and take your food stores. Villages offered protection, even if safety often came at the price of subservience.

Others stress the pull factors: villages provided the opportunity to acquire goods that a hunting band could not make for themselves. Villages also maximised resources. Grain stores – as the story of Moses tells us – could help large groups of people pullthrough lean times. But recent research shows that, just as nomads led healthier lives than settled peoples, for a long time hunters got the better of bartering exchanges

with farmers because they got more calories in return for their meat than they provided.

So how did settled societies manage to overcome this health deficiency over time? This has a lot to do with our ever-increasing resistance to epidemics. Like those of other animals, the human immune system is adaptive, it ‘learns’ a lot about illnesses that

have been around for a while and this increases our chances of survival.

Ironically, human cohabitation in large units therefore, over time, strengthens our immune responses. Sustained levels of nutrition, even in hard times, also helps protect against illness. And perhaps most important of all, increasingly these groups of villages did not live in isolation. Instead, they became part of networks that eventually would come to cover much of the Eurasian continent.

Historians have recently

found that a move to agriculture did not necessarily improve human

health

A replica of a Paleolithic cave painting at Lascaux in south-western France. Such paintings appear to celebrate the hunt, central to pre-agricultural life

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We all ‘know’ that the Roman empire collapsed because of ‘barbarian’ invasions. Those with an interest in matters outside Europe also know that the Han empire in China collapsed around the same time for the same reasons. What historians are debating today is what caused these massive migrations, which centre on the years AD 400–800. We also don’t know why theses exoduses lasted so long, or why some groups settled (often in places that seem incongruous based on their origins) and others went on almost to the other end of the Eurasian landmass. What drove people to act as they did?

Some historians emphasise fear. Changes in climate or epidemics may have made aggressive neighbours more powerful and forced tribes out of their native lands. When fleeing, these tribes in turn came across others less skilled in war – or maybe simply unaccustomed to the kind of warfare they were facing. These groups could then be robbed and plundered, and in some cases subjugated to form new states. The Huns, who hit Europe and the Middle East in the late third century, were probably driven west. But having previously lost the contest for resources in their native central Asia (somewhere around where the western part of

Mongolia is now), they were victims no more. Attila, their chief, became one of the greatest (and most brutal) conquerors the world has seen.

Other historians talk about the push of groups coming out of central Eurasia (roughly the area between Mongolia and the Caspian Sea), which forced other nations east, west and south. This may explain the Germanic invasions of western and southern Europe. Forced from their homelands in the east, the Germanic peoples invaded other territory occupied by peoples who seemed weaker – or at least a less fearsome alternative to those pushing from the east.

It was as if there was a great central Eurasian conveyor belt of peoples sending different groups off east towards China, west towards the Roman empire and south towards India. These invaders in turn pushed other peoples ahead of them, which then – in some cases – broke into established empires for protection.

The Völkerwanderung, as the Germans call it, or the great

What drove the great migrations of the first millennium AD?

3

Changes in climate or

epidemics may have made

aggressive neighbours more powerful

migration of the peoples, made some groups fetch up in the strangest of places, as modern DNA research reveals. Persian-speaking Alans ended up in what is today north-eastern France and Belgium – their genes are still left in the population, although their language has disappeared. Germanic Vandals went to north Africa, where they constructed an empire; the local Berbers still carry a very high percentage of their genetic composition. For a while migration became the done thing – even peoples who had been settled for a very long time got the taste for it, as opportunities opened up.

The ‘conveyor-belt’ idea isn’t universally accepted. Another group of historians argue that the weakness of empires created the migration period, rather than events working the other way around. People began breaking into the rich lands of the east, west and south because they could, because the empires that held these lands had become too weak to defend their territories. In this reading, a combination of climate change, epidemics and shifts in military power caused imperial instability. This decline of empires in turn created unwanted immigration. Power protects. Weakness invites others in.

Looking at the great migrations after the Völkerwanderung does pose a few questions about both of these general explanations. What, for example, did non-material factors, such as culture and religion, have to do with what happened?

If we look at the creation of the Muslim empires, or – before them – of the Turk expansion of the fifth to the eighth centuries, it seems that material factors may have been less important than a religion that inflamed the minds of men or a culture that seemed trendy and inclusive. Muhammad’s armies swept everything before them not because of their military innovations, but because their commanders knew they were right. And for a brief

moment many young people in a vast area – from Manchuria to

Anatolia – wanted to be Turks. We don’t know

why, but then we don’t know why so many young people across the globe today want to be American gangster rappers either.

A medallion depicting Attila the Hun, leader of an empire that encompassed Hungary, parts of Germany, the Balkans and Ukraine


57August 2013

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Why did the Chinese stay at home?4 Song China

did not have a missionary zeal

to drive it towards militarisation and conquest

Part of a Taoist mural from the Song dynasty era. Did the Song emphasis on the

domestic sphere lead to China’s failure to expand?

Why did China, when it was the most powerful country in the world, not expand? Why did Europeans, in another great migration, populate three conti-nents, while the Chinese mostly declined to travel?

One key line of discussion on this question concerns technology in comparative terms, and we will return to this in box 5. However, it’s a discussion that needs to be seen in conjunction with controversy over interpretations of Chinese history – controversy focused on the Song dynasty, when China was at the peak of its power in terms of culture and administration. Later Chinese dynasties were more militarily powerful (the Ming and the Qing) but it was the Song, many historians now claim, that set China on the path to prefer domestic finesse over limitless conquest.

In all of China’s long history, there is something special about the Song dynasty, which ruled, in one form or another, from AD 960 to 1279. It came to power after a long series of destructive civil wars. The main aim of its leaders was to postulate and construct a comprehen-sive set of ideas around which society should evolve. The Song reformers wanted a reinvigorated economy, an integrated government and well-defined laws based on obligations and responsibilities. Most

importantly, they managed to put many of their ideas into practice.

One thing that really stands out when looking at the era is Song technological innovation – gunpowder, movable type and the sternpost can all be traced to the Song period. Uniquely for the pre-modern world, economic growth in China seems for a long period to have outstripped demographic trends.

One change making this possible was certainly the discovery and adoption of a rice variety that permitted two crops a year. But China was also producing nearly as much iron as the whole of Europe six centuries later. Textile production too underwent dramatic development, and it is possible to speak of Song ‘industrialisation’ as a recognisable phenomenon.

But Song China did not have a missionary zeal to drive it towards militarisation and world conquest. Its focus was on growth at home and – first and foremost – on developingConfucian ideals as to how society should be organised and on how civilised people should live their lives. It preferred peace deals to conquest.

Historians still debate how important these ideals were for what Song China actually did. Was the lack of expansion based on a Confucian emphasis on moderation and restraint, and therefore deliberate? Or was it the by-product of a love of luxury and a not insignificant portion of sloth, and therefore (at least in some ways) accidental?

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Song empire fell to its more aggressive northern neighbours. In fact, it fell twice, because the northern part was conquered by the Jin in 1127 and the southern rump by the Mongols 150 years later. But the dynasty bequeathed to its successors a Confucian ideology, which would remain largely intact until the collapse of the Qing dynasty in the 20th century. Is it possible that the culture and the ideals the Song created prevented China’s expansion even in those later dynasties when such immoderation would have been militarily plausible?

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In contrast to China, many European states expanded globally. But why precisely have states of European origin largely dominated the world since (at least) 1700? There are plentiful explanations for this, all of them contested. The historian Niall Ferguson sets out what he calls the west’s six ‘killer apps’: competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. But it is hard to see how these – even in combination – should propel the kind of extraordinary expansion that created the global European empires.

One key issue here is religion. Together with Islam, Christianity has a missionary zeal at its core, the kind of zeal that historically has often pushed ideologies of conquest. Gaining territory overseas was not just about material advantage, it was about winning souls for Christ. This provided a justification for expansionist foreign policies and imperial ambitions. Unlike China, European states in the early modern era became skilled at warfare through inter-state competition. But as China shows, a motive was needed that went beyond skills and

coal. Another was access to plentiful resources from the Americas. Both these factors favoured new technologies over old and spurred the expansion of integrated capitalist markets. An age of political ferment and massive inter-state wars may also have led to the main European countries, Britain and France, looking outwards rather than inwards.

It was, in other words, not decline and fall elsewhere that made Europe’s global expansion possible. The stress, at least in historians’ debates at the moment, is on parts of Europe being an exception to what had gone before. In this context, Ferguson is right about Europe’s strengths, but these were also available elsewhere, albeit in slightly different forms. By themselves – even in combination with religious zealotry – such strengths cannot explain how the European world system came into being. Something truly exceptional in other fields (such as an energy revolution and access to virgin lands, such as the Americas) had to happen for these advantages to develop as they did.

Our debates about the rise of Europe must also be influenced by how relatively brief the European age turned out to be. By the late 19th century, non-European peoples had acquired much of Europe’s military technology and were gradually learning how to use it. By the late 20th century, even the most powerful European offshoot, the USA, was feeling the pressure of an Asian resurgence. If the debate on the causes for the rise of the west teaches us anything, it is that in history even the most exceptional advantage tends to be transient, transformable and transitional.

Why did Europe dominate the world from the 18th to 20th centuries?

5weapons. Christianity supplied such a motive in abundance.

But even if religion and bellicosity spread trouble-making Europeans around the globe by the 18th century, the era of total European predominance still lay in the future. Here, the view that European science, medicine, consumerism and attitudes to work somehow predestined global dominance does not hold up to scrutiny. The Chinese economy, on its terms, was doing at least as well as the European in the early 18th century. But then something happened. Between 1750 and 1850, parts of Europe went through cataclysmic change, which made states of European origin able to impose the first global order, an order that has lasted up until our own time.

Again, what happened? Some historians, such as Kenneth Pomeranz and Bin Wong, have tried a comparative approach between China and Europe, which emphasises the unique advantages the most advanced

European states gained from the middle of the 18th century onwards. One key

factor seems to have been cheap energy in the form of

,and transitional.

p gthe 18th century onwards. One key

factor seems to have been cheapenergy in the form of Gaining

territory was not just about

material advantage, it was about winning

souls for ChristAn 18th-century painting showing Dominican missionaries baptising

a Native American in Mexico

Odd Arne Westad is professor of

international history at LSE. He

is the author of Restless Empire:

China and the World Since 1750

(Bodley Head, 2012).

A New History of the World by Andrew Marr (Macmillan, October 2012)

FIND OUT MORE

HISTORYHISTORY OF THE WORLDH

Dark satanic mills were key to European

prosperity, but how far do they explain

the continent imposing a global order?


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OF THE

Anwat Paon Jaravi Purdah or seclusion from public view was strictly observed in

the Nizam’s court and the women’s quarters were out of bounds to

all except the closest. Nevertheless, they adorned themselves with

collar type necklace, armbands and bangles, waist belts set with

diamonds and anklets with rows of rubies, emeralds and diamonds.

This is a rare surviving pair of toe-rings (anwat paon) in the form

of flower-heads, each kundan-set with 11 foiled old-cut diamonds

in pear-shaped petal surrounds. The reverse and the hinged band

enamelled with red and green floral motifs with touches of white.

The Deccan idiom is apparent in elegant forms and delicate detail-

ing on the gold; the enameled surface is rarely over crowded and

the emphasis is on flower studies and details. Toe-rings such as

these were only worn by important women in the royal household.

n 1937, the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, reputed to be the richest man in the world, wasfeatured on the cover of Time magazine. The article

estimated his daily income to be in excess of $5,000, his jewels were valued at $150 million and he was believed to own gold bars worth $250 million. Descended from the Asaf Jah dynasty, who came to the Deccan in the early 18th century as viceroys of the Mughal emperor, the Jewels of the Nizam were once part of the fabulous collection of the Nizams of Hyderabad Comprising turban ornaments, necklaces, earrings, armbands, bracelets, belts, buttons and cuff links, anklets and rings, there are more than 300 items in the collection – each one spectacular and exquisitely crafted.

The ornaments reflect the ethos of a powerful and wealthy dynasty whose roots were firmly entrenched in Mughal culture; there are items that display distinct indigenous influences and many that manifest the Europeanisation characteristic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.of th

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Kanthi Goshwara-I-Marvreed Wa Almas The Mughal emperors had an infinite passion for emeralds, which was

eventually acquired by the maharajas

the Muzo and Chivor mines of Colombia were discovered, emeralds poured

into India by way of Portuguese trade through Goa and the Deccan ports.

This necklace (kanthi) of 24 graded emerald drops is styled to resemble

the champakali or buds of the Michelia champaca flower. The irregular

shapes and sizes of the beads came about because the Indian gem cutter

avoided unnecessary cutting and faceting and the rough gems were tumble-

polished, drilled and used as beads. Each bead was then capped with

diamonds set in gold, surmounted with a round diamond and a pearl finial

set in a gold cup, which was then strung on fine gold wire interspersed with

emerald beads.

The quality of the stones used in this necklace are testimony to the vast

quantities of loose gems that were held by the Nizams.

A t P J

Usha Balakrishnan opens the Nizam of Hyderabad’s treasure box to reveal some invaulable gems

JEWELS OF THE NIZAMHISTORY

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Angushtari Zamurrud This emerald ring (angushtari) belongs to a small group of carved Indian gemstones in the

world. The Mughals perpetuated the practice of carving emeralds with floral motifs and inscrip-

tions. Designs were selected after consultation with astrologers, and inscriptions were added to

immortalise lineage. The emerald weighs approximately 20 carats and is carved on both sides

and set in a pierced gold mount. The front of the gem is carved with a flowering lotus bloom with

leaves and a chevron border around the four sides and the reverse is also decorated with a similar

flowering plant. The band is also carved with a pierced trellis design and decorated with red and

green enamel. As a favourite envoy of the Mughal emperor, and as caretaker of the imperial realm

in the Deccan, the carved emerald ring originally set in an armband might have been sent as a

special acknowledgement of service and recognition of loyalty to the Nizam of Hyderabad

Kanthi Marwareed Kanval Almas Mai Padak

This necklace (kanthi) is one of the most important jewels in

the collection. The design of the necklace reflects the growing

infusion of English customs and European fashion among

Indians since the arrival of the British in the 19th century.

Taking advantage of this interest, European jewellery firms

established businesses in Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai

to cater initially to European residents and inevitably to a local

populace who increasingly sought British goods. In course

of time, many of them became the preferred jewellers of the

Nizam of Hyderabad. Although, the necklace was made in the

late 19th century, the golden coloured Golconda diamonds and

pearl buttons must have been a part of the Nizam’s treasury.

The gradual gradation in size and colour that has been achieved

in the necklace could only have been done if the jeweller had

a vast number of such gems to select from and none but the

Nizam of Hyderabad could have had such a large selection

of Golconda diamonds. The briolette diamond pendant

weighs approximately 130 carats and is perhaps the

only one of its kind in the world.

Sarpech Yakhoot Wa Kanval Almas

Of all the regalia of Indian royalty, turban

ornaments (sarpech, sarpatti, kalgi, jigha

and turra) were the most visible symbols of

monarchy, power and wealth. As insignia of

royalty, the Nizam’s collection has a spectacu-

lar range of turban ornaments ranging from

the 17th century to the late 19th century. The

later Nizams did not wear turbans – yards of

cloth tied around the head – in the traditional

format. Instead, the court headgear was a long

conical cap against which the jewels sparkled.

This piece in a floral design brings together

Burmese pigeon-blood rubies three large

golden-yellow briolette diamonds. The setting

of claws and boxed gold mounts is typical of

the cross-fertilisation of Indian and European

workmanship in the late 19th and early 20th

century. The entire sarpech can be separated

into six smaller constituents which could be

used as a brooch, pendant or as a jewel for

the hair.

Usha R Balakrishnan is an art historian, specialising in

Indian jewellery. She has evaluated and catalogued the

jewellery collection of the Nizam of Hyderabad and has

documented it in her book The Jewels of the Nizams.

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This necklace (kanthi) is one of the most important jewels in

the collection. The design of the necklace reflects the growing

infusion of English customs and European fashion among

Indians since the arrival of the British in the 19th century.

Taking advTT antage of this interest, European jewellery firms

established businesses in Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai

to cater initially to European residents and inevitably to a local

populace who increasingly sought British goods. In course

of time, many of them became the preferred jewellers of the

Nizam of Hyderabad. Although, the necklace was made in the

late 19th century, the golden coloured Golconda diamonds and

pearl buttons must have been a part of the Nizam’s treasury.

The gradual gradation in size and colour that has been achieved

in the necklace could only have been done if the jeweller had

a vast number of such gems to select from and none but the

Nizam of Hyderabad could have had such a large selection

of Golconda diamonds. The briolette diamond pendant

weighs approximately 130 carats and is perhaps the

only one of its kind in the world.

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The Indian rhino is one of two ‘unicorn’ species (the other is the Javan). Here, a mother and calf are pictured next to a stand of elephant grass 4–5m high in Kaziranga National Park


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63August 2013


UNICORNSAVING THE

In the fertile floodplains of Assam,

men risk their lives every day to poach

– or protect – the few surviving Indian

rhinos. Andrew Balmford reports

from conservation’s front line


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CONSERVATION INDIAN RHINONATURE

y first encounter with one of conservation’s great successstories begins 3m above a

mist-bound sea of grass. I’m on the back of a freckle-eared, 40-year-old mother of three called Mohan Mala – one of a herd of working elephantsthat, each dawn, transports wide-eyed visitors into Kaziranga National Park in Assam, north-east India.

Our line of giants descends with surprising grace to cross the muddy margins of a beel, or shallow lake, then snakes for a while longer through the shrouded grassland. We reach a second beel – and, suddenly, there it is. Belly-deep in the mud, a great armour-plated beast, almost as vast and more extraordinary still than the elephants we’re riding, is peering myopically at us: an Indian rhino.

It’s a male – almost 2m at the shoulder and weighing about the same as two family cars. For a time he gazes at us through the morning dampness. Then, apparently content that we’re not a threat, he settles back to his wallow.

We make our way across a broad plain. As the mist thins, steel-blue hills appear in the distance. Our guides spot a pair of brown-tufted ears, golden-edged in the early light: another rhino, this time a female, with a young calf in tow. As we approach, the pair trundle into a pool, the mother watching us warily. It’s the same at the next water hole: another female and another youngster – this one only a few months old, with the tiniest nub of a horn.

Reversal of fortune

Kaziranga is one of the best places to see Indian rhinos – all told, about 2,000 of them lumber around the place. Yet in 1905, when it became one of the world’s first formally protected areas, fewer than 20 rhinos remained, thanks to centuries of habitat clearance for farming combined with sport-hunting by powerful elites.

The threats have since changed: the

Only a tiny proportion of poached Indian rhino horn is recovered. The vast majority ends up in China, where it is sold in powdered form as a ‘fever-reducing’ agent

A SINGLE KILOGRAM OF RHINO HORN CAN FETCH $65,000. HOUSEHOLD INCOMES ARE OFTEN UNDER $10 A MONTH, SO THE INCENTIVE TO POACH IS OBVIOUS

rhinos’ greatest problem is now poaching for their horns, which are sold for use in oriental medicine and are worth even more than those of African rhino species. Contrary to some reports, the main use is not as an aphrodisiac (though it’s a grim irony that the adjective for rhinoceros-like is ‘rhinocerotic’) but as a fever-reducing agent. The growth of China’s middle classes has seen the price of Asian

rhino horn soar: a single kilogram can fetch $65,000 – more than gold.

In a region where household incomes are often under $10 a month, the incentive to poach is obvious. Yet a century of conservation efforts has increased Kaziranga’s rhino population a hundred-fold; two-thirds of all Indian rhinos now live here. I’ve come to find out for myself how this extraordinary turnaround has been possible.

M

A poached rhino lies in a pool of its own congealing blood while one of

Kaziranga’s armed guards looks on. Rising floodwaters had forced the animal to seek shelter outside

the core area of the reserve, where it was more vulnerable to attack


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NATURECONSERVATION INDIAN RHINO

Kaziranga’s guards patrol the huge wetland reserve in groups of three. They can earn about $160 a month: a decent wage, though it’s dangerous work

Annual rhino-poaching rates have been limited to single figures for most of the past 15 years, though they are now increasing again. In reality, it’s an unending low-level war. To find out what it’s like to be a rhino guard, I have been granted permission to visit an anti-poaching camp on the banks of the Brahmaputra River.

Life on the front line

We drive north, along a track littered with elephant droppings like giant Christmas puddings; the snow-clad peaks of the Tibetan Himalaya are just visible in the distance. Signs of rhinos are all around. Their well-trodden trails and enormous latrines (the accumulation of months of nightly outpourings) testify that Kaziranga’s rhinos are creatures of habit – and thus easy targets for poachers.

The camp consists of a hut raised on 3m concrete stilts to withstand the river’s floodwaters. This is conservation’s front line, barely a few minutes by boat from the islands where the poaching gangs await their chance.

I meet its guardians – men in khaki with old .315 rifles. They spend a month at a time at this spartan outpost. By local standards the job is well paid, but it can be lonely – and dangerous. The guards tell me that they patrol their area in groups of three. They walk for 10–15km along the roads and rhino trails, along the roads and rhino trails,

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Indian rhinos’ horns are up to 25cm long, though in combat they use their lower outer incisors

Wallowing in muddy pools may offer rhinos

relief from biting insects

Two key factors have contributed to this achievement. One is the support of the majority of local people. The other is the sophisticated, almost paramilitary, anti-poaching operation at Kaziranga. Developed during the 1980s in response to the intensifying slaughter that was claiming almost 50 rhinos a year, the park’s ranger system currently deploys nearly 500 front-line staff.

Every night the guards patrol their

sectors, searching for poachers while trying to avoid tigers, sloth bears and wild elephants. There are frequent gun battles – and both sides shoot to kill. Four guards have died since the mid-1980s, and twice as many have been seriously injured. Yet the poachers usually come off worse. During the same period, more than 100 of them have lost their lives; in excess of 600 have been arrested.


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66 August 2013

Among all rhinos alive today, the Indian species has the most luxuriantly

knobbly, folded skin, which droops over its front and back legs

THERE ARE FREQUENT GUN BATTLES – AND BOTH SIDES SHOOT TO KILL. FOUR GUARDS AND MORE THAN 100 POACHERS HAVE DIED

finding poachers every few weeks.The ensuing gunfights seem to be

chaotic affairs. One man – recruited, like most, from a nearby village – recalls an example from one September night. “It was 1am, and there was a full moon. Poachers tried to kill a rhino. They missed, but we heard the shot. Then we waited for a long time…

“At 4.45am, some men moved towards our group. There were six of them and only three of us. They were wearing khaki, so at first we thought they were guards and shouted ‘Stop!’ When they didn’t, we knew who they were. One of them had a .303 rifle, so I shot him. He died.”

The other guards tell similar stories – of dark encounters, of confusion

punctuated with gunshots, of people dying over rhinos. I’m struck by how matter-of-fact their accounts are: no euphemisms; no tall tales. This is simply what these men do in the name of conservation.

But there’s something else, besides brute force and bravery, that explains why there are still rhinos at Kaziranga:

the people of Assam want them.You don’t have to spend long here

to realise that they are tremendously proud of Kaziranga and its rhinos. The species is the state animal and the logo of choice for almost all enterprises Assamese, from bus companies to the local squadron of the Indian Air Force.

Respect for big, distinctly dangerous creatures – not just rhinos, but elephants, wild water buffalos and tigers – is also manifest in extraordinary tolerance of the damage that they cause. The contrast in attitude with Britain, where many of us seem to find it difficult to co-exist with hen harriers, foxes or badgers, is striking. When I ask local people why this should be so, everyone attributes it to a religious belief in the rights of other creatures. For most Hindus and Buddhists, all animals are divine.

Even in an Indian context, however, the Assamese pay a high price for such acceptance of their fellow creatures. The state is home to one-fifth of all of India’s elephants; they kill on average 60 people a year, and the death rate is rising. Crop-raiding is less devastating,

THE WILDLIFE TOURISM BOOMLocal demand for wildlife-watching holidays is soaring.

Since the 1990s, wildlife tourism in India has grown enormously – at 15 per cent or more in many protected areas. Visitor numbers at some of the most popular destinations, such as Kanha, Periyar and Ranthambore, have more than doubled in a decade.

In marked contrast with the situation in Africa, in most parks over 80 per cent of visitors are now Indians. Tourism thus has the potential to play a vital role in building domestic support for conservation.

But pressure from visitors

also increases disturbance of sought-after species – a worry that triggered a temporary ban in 2012 on tourists in some tiger reserves. Another concern is the shift to luxury tourism, which makes visits prohibitively costly for many Indians.

One radical suggestion is to encourage tour operators to restore farmland around parks for ‘high-end’ tourism, mirroring private reserves in South Africa. This would create more habitat for squeezed wildlife and more space for Indians to visit reserves.

Elephant rides to see rhinos and tigers are

highlights of many wildlife tours


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67August 2013


but much more common. Around Kaziranga, villagers report that over a quarter of their rice harvest is lost to wildlife each year. Elephants are the chief culprits, but rhinos, wild boar, deer, buffalos, monkeys and parakeets all raid the fields, too.

Crop raiders

Farmers defend their crops as best they can. The flat paddyfields are punctuated with rickety look-out posts from where dusk-till-dawn sentries shout warnings of approaching animals. Villagers try to chase away the would-be raiders with burning torches, drums and firecrackers. Sometimes they succeed, but often they don’t.

Gesturing at a paddy flattened by elephants 15 days earlier, a slight 56-year-old farmer in a jumper and dhoti (a piece of cloth worn like a skirt) explains the impact of crop-raiding: “The elephants came in the night – six or seven of them. They ate only some of the rice, but they trampled a lot more.” With the remainder of his crop now ripening,

he’s expecting the pachyderms back soon.

I look around at the destruction, and try to comprehend what losing the return on months of hard work, time after time, must be like for someone struggling to feed his poor family. What does he feel about elephants and Kaziranga?

The man breaks into a broad smile, then says something that staggers me. “We don’t want to hurt the elephant. We also care for the elephant. If he comes and eats our crops, we feel angry. But not all the elephants or rhinos are doing that – we’re only angry with the ones that come to eat.” Back in my comfortable tourist lodge, I reflect on what I’ve just heard. I am shocked, amazed and humbled.

Achieving the improbable

So can Kaziranga’s rhinos survive? The challenges seem overwhelming: keeping well-armed, profitable poaching operations at bay; maintaining good relations with tens of thousands of local people

who can’t afford to continue losing their crops to wildlife; and stemming fresh threats from dam proposals, highway expansion and pollution from agricultural intensification upstream.

But think back to just over a century ago, when there were fewer than 20 rhinos, no official protection for them and lots of trigger-happy autocrats. If the immense dedication of Kaziranga’s conservation professionals continues, and the extraordinary respect of its people for their fellow creatures endures, then my guess is that their great-grandchildren will be lucky enough to live in a world that still has space for unicorns.

Andrew Balmford is professor

of conservation science at the

University of Cambridge. He

visited the rhinos of Kaziranga

National Park to research his latest book.

Andrew’s recent book Wild Hope (University of Chicago Press, `1,562) celebrates conservation success stories from around the globe.

FIND OUT MORE

The carcass of an old rhino (which died of natural causes) provides a meal for one of Kaziranga’s tigers

WE REACH A SECOND BEEL AND THERE IT IS – A GREAT ARMOUR-PLATED BEAST, ALMOST AS VAST AS THE ELEPHANTS WE’RE RIDING

INDIANRHINOCEROSRhinoceros unicornis

OTHER NAMEGreater one-horned rhinoceros.

WEIGHT 1,500–2,100kg.

LENGTH Head to tail: 3.1–3.8m.

ID TIPS Has a single horn, huge skin folds and wart-like bumps on the legs and shoulders.

DIETMainly grasses, also fruit, tree leaves and branches; raids rice, corn and other crops.

LIFE-CYCLE Male is solitary and territorial; usually begins breeding only after 15 years of age. Female has a single calf after a 16-month gestation; remains with young for up to 4 years.

HABITAT Floodplain grasslands, swamps and forests.

STATUS Vulnerable; wild population about 2,900.

F A C T F I L E

S


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Dorian Gray eventually realises the only way to redeem his soul is to kill himself


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nd, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. A cold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in

a flame of murky orange. He shuddered. “Shut the door behind you,” he said, as he placed the lamp on the table.

Hallward glanced round him, with a puzzled expression. The room looked as if it had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian cassone, and an almost empty bookcase, - that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was standing on the mantel shelf, he saw that the whole place was covered with dust, and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse ran scuffling behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour of mildew.

“So you think that it is only God who sees the

soul, Basil? Draw that curtain back, and you will see mine.”

The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. “You are mad, Dorian, or playing a part,” muttered Hallward, frowning.

“You won’t? Then I must do it myself,” said the young man; and he tore the curtain from its rod, and flung it on the ground.

An exclamatiom of horror broke from Hallward’s lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous thing on the canvas leering at him. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! It was Dorian Gray’s own face that he was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely marred that marvelous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual lips. The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble � G

ETTY

69August 2013

AN EXCERPT FROM A BOOK YOU SHOULD READ HISTORY

INSIDE THE PAGES

In this excerpt, Dorian Gray’s grotesque corruption is finally

revealed to Basil Hallward

A

BY OSCAR WILDE

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY


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August 201370

AN EXCERPT FROM A BOOK YOU SHOULD READHISTORY

Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful

curves had not yet passed entirely away from chiseled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognise his own brush-work, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left-handed corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion.

It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire. He had never done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed from fire to sluggish ice in a moment. His own picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned, and looked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his hands across his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat.

The young man was leaning against the mantel-shelf, watching him with that strange expression that is on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when a great artist is acting. There was neither real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in the eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.

“What does this mean?” cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears.

“Years ago, when I was a boy,” said Dorian Gray, “You met me, devoted yourself to me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, that I don’t know, even now, whether I regret or not, I made a wish. Perhaps you would call it a prayer…”

“I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! The thing is impossible. The room is damp. The mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used has some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible.”

“Ah, what is impossible?” murmured the young man, going over to the window, and leaning his forehead against the cold mist-stained glass.

“You told me you had destroyed it.”“I was wrong. It has destroyed me.”“I don’t believe it is my picture.”“Can’t you see your romance in it?” said

Isn’t there a verse somewhere, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow’?”

“Those words mean nothing to me now.”“Hush! Don’t say that. You have done

enough evil in your life. My God! Don’t you see that accursed thing leering at us?”

Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more than he had ever loathed anything in his whole life. He glanced wildly around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife that he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it, and turned round. Hallward moved in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed at him, and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man’s head down on the table, and stabbing again and again.

There was a stifled groan, and the horrible sound of someone choking with blood. The outstretched arms shot up convulsively three times, waving grotesque stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him once more, but the man did not move. Something began to trickle on the floor. He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. Then he threw the knife on the table, and listened.

He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. He opened the door, and went out on the landing. The house was quite quiet. No one was stirring.

Dorian, bitterly.“My romance, as you call it…”“As you called it.”“There was nothing evil in it, nothing

shameful. This is the face of a satyr.”“It is the face of my soul.”“God! What a thing I must have

worshipped! This has the eyes of a Devil.”“Each of us has Heaven and Hell in

him, Basil,” cried Dorian, with a wild gesture of despair.

Hallward turned again to the portrait, and gazed at it. “My God! If it is true,” he exclaimed, “and this is what you have done with your life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to be!” he held the light up again to the canvas, and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed, and as he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.

His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor, and lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and buried his face in his hands.

“Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful lesson!” There was no answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window.

“Pray, Dorian, pray,” he murmured. “What is it that one was taught to say in one’s boyhood? ‘Lead us not into temptation. Forgive our sins. Wash away our iniquities.’ Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.”

Dorian Gray turned slowly around, and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. “It is too late, Basil,” he murmured.

“It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we can remember a prayer.

�

This excerpt is published with

permission from Hachette India. No

part of this excerpt may be quoted

or reproduced without prior written

consent from Hachette India. A

Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar

Wilde (Hachetter India, `now in bookstores.


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To make summer time more

fun for our readers, BBC Knowledge ran the Curious

Mind of the Week contest

on its Facebook page from

May-June 2013. A question

was posted every day of the

week and the winners were

selected on points tabulated

at the end of each week.

The response to the contest

was stupendous, with over

4,000 entries. The winners

selected had the

opportunity of having their

photograph as the profile

image of BBC Knowledge’s

page for the week.

Congratulations to the winners!

We have always tried to make BBC Knowledge an interactive read. Here’s just a snippet of what we’ve been uptoBuzz

WEEK 1 Sanjeev Purkait

WEEK 2 Puneet Kumar

WEEK 3 Kanwar Simar Singh

WEEK 4 Manraj Singh

WEEK 5 Palak Chheda

WINNERS

Like our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/knowledgemagazineindia) to participate in our contests


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CATASTROPHISMThe devastating effect on life caused by events such as meteor impacts and great floods has only recently begun to be accepted by science. But what does this mean for the future of our planet?

t could have been a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie: a former NASA astronaut brandishes

a report calling on the United Nations to take urgent action in order to prevent a global catastrophe.

But this was no fictional encounter. At a meeting held in Vienna, Austria, last November, ex-astronaut Russell Schweickart told UN officials that global efforts must be made to deal with the very real threat from cosmic impacts.

According to an expert study presented at the meeting, a collision with a so-called Near Earth Object (NEO) – one of thousands of chunks of rock orbiting the Sun close to the Earth – could cause

“terrible destruction, dwarfing that caused by more familiar natural disasters”.

Not so long ago, such statements would have been ridiculed by the scientific community as quasi-religious paranoia. But no longer. The view of the Earth as a cosmic haven shaped by the slow, steady processes of geology has been undermined by evidence that our planet regularly suffers catastrophes of a magnitude thought to be the preserve of ancient myth.

From Babylonian manuscripts to Dark Age chronicles, descriptions of disasters striking with devastating consequences have long been a feature of accounts of ancient Earth history. Many describe fires that rain down from the skies. The legend of Gilgamesh, which originated in Mesopotamia over 4000 years ago, describes how “seven judges of hell” raised their torches, lighting the land with flame, and sent a storm that turned day into night. Writing more than 2000 years later, the Dark Age British cleric Gildas described “a fire that fell from heaven” around the year 441AD that led to dark skies and migrations out of England, with the land still in ruins a century later.

The dramatic view of Earth history now emerging could hardly be more different from that held by modern scholars even as recently as the 1980s. For centuries, the idea of cosmic events affecting life on Earth was viewed as heretical by the Church, which regarded catastrophes as proof of divine intervention, and also by the scientific establishment, which dismissed it as

IN A NUTSHELL

What is catastrophism?Devastation descending from the heavens, dramatic eruptions, global upheaval: these are the classic ingredients of catastrophes of biblical dimensions. And for thousands of years such events featured in the mythology of many ancient cultures. Yet scientists long dismissed them as mere scare-stories, the Earth’s past history being determined, they argued, by slow, steady action of forces such as erosion. In recent years this view has been challenged by mounting evidence for global catastrophes which devastate life on Earth. Their cause is eerily reminiscent of the ancient fears of our forebears: heavenly devastation wreaked by giant meteor impacts, and titanic volcanic eruptions. Scientists now recognise that such ‘catastrophist’ effects have played a key role in history of the Earth and the fate of life upon it.

EXPLORING LIFE’S GREAT MYSTERIES

ROBERT MATTHEWS INVESTIGATES

THE BIG IDEA

II

mere superstition.Yet over the last 20 years or so, the sheer weight of evidence has confirmed the reality of heaven-sent catastrophes – and revealed just how close we have come to them in the recent past – such as the Tunguska incident (p74) 100 years ago.

Suspicions that the ‘myths’ of global catastrophes should be taken seriously actually date back to the dawn of modern science itself, in the 17th century. Following the publication of Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation in 1687, British astronomer Edmond Halley decided to apply them to the mystery of comets. By studying records of their appearance, Halley argued that the bright comets of 1456, 1531, 1607 and 1682 were in fact the same comet, following a vast elliptical orbit around the Sun in

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73August 2013

agreement with Newton’s laws. But Halley noted something else as well: a comet crossing the orbit of the Earth might one day collide with us, with potentially devastating consequences.

In December 1694, Halley gave a lecture at the Royal Society of London in which he claimed that the biblical Great Flood may have been caused by the impact of a comet. He even argued that features like the Caspian Sea might have been formed by such cataclysmic events. Within days, he had recanted his claim, apparently under ecclesiastical pressure. The Church viewed catastrophes such as the Great Flood as proof of the power of God, and any attempts to explain them using science were not to be encouraged. Even so, Halley’s lecture would prove to be a turning point, highlighting for the

first time the vulnerability of the Earth to cosmic forces.

Over the next century, others would also attempt to put biblical accounts of catastrophes on a scientific basis, with the Cambridge, UK, mathematician William Whiston claiming that an analysis of cometary orbits showed that the Great Flood had occurred in 2349 BC.

By the early 19th century, eminent French zoologist Georges Cuvier appeared to have found rock-solid evidence for the Great Flood – quite literally. By studying the geological strata around Paris, Cuvier had found that fossils of sea creatures in one ancient layer of chalk were overlaid by those of land creatures. Then, just as abruptly, the layer above contained sea creatures again – with the top layer showing evidence of a vast and rapid An artist’s impression of the Chicxulub

Crater in Mexico shortly after impact

This layer of rock in Italy gives evidence of impact 65 million years ago


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1694 1795 1812 1830

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1906

74

that the evidence for past catastrophes was not conclusive, he had not shown that they were impossible either. What he had done was to ensure any challenge to uniformitarianism would get a very rough ride for the next 150 years.

Hints of where that challenge would come from were emerging even as Lyell built his case against catastrophism. For centuries there had been reports of stones falling out of the sky, but these had been dismissed as folk stories – until 26 April 1803, that is, when meteorites rained down on the village of L’Aigle, in Normandy, France. An investigation held by the leading French astronomer Jean Biot showed that the stones had indeed come from space.

Scientists took much longer to accept that larger meteors could also strike the Earth. In the late 1890s, Grove Gilbert, chief geologist of the US Geological Survey, decided to investigate reports of large numbers of meteorites being unearthed around a 1.2km (0.75 miles)-wide crater in the Arizona desert. Failing to find a giant meteor buried in the crater, Gilbert argued it must have been formed by a bubble of steam in once-molten rock – overlooking the possibility that the meteor could have been vaporised on impact. In 1906, Daniel Barringer, an American mining engineer, published evidence linking the Arizona crater to an impact, but failed to convince the scientific establishment – not least because in his scientific paper describing his claim, he derided Gilbert’s conclusions. Not until the 1950s would a new generation of geologists recognise the cosmic origins of what is now called Meteor Crater.

inundation around present-day Paris. Cuvier took these sudden changes in the fossil record as evidence for sudden catastrophes which devastated life on Earth, of which the Great Flood was just the most recent example.

Solid backing

Cuvier’s discoveries, published in 1812, won backing from a number of eminent scientists, such as the geologist James Hall, and the ‘catastrophist’ movement was born. Others were deeply sceptical, however, pointing out that the evidence of a global flood was far from conclusive. Most sceptical of all were the followers of the Scottish geologist James Hutton, founder of the ‘uniformitarian’ view of Earth history. In 1795, he had published a two-volume text based on the view that the slow, steady processes that shape our planet today were also crucially important in the distant past.

Uniformitarianism was a powerful idea, allowing geologists to extrapolate from what they could see today to probe questions about the Earth’s history. Its most important advocate was another Scot, lawyer and geologist Charles Lyell, who saw catastrophism as an attempt by religious zealots to win scientific credibility for their beliefs. Lyell showed that Cuvier’s ‘evidence’ for the Great Flood could be explained by gradual changes in sea level, attacking catastrophists for being too keen on supernatural explanations.

By the 1830s, Lyell’s influential book, Principles of Geology, had ensured that claims of global catastrophe were immediately linked to wild-eyed superstition. Yet while Lyell had shown

On the morning of 30 June 1908, villagers in a remote part of Northeast Siberia witnessed the terrifying effects of catastrophism at first hand. Eyewitnesses reported seeing a huge fireball tearing across the sky before exploded in a blast that could be heard over 800km (500 miles) away.

It took another 20 years for the first clues to the cause to emerge, when scientists reached the epicentre of the event, north of the Tunguska River. They found a scene of utter devastation covering hundreds of square kilometres, with thousands of scorched trees lying like matchsticks, pointing outward from the centre of the blast. Analysis of samples taken at the site suggests the cause was the break-up of a 50m (164ft)-wide asteroid with the violence of a 15-megatonne H-bomb.

The Tunguska incident

TUNGUSKA

� Sir Edmond Halley informs fellow scientists at the Royal Society, London, of the catastrophic effects of a comet impact, which he claimed could

trigger a flood of biblical

proportions

Scottish geologist James Hutton establishes uniformitarianism, stressing steady and gradual changes in geology through processes like erosion, which he viewed as taking place over unimaginably long periods of time

� Studies of the fossil record in rocks near Paris lead Georges Cuvier to put forward the case for several extinctions of life during Earth’s history, including a Great Flood

Charles Lyell’s hugely influential work Principles of Geology puts forward simple explanations for the supposed evidence for the biblical Great Flood, and thus shifts thinking away from catastrophism

MAKING SENSE OF GLOBAL

CATASTROPHE

TIMELINE � American mining engineer Daniel Barringer publishes evidence that Arizona’s mile-wide Meteor Crater was created by the impact of an iron meteorite, rather than by some terrestrial upheaval

Soviet researchers take soil samples at the impact site of the Tunguska meteorite

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EXPLORING LIFE’S GREAT MYSTERIESTHE BIG IDEA

75August 2013

on Earth: the dinosaurs. While intriguing, however, the idea remained speculative and the evidence inconclusive.

That changed in 1980, when a team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, finally unveiled evidence powerful enough to break the 150-year stranglehold of uniformitarianism. Led by the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Luis Alvarez, the team had been studying the fossil record of the extinction of the dinosaurs. They found that clay samples from around the time of the event contained very high levels of iridium, an element relatively common in meteors.

The implications of such high levels of iridium were dramatic, pointing to the impact of a huge meteor between

Another clue pointing to a cosmic origin of global catastrophes emerged in the 1930s, with the discovery of the first asteroids on orbits crossing that of the Earth. This prompted the American astronomer Harvey Nininger to point out that such asteroids could occasionally hit the Earth, with catastrophic results. In 1942, he suggested that such impacts might explain the otherwise puzzling gaps in the fossil record, which hinted at mass extinctions of life several times over the last few hundred million years.By the mid-1950s, some scientists were suggesting that a meteor impact 65 million years ago might have ended the 100-million-year reign of the most successful creatures ever to live

Nobel Prizewinning American physicist Luis Alvarez and colleagues put catastrophism back in the limelight by linking the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago to a cosmic impact

� Astronomers observe debris from comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashing into Jupiter. The largest impact released as much energy as six million H-bombs and left a dark area some 7000 miles (11,265km) across

On April 13, a small asteroid called Apophis comes closer to the Earth than many satellites, and has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking with the violence of 1000 H-bombs

� Approximate earliest date of the next impact of a Tunguska-like NEO, of the kind that exploded over Siberia in 1908, devastating a vast area of forest

five and 10km (3-6 miles) across. Such an event would have triggered a global conflagration, with smoke and debris blotting out sunlight for months, causing the collapse of food chains. Could this explain the disappearance of the dinosaurs?

The mere hint of a return to catastrophism provoked a bitter response from many scientists. Critics argued that the iridium layer could have come from huge volcanic eruptions known to have taken place around the same time, and pointed out that the dinosaurs were already dying out before the supposed impact.

Even so, further evidence pointing towards a global catastrophe 65 million years ago started to emerge. In 1988, an international team of scientists revealed the existence of a layer of soot just above the iridium layer at many sites around the world – apparently caused by a global fire. Others found evidence of a huge tsunami created in the Gulf of Mexico around 65 million years ago.

The clincher came in 1990, when American geophysicists at the University of Arizona revealed the existence of a vast circular impact structure buried on the coast of Mexico. Measuring 180km (112 miles) across, the Chicxulub Crater is just the right size, and in the right place, to explain all the other anomalies – and it too is 65 million years old.

Faced with such compelling evidence, most scientists now accept that a huge meteor did strike the Earth 65

CATASTROPHISMThe view that catastrophic events have played a major role in Earth history. Despite being the dominant view for thousands of years, catastrophism fell out of favour during the early 19th century. Recent recognition of the role of cosmic impacts have led to its revival, albeit in far more scientific form.

UNIFORMITARIANISM 18th century Scottish geologist James Hutton suggested that processes which shape our planet today, such as erosion, were crucially important in the distant past. Taken up by many influential geologists, uniformitarianism hardened into the view that global catastrophes are little more than frightening superstitions.

TWO KEY THEORIES

After the flood waters have subsided, the

animals leave Noah Ark


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�

Comet to get you? Space is full of

uncharted objects

EXPLORING LIFE’S GREAT MYSTERIESTHE BIG IDEA

76 August 2013

In 1989 a small asteroid zoomed past the Earth – and triggered a scare that led to an international effort to catalogue all such Near Earth Objects (NEOs) that pose a threat to our planet.

The 300m (984ft)-wide rock at the centre of the scare, 4581 Asclepius, avoided a collision with the Earth by less than six hours. Had it struck, the devastation would have been equivalent to the detonation of thousands of H-bombs.

To avoid future scares, NASA set up the Spaceguard Survey, with an initial goal of discovering and tracking every NEO above 1km (0.6 miles) in diameter – big enough to cause destruction on a global scale. Around 950 such objects are thought to exist, and to date around 80 per cent of them have been found.

NASA has now embarked on the second phase of the survey, which aims to find and track 90 per cent of all NEOs down to just 140m (460ft) across. So far, however, barely 10 per cent of the expected numbers of such NEOs have been located.

Looking for trouble: the Spaceguard SurveySPACEGUARD SURVEY

million years ago, triggering a global catastrophe, and that it could happen again.

While uniformitarian processes like erosion undoubtedly play the major role in shaping our planet, catastrophist events have clearly had a dramatic effect as well. The fossil record shows evidence of at least five mass extinctions, with the largest taking place 250 million years ago, eliminating 70 per cent of land animals and 95 per cent of marine life. Such mass slaughter is not an unmitigated disaster, however: mass extinctions often allow once downtrodden life-forms to flourish – their predators having been wiped out.

The re-emergence of catastrophism as a scientifically credible concept was signalled in spectacular fashion in July 1994. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck Jupiter with greater violence than the detonation of the entire world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Many scientists hoped the event would alert governments to the need to take action to prevent humans suffering the fate of the dinosaurs. Yet so far, attempts to deal with this threat have been muted. Projects such as NASA’s Spaceguard Survey have so far identified only around 80 per cent of NEOs whose impact would trigger a global catastrophe.

Yet, as the UN officials heard at last November’s meeting, the impact of NEOs as small as just 50m (164ft) across can devastate huge areas – as seen at Tunguska. To date, only a tiny fraction of such objects has so far been catalogued and tracked.

In the meantime, NEOs continue to spring nasty surprises. Shortly before the UN meeting, an astronomer in Tucson,

Arizona, discovered an NEO on a collision course with the Earth. Fortunately, the object – code-named 2008 TC3 – was just a few metres across. Even so, within 24 hours it had plunged into the atmosphere over Northern Sudan, Africa, and exploded with the violence of 1000 tonnes of TNT.

With uniformitarianism now revealed to be a comforting myth, such events may regain their ancient significance – as portents of the future, which are ignored at our peril.

� neo.jpl.nasa.govNASA’s Near Earth Object resource site

� Catastrophism: asteroids, comets and other dynamic events in Earth historyby Richard J. Huggett (Verso, 1998)

Robert Matthews is a science

journalist and Visiting Reader in

Science at Aston University, UK.

www.robertmatthews.org

FIND OUT MORE

Despite its negative-sounding name,

catastrophism also has a more positive side.

Indeed, we humans may owe our current

supremacy to the catastrophic meteor impact

and volcanic eruptions that helped push the

dinosaurs into extinction 65 million years

ago. With these supremely well-adapted

creatures gone, others could flourish – and

within 10 million years mammals had become

the dominant life-form on Earth.

Dinosaurs can hardly complain about

their fate, however: they too seem to have

benefited from the biggest mass extinction

event in the history of our planet, when

around 70 per cent of terrestrial vertebrates

were killed off around 250 million years ago.

Known as the Permian-Triassic extinction, its

cause remains the subject of much research,

with multiple meteor impacts, volcanic

eruptions and dramatic climatic change

among the likely suspects.

Catastrophism isn’t all bad news

�

�

MASS EXTINCTION

Scientists are still not certain what wiped out the dinosaurs

SC

IEN

CE

PH

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LIB

RA

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Padma Negi, Principal of Billabong High International Juhu, Mumbai, believes that the big challenge teachers face today is to help students move forward despite dejection

What according to you is good education?

Good education is learning important lessons of life. It is something that prepares a student to handle situations to the best of his/her ability, be it a written, oral assessment or a simple task like interacting with a caller on the phone.

What is Billabong High International

School’s approach towards a child’s

education?

At Billabong, we endeavour to provide our students a stimulating, enriching and intellectually challenging learning environment.

How is this imparted through a daily

school day?

The curriculum is designed meticulously and implemented in an engaging manner; students are encouraged to play at least one sport and/or participate in one performing art activity on a weekly basis. They are also encouraged to take individual and collective responsibility for specific routine tasks.

How is the student’s progress measured?

In addition to written assessments, students are graded according to their attitudes and understanding of various skills in mathematics, social science, EVM etc. We also look at their practical application of knowledge in science and computer laboratories. We also lay an equally important emphasis on their progress in extra-curricular activities such as debating, role-play, group discussion, performing arts and poetry rendition.

How involved would you have parents

of students be when it comes to their

education?

We encourage parents to participate in

“As a school we have actually set a precedent of the student teacher ratio”

their child’s learning process not just by pushing for completion of their child’s homework, but by helping the child relate the theories taught to real life. Also, our parents come to school to speak to the students in their area of expertise. Parents are also actively involved in implementing the school discipline policy.

How do you encourage discipline in

students?

The student council members take

Principal Speak

77August 2013

care of discipline in daily routine matters. At Billabong, each student is encouraged to assess his/her own conduct within and outside the classroom. They reflect upon themselves and write a line, in the report card, about what they hope to achieve in specific time period. Administrative intervention is the last resort in extreme cases.

In Billabong High, the ratio in the

teacher: student is 13:1 in primary

grades? What was the decision behind

these ratios?

Since we set a lot of store by activity-based teaching it is not possible to achieve objectives with large numbers hence as a school we have actually set a precedent of the student teacher ratio.

What are your views on the current

perspective towards education in

the country?

The pedagogy in aware and resourceful institutions is acquiring an international hue resulting in a learner-oriented teaching atmosphere. However, the larger picture continues to be cause for concern as school and college graduates are still seen as unskilled and unemployable by the majority of employees.

Compared to five years ago, do you

see a change in the challenges you face

when you deal with students now?

The gap between aspirations and actual potential has widened discernibly making it more and more difficult for students to reconcile themselves to reality. For teachers the big challenge is to help students move forward despite the daily dejections.

Good education is learning important lessons of life


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Science Olympiad FoundationS

Winners seated in the auditoriumWinners pose with their awards

The Science Olympiad Foundation (SOF) organised a felicitation function to award the international winning students, teachers and principals of the Olympiad exams for the academic year 2012-13. Awards were given to the top three international rank holders from classes one to twelve for the four Olympiad exams conducted by SOF. Winners from classes seven to twelve won `50,000 each, the rank two

holders won `25,000 each and rank three holders won `10,000 whereas, winners from classes one to six were awarded iPads. In addition, attractive gifts were given to all winners.

The top ten principals and top forty teachers whose students put up an excellent performance were also felicitated with cash awards, mementos & citations.

Registrations are open for the current academic year For further information please visit www.sofworld.org www.facebook.com/sofworld

Call 0124-4951200

Guests of honour on stage at the Science Olympiad Foundation’s 15th International Awards Ceremony held at the Chinmaya Mission Auditorium, Delhi on Sunday 16 June 2013


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International Olympiad winners for 2012-13

Promotional Feature

Y.S. Rajan, Hon. Distinguished Prof ISRO, Chairman, NIT Manipur awarding a winner present with his family An award winner and his family on stage with Justice

RC Lahoti, Former Chief Justice of India

Mahabir Singh, Founder and Executive Director, SOF awarding a winner present with his family

Charlie Walker, Director Programming, The Biritish Council on stage with an awardee and her family

Swami Nikhilananda Saraswatiji, Chinmaya Mission presenting a winner and his family with an award

Winning teachers and principals at the awards function


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Have suggestions for any gadget/application? Share

with other readers, email [email protected]

Play TunesMP3 players in the market that

will get your groove on

GROOVE UNDERWATERWinner of the 2013 Red Dot Design Award, Neptune by Finis is

designed especially for underwater athletes. Lacking ear buds, its

innovative bone conduction technology transmits music through your

cheekbones directly into your inner ear, giving you clear sound

underwater. A high contrast OLED screen lets you browse through

your playlist. You can now easily listen to music while swimming or

scuba diving. Just remember to look out for the sharks.

Price: `

A MUSE FOR YOU Yes it is pebble-shaped and you probably think

that it doesn’t pack a wallop when it comes to

music. But it does. The Samsung Muse, comes

with a SoundAlive Optimized Audio technology,

which adjusts the sound quality and clarity as

you listen. The cherry on the cake for Samsung

loyalists is the Music Sync feature that allows

you to transfer your playlist directly from your

Samsung smart phone.

Price: `

innovative bone conduction technology transmits music through your

cheekbones directly into your inner ear, giving you clear sound

underwater. A high contrast OLED screen lets you browse through

your playlist. You can now easily listen to music while swimming or

scuba diving. Just remember to look out for the sharks.

Price: `

NEW NANO When you talk about music, it is rather hard to ignore Apple. With a larger display and a thinner body, iPod Nano has been

improved to provide a better music experience. This sleek device allows easy browsing according to genres, artists, albums

and songs. And if you are not sure of what to hear just shake the device to shuffle. The Nike+ fitness app takes care of your

daily workouts. The Nano has also been made user-friendly with the voice over function, which reads all the songs and artists

on the screen with a tap of a finger and the Mono audio which helps direct both the audio channels in either ear.

Price: `


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PLAY WITH EASE Creative Zen Style M300 shows you that you needn’t be afraid of technology.

This user-friendly gadget is perfect for luddites all around. It is equipped with

Bluetooth wireless connectivity, built-in FM radio and 32GB of expandable

memory. Compact, light and stylish, this player is easy to carry anywhere.

The touch-responsive navigation makes for hassle-free use for children as

well. It plays multiple format files, which can be transferred from your PC. It

comes with a built in voice recorder, 20 hrs of battery life and 8GB storage.

Not very fancy, yet not very modest, it is value for your money.

Price: `

DON’T STOP THE MUSIC The Cowon D20 is designed to be your new best friend. With the

longest battery life amongst the mp3 players featured here, 90

hours for audio and 13 hours for video, it will never leave

your side. This compact design comes with JetEffect 5

technology, which offers 48 presets to be there for

your different listening moods. Inbuilt speakers,

16mm colour display, FM radio and voice

recorder make it more than a simple mp3 player.

Price: `

USIC e your new best friend. With the

e mp3 players featured here, 90

rs for video, it will never leave

t design comes with JetEffect 5

offers 48 presets to be there for

stening moods. Inbuilt speakers,

display, FM radio and voice

ke it more than a simple mp3 player.

81August 2013

KEEP IT SIMPLE If we had to describe the Sansa Zip Clip Mp3 player in one word, it

would be simplicity. This player from SanDisk is small, light and

has wearable clip, which makes it easier to carry around. It has a

1.1 inch colour display screen that lets you see your playlist and

albums. Despite being so basic, it still boasts of an 8 GB

memory space and a 15 hour battery life. Clip Zip is a product

that was designed to be an Mp3 player and it is just that. No

videos, no games, no fitness apps, just pure music. If it is

your child’s first Mp3 player, Sansa is a perfect choice.

Price: `

SMALLEST IN THE WORLDGood things come in small packages and this rings true for

the New Kube from Bluetree electronics. Claiming to be the

smallest Mp3 player in the world and weighing in at just 18

grams, it allows you to store 8000 songs! You can arrange

your music into folders for easy navigation and enjoy a high

quality audio experience thanks to its inbuilt equalizer with

seven settings. The other best part - six hours of

uninterrupted music for just one hour of charge

Price: `


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DA

N D

RY

� Dr Parnia is a resuscitation specialist, a medical profession-al with a deep knowledge of the body systems that support life. Along with Josh Young, he has written a scientific adven-ture story that is well informed and gripping. It is also funda-mentally wrong-headed.

Mixing tales from the emergency ward with the latest medical research, Parnia reveals how a battle against the factors which damage the body during the death process has made it possible to push back the point at which people can be restored

to life. People are brought back to life hours after their hearts and all medical signs have stopped. Accompanying this medical ‘miracle’ is an increase in the number of people who report near-death experiences. Dr Parnia discusses the remarkable similarities among these reports (tunnels, white lights, encounters with benevolent beings), as well as related research concerning out-of-body experiences and consciousness during coma.

This is where the book goes wrong. The research

is fascinating and clearly presented, but Parnia wants to interpret it as showing that consciousness persists independently of life and brain activity. These experiences are genuine reports of an afterlife, he claims. I’m sceptical.

The plural of anecdote is not data: 100 people telling you they have fairies living at the bottom of their gardens isn’t good evidence, even though it is 100 people. Psychology research shows that false memories and confirmation bias are common factors, often

Dr Sam Parnia with Josh Young

Rider, `1,177

ResourceA FEAST FOR THE MIND

The Lazarus EffectThe Science That Is Rewriting The Boundaries Between Life And Death

producing unreliable accounts, especially for events in which awareness is disrupted. Also, many who have ‘near death’ experiences are not really near death. You need hard evidence for remarkable claims. When he’s off the topic of emergency care, Parnia doesn’t provide it.

Dr Tom Stafford is a psychologist and the co-author of Mind Hacks.

Do reports of white light and long tunnels indicate

the existence of an afterlife?

84 August 2013

h


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Get your clicks

85August 2013

Weird LifeThe Search For Life That Is Very, Very Different From Our Own

David Toomey

WW Norton & Co, `1,630

This book could only have been written in the last few years, now that we’ve come to appreciate the sheer diversity of life on Earth, and the possibility of something altogether weirder.

By first explaining the molecular machinery that drives life as we know it and the ‘extremophile’ organisms tolerating the most hostile environments, Toomey is then able to discuss ways in which other life might be considered to be weird (at least compared to us!). For example, life might use a chemical other than DNA, or something other than water to fill its cells, like liquid methane.

And as Toomey argues, this isn’t merely idle speculation – by understanding the limits of terrestrial life we gain crucial insights into the possibility of extraterrestrial life: organisms inhabiting perhaps Mars, or the moon Titan.

In the later chapters, Toomey allows himself to venture into the realms of science fiction, which makes for a fascinating aside. He discusses the feasibility of machine life, or organisms residing right on the brink of a black hole to sip the trickle of available energy.

EarthmastersThe Dawn Of The Age Of Climate Engineering

Clive Hamilton

Yale University Press, `1,812

While the issue of climate change may have slipped down the political agenda, the problem of global warming remains. One day, Hamilton says in this superb book, we will realise that the question has changed. It is no longer a matter of whether we can prevent a climate crisis, rather if we can cope with the effects.

Geoengineering is one way to try. In its broadest terms, it encompasses all the possible techno-fixes that could help us escape rising temperatures. They are all discussed here – from sucking carbon dioxide from the air to spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to block sunlight.

What makes this work stand out is its exploration of the people, politics and power that lie beneath. From the nuclear weapons scientists of the Cold War to wealthy philanthropists, Hamilton shows how control over the atmosphere is a seductive and enduring fascination. And, like one of the mirrors that could be erected in space to bounce back sunlight, in the dynamics of geoengineering we can see reflected the special interests, money, power and societal blinkers that got us into this mess in the first place.

PaleofantasyWhat Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet And How We Live

Marlene Zuk

WW Norton & Company, `1,630

Nostalgia, so they say, isn’t what it used to be. Adverts and the internet are overstuffed with paeans for the Good Old Days. To be specific: the Stone Age. A time when human beings only ate ‘natural’ foods and got plenty of exercise, before agriculture came along to ruin things with its restricted and starchy diet and sedentary habits. How we yearn for our Palaeolithic peak, when men were men and mammoths were nervous. Ourconstitutions are Palaeolithic, unsuited to our fretful modern lifestyles. It says so in our genes.

Au contraire says Marlene Zuk in this refreshing book. Human evolution didn’t stop in the Palaeolithic. Why would it? Evolution is the moving finger. Having writ, it moves on, just as it did when we were climbing trees or swimming in the primordial slime. We are now as genetically mismatched to the ‘paleofantasy’ of Stone Age life as giraffes are to unicycles.

As such, Paleofantasy is a necessary corrective to so much new-age nincompoopery. Besides, you’ve got to love any book that starts: ‘the first thing you have to do to study 4,000-year-old DNA is to take off your clothes’.

EPaleofantasy WEarthmastersE W i d LifW

This is a wonderfully provocative book, attacking the many myths of popular psychology. ‘Is our culture of self-help really helping,’ Dr Briers asks, ‘or is it just

creating expectations that none of us can live up to?’ From the

title you can guess how he answers that question. He is

honest enough to admit that as a clinical psychologist, his clients have

had to put up with his own ‘psychobabble’ and he has even written

the odd self-help book.But he doesn’t just pick on obvious

targets such as ‘you can do anything you want’ or ‘your inner child needs a hug’; he

also raises questions about mainstream psychology, including the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). He acknowledges the contribution that CBT has made to our understanding of the mind, but makes a convincing case that it’s not all it is sometimes cracked up to be.

I would have preferred it if he had spent longer on fewer chapters, but this is fascinating reading for anyone who has ever wondered about the reality behind the claims of the self- help industry.

Psychobabble Exploding The Myths Of The Self-Help Generation

Dr Stephen Briers

Pearson, `996


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Everyone, it’s said, loves a good story, and Encyclopedia Mythica has more than most. Moreover, it also offers a look at the sources of the great mythological tales, and will have you wondering how much of the fiction is grounded in fact. You can look up myths by geographical region, or by pantheon. The Greek, Roman, Norse and Celtic mythologies are all well represented.

The Smithsonian’s history and culture section has a myriad of pages on the history of subjects ranging from advertising to jazz. Examine the life of Abraham Lincoln, or the genesis of the electric guitar. Be sure to check out ‘HistoryWired’, a collection of the Smithsonian team’s own favourite objects. Kermit the Frog is, of course, included.

The three strands of this eye-opening site deal with the scientific understanding of racial differences, a look at the molecular level, and an in-depth history of the way we humans have dealt with race throughout our existence. There’s also some imaginative animation and 3D modelling, lots of personal blogs and anecdotes, and interactive games.

An interactive tour of the human body, featuring sections on the brain, the heart, the digestive tract and the skeleton. You can watch animations of organs in action, and zoom around the inside of a human body, navigating with your mouse. There are tours to help you get under the skin, and games to test whether you’ve been paying attention.

While this site features plenty of useful links and discussions of ongoing scientific issues, the main draw is Ramona, an artificially intelligent conversation-bot. She’s the brainchild of scientist Ray Kurzweil, known for his bold statements on the likelihood of man and machine merging within the next 30 years, and talking to Ramona is certainly an interesting – if slightly unsettling – experience.

� WEBSITE � Website � Website

� Website � Website � Website

Debunking the mythsAn institution

RACEThe Virtual Body Kurzweil AI

www.pantheon.orgwww.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/History_and_Culture/

www.understandingrace.comwww.medtropolis.com/vbody.asp www.kurzweilai.net

Anarchism, generally defined as the opposition to any form of state or government, has a very long and involved history. Here there’s a hoard of information on the various political philosophies of anarchist movements, if that’s what you want, but also biographies of leading lights and a nation-by-nation state of play in the respective anarchist movements.

Chaos rules

Get your clicks

If you have a favourite website, blog or podcast that you’d like to share with other readers, please email [email protected]

Our pick of internet highlights to explore

Get your clicks

86 August 2013

dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/index.html


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Games REVIEWS

87 August 2013

PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Pocketwatch Games, `1,361

Have you ever watched Ocean’s Eleven and thought, “Hey, I could do that!”? Well, you probably couldn’t, but it’s certainly fun to make believe. Just picture it: the glamour, the danger… the Hollywood A-listers goofing around in expensive hotels.

Well, Monaco won’t let you clink glasses with George Clooney or Brad Pitt, but it will let you indulge your daydreams of being a master thief. And just like any good heist movie, much of the fun lies in the fact that your carefully laid plans will invariably go wrong. Monaco doesn’t just flirt with disaster, it sweeps disaster off its feet and gives it a whopping great snog on the lips.

It’s the distinctly odd art style that’s likely to grab your attention first. Monaco’s levels resemble a set of black-and-white blueprints, viewed from above. As your

diminutive crook scampers around the level, the world bleeds into colour according to what they can see; moving into a new room will cause it to bloom into life, just as the path behind you fades to a monochrome gloom.

At first this aesthetic may seem confusing, but once it clicks you’ll see Monaco for what it really is: a stealth game where uncertainty and chaos lurk around every corner. If you’re blessed with skill and luck then everything will run like clockwork, but it’s far more likely that something will slip. An alarm gets tripped, the guards swarm in, and suddenly you’re scrabbling to save your no-good hide.

There’s a whole rogue’s gallery of scoundrels to play as, ranging from a charming impersonator (think Tom Hardy in Inception) to a pickpocket with a malevolent pet monkey. Up to three friends can join you on a heist too, but never forget – there’s no honour among thieves.

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Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine

In reality Clooney and his suave crew of thieves in Ocean’s Eleven would have spent 50 years in a supermax prison; it’s much safer to rob a casino from the comfort of your sofa

Injustice: Gods Among UsPS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, Warner Bros. Interactive, `3,631

This game brings together some of the biggest names in DC Comics, then goads them into smacking the living daylights out of each other – it’s the gaming equivalent of that kid at school who was always provoking fights and then running away when the teacher showed up. While hardcore gamers will stick to Street Fighter IV, this offers the chance to duff up The Joker as Batman, or to pitch Wonder Woman against Lex Luthor. Take that, slaphead!

Deadly Premonition: Director’s CutPS3, Rising Star Games, `2,360Deadly premonition is one of the best and worst games you’ll ever play. The graphics are woeful, the controls are sloppy, and it’s a massive rip-off of Twin Peaks. On the other hand, it’s also a game where you control an unhinged FBI agent whose beard grows if you don’t shave him. It’s hilarious, creepy and utterly baffling – the definition of a cult classic. This new version fixes a few flaws, but it’s still something of a curate’s egg.

Star CommandiOS / Android, War Balloon Games, `272

As with recent with Focus favourite FTL: Faster Than Light, Star Command places you in charge of your very own starship. But where FTL focused on your ever-vulnerable craft, Star Command is all about your crew - cute little folk in coloured jumpsuits. You’ll order them about your vessel, assign them jobs and beam with pride when they get promoted. And then you’ll openly weep when they get vaporised by invaders. It’s a sci-fi tragicomedy delivered in bite-sized portions – ideal for your daily commute.


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wo important, often competing forces, play a defining role in

the life of stars. One is gravity which attracts and binds together anything that has a mass. For example, a large-scale distributed system of many particles or gas would converge towards a compact spherical configuration due to their self-attraction through a process known as gravitational collapse. This process of convergence does not proceed indefinitely though because of another competing outward force due to pressure, which arises due to large density and temperature (or quantum mechanical effects) in the core of this collapsing system.

The solar system was born about 4.6 billion years ago due to a similar gravitational collapse of a part of a very large cloud of gas known as the pre-solar nebula. This embryonic solar system was in the form of a disk of gas surrounding a central, dense, spherical core. The latter - often referred to as a protostar (take it as a baby star)- would have become more and more compact until the pressure and temperature rose to a point where nuclear fusion initiated, converting hydrogen to helium. This nuclear reaction continuously released a large flux of energy, creating enough pressure to hold the system against further collapse. A stable star, the Sun, was born.

This phase of the Sun when hydrogen is fused together at its

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core to produce helium is known as the Main Sequence phase and lasts about 10 billion years; this is the primetime of a solar-like star’s life cycle, but age is fast catching up! As the Sun burns more and more hydrogen and accumulates helium, the rate of nuclear reaction increases, increasing its energy output. In a billion or so years from now, the Sun will be so hot that the Earth will no longer be in its habitable zone. The Earth’s atmosphere and surface will heat up, its oceans will evaporate and the water-vapour so generated will trap more heat making our planet’s environment unsuitable for life as we know it. But Mars, which is presently too frigid, will warm up and if the water that is buried beneath its surface is somehow released and oxygen created, then Mars may become habitable. Now you know why trying to reach the Red planet is not just another crazy exercise

dreamt up by nutty scientists! Further in the future about

5.5 billion years from now, the core of the Sun will run out of hydrogen and cannot be supported against gravitational collapse. The contracting core will release energy which will ignite nuclear fusion of hydrogen which still remains in the outer shell of the Sun. The heated outer shell of the Sun will start expanding, heralding the end of the Sun and creating what is known as a Red Giant. The expanding giant’s hot atmosphere will slowly gobble up Mercury, Venus and then Earth and other planets. The contracting core of the Red Giant will become so dense and hot that helium will start fusing to form Carbon. But the helium fusion reaction will not last very long and eventually there will be nothing to hold the star together. Its outer layers will be ejected away forming a planetary

nebula such as the Ring Nebula and its dense core will become a White Dwarf. The White Dwarf, similar in size to the Earth, but almost half the weight of the Sun, and made up mostly of Carbon will radiate initially and light up the surrounding nebula in a cosmic spectacle of unparalleled beauty. Eventually, however, it will cool off and become dark. The cosmic dance of birth and death would have come to a full circle and continuous survivability of life - originated here - would necessitate getting out of the solar system well before this happens.

Luke Skywalker watches a double sunset from his home-planet Tatooine in Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Would there be a future generation of displaced humans in such a planet? I do not know; but I sure hope that someday, far, far away in time and space, a boy and a girl will peer into the darkness towards the faint rays of a White Dwarf and whisper “from thence we came, far, far back in time...”. Our future reality - complemented by scientific discovery - may surpass anything that we can currently imagine, and therein lies hope for humanity faced with the vagaries of the dying Sun.

Astrophysicist Dibyendu Nandy is Associate Professor and Ramanujan Fellow at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata. He heads the CEnter of Excellence in Space Sciences, India (CESSI), and is also the Chairman of the International Astronomical Union Working Group on solar–stellar environments.

Dr Dibyendu Nandy writes about the inevitable demise of the Sun The last word

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“...(it) will start expanding, heralding the end and creating what is known as a Red Giant”

A beautiful end? An image of the Ring

Nebula (M57) taken by the Hubble Space

telescope reveals what the future solar

system could look like about 8 billion years from now –

when the Sun is in its final death throes having evolved into a White Dwarf star

(the small white dot at centre of the image) and ejected

its outer shell of material


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SCIENCE HISTORY NATURE FOR THE CURIOUS MIND


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BBC Knowledge Jul 2013