Braintainment - September-October 2015

8/20/2019 Braintainment - September-October 2015

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Why can’t youhear owls fly?

R aptors fly much more quietly thanother birds so that t heir prey cannothear them coming. Also, where otherraptors benefit fr om their speed tocatch prey, the owl has to rely on hissilence. Science has not quite workedout how the bird can fly so silently.

There are a few clues, however. Thefeathers of an owl are different fr om

those of other bir ds. They are longer,

have a different quill structure and asmoother end. Researchers think that

these proper ties make for quieter wingmovement because the turbulencebehind the wings is reduced. Thefeathers also contain a silk-like layer,

whi ch mutes the flapping of the wings.Lastly, the wings and feathers of an owlare more aerodynamic, allowing him tomove silently through the air.

Focu

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science.za

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Milk from wild animals used long before domestication startedA

n international team of

researchers from South Africa,

USA, UK and Italy has discovered

evidence of an unusual paint mixture

used approximately 49,000 years

ago in northern KwaZulu-Natal. The

paint mixture consisted of red

powdered ochre and casein (dried

milk protein) obtained from a wildbovid animal.

The paint is a well -preserved

micro-residue on the edge of a small

stone flake excavated from Sibudu

Cave by Professor Wadley from the

Evolutionary Studies Institute, Wits

University.

Using chemical and elemental

analyses the researchers were able

to es tabli sh that powdered ochre was

mixed with milk in its liquid form.

However, the milk used was not from

a domestic cow but from the wild

bovid family such as buffalo, eland,

kudu and impala.

This find is surpr ising for a number of

reasons.

The use of bovid milk predates the

introduction of domestic cattle in

South Africa. So how was the milk

obtained from a wild bovid? Theauthors suggest that the mi lk was

likely obtained by killing a lactating

wild bovid female. Many South

African wi ld bov ids separate from the

herd when giving birth and hide away

with their young, thus becoming easy

prey for experienced hunters, writes

the team.

Previous studies show that early

humans blended ochre with other

substances to make paint, body

paint, sunscreen and glue for fixing

stone tools on wooden or bone

handles. There are, however, no

ethnographic precedents for mixing

ochre with milk.

Who is the boss?

M

ale combat first appeared some 270 million

years ago. This is what researchers from theEvolutionary Studies Institute at Wits University fou

when they conducted an updated and more in-dept

study of the herbivorous mammalian ancestor,

Tiarajudens eccentricus, discovered 4 years ago.

Through this study, researcher s from Brazil and Sou

Africa can now present a meticulous description of

the skull, skele ton and dental replacement of this

Brazilian species. And they learned that 270 million

years ago, the interspecific combat and fighting we

see between male deer today was already present in

these forerunners of mammals.

Saber-teeth are known to belong to the large Permia

predators’ gorgonopsians (also known as saber-too

reptiles), and to the famous saber-tooth cats from t

Ice Age. Then T iarajudens eccentricus was discover

and it had some surprises: despite large protrudingsaber-tooth canines and occluding post-canine teet

it was a herbivore.

The discover y of this Brazilian species also allowed

a re-analysis of the South African species

Anomocephalus africanus, discovered 10 years

earlier. The two species have several similar feature

that clearly indicate they are closely related, but the

African species lacks the saber-tooth canines of i ts

Brazilian cousin. In the Middle Permian, where these

Gondwana cousins were living, around 270 million

years ago, the first communities with diverse,

abundant tetrapod herbivores were evolving.

In deer today, enlarged canines are used in male

displays during fighting. The long canine in the

herbivore T. eccentricus is interpreted as an indicat

of its use in a similar way, and is the oldest evidence

where male herbivores have used their canines dur i

fights with rivals.

It seems likedinosaurs used theirgargantuan teeth

to lay claim to theirterritory

This image showsSibudu rubbedred ochre


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Q& AQuestions & Answers

Got questions you’ve been carrying around for years? Braintainment answers them! Mail yourquestions to [email protected]

A music recognition app

works by comparing various spec trograms with one another. Aspectrogram is a graph in

which the fr equency and theamplitude of the music aremeasured against time. This

delivers a unique patternper song. When you presenta song to the app, it willcreate a spectrogram andcompare it to a database ofmillions of songs. Eventuallyit will send the user the titleof the song.

How does a music recognition

app work? Kyle Anthony, Johannesburg

This app even manages to findthe correct song title during alive concert.

M O R G A N D A V I D D E L O S S

Y / C O R B I S / H H

How far can you look intospace with the naked eye?Jeff Swart, Windhoek

That depends on circumstances. Normally you casee the Andromedanevel, the furthest object you

can see from the Northern Hemisphere. It is betwee2.4 and 2.9 million light years away from us. On a

very bright night with no artificial light, and if you ha very good eyes, you might see the Bode system. Thisspiral-shaped star system is about 12 million lightyears away from us. And with lots of luck you mightsee even further. It would have to be a supernova, anexploding star that is extremely bright at the same

time. Researchers discovered a supernova at about million light years with binoculars last September. If

was closer you would have been able to see it with tnaked eye.

Can you get a world recordin anything? Martin Court, Pretoria

There are hardly any rules for arecord attempt. The most impor

requirement: the record has to bebreakable. You may also not risk youlife or make animals suffer. Guinnes

World Records decides if an attemphas the right requirements. So ‘drawmany suns in 1 minute’ is allowed. Mrecords don’t make it into the GuinnWorld Records book. There are only4,000 in the book whereas there are60,000 records. The organisationdecides which ones make it into thebook. The unpublished records areknown by the organisation, but cannbe found. They are working on a web

to put these on.SOURCE: GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS

You don’t have to begood at anything to

break a record. H E N R Y R O M E R O / R E U T E R S


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Culture

Eight misconceptions aboutNative American tribes

The nativetruth

H O L L A N D S E

H O O G T E

First, Westerners mistook them for being Indians from Asia. Propaganda, thanksmainly to Hollywood, had us thinking that they had names such as Dances with

Wolves and used monosyllabic words such as ‘ugh’. However, this is a far cry from what Native American people were. Here’s the truth.

7 TEX T: BERRY OVERVELDE

They say ‘ugh’

History tells us that Native Amer igrunted the word ‘ugh’. This is n

true. Fir stl y, there were several hund tribes who spoke dif ferent languagesdialects. So even if one tribe would hsaid ‘ugh’, they surely didn’t all say th And ‘ugh’ it sel f? It never would have a real word but rather a cor rupt versi‘how’, also written as ‘howgh’ or ‘hug The interjection ‘ugh’ sur faced centuago as a disapproving groan in the Enlanguage. But in Native American cul this word was probably a greet ing. Otsources saw the ‘ugh’ as an agreeingreaction when another person wasfinished speaking. The word probably

became popular due to Western stor y writers such as Kar l May. However, thused it incorrectly. Some writers also‘ugh’ to indicate that a person hadstopped speaking. Others wrote that word was a gesture of disapproval, julike in the English language, while inreality it was probably a sign ofagreement. In short: Native Americanmight have said ‘ugh’, or something tresembles this, but differently from h we think . And i t cer tainly wasn’t a rea word. Ugh.

War cries

Paint on your face? Check. Sitting ona horse? Check. Tomahawk ready?

Check. Now you are nearly ready to go to war. The only thing lef t to do is use yourhand to tap your mouth and produce the‘wahwahwah’ war cry before you head offinto battle. This is according to thestereotyped image. But what was thereality? It is known that many Indian tribes used to shout out all sor ts of warcries beforehand to motivate the warparty. But that is not ‘typical’ Native

Amer ican tr ibe behaviour, becausedozens of armies also used such warcries (the Japanese ‘banzai’ is a well-known example). Also, it would beunlikely to encounter male warriorsscreaming ‘wahwahwah’. The sound wasmainly made by the females and thesound was made without the use of theirhands. The hand gesture was probablymade up by white Americans whocouldn’t make the sound without using their hands.

And if they had a chance they would attack innocent colonists.

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Scalp collectors

Been to battle? Then you naturally want to take a trophyhome. Chopping off heads is an option. But scalping,

cutting off the hair and skin of the victim’s head, is morepractical. Why? Because it was easier to take back tothe camp. Native Amer ican tribes have becomenotorious for their acts of scalping. And fromhistory we know that a lot of scalping tookplace even before the arrival of the

Europeans. For example, in 1325 thebattle of Crow Creek in South Dakotabetween rival tribes resulted in manydeaths. When archaeologistsexhumed the bodies, they found thatthe majority of the dead had beenscalped. Many people think thatscalping was unique to Native Americantribes. But this also happened in otherparts of the world. The Greek historianHerodotus wrote for example thatsoldiers from Scythia (people fromEastern Europe and Central Asia)already collected scalps: themore, the manlier. And theEuropean colonists in North

America also took part in this.Large rewards were dished outregularly for the collection of NativeAmerican scalps. This led to manyscalp-hunting expeditions.

Scalping is not typicallyNative American. TheScythians already did thiscenturies before. And theEuropean colonists alsotook part.

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All tribes

campedT

epee, wigwam, call it what you want. But the fac t is that Native

Americans lived in tents. At least if you want to believe the most popularmovies and books. If you do, you wouldbe wrong. There were hundreds ofNative American tribes and each one’sdwelling place varied. Indeed, somelived in tents such as wigwams or

tepees. They are not the same: wigwams are small hoop-shapedstructures, while tepees consist of afew poles and animal skins. The latter

was mainly used by nomadic Indian

tribes on large planes in the middle of the USA. That ’s because the tent s werequick and easy to assemble and takedown while they were on the move. But

there were also lots of tribes that werenot nomadic and did not live in tents. Acase in point: tribes that lived along

the East Coast buil t plank houses– long, shaped wooden structures withpointy roofs that looked a lot likeEuropean houses. Other tribes stayedin chickees (huts with raised floor s andpointy roofs) or pueblos (houses madeof clay).

Doing the rain dance

Some countries get more rain thanothers, which helps produce fertile

agricultural land. Twenty-four states in the USA get more than 1,000mm of r ainper year. This excludes the very wetHawaii, which gets even more. Hence, the

tr ibes that lived in these fertile regions would not have had much need for arain-making ritual.In the dry South West they did have

rituals that had something to do withrain-making. The most well known isof the Hopi from Arizona, who used lsnakes during their dance. These da

were meant to welcome and celebrarain. But they were not quite the typrain dances that we are thinking of (

wants rain, tribe makes a dance and voila: here come the c louds already, The snake dance of the Hopi, fo r exa

was par t of an anritual in August,normally the wett

time of the year i Arizona. Such a rdance was thus n

meant to ‘make’ but probably had to do wi th a harvfestival.

Rain is not the onlyreason for a song aa dance. This is thedance of the Ojibwtribe, carried out bFlying Cloud, TobaMoonlit Night and Seagull.

No, these are not wigwams. The ladies are erecting their tepees.

C O R B I S / H H

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Culture

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At least 5 million Native Americans werecounted at the last census in the USA

He who has a verylong name

Dances with Wolves or He Who Kills aWhole Herd of Bison with Bare Hands.

Many Native Americans have long andelaborate names in Hollywood movies. Thereality is that many Native Americans had(and still have, even today) several names.Ther e was a bir th name, a nickname andother names that they were given as theygrew up.Take Chief Sit ting Bull (ar ound 1831-1890), famous leader of a group of LakotaIndians. At birth he r eceived the nameJumping Badger. His nickname wasSlon-he, or in other words Slow (he wasrather slow as a child). And then when itwas celebrat ed on his 14th bir thday thathe had grown into a warrior, his father

called him Thathanka Iyothanka, meaningSitting Bull. It all sounds very poetic, yes,especially in comparison with names likeJack and J ill. But translating names into adifferent language makes them soundmore poetic. A lexander means somethinglike ‘protector of mankind’ and Beatrix‘blessed woman’. What about having awhole sentence as a name? This did nothappen. Most names were 1 or 2 words.These only change into several words, orsometimes a full sentence, once youtranslate them. Hiawatha for example thenbecomes ‘He Who Combs’.

Almost extinct

Many Native American tribes ar e almostextinct. Many only exist in reserves:

pieces of ground that the government hasassigned to them. It is true that af ter thearrival of the Europeans in America the sizeof the native population decreased due todiseases such as smallpox, while others

were ki lled in batt le. E xactly how many i s noknown. It is impossible to ascertain howmany people were on the other side of the

Atlant ic Ocean before Columbus cr ossedover in 1492. The estimation that historiansmake of the original number of nativehabitants varies a lot. But it is pr obablyseveral tens of millions. These include tribesfrom Central and South America as well.

Accord ing to the most r ecent census of thepopulation in the USA (2010) there areabout 5.2 million Native Americans in thatcountry. Their numbers have indeeddecreased dramatically since 1492, but theyare not quite on the verge of extinction. Alsoof the 5.2 million Native Americans, only22% live on reserves. More than half of theother 78% live in urban areas.

A feather in

your hair?H

ow would you describe a Nat ive American? Many would probably

say they had reddish complexions and wore feathers in their hair (preferablyeagle feathers). Nobody can blame youfor this answer, because almost everyNative American who you see in comicstrips and Western movies has feathersin his hair. This probably originatedamong the Sioux and later alsobecame popular with other tribes. Butnot every tribesperson was importantenough to put feather s in his hair.

Also, many Native American people

used head attire other than eaglefeathers. Tribes in the North East often

wore a headband wi th a feather, but that could just as well have been a turkey or heron feather. Other tribes wore porcupine qui lls or r eindeer tails. There were even others, in the American West, who wore ‘ordinary’hats, braided from tree roots.

Sioux chief Sitting Bull (1831-1890).

Yes, there were tribes that wore feathers on theirheads, but not all of them.

S H U T T E R S T O C K

B R I D G E M A N / H H6

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The Native Peoples ofNorth America: A Histoby Bruce Johansen: ahistory of Native

Americans, from theirarrival in America untinow.

EXTRA INFO


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0

Where do I

come from?

T

o determine where

Boersma’s mom’sancestors come from,23andMe tested his mito-chondrial DNA (mtDNA).

This DNA is passed on only via your female line. Hehas the advantage as amale of being able to tracehis paternal line as well.

This is done by analysinga particular part of the Ychromosome. It’s only pas-sed on from father to son.

Neither analysis revealsanything spectacular:Boersma is clearly a Euro-pean of Caucasian origin.For most Europeans, whosefamilies have been living in

the same place for ages, this type of analysis won’treveal anything exciting.But for South Africans,Kinsley says, the test canreveal much. “The vastmajority of white South Af-

ricans’ ancestors migrated to SA from Europe about10 to 15 generations ago.Maternal and paternalDNA lines can therefore be

traced back to a locationin Europe. And because somany of those immigrantsmarried or had children byMalay and African slaves,Indian migrant workers,Chinese miners and the

various other people who

flocked to South Africaduring the gold rush, whiteSouth Africans are alsoable to trace their rootsback to Asia or the rest of

Africa. South Africans of African descent can notonly see where in Africa

their forefathers camefrom, but also where inEurope or Asia. All of thiscan have an influence on

their disease profiles.”

up all over the place. It may soundlike fun, but what can you actually

do with a genetic test? Aren’t you just what cynics call an ‘eager-spitter’ or ‘information exhibitio-nist’, someone who simply wantsto boast that they’ve had theprofiles compiled? Companiescertainly cater for that too – youcan have your DNA profileprinted onto canvas to hang inyour lounge if you like.But isn’t it scary to know whatinformation about you is geneti-cally determined?Let’s start here: 23andMe doesn’tmap your full genetic sequence.Neither do most other geneticbusinesses. Why? The largest partof your DNA, more than 99,5%,is exactly the same as every otherhuman being’s. So there’s littleuse in determining your specificgenetic sequence for those bits.Besides, scientists still know verylittle about the function of a

significant portion of our DNA.

This is why 23andMe only looksat the pieces of DNA that haveknown influences on health orphysical characteristics. In total,they only analyse about 0,032% ofyour DNA. That’s about 960,000base pairs.Noelene Kinsley, who recentlycompleted her Master’s in geneticcounselling at Wits University isone of only a handful qualifiedgenetic counsellors in SA. Shebelieves that submitting yourDNA to a website is all good and

well for Caucasians, but forAmericans – and South Africans– it might be a bit more tricky.“Most studies about gene-linkedillnesses have been done onEuropean populations. There areonly a limited number of studieson African populations. Yet weknow that there are certainconditions in which the genes arerace-specific. Like albinism, forinstance. While both Caucasianand African people can sufferfrom albinism, the gene thatcodes for albinism in Africans is

completely different to the onewhich codes for albinism inCaucasians. We’re not talkingabout different mutations of thesame gene, but completelydifferent genes! And albinismisn’t the only disease for whichthis is true.”

A Family means moreSix weeks pass. 23andMe sendsBoersma a message saying hisgenetic profile has been comple-ted. It’s available online for his

perusal. And suddenly it’s apersonal, almost too close tohome. Will he know soon willnesses will affect him in fuNot necessarily, says Kinsle“Your family history, currenmedical conditions and specmarkers in your blood, likecholesterol and sugar levels,actually much better predictfuture illnesses than your geAs far as Boersma knows, thare no genetic illnesses in hifamily.“Then the chances are incre

small that the analysis will reanything useful. You could for fun, but it won’t give youto work with on a medical le“But if inherited illnesses arof your family history, you sthe chance of having a nastymutation. And in that case yhave to ask yourself if it realsomething you want to knowalso important to consult wiyour family before having yoDNA analysed. After all, a part of their DNA is the samyours. This means if you havserious genetic illness, the samight be true for the rest of family.“Plus if you do have geneticlinked diseases in your famibetter by far to do the tests vhuman genetic specialist thaa website. The results have aemotional impact. So you haprepare for the results, and hthe proper emotional suppoAlso, the results themselveslittle without understandingall sorts of other factors canthem. Going via a professiowill give you a better interpr

tion of the results and how tcould affect your life than asimple web page would.”

A Long listThe email from 23andMecontains a link to Boersma’spersonal test results, divideda section on kinship and a seon health. He clicks on the rfor illness, and sees a list of a100 diseases. Then he clicks‘heightened risk’. There are

960,000 base pairsare investigated. It

seems a lot, but it’sonly 0,032% of your

total DNA.

Is a 37% higher risk oflung cancer something to worry about?

Body & Soul

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Bad DNA = no insurance?

I

sn’t knowing all this stuff about your DNA dangerous? What if it lands in the wrong hands? Like those of medical aid or life insurance companies?

Do you have to pay a higher premium if you have ‘bad’ DNA? In South Africamedical aids work on a ‘community rating’ basis. This means medicalaids can’t load your premiums if you have a specific disease. However, lifeinsurance can be loaded for certain risks. There are very specific guidelinesfor how genetic information can be used by life insurers, Kinsley says. “Butmy research has indicated that most South African life insurers do not useDNA profiling to assess their risks. However, for some very specific diseasescalled monogenic conditions (like cystic fibrosis), where we know a singlegene is 100% predictive of that disease, genetic tests may be used.”

diseases on the list. The absoluteand relative risk for each diseaseactually manifesting is listed nextto its name. At the very top? Lung

cancer, with a maximum of 4 starsindicating reliability of the test.That means it’s been thoroughlyresearched. It seems Boersma hasa 37% higher chance than theaverage person to develop cancerof the respiratory tract. “It mightlook like a lot, but the numberscan be deceiving,” says Kinsley.“Imagine 1% of all people get adisease and you have an 80%increased risk of getting that samedisease. That still means you haveonly a 1,8% chance of getting it. Itis a bit worrying, but such a smallrisk is really not something to putyou into a funk. You have to lookat the absolute risk as well.”

A Bigger risk of cancer And the absolute risk of lungcancer on Boersma’s report is11,6%. That means a chance ofabout 1 in 9 that he will developthe disease as opposed to thenormal risk of about 1 in 12. So‘normal’ risk is fairly high already,and his is slightly above average.“But,” says Kinsley, “actuallydeveloping cancer, or othercomplex diseases like diabetes,

high blood pressure and heartdisease, depends on the interac-tion between genes, lifestyle and aload of other factors. Lifestylealone can be a huge influence.And we have scientific proof thatlifestyle makes a difference toeveryone’s health, not just thosewith higher genetic risks. Plus wedon’t yet know for sure what theinterplays of the various genes arein these more complex diseases,which is why the results of tests

like these won’t ever really be ableto predict precisely whether you’lldevelop those diseases.”The influence of some genes is

explained on the 23andMewebsite. In the case of lungcancer, genes only have an 8 to14% influence on the develop-ment of lung cancer. “Smoking isby far the largest risk factor forlung cancer,” Kinsley says.The fact that Boersma doesn’tsmoke is therefore much moreimportant than the few percen-tage points of extra risk his DNAprofile seem to indicate. “Gro-wing to a healthy old age is notdetermined by your DNA profileas much as by your lifestyle andenvironment: drink in modera-tion, don’t smoke, eat healthyfoods and get enough exercise.We have scientific proof that thatkind of lifestyle has an effect onyour overall health. We simplydon’t know enough about theinfluence of most of our genes torely too heavily on the results ofDNA analysis, unless there’s aknown genetic condition. DNA iscertainly not the be-all andend-all of your disease profile.”

A Mutation affects sister Boersma’s other ‘plusses’ are

negligible. They revolve aroundconditions that are so rare thateven doubling the chances ofdeveloping them means minimalrisk. The list of lowered risk islonger, but also nothing earth-shattering. It’s really just aboutminimal reductions in risk.According to Kinsley that’s alsotypical. “There are dozens ofgenes involved in most complexdiseases. A plus here is counteredby a minus there. Now add in the

crucial aspects of lifestyle andenvironment, and you start under-standing why the test results areoften just about moving a few

percentage points up or down.Your personal risks will moreoften than not be somewhere nearthe average, maybe a little aboveor a little below, but nothing to betoo concerned about.”One exception is information.23andMe only reveals informa-tion behind a picture of a lock.Sometimes mutations can have

I t’s useful to think of thehuman DNA profile like amap to a new country you’ve

never visited. Now imagine that there are big tears andsmudges all over the map. So while you have a general ideaof where you are, you can’t besure that the road you’re onis actually going to get you to where you want to be. And youmight think you’re going along the correc t road, but you’ve

actually missed a turn-off.“That’s a good way of looking at what we know about the human

DNA profile. We have big gapsin our knowledge – the tearsand smudges. We know thatcertain genes make you ‘travel’in a certain disease’s direction.But there’s no guarantee you’llget it. And you might think yougot to where you were going butactually you’re in a completelydifferent town.”

What do DNA profilesactually reveal?

effects much bigger than a fewpercentage points. In thiscategory, 23andMe checks forchanges in the BRCA- and

LRRK-genes. Mutations in thesegenes increase your chances to80% of developing breast cancerand Parkinson’s disease respecti-vely. The lock over the breastcancer BRCA-gene is particularlyclose to Boersma’s heart becausehis mom had breast cancer. If themutation is present, it could affecthis sister. But he also knows that

DNA analysis used tobe very expensive and

took ages to complete These days it’s cheape

and faster

Smoking has agreater influenceon your healththan a tiny ‘fault’in your DNA.

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Science

eternity’. This doesn’t exist in

Einstein’s relativity theory.According to the Germangenius, it is impossible to take atrip back in time. To do that,you have to overtake the lightthat has shone through thehappenings of the past.Here’s an analogy: When yousee a full cup of tea, the lightradiates to all sides. The light ofthe full tea cup has gone farinto space by the time your teais finished after five minutes. Ifyou want to see that same fullcup of tea, you have to find theradiated light, overtake it, pass

it and wait for it. In other words,you have to move faster thanthe speed of light. However,that is not possible – not then,not now and not in the future.The speed of light is themaximum speed that can bereached in space. This is a lawthat always applies.However, there might be a wayto circumvent the law of speed.That gateway from Star Trekresembles a physical conceptthat researchers call a‘wormhole’. In theory, it is anopening into a time dimension.In simple words: a wormholewould be a way to cut off thepath of the previously radiatedlight. So, instead of overtakingthe light of the full tea cup, onewould have to find a shorterway to the place where the ‘tealight’ still has to arrive. Youwould be there first and see thepast arrive. This shorter way isthrough a wormhole.

A The door stays openHowever, this is only the caseif wormholes actually exist,because there is no conclusiveevidence that they do. It lookslike cooking upside down.Usually, one starts withgetting the ingredients for arecipe and you then use themto test your culinary skills.But, now we start with thedish that we are going to

serve (the wormhole) anhave to figure out whatingredients have been usWe have to ask, is it timeit space? And what happwith that? Are theystretched? Accelerated? is what physicists are tryfind out.“I expect that during thecourse of this century, it be possible to ascertain

The distant future is not close by. Whoever wantsto go had better get a comfortable spaceship.

H.G. Wells invented a timemachine. Sadly, he didn’t

explain how it worked.

Your furthest point has been

reached after 10 years. Flyingback will take another 10 years:5 years to slow down andanother 5 to speed up.According to your watch, youhave now aged 20 years.Meanwhile, here on Earth, wehave passed 3 centuries. You cannow shake hands with yourgreat-great-great-great greatgrandchildren.This scenario is not sciencefiction. The propulsion will haveto come from something verydifferent than the engines oftoday. But from a physical point

of view, there is no obstacle thatwould prevent such a trip to thefuture. It is difficult to execute inpractical terms, but theoreticallyit is possible.

A Passing a cup of teaDoes the same apply fortravelling to the past? Thisdoesn’t seem to be a problem inbooks and films. In Star Trek,the crew of the StarshipEnterprise travelled back toNew York in the crisis years ofthe ‘30s, 3 centuries before theirtime. How did they do it? They

just stepped through thegateway called ‘guardian of

0

Those who want to travel tothe past have to move fasterthan the speed of light

Man has been fascinated by time travel forcenturies. It can be done seamlessly in

movies and books. Here are a few examples:A Godly power: The Japanese legend Urashima

Taro from the 8th centur y tells us about afisherman who stays underwater for 3 days witha godly sea dragon. When he arrives at home, 3centuries have passed.A Sleep: In the French book, The year 2440: Adream if ever there was one (1771), author Louis-Sebastien Mercier makes his lead person fallasleep and wake up in Paris of 2440. He sees theperfect society that is descr ibed in a lyrical way.

The message for the reader: today’s life is bA Magic: Norwegian poet Johan Wessel wroa play called Anno 7603 (1781). In the poea ferry transports a boy and a girl to the yea7603. The traditional man-woman parts havbeen turned around and the army comprises

women only.A Time machine: The first special machine f

time travel comes from author H.G. Wells. Tdevice became famous in his book, The TimMachine (1895). It had already appeared inThe Chronic Argonauts (1888). However, Wfails to tell us how the time machine works.

How did we travel through time in the past?

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whether a wormhole exists ornot,” says Carlo Beenakker,Professor of TheoreticalScience at the University ofLeiden in the Netherlands. If

it’s not possible, it would meanthat the door for a trip to thepast is closed. According toBeenakker, the fact thatastronomers have not detecteda wormhole means nothing.“We don’t even know where tolook to find one. There are afew possible places and thereare enough corners in spaceand in science that we don’tknow well enough yet.” 7

[email protected]

Scientists know better thananybody else that nothing

goes faster than light. There are,however, elementary particles

that do their own thing. Theseare neutrinos that were shot to

travel a distance of 732km fromSwitzerland to Italy in a series

of experiments. The startingpoint was a particle acceleratorat CERN where they reached aspeed close to the speed of light.

The intention was that they wouldreach Italy 2.5 milliseconds later.However, some neutrinos arrived60 nanoseconds faster despiterepeated measurements. Thatmade them faster than light.

The researchers don’t understandhow this was possible, and haveasked institutions with differentparticle accelerators to do thesame experiment and to measure

The result surprised ProfessorCarlo Beenakker. “Within a fewyears, it will appear that mistakeshave been made. I am convincedof that. Nothing travels faster

than light. This is apparent fromresearch from the last 100years. One single experimentcannot prove the opposite.” Themedia suggests that super-quickneutrinos opened the door to

time travel. “Nonsense,” statedBeenakker. “Even if it were true

that the neutr inos travel faster than light, the par ticle would travel without time. You don’t

know if it comes from the futureor the past. And if you don’t know that, you wouldn’t be able to doanything sensible with it.”

Neutrinos are

too fast

Beam me up Scotty: the ‘guardian of eternity’ in StarTrek is the gateway to the future and the past.

Particle accelerator at CERN.

www.livescience.com/16207-faster-light-discovery-time-travel.html: Is timtravel possible?Doctor Who: Series about a doctor wuses a machine, called a TARDIS, to journey through time.

EXTRA INFO

“History could become experimental science if we could travel

back to the past. The possible insights that we would acquire

with our own history and origin are mind-boggling. I have no

idea if it will ever be possible, but it is worth the trouble to re-

search every possibility.”Carl Sagan (1834-1996), American astronomer

E Y E V I N E / H H

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Why does water make a noise

before it boils?Leigh Bekker, Port Elizabeth

As the water is heated,

the bottom layer of water gets hot enough(100°C) to begin turningsome of the water from aliquid to a gas. This gas iscalled ‘water vapour’, and itforms bubbles in the liquid.Since these gas bubblesare less dense than the

water around them, theybegin to rise. At this point,however, the top layer of

the water is still cool. When the water vapour bubblesrise into this cool layer,

they are cooled enough so that the vapour condensesback into a liquid. As the

vapour turns back into aliquid, with less volume,

the bubbles collapse. Thisleaves little holes in the

water, wherever there wasa bubble. The surroundingliquid rushes in to fill theempty spaces where thebubbles were. This makes‘popping’ noises. Eventually

the upper layer of wateralso reaches 100°C.When that happens, thebubbles forming on thebottom can make it all the

way to the top of the pot without condensing backinto a liquid. So all that isleft is the gentle sound ofbubbles of water vapourbeing released into the air.SOURCE: WWW.WORSLEY SCHOOL.NET

Does anybody ‘tidy up’ theinternet? Maureen Peters, Edenvale

There is noorganisation that

searches the web forunused sites. Sometimesa site disappearsbecause the owner takesit down. There are times

when a whole lot ofsites disappear because

a host goes bankrupt.However, many of the olddisappeared sites canstill be found on internetarchives, like archive.org.

The exact number of websites is unknown,but estimates run intohundreds of millions.

D I R K O L A F W E X E L / C O R B I S

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Got questions you’ve been carrying around for years? Braintainment answers them! Mail yourquestions to [email protected]

A well-funct ioning gun made fromplastic is not possible. Plastic

is not resistant against the heat andpressure that arises when you fire abullet. The weapon would burst intoflames when you pull the trigger. Partsthat are under pressure, such as thebarrel, have to be made of metal. Theparts that endure less pressure canbe made of plastic. Indeed, there arepeople who are replacing broken partsof their weapons this way.

A You can printalmost anything youcan imagine with a3D printer. The mainlimitations are sizeand materials.A 3D printingtechnology isdeveloping rapidly.More and morematerials may beused as a basis:ceramic, stainlesssteel, glass and evenconcrete.

L U O W E I / X I N H U A P R E S S / C O R B I S

Q & A

FLASH


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The sun, Earth and other planets floated throughspace as tiny particles in a big cloud

Matter and gas hasfloated throughspace in cloudsfor about 5

billion years. About 98% ofthese clouds are made up ofhydrogen and helium, whichare the lightest elementsaround. These were formedduring the Big Bang. Inaddition, particles measuringless than a micrometre floatin between these gases. Theseparticles contain heavierelements, such as carbon,

oxygen, iron and aluminium.These are the building blocksof Earth-like planets. Howdid this primal mist of matterand gas become the birthchamber of Earth?

A A cloud becomes a star Such a cloud is an unstablebalance between gas pressurein the cloud that pushes thegas and matter particlesapart, and gravity, whichpulls the particles together.Sometimes, gravity wins.According to CarstenDominik, a professor ofastronomy at the Universityof Amsterdam (NL), thiscould happen when a cloudcools and the gas pressurediminishes. “This could alsohappen when a shockwave

emitted from a nearbyexploding star disturbs thecloud,” he added. The

result is that the cloudimplodes. This is whathappened to our primal mistabout 4.6 billion years ago.Gravity became stronger andpulled the material in thecloud closer together. Thegravitational forcetransformed into kineticenergy and the gas particlesstarted moving faster, andnaturally, also becamewarmer. A star arose in themiddle. For us, this was thesun. The temperature in the

middle of the star rose tomillions of degrees. Atomicfusion occurred in theenormous heat and the newstar also produced energy.

A Turning creates a discNot all the material of thecloud formed a star. Thisprimal mist was also startingto rotate, spinning faster asthe cloud collapsed.“Compare this to a skaterwho performs a pirouette onthe ice. When she pulls herarms around her, she will spineven faster,” explainedDominik. “Centrifugal forceswere created by the rotation,which pushed out the gas andmatter perpendicularly on tothe axis. A flat disc of matterappeared around the star,much like pizza dough that isspun around. Most of thematerial of the original cloud

matter disappeared into star from this so-called‘protoplanetary disc’. Bumatter and gas further afrom the star did not rotfast enough to fall into itAbout 1 to 10% of the pmist orbited around the instead.

A A collision makes luThe shaping of the star aits associated gas and dismatter took about a millyears. At that stage, ther

were still no planets, butbirth would happen soon“All the tiny matter partin the disc rotated in thedirection around the sunall particles orbited neataround the star, nothingwould happen,” explaineDominic. “But sometimethe particles moved up odown in their orbits, andcollided with each otherhappened at such a low sthat the 2 particles simplstuck together. Thesefragments slowly grew infrom a millimetre to acentimetre. These little leventually grew to largechunks, known asplanetesimals. These aresmall bodies from whichplanet originates in the estages of development ofsolar system. Exactly howthat works is sti ll a myste

Everythingis star matter

Our planet consists ofnumerous heavy elements

such iron and oxide. Theseelements arose once in stars.

The core of a star changeshydrogen, which has its originin the Big Bang, into otherelements. Fusion makes

this possible, by fusing thecores of atoms. From here,

other heavier elements arise.Hydrogen is mainly convertedinto helium in stars. A lotof energy is released in thisprocess. Hydrogen depletesas the stars age. Big stars canconvert helium into oxygenand carbon. These elementscan melt together to formeven heavier elements in evenbigger stars. When these old,enormous stars explode at theend of their life, even heavierelements arise. Everythingis then thrown into spaceduring such an explosion orsupernova. New stars andplanets can arise from thisfloating matter.

Giant birth

Our solar system doesn’t only have Earth-like planets but also the gaseous giants

Jupiter and Saturn. It is not cert ain how these planets were formed. The genesisof a gaseous giant is probably the same as that of Earth and other terrestrial planets.Matter particles with heavier elements clumped together to a form a large ball. Nogas was present then. Gravity became stronger as the planet increased in size. When

the planet grew large enough, about 10 times the mass of Earth, the g ravi ty wasenough for the celestial body to not only attract solid particles, but also gas. Hence,

the gaseous planets have a rock core, but the largest part of the mass consists ofgaseous hydrogen and helium.

Astronomers suddenly saw this star in spacein 1604. We now know that these are theremains of a supernova, an exploded star. Anew star will arise from this matter only inthe distant future.

J H U / E S A / N A S A

Space

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A The globe warms upIn the case of Earth, al l thematter particles wereabsorbed into planetesimalsafter about 10 million years.They only began to take on around shape once they werea few thousand kilometres insize. According to Dominik,gravity pulled the mass into around shape. It was as if theforce that arose from themiddle of the planet in themaking pulled everythingtowards itself, and the round

shape formed because onlyin this shape could all themass be as close to the centreas possible. It took about 30million years before thesechunks formed a planet thesize of Earth. Manycollisions took place duringthis time. A lot of energy wasreleased every timeplanetesimals crashed on the

Radioactiveclock

We can determine

the age of rocks onEarth and of meteorites blooking at their radioactivelements. These changeover the course of timeinto other varieties of sucan element or into otherelements. The radioactiveelement rubidium-87, forexample, changes to theelement strontium-87.Robidium-87 has a half liof about 49 billion years.

This means that after this

time, half of the orig inalrubidium-87 is converted strontium-87. Scientists ccalculate how old a pieceof rock is by looking at thratio between the variouselements in the object.

Know your neighbours

Our solar system has 8 planets. Here aresome interesting facts about our planetary

neighbours:7 Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are Ear th-likeor terrestrial planets. They have a solid surface.

Jupiter and Saturn are known as gaseous giant s,as their surfaces consist mainly of gas. Uranusand Neptune are ice giants. The outer layer of

these planets consists of evaporated water,methane and ammonia.

7 Jupiter is the largest and heaviest planet of our sosystem. It has a diameter of 143,884km and its mais 318 times greater than that of Earth. It is heavier than all the planets in the solar system put togethe7 Mercury is the smallest planet of our solarsystem, with a diameter of 4,878km.7 The temperature on Uranus is -224°C, making

the coldest planet in our solar system.

7 Venus is the hottest planet, with an average temperature of 480°C.

Many areas in space have been discovered where starsare born. It only takes 50 million years before a cloud ofmatter changes into a star with a few planets.

1. The original matterand gas cloud.

2. The cloud collapses and becomes a protoplanetarydisc with a denser and warmer centre.

4. The planetesimals havegrown to round planets.

3. Thick clumps arise aroundthe hot centre. These arecalled planetesimals.

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0

wasn’t – and to date it is still not. Testflights have been made with prototypes,but the first space tourists in their cosmicflight have still not left. The Big Mission was stopped eventually, because of‘stagnant development’ in space.The big problem is that manned spaceflights are so expensive and need so

much preparation time that almost nocompany can afford the investment. Fornow it is only governments that can dothis. And they already have enoughtrouble maintaining a space station witha handful of crew (ISS).

A One-way trip to MarsThe optimism of companies and privateindividuals to ‘quickly’ build a spaceshipand earn money with ticket sales isunlimited. It isn’t even about orbitingEarth anymore. There is a lot ofcommotion about Mars One, a plan to

A trip to space for ordinarypeople? We already

wanted that when we had noteven started the space race. The 3 gentlemen who sciencefiction author Jules Verne sent

to the moon in 1865 were notexactly seasoned astronauts.Same goes for Tintin, Snowy,Captain Haddock andProfessor Calculus, wholanded on the moon in thecomic strip book Explorers onthe Moon in the mid-1950s.When we finally started talking about space trips,future fantasies becameabundant. Cartoons appeared

in newspapers with hotelsorbiting around Earth and themoon. In the ‘60s and ‘70severybody expected that bynow, at the start of the 21stcentury, we would have a

booming space tourismindustry. But the only tourists who have been in space so farpaid millions for a week in theRussian space station Mir,and later in the ISS. You can’tcall them ‘ordinary’ people. The dreams about cosmicholidays have remained foreverybody. In 1998 evenHilton made plans for a hotel with 5,000 rooms on the

moon. You may have to wait to make bookings though,because we haven’t heardanything since.

Old fantasies

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