A TIMES OF INDIA PUBLICATION
Volume 8 Issue 2 • February 2018 `125
SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE • FOR THE CURIOUS MIND
PLASTIC PROBLEM Solving the
SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH
GRAVITY
What if the force that holds the Universe together doesn’t exist?
CANINE COMEBACK
Italy’s wolf population is flourishing again
KNIGHTS TEMPLARS
The rise and fall of the elite warriors
R.N.I. MAHENG/2010/35422
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From the
editor
IT'S A NEW YEAR, TIME TO FIND NEW HOPE IN THE WORLD.
Which is why you'll love our story on the way forward with plastics. Sure, we should all reduce our use of plastic, but there’s also great news about what’s been done about the plastic we’ve already used, and updates on alternatives to plastic that the scientists of the world are coming up with. We also have good news from the world of wildlife – Italian wolves and tawny owls are doing great, thank you, and an update on space tourism. Yes, Elon Musk has the goods all right. We also have a fascinating story on the Knights Templar; if you liked The Da Vinci Code, you’ll want to read this one. And there’s an interesting supposition in Something’s Wrong with Gravity – what if Einstein and Hawking missed out on telling us something vital? Find out more about Kubera, the god of wealth, in our continuing series on Indian mythology, and turn to the last page for a fascinating found object – a glazed tile stolen from Uzbekistan. Happy new year! May 2018 be a year of discovery for us all! Primrose Monteiro-D’Souza Editor & Chief Community Officer, BBC Knowledge
SEND US YOUR LETTERS Has something you’ve read in BBC Knowledge 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: edit.bbcknowledge@wwm.co.in 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.
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CONTENTS A TIMES OF INDIA PUBLICATION
Volume 8 Issue 2 • February 2018 `125
SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE • FOR THE CURIOUS MIND
PLASTIC PROBLEM Solving the
SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH
GRAVITY
What if the force that holds the Universe together doesn’t exist?
CANINE COMEBACK
Italy’s wolf population is flourishing again
KNIGHTS TEMPLARS
The rise and fall of the elite warriors
64 Cover Story
R.N.I. MAHENG/2010/35422
Cover Feb 18.indd 1
15/12/17 12:05 PM
Solving the Plastic Problem We look at innovative technology that is going to clean up our oceans
FEATURES
46
Something’s Wrong with Gravity
54
Space Tourism gets Real
What if the force that holds the Universe together doesn’t exist? We find out how this new revelation will help us finally understand dark matter!
Space entrepreneur Elon Musk has penciled in a date in 2018 to send two tourists around the Moon and back on Space X’s Falcon 9. Read this before you buy the tickets
72
God’s Elite Warriors
We crack open the story of the Knights Templar, a band of ferocious workers who ferociously defended the Crusaders’ interests in the Middle East
82
Tawny Owls in the Nest
Peek into the life of one of nature’s most mysterious creatures: the tawny owl
38
22 18
92 REGULARS
8 Q&A: Your Questions Answered
Why does music make us feel good? Why do ants walk in a line? Does sea air really make you feel better? These questions and more answered by our panel of experts
18 Snapshots
Enthral and inform yourself with these amazing photographs!
22 Discoveries & Innovations
Get your science and tech news and updates here
34 On the Shelves
Books with plot twists that will leave you dizzy
38 Portfolio: Canine Comeback
In Italy’s diverse wildlife, the enigmatic wolf holds a special place in the heart of the conservationists
78 Indian Mythology: Kubera Mythology expert Devdutt Pattanaik details the history of the god of wealth
89 Puzzle Pit
Let’s get those grey cells churning
78
38
92 Found Object
What do the inscriptions on this rescued brick from Uzbekistan’s history reveal?
31
82 5 FEBRUARY 2018
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Editorial, advertising and subscription enquiries BBC Knowledge Magazine, Worldwide Media, The Times of India Building, 4th floor, Dr. D. N. Road, Mumbai 400001 Printed and published by Joji Varghese for and on behalf of Worldwide Media Pvt. Ltd., The Times of India Building, 4th floor, Dr. D. N. Road, Mumbai 400001 and printed at Rajhans Enterprises, No. 134, 4th Main Road, Industrial Town, Rajajinagar, Bangalore 560044, India. Editor- Preeti Singh. The publisher makes every effort to ensure that the magazine’s contents are correct. However, we accept no responsibility for any errors or omissions. Unsolicited material, including photographs and transparencies, is submitted entirely at the owner’s risk and the publisher accepts no responsibility for its loss or damage. All material published in BBC Knowledge is protected by copyright and unauthorized reproduction in part or full is prohibited. BBC Knowledge is published by Worldwide Media Pvt. Ltd. under licence from Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited. Copyright © Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part prohibited without permission. The BBC logo is a trade mark of the British Broadcasting Corporation and is used under licence. © British Broadcasting Corporation 1996. CIN: U22120MH2003PTC142239
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questions & Answers
&A
Dr Peter J Bentley Computer scientist, author Prof Alice Gregory Psychologist, sleep expert Charlotte Corney Zoo director, conservationist Dr Helen Scales Oceans expert, science writer Dr Christian Jarrett Neuroscientist, science writer
Emma Davies Heath expert, science writer Luis Villazon Science/tech writer Dr Aarathi Prasad Biologist,geneticist Prof Robert Matthews Physicist, science writer
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
WHY DO ANTS WALK IN A LINE?
Ants look highly organised when they’re on the march, but they’re literally just following their noses
08 FEBRUARY 2018
PHOTOS: GETTY X4 ILLUSTRATIONS: RAJA LOCKEY
Ants are highly social insects, thriving in colonies of millions of individuals that work as a team. Good communication skills lie at the heart of their success. They rely heavily on chemical scents, called ‘pheromones’, to defend territories and exchange complex information – from the location of food sources and nest sites, to the presence of predators. Each ant species has its own chemical vocabulary of up to 20 different pheromones that can be secreted to form specific scent trails. The tips of their antennae translate the chemical ‘words’, thereby guiding the ants, in a line, to or from the desired destination. CC
WHY DOES MUSIC MAKE US FEEL GOOD? At a basic level, it is to do with how our brains have evolved to find it rewarding to look for and find meaningful patterns in sound. Research suggests there is something particularly satisfying about a piece of music that is in some ways familiar, but also contains a few surprises. Music can also make us feel good by amplifying our current mood (think of the ‘pleasure’ of wallowing in a sad song when you’re feeling down); it can also trigger fond or poignant memories. Then there’s the social side: singing along with friends to a new tune from your favourite band fosters a powerful sense of belonging. CJ
Few things can stir the emotions like listening to music
WHAT IS AT THE CENTRE OF A GAS GIANT LIKE JUPITER? This is one of the key questions astronomers hope to resolve with data from NASA’s Juno mission, currently orbiting Jupiter. Jupiter’s atmosphere is made up of around 90 per cent hydrogen and 10 per cent helium, so computer models suggest its core may be made from metallic hydrogen, a bizarre form of the element thought to exist at extreme pressures. RM
THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
PHOTOS: GETTY X4, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY ILLUSTRATIONS: RAJA LOCKEY
HOW CAN I LIVE TO BE 100?
1. Be born later
2. Be female
3. Take vitamin D
4. Stay active
Life expectancy figures normally assume mortality rates will stay the same, but medical and safety improvements are constantly reducing them. A new Danish model that takes this into account found that children born in the developed world today have a 50 per cent chance of reaching 100.
Women live longer than men, and not just because they tend not to fight wars. Japanese researchers created mice without a father by combining two female genomes. Their lifespan was extended by 30 per cent. Men may be engineered for size and strength at the expense of durability.
Vitamin D has been shown to help proteins in your cells keep the correct 3D shape. Misfolded proteins are associated with ageing diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Daily exercise slows the gradual loss of heart muscle and bone density as we age, and reduces the risk of falls. Once you can no longer walk 400m (0.25 miles) in five minutes, your chance of dying in the next three years rises by 30 per cent.
questionS & Answers
HOW LONG DO SIX PINTS OF LAGER STAY IN MY SYSTEM? There is no simple answer. The rate at which your body breaks down alcohol depends on many factors, including your age, sex, weight, metabolism and how much you’ve eaten. As a general rule of thumb, it takes about one hour for your body to break down one ‘unit’ (10ml of pure alcohol). A pint of low strength lager contains about two units, while a higher strength one has three. So it could take 18 hours or longer for the alcohol from six pints of strong lager to leave your system. In other words, at least some alcohol will still be in your blood the morning after the night before. ED
WHY DO BEAVERS BUILD DAMS?
Dam-building is synonymous with beavers, the ultimate aquatic engineers. Using branches from trees they have felled, these large rodents dam lakes to create moat-like ponds of still water where they construct islands known as ‘conical lodges’ out of timber, mud and rocks. The body of water surrounding the lodges provides protection from predators – resident beavers enter and exit their sophisticated homes incognito via waterfilled tunnels leading from the lodges to the pond. The largest lodge, found in Alberta, Canada, measures over 500m in length – though, contrary to a widely circulated myth, it is not visible from space! In deep or fast-moving water areas, beavers simply excavate into river banks and set up home there instead. CC
Stratolaunch will have the longest wingspan of any aeroplane and, once it’s complete, will be used to propel satellites into orbit
TOP 10
SLEEPIEST ANIMALS (by hours spent sleeping per 24 hours)
10 FEBRUARY 2018
1. KOALA 20-22
2. SLOTH 20
3. BROWN BAT 19.9
4. GIANT ARMADILLO 18.1
5. NORTH AMERICAN OPOSSUM 18
WHICH PLANE HAS THE BIGGEST WINGSPAN? The passenger plane with the biggest wingspan is the airbus A380 – a monster double-decker plane that carries 550 people, with a wingspan of 80m. But the overall plane with the biggest wingspan will soon be an aircraft that carries no passengers at all. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest men, has helped create the Stratolaunch. This will be an aircraft with six 747 jet engines and a twin fuselage (the flight crew are all in the righthand one, and instrumentation is in the left one). The amazing machine will carry rockets high into the atmosphere to make launching satellites cheaper and more reliable. It’s still under construction, but its wingspan will be 117m. PB
IN NUMBERS
2.647 Length, in Earth days, of a year on newly discovered exoplanet NGTS-1b, a ‘hot Jupiter’ lying some 600 lightyears from Earth
41bn
Total carbon emissions from Earth in 2017 – the first rise in emissions for three years
19.7M
6. PYTHON 18
7. OWL MONKEY 17
8. HUMAN INFANT 16
9. TIGER 15.8
10. TREE SHREW 15.8
PHOTOS: GETTY X3, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY ILLUSTRATIONS: RAJA LOCKEY
Area in km2 of the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer at its winter 2016 peak... That’s good news: it’s the smallest it’s been since 1988
questionS & Answers HOW IT WORKS
The MRI Scanner
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) takes advantage of the fact that the nucleus of a hydrogen atom (a single proton) behaves like a weak compass needle. In the presence of a strong magnetic field, the hydrogen atoms will align themselves, but a radio signal of the correct resonant frequency will cause them to deflect slightly. When the signal is removed, the atoms return to their equilibrium state and emit a radio signal of their own. An MRI scanner can detect these signals and use them to map the distribution of molecules with lots of hydrogen atoms – ie, water and fat. In this way, it can create detailed images of the inside of the body.
A. Scanning table
The patient can only be scanned from inside the magnetic coil, so a motorised table slides them in and out.
B F
E
C D
A
B. RF system
An antenna produces a radio signal to ‘nudge’ the hydrogen nuclei and listen to the answering radio wave they emit.
C. Liquid helium
12 FEBRUARY 2018
D. Main magnet
F. Gradient system
Superconducting magnetic coils produce a magnetic field of 1.5 teslas – that’s about 300 times stronger than a fridge magnet.
Liquid helium is pumped through an enclosing jacket to cool the superconducting magnets almost to absolute zero.
A second coil distorts the main magnetic field so that the resonant frequency of the protons varies according to position.
E. Patient
The high magnetic fields mean that patients with cochlear implants, pacemakers or embedded shrapnel usually can’t be scanned.
WHY DON’T HORSES HAVE TOES?
Early horses such as Hyracotherium, which lived 55 million years ago, did have multiple toes, but they were much smaller animals. For taller animals, excess weight at the end of their legs has a much bigger impact on their speed. A recent study at Harvard University, the USA, found that one broad hoof is almost as strong as multiple smaller toes, but much lighter. Natural selection has gradually discarded the horse’s side toes and widened the middle one to increase running speed. LV
WHAT’S THE FURTHEST A BOTTLED MESSAGE HAS TRAVELLED? The longest known single journey was that of a Doctor Who postcard in a bottle, thrown into the sea at Tyne and Wear, the UK in 2011. This turned up 17 months later in Perth, Western Australia – over 14,500km away. But, in 1929, German marine scientists dropped a bottle into the Indian Ocean with instructions for the finder to report where it washed up and then throw it back. This floated for six years and covered 25,600km! LV
DOES SEA AIR REALLY MAKE YOU SLEEP BETTER? Take a coastal walk and the chances are that you will sleep better, according to a 2015 study by the UK’s National Trust. However, there is no evidence that sea air in itself will make you sleep better. At one time, people attributed their sleepiness to certain ions or ozone in sea air. In reality, we probably sleep better after a trip to the seaside because we have had a satisfying amount of exercise and have been lulled by the rhythmic sound of the waves. Those that live their daily lives by the seaside don’t tend to report improved sleep. ED
WHY DID WE EVOLVE AN IMAGINATION? Imagination underlies our ability to anticipate different futures and to reflect on alternative pasts. Arguably, it’s what distinguishes us most profoundly from other animals. It means we can learn from past experiences (“If I’d taken a spear with me, I could have caught the deer”) and we can hypothesise about the possible
outcomes of future scenarios (“If I trek across the desert without any food or water, I will get hungry and thirsty”). This makes us incredibly adaptive and is the secret to our superlative planning and problem-solving skills. Once imagination evolved, it also unlocked the gifts of storytelling, fantasy and wonder. CJ
questions & Answers
BLACK HOLES
LOUISE WEBSTER
PAUL MURDIN
While their enigmatic name was first coined in 1967, the idea of objects whose gravity is so intense not even light can escape them is far older. In 1783, an English cleric and amateur scientist named John Michell showed that Newton’s law of gravity suggested such objects could exist. But Michell went further, suggesting that despite being invisible, such objects might reveal themselves if they happened to have a star in orbit about them. He proved to be amazingly prescient in both respects. During the 1930s, theorists using Einstein’s more sophisticated theory of gravity, known as General Relativity, showed that sufficiently massive stars could collapse under their own gravity at the end of their life, and turn into black holes (ironically, Einstein himself never accepted that such strange objects could really exist). Michell’s second claim was confirmed in the early 1970s. British astronomers Louise Webster and Paul Murdin at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and Thomas Bolton, a student at the University of Toronto, Canada, independently announced the discovery of a massive but invisible object in orbit around a blue star over 6,000 lightyears away. The object, an intense X-ray source codenamed Cygnus X-1, is now regarded as the first black hole to be identified. RM
Cygnus X-1
14 FEBRUARY 2018
ARE ATOMS EXPANDING AS THE UNIVERSE EXPANDS? The expansion of the Universe only significantly affects space and time on scales bigger even than entire clusters of galaxies. Below this, the size of objects is dictated by far stronger influences, notably the force of electromagnetism in the case of atoms. Extremely sensitive measurements have found no evidence that the fundamental properties of atoms are anything other than constant. RM
CAN A TREE GROW IN SPACE? Experiments on the ISS have shown that young spruce tree seedlings do grow in microgravity, but they don’t look quite the same. The seedlings grow faster, and the pine needles don’t point downward so much. DNA analysis shows that several plant genes are more active in space, but we’re still waiting to find out the long-term effects on larger plants. LV
IS VAPING SAFE?
The most recent research shows that vaping is much less bad for you than smoking. If you already smoke cigarettes, then switching completely to e-cigarettes will significantly improve your health. But smoking is so bad for you that you could switch to skydiving and still come out ahead! Skydiving every day for 70 years gives a 23 per cent chance of early death, while lifelong smokers have a 50 per cent chance of dying before 70. The real question is: can you safely take up recreational vaping, even if you don’t already smoke? The evidence for this is much less clear. Nicotine by itself doesn’t cause cancer, and vape juice
doesn’t contain any of the 70 known carcinogens that are present in tobacco. But it does contain other chemicals, such as propylene glycol. When this is heated by the electric element in the e-cigarette, it can create formaldehyde, which is carcinogenic. The different flavour chemicals used in vape juice are all organic compounds, and these can also be altered by the heating element. Vaping has only been around for a decade, so it is still too soon to be sure of long-term effects. Since e-cigarettes will get you hooked on nicotine just as surely as tobacco does, it doesn’t seem wise to take up a whole new addiction. LV
PHOTO:S: ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA, CHANDRA/NASA, MIKE PEEL/WIKIPEDIA, GETTY X2, PETER ESSICK/AURORA PHOTOS ILLUSTRATION: RAJA LOCKEY
W H O R E A L LY D I S C O V E R E D ?
W H AT I S T H I S ?
WILD WETLANDS This aerial photo shows part of Sears Point, an area of high land that juts out into the San Pablo Bay in northern California, the USA. Over 388 hectares of it are being restored to marshland, as this provides an important habitat for local wildlife and reduces the risk of flooding in nearby towns. The circular ‘marsh mounds’ seen here prevent waves from forming and carrying away the sediments marsh plants need to grow.
questionS & Answers
WHAT COULD EXPLAIN THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM?
Ancient Chinese records report the appearance of a bright comet in 5BC and also the sudden flare-up of a star in 4BC – both around the time when Christ is now thought to have been born. However, some researchers have claimed these events lack the astrological significance of ‘portents’ involving the Moon and planets, which would have attracted attention among scholars of the time. This has led to the emergence of two top contenders for explaining the Star of Bethlehem. The first is a so-called ‘occultation’ in 6BC, when the Moon appeared to pass in front of Jupiter in the night sky. The second contender is an unusual triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that took place in 7BC, when these two great planets repeatedly appeared close to one another. RM 16 FEBRUARY 2018
WHY ARE CLOWNS SO SCARY? For many people, there is something disturbing about the clown’s make-up that renders their facial expression as an unnatural, fixed grin or smile. This means we can’t read their true emotions, putting us on edge. It’s probably no coincidence that many of the most infamous horror characters also conceal their faces in some way – think of the Scream mask, or Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. When the clown also behaves aggressively or menacingly, the contrast with their playful costume and grinning features just adds to the creepiness. But context is everything: children can find friendly, silly circus clowns hilarious. CJ
WHY DO DOGS EAT GRASS? A 2008 study found that 68 per cent of dogs regularly eat grass but only 22 per cent of them are sick afterwards, so it doesn’t seem to be because the dog is ill. Wolves also eat grass, and it may be that this helps to purge their intestines of parasites. Dogs may have inherited this ancestral behaviour even though most pets are regularly dewormed. LV
USB sticks are actually lighter when full of data
QUESTION OF THE MONTH
DOES A USB DRIVE GET HEAVIER AS YOU STORE MORE FILES ON IT?
Believe it or not, they get lighter. USB drives use Flash memory, which means the ones and zeros of your data are stored on transistors. When you save data, a binary zero is set by charging the float gate of the transistor, and a binary one is set by removing the charge. To charge it, we add electrons, and the mass of each electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000091 grams. This means that an empty USB drive (which mostly holds zeros) weighs more than a full USB drive (which has ones and zeros). Add data, reduce the weight. However, you would need to weigh more USB drives than exist on the planet together at once before the difference in weight became easily measurable. PB
snapshots Nature
18 FEBRUARY 2018
She’s having a bubble! This is a social wasp belonging to the genus Ropalidia, which is commonly found across southeast Asia. Most insects belonging to this genus produce nests by swarming, in a manner similar to honeybees – an unusual behaviour for wasps. However, in this particular species, a single mated female starts a nest in much the same way that wasps often do. “In this photo, the female has constructed a paper nest from wood fibres and water – natural papier maché – and, in the cells, you can see developing larvae. These will turn into adult females that look exactly like their mother queen, but, instead of laying eggs, they will become workers, expanding and defending the nest and tending to the eggs and larvae,” said entomologist and BBC presenter Adam Hart. “She has removed water from the open nest using her mouth. Wasps, like their relatives the bees and ants, are scrupulous in keeping conditions in their nests just right for rearing the young.” Unlike other worker wasps in the UK, which remain more or less sterile throughout their lives, Ropalidia workers have the capacity to become breeding females that can replace the mother queen if she is lost.
PHOTO: ALAMY
PHOTO: CATERS NEWS
KEDAH, MALAYSIA
snapshots Science
A nifty little mover ROTTWEIL, GERMANY Looking like something out of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, this image from ThyssenKrupp’s testing tower shows the world’s first ‘ropeless’ elevator. Thanks to its cable-free design, the MULTI elevator can move both vertically and horizontally, with exchanger mechanisms controlling direction, much like points on a railway line. Very tall buildings require multiple lift shafts, as having a single, central shaft can undermine their structural integrity. But, as Markus Jetter, ThyssenKrupp’s head of project development, explains: “With MULTI lifts, architects are no longer restricted in their designs by concerns about elevator shaft height and vertical alignment. Traditional shafts can occupy 40 per cent of the floor space in a typical tall building; MULTI halves that, leaving more room for offices and apartments.” The first MULTI elevator is due to be installed in the new East Side Tower in Berlin in 2020. 20 FEBRUARY 2018
PHOTO: THYSSENKRUPP
DISCOVERIES
discoveries Science
DISPATCHES FROM THE CUTTING EDGE
The teeth found in Devon came from two small, rat-like mammal species that co-existed with dinosaurs
TEETH SHED NEW LIGHT ON MAN’S EARLIEST ORIGINS
T
WO fossilised teeth found on Devon’s ‘Jurassic coast’ have been identified as belonging to some of man’s earliest ancestors. The teeth belonged to two previously unknown species of small, rat-like creature that lived around 145 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period. The two species, which have been named Durlstotherim newmani and Durlstotherim ensomi, are now effectively the earliest known creatures in the line that led not just to humans, but to pretty much all mammals that are alive today – from the tiny pygmy shrew to the giant blue whale. The fossilised teeth were discovered by Grant Smith, an undergraduate student at the University of Portsmouth, England. After realising they were
22 FEBRUARY 2018
1MM
the teeth of some kind of early mammal and showed them to his supervisor, Prof Dave Martill, who, excited by the find, consulted Dr Steve Sweetman, an expert in early mammals, who confirmed the specimens’ remarkable age. “Even at first glance my jaw dropped. The teeth are of a type so highly evolved that I realised straight away I was looking at remains of Early Cretaceous mammals that more closely resembled those that lived during the latest Cretaceous – some 60 million years later in geological history,” said Dr Sweetman. “Our 145 million-year-old teeth are undoubtedly the earliest yet known from the line of mammals that lead to our own species.”The creatures from which the teeth came would have been small, burrowing mammals, and most likely nocturnal. “The teeth are very worn, which suggests the animals to which they belonged lived to a good age for their species,” said Dr Sweetman. “No mean feat when you’re sharing your habitat with predatory dinosaurs!”
PHOTO: DR MARK WITTON/UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH
PA L A EO N TO LO GY
THINGS WE
LEARNED THIS MONTH
PA L A EO N TO LO GY
DINOSAUR-KILLING ASTEROID IMPACT WAS WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid struck the Yucatan peninsula in Central America, forming the Chicxulub crater and wiping out the dinosaurs in what is known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event. But two new pieces of research suggest that this impact was even more cataclysmic than was previously believed. A new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters shows that up to three times as much sulphur may have been released into the atmosphere as a result of the impact than previous models have suggested. This would have led to a longer period of global cooling, which helps to explain the devastating effects on the Earth’s fauna at the time. “Many climate models can’t currently capture all of the consequences of the Chicxulub impact, due to uncertainty in how much gas was initially released,” said the paper’s lead author Joanna Morgan, a geophysicist at Imperial College
London, England. “We wanted to revisit this significant event and refine our collision model to better capture its immediate effects on the atmosphere.” But perhaps more surprising are the results of a study conducted at Japan’s Meteorological Institute and Tohoku University. In a paper just published in the journal Nature, researchers Kunio Kaiho and Naga Oshima show that the high levels of soot and sulphurous gas that caused the mass extinction were a result of the rocks on the peninsula being particularly rich in hydrocarbons. Such rocks covered only around 13 per cent of the world’s surface, and had the impact occurred in a different area where the rocks were less rich in hydrocarbons, the dinosaurs would most likely have survived. In other words, the chances of the asteroid impact killing off the dinosaurs as it did were only slightly more than one in 10. Unlucky…
If the Chicxulub meteor had shifted trajectory slightly, dinosaurs could still be roaming the Earth today
BLUE LIGHT CAN HELP TO RELAX US FOLLOWING AN ARGUMENT If you find your blood boiling after a bit of argybargy, get yourself a blue light. A team at the University of Granada, Spain, has found that blue lighting can help us to calm down. DOGS ARE RED/GREEN COLOUR BLIND Thinking about playing fetch with your dog in the park? You might want to think twice before buying a red ball: researchers at the University of Bari, Italy, have found that dogs can’t distinguish between the colours red and green. EATING MUSHROOMS COULD HELP US LIVE A LONGER, HEALTHIER LIFE High levels of the antioxidants ergothioneine and glutathione found in mushrooms could help to prevent cell damage caused by free radicals – oxygen atoms with unpaired electrons produced when the body uses food to produce energy. CATS COULD PREVENT CHILDREN GETTING ASTHMA Danish researchers have found children who grow up in families that keep pet cats are far less likely to suffer from asthma. The effect is thought to be down to specific genetic triggers for the conditions being switched off when children are in regular contact with moggies.
discoveries Science IN NUMBERS
SIX MONTHS
The average time is takes to shed extra pounds put on through over-indulging during the holiday period, as estimated by a team at Tampere University, Finland
23 TERAWATT ZO O LO GY
NEWLY IDENTIFIED ORANGUTAN IS WORLD’S MOST ENDANGERED GREAT APE SPECIES A population of orangutans that lives in a remote part of northern Sumatra, and that was only discovered in 1997, has now been identified as a separate species. With only around 800 individuals known to exist, it’s now also the most threatened of all great ape species. It was once believed that all orangutans were one species, but since 1996 science has recognised two: the Bornean and Sumatran orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus and Pongo abelli, respectively). The following year, a longrumoured population of orangutans living in the Batang Toru region of northern Sumatra was seen for the first time, but initially the apes were thought to be of the species P. abelli. However, close study of an adult skeleton found in 2013 has revealed significant differences in the skull and teeth of the Batang Toru apes, leading to their new classification: 24 FEBRUARY 2018
Pongo tapanuliensis, or the Tapuli orangutan. Genomic analysis suggests that the species must have split from P. abelli around 70,000 years ago. “The Batang Toru orangutans appear to be direct descendants of the initial orangutans that had migrated from mainland Asia, and thus constitute the oldest evolutionary line within the genus Pongo,” said lead author Alexander Nater, from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. With just 800 individuals known,P.tapanuliensis goes straight to the top of the endangered great apes league table, not least because large areas of its habitat are threatened by plans to build a hydroelectric dam in the region. The discovery isn’t great news for P. abelli in that regard, either – there are now 800 less of them than was previously believed.
20 MILLION
The number of lives saved worldwide by the measles vaccine since the turn of the millennium, as calculated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
PHOTOS: ANDREW WALMSLEY, NATER ET AL., UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK/MARK GARLICK ILLUSTRATION: DANIEL BRIGHT
HOURS
The amount of energy used globally by Bitcoin miners each year... That’s just short of the 24.8 terawatt hours generated by renewable energy worldwide in 2016
S PAC E
MASSIVE NEW EXOPLANET SHOULDN’T, IN THEORY, EXIST DOGS
People have more empathy for dogs than their fellow humans, a study at Northeastern University, Boston, the USA, has found. Subjects who read about dogs being beaten were more moved than those who read similar stories about humans.
THE AMISH
A genetic mutation found in some members of an Amish community in Indiana, the USA can help them to live up to a decade longer than people without it, a study at Northwestern University has found.
G O O D MO N T H BA D MO N T H
FAST EATERS
Well, this is a bit of a headscratcher. Recently discovered exoplanet NGTS1b is causing astronomers to rethink their ideas about how planets come into being, because according to current theories, such a large planet should not be able to from around a star as small as its parent. NGTS-1b is the first exoplanet discovered by the Next-Generation Transit Survey. This international initiative, based at the Paranal Observatory in Atacama, Chile, uses an array of 12 telescopes to scan a small area of sky repeatedly over several months. By detecting a dip in brightness, every 2.65 days, of the light coming from a red dwarf star dubbed NGTS-1, astronomers were able to determine that a ‘hot Jupiter’type exoplanet is orbiting the star. ‘Hot Jupiters’ are gas giants (like our own Jupiter) which are much closer to their parent star than Jupiter is to our own Sun. Because they’re so large
Taking your time at the dinner table could lead to a trimmer, healthier you. A study led by the American Heart Association has found that slow eaters are significantly less likely to suffer from obesity, heart disease and stroke.
GRAMMAR PEDANTS
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, the USA, have found that the English language is evolving by random chance, and is subject to the same ‘drift’ found in natural selection in the animal kingdom.
NGTS-1b is a ‘hot Jupiter’ orbiting a red dwarf star, which, until now, wasn’t believed to be possible
and orbit their parent so closely, they cause significant, regular dips in its brightness, and, as a result, are among the easiest exoplanets to spot. It’s believed they form, like Jupiter, in the outer reaches of a solar system, before migrating inwards – but such an explanation assumes the presence of a main sequence star such as our own Sun. According to current theories, a red dwarf like NGTS-1, which is only half that size, should only have enough gravity to form rocky planets, not gas giants. “Having worked for almost a decade to develop the NGTS telescope array, it’s thrilling to see it picking out new and unexpected types of planets,” said Prof Peter Wheatley of the University of Warwick, England, who is head of the NGTS project. The team’s next challenge will be to work out how common planetary systems like this are.
discoveries Science ZO O LO GY
COCKATOOS ARE SKILFUL SHAPE-SORTERS
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Goffin’s cockatoos have shaperecognition abilities akin to those of a human two-year-old
PHOTOS: BENE CROY, GETTY
Who’s a clever boy, then? Goffin’s cockatoos, a species of small parrot native to Australasia, have been shown to have similar shape-recognition abilities to a human two-year-old. Though not known to use tools in the wild, the birds have proved adept at tool use in captivity. In a recent experiment at the University of Vienna and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, cockatoos were presented with box with a nut inside it. The clear front of the box had a ‘keyhole’ in a geometric shape, and the birds were given five differently shaped ‘keys’ to choose from. Inserting the correct ‘key’ would release the nut. In humans, babies can put a round shape in a round hole from around one year of age, but it will be another year before they’re able to do the same with less symmetrical shapes such as squares, triangles or crosses. This ability to recognise that a shape will need to be rotated into a specific orientation before it will fit is called an ‘allocentric frame of reference’. In the tests in Vienna, the Goffin’s cockatoos were able to select the right tool for the job, in most cases, by visual recognition alone. Where trial-and-error was involved, the cockatoos fared better than apes and monkeys have in similar tests. “This indicates that [Goffin’s cockatoos] do indeed possess an allocentric frame of reference when moving objects in space, similar to two-year-old toddlers,” said Alice Auersperg, head of the Goffin lab at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. The next step, say the researchers, is to try and work out whether the cockatoos rely entirely on visual clues, or also use a sense of touch in making their shape selections.
Ayahuasca has been used in religious rituals since at least the 16th Century
M E N TA L H E A LT H
PHOTOS: ALAMY, NASA/ESA/G BACON/STSCL
HALLUCINOGENIC DRUG BREWED BY AMAZONIANS COULD BE USED TO TREAT ALCOHOLISM AND DEPRESSION A psychedelic drug traditionally used in South American shamanic ceremonies could be used to treat alcoholism and depression, new research from the University of Exeter and University College London suggests. Previous studies have suggested that LSD and magic mushrooms can help alcoholics tackle their addiction, but now ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew often consumed in rituals in the Amazon region, has also shown promise. The brew is made from a blend of the bush Psychotria viridis and the stems of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine. It is used in rituals by indigenous tribes and religious groups in the region, as well as being increasingly popular with visitors seeking psychedelic experiences. The resulting concoction contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a Class A prohibited
drug in the UK.Taking Global Drug Survey data from more than 96,000 people worldwide – including 527 ayahuasca users, 18,138 who used LSD or magic mushrooms and 78,236 nondrug users – the team found that ayahuasca users reported lower problematic alcohol use than people who took LSD or magic mushrooms, and higher general well-being than other respondents. “These findings lend some support to the notion that ayahuasca could be a powerful tool in treating depression and alcohol use disorders,” said lead author Dr Will Lawn, of University College London. “Recent research has shown ayahuasca’s potential as a psychiatric medicine, and our current study provides further evidence that it may be a promising treatment – though it’s important to note that these data are purely observational and do not demonstrate causality.”
discoveries Science A previously unknown chamber has been found inside the Great Pyramid
HIDDEN CHAMBER FOUND IN GREAT PYRAMID USING COSMIC RAYS How sub-atomic particle detectors are enabling archaeologists to peer inside ancient structures as never before
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PHOTO: SCANPYRAMIDS
EGY PTO LO GY
PHOTOS: SCANPYRAMIDS, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, HIROYUKI TANAKA X2
Mehdi Tayoubi and colleagues now hope to investigate the new chamber in more detail
Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious chamber deep within the Great Pyramid of Giza, using a cutting-edge imaging technique based on the detection of subatomic particles created by cosmic rays. Dubbed the ScanPyramids Big Void, after the name of the project that discovered it, the cavity is approximately 30m long and 3m high and is situated above the Grand Gallery, a large corridor that connects the two largest of the iconic structure’s three main chambers. The Great Pyramid, also known as Khufu’s Pyramid, was built during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu, who reigned from 2509 to 2483 BC. Despite years of research, there is no consensus on how exactly the monument was constructed. As yet, the precise structure and role of the newly-discovered void remain unknown, but the findings may pave the way for further studies that could help researchers to understand the pyramid and its construction process. “No important internal structures have been found in the Pyramid since 820AD, when the Calife Al Mamun dug a tunnel and penetrated inside, revealing most of the structure we know today,” said Prof Mehdi Tayoubi from Cairo University. “Finding something as important,
“Our discovery is the first demonstration of the potential of cosmic ray imaging to gather new information in archaeology” in terms of size, as the Grand Gallery is an important breakthrough.” The void was discovered using sensors tuned to detect muons, particles that are created when high energy cosmic rays slam into molecules in the upper atmosphere. By piecing together data from several different locations, the team were able to form a threedimensional image of the pyramid’s internal structure. “Our discovery is the first demonstration of the potential of cosmic ray imaging to gather new information in archaeology,” said Nagoya University’s Kunihiro Morishima from Japan. “The Big Void has not been touched by anyone since the building of the pyramid 4,500 years ago, so, if there are some artefacts inside the big void, they should be very important for understanding ancient Egypt.” The team now plans to take further scans of the Big Void, in order to determine its shape and structure in more detail.
discoveries Science
WHAT ARE MUONS? Muons are negatively charged subatomic particles that come from the lepton family – the same family as electrons, though muons are much heavier. Like electrons, they are not thought to be made up of any smaller particles, making them a so-called elementary particle. They were first discovered in 1936 by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Carl Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer at Caltech in the US while they were studying cosmic radiation.
Around 10,000 muons reach every square metre of the Earth’s surface each minute. They are created when cosmic rays – high energy radiation that originates from outside the Solar System – collide with molecules in the upper atmosphere. As muons don’t interact very strongly with matter, they are able to travel through solid objects – including our own bodies – and penetrate deep into the surface of the Earth. Cosmic rays from outside our Solar System send muons cascading through it
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WHAT IS MUON TOMOGRAPHY? Thanks to their ability to penetrate deep into solid matter, muons can be used to image the internal structure of objects in a manner similar to X-rays. Detectors are placed in strategic positions around the object to be scanned, and left running for several months. Over time, a pattern of detections builds up, revealing the void areas where the muons passed through without issue, and the denser areas where some of them were absorbed or scattered. The internal structure of the object can therefore be discerned. The technique has previously been used to reliably image and create 3D models of the interior of volcanoes, making clear the distinction between rocks of different temperatures, water, and voids beneath the surface, and also to probe the ruins left behind in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
prepare yourself for tomorrow Pimax’s new VR system raises the graphics bar with 8K resolution
GAMECHANGERS As the year draws to a close, we take a look back at the tech and gadgets that left a mark in 2017...
First up are two virtual reality headsets that highlight how rapidly VR is evolving. Consumer VR has so far mostly come in two flavours. Either you wear a costly headset connected to an even more expensive PC/Mac, or you tuck your phone into a visor, which is less immersive but a lot cheaper. But now there’s Oculus Go, a standalone dedicated VR headset and handheld controller that require no other hardware – giving you the best of both worlds for just $199 (£150 approx). Meanwhile, a new headset from Japanese start-up Pimax VR recently broke the Kickstarter funding record previously held by Oculus Rift. Their headset promises unparalled immersion, with each eye treated to its own 4K display. But, while VR has been big news in 2017, it wasn’t the only technology to be developing apace. So over the next eight pages, we look at some of the hottest topics in tech in 2017, from robots to AI to electric cars, and ask, ‘Where next?’. The future starts here...
Innovations Science
TRANSPORT
PETROL AND DIESEL CARS GET AN EVICTION DATE
Dirty air is making us ill. In fact, 40,000 premature deaths per year can be attributed to poor air quality, according to the Royal College of Physicians, the UK. So news in July 2017 that the (UK) government was setting out to clean up air was welcome. The headline was that the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans would be banned by 2040 – with hybrids being exempt. But the initiative was greeted by a healthy dose of scepticism. Firstly, climate and environment experts felt the deadline wasn’t soon enough: we’ll still be breathing in polluted air for the next 22 years. Secondly, the scheme didn’t explain how the country might prepare for a new influx of cars needing somewhere to plug in. To cope with the extra energy demand, it’s estimated we’d need 30GW of extra electricity per year, equivalent to the output of 10 more Hinkley nuclear power stations or 10,000 more wind turbines. Finally, the Royal Automobile Club, London, pointed out that it wasn’t clear what the ban meant for drivers, with big cities likely to start imposing their own restrictions on polluting vehicles much sooner. There is cause for optimism, though. While the infrastructure strategy is lacking, car makers from Nissan to Volvo to Jaguar are competing to reimagine themselves in an emissions-free age. Nissan, which produced the Leaf – the first proper electric car – sent it to compete in the Mongol Rally, proving that you don’t need fossil fuels to go long haul. It also unveiled home charging stations which could store power from the grid at off-peak hours, to lower costs. Dyson announced plans to build an electric car in the near future, while Tesla recently answered the question “What about trucks?” with its Electric Semi, which can haul 36 tonnes for 500 miles on a single charge. 32 FEBRUARY 2018
Plug-In Adventures’ modified Nissan Leaf was the first electric vehicle to complete the 12,875km Mongol Rally
Car makers are competing to reimagine themselves in an emissionsfree age
SMART HOMES
NEW SECURITY NORMS FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS The ear in tech started at the CES show in Las Vegas, where Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa could be found in over 30 products. That trend continued all year, with new Alexa devices hitting the shelves almost daily, and Amazon itself recently unveiling a raft of new Alexa products including Echo Spot, Echo Connect and, most significantly, Echo Plus, which doubles as a fully-fledged smart home hub. With Alexa now in so many homes, this is an obvious next step. When tech companies first started talking about ‘internet fridges’ and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices, people laughed: who needed to go online or fumble about in an app to see if they had milk, when they could just open the fridge door? But introduce Alexa to the mix, and suddenly you can check if you’ve got milk, and order more if you haven’t, without even reaching for your phone. So expect 2018 to be the year when the IoT – Now With Voice Control!™ – finally takes off. But at what price? Almost as frequent as Alexa product launches in 2017 were alerts about
security weaknesses in IoT devices – from the Amazon Echo, to Nest security cameras, to children’s toys and smartwatches aimed at kids, which Germany has just gone so far as to ban outright. In May 2017, Daniel Coats, the US Director of National Intelligence, suggested insecure IoT devices could be used to launch cyberattacks on vital infrastructure, while a recent report by German security specialists Gemalto found that just 52 per cent of data captured by such devices is encrypted. John Moor, managing director of the IoT Security Foundation, said: “At this point in time there are no specific regulations for IoT security, and that explains in part why we are seeing so many problems. But we’re starting to sense a consensus form around the key requirements for IoT security, and we are encouraging governments considering regulation to look hard at our expert-led work, so as to translate this into useful regulation for responsible suppliers, consumers and citizens.”
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Alexa is everywhere: the Amazon Echo Plus (1), Echo (2), Echo Connect (3) and Echo Spot (4)
O NOT on the shelves Books
TWISTED TALES WE LIST BOOKS WITH SURPRISING PLOT TWISTS WORDS: MOSHITA PRAJAPATI
THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD Agatha Christie William Collins, Sons The Crime Queen spins a web of deceit, with twists and turns in every chapter, and secrets that tumble out of every character’s cupboard. Published in 1926, this murder mystery, set in a hamlet in England, will have you turn back to the first pages of the book to look for the tell-tale signs that pointed to the killer’s motives that you had missed the first time around. This plot twist was something that no one saw coming…
GONE GIRL Gillian Flynn Crown Publishing Group Where do we even begin when it comes to this pop culture phenomenon, which was later adapted into a movie for its sheer plot twist that no one saw coming? Nick Dunne’s wife Amy goes missing days before their sixth anniversary and suspicion falls on Nick. From Nick’s secret life, to his interactions with his family and the media, and Amy’s diary, which points a finger at Nick, the plot of Gone Girl will have you tearing through the pages in hysteric anticipation.
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SS DO NOT C ROSS FIGHT CLUB Chuck Palahniuk W W Norton & Company The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club. That ensures this will be a short review. You will have to read the book to find the plot twist for yourself.
BIG LITTLE LIES Liane Moriarty Penguin Books This one has little secrets, unexpected plot developments and a plot twist that will astound you. Set in a suburban town on the west coast of America, three female characters and their quirky and eclectic life choices make for a gripping read about the big little lies we tell ourselves just to survive life’s daily grind. NEVER LET ME GO Kazuo Ishiguro Faber & Faber This book is simple in narrative and in its exploration of human relationships, and in that simplicity lies the adroitness of the author. He sucks you in with this beguiling take on starcrossed lovers but therein lies a deeper meaning – an emotional depth and resonance and the revelation of a truth that will leave you emotionally gutted at the end. Science fiction and romance have never merged better than this.
SHUTTER ISLAND Dennis Lehane William Morrow and Company The ending of this novel is still debated – that’s the power of a great plot twist. A US Marshal is sent to a psychiatric hospital located on a remote island to investigate the case of a missing patient. But he discovers that there is more to the hospital than a missing patient – nothing is what it seems.
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travel & food Around the World
NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF
TRAVEL & FOOD INFO NUGGETS FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE
PARIS, FRANCE
LAKE BAIKAL, RUSSIA
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa receives her own fan mail each week. It has been on display in the Louvre museum in Paris since 1797.
THE PANTANAL
Lake Baikal, set in the icy landscape of Siberia in Russia, has more water than the Great Lakes of North America. It is also considered the deepest lake in the world.
The Pantanal, an enormous tropical wetland that runs across Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, is one of the best spots to sight jaguars in the wild.
CHILE
LONDON, THE UK
Located on a peninsula of solid marble bordering the glacial Lake General Carrera, the Cuevas de Mármol, or the Marble Caves, have been formed by waves washing up against the calcium carbonate for over 6,000 years. They can only be visited by boat.
At its highest point, the London Eye is about as tall as 26 giraffes standing on each other’s heads! The giant Ferris wheel is sited on the South Bank of the River Thames.
The Bahrain National Theatre has 1,001 seats, in a nod to the legendary Arabian Nights. It is a stunning building on the waterfront in Manama, the capital of the island country. 36 FEBRUARY 2018
123RFX8
KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN
FIVE THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE
TRAVEL WITH FOOD
THE GRAND PRISMATIC SPRING
THE USA
Located in Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot spring in the United States.
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First found by European explorers in 1839, the “boiling lake” is strikingly colourful. While the water is blue, the colours on the shores range from red to green.
The colours of the water comes from pigmented microbial mats, with the hues coming from chlorophyll and carotenoids that react to the temperature. In winter, the mats are usually a dark green, while, in summer, they could be orange and red. The blueness of the water is due to the high purity and depth of the spring, and also because the water is too hot for bacteria to grow.
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Muhammara The Middle East
Muhammara is eaten as a dip and as a spread with pita, as well as with grilled kebabs, meats and fish. A versatile dish made with succulent red peppers, it is also used as a condiment across Lebanon and Syria and the rest of the Middle East. 37 FEBRUARY 2018
portfolio Wildlife
Cani n e COMEBACK Italy’s wolf population has made a remarkable recovery since the1970s, with a stronghold growing in the Abruzzi Apennines. Jo Price reveals the secrets of their success
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This curious youngster is a member of a pack living in a valley in the Abruzzi Apennines; as the juveniles gained confidence in the summer, they started to venture out from the forest close to a public trail. Wolves disperse when they are about two years old, and can travel over 1,000km when they leave the natal pack. France’s wolf recolonisation began when a few wolves moved into the Alps from the northern Apennines.
portfolio Wildlife Wolves roam in search of food – as the old Russian proverb puts it, ‘The wolf is kept fed by its feet.’ The average size of the territory of an Italian pack is 100–250km2, but there are known territories as small as 50km2 and as large as 450km2
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RIGHT This photograph shows a rare encounter between a juvenile and a small herd of red deer in deep snow. After an intense exchange of stares, a hind mock-charged and the wolf backed off. In the Apennines, there is generally plenty of wild prey for wolves, including red, fallow and roe deer, wild boar, and smaller animals on occasion. TOP RIGHT Two juvenile wolves investigate a mountain meadow near the pack’s rendezvous site as they wait for the adults to return from the hunt. The youngsters become braver by the day as they play and explore using their finely-tuned senses.
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HE Abruzzi Apennines are close to Rome and Naples, but remain surprisingly wild. Their biological richness lies in vast beech forests, deep valleys and solitary mountain plateaus that are home to Italian wolves. Award-winning photojournalist Bruno D’Amicis has spent six years documenting the lives of these mysterious canids. “We need to redefine our relationship with large carnivores,” he says. “A cultural change is necessary so that wolves and humans can live alongside each other.” Centuries of persecution wiped out grey wolves in much of Western Europe, and the population in Italy almost suffered the same fate. By the 1970s, only about 100 Italian wolves Canis lupus italicus, a subspecies of the grey wolf, survived in a limited area in the central and southern Apennines, but the arrival of legal protection in 1976 enabled the animal to make a comeback. There are
now about 1,000 to 2,000 wolves in Italy, with approximately 1,500 in the Apennines and 120 in the Italian Alps. According to Luigi Boitani, the chairman of the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe, the growth is mainly due to an increase in availability of wilder areas, with the abandonment of mountain and marginal agriculture; the wolves’ ability to feed on a variety of prey, and willingness to disperse have enabled them to take full advantage. However, the subspecies is coming into increasing conflict with humans, contending with poaching, persecution from farmers and dangers of hybridisation. “The control of free-ranging dogs and illegal killing using poison bait need to change,” says Boitani. Despite these challenges, the European population of wolves in general is now thought to exceed 10,000, quadruple the total in the 1970s – a success story welcomed by D’Amicis. “More than any other species, the wolf has managed to touch human imagination.”
portfolio Wildlife
ABOVE After a late summer storm, the afternoon light illuminates the mountain ridges in Abruzzo National Park. Meadows above the timber line turn golden at this time of the year, while the old beech forest underneath starts to show the first colours of autumn. These wild mountains are a favourable habitat for wolves, because they provide abundant prey and cover. BELOW Three adults cautiously make their way out of the shelter of the forest and into a mountain meadow. A pack consists of a mated pair and their offspring, including any young wolves born the previous year that have yet to disperse. This trio belongs to a pack of five.
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A lone adult male crosses a snowy field in winter. Italian wolves are genetically distinct, but their external morphology is very similar to that of most European wolves. Breeding with dogs is a considerable threat to wolves because of the loss of genetic purity.
portfolio Wildlife
A juvenile howls with his siblings and parents, which are out of shot; a youngster’s howls are short and repetitive compared with those of an adult, which linger and are deeper. Howls keep the pack in touch and advertise territory.
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BRUNO D’AMICIS is a wildlife photojournalist deeply interested in mountain ecosystems and conservation issues. Despite working around the world in a variety of habitats he always returns to photograph his first love, the Abruzzi Apennines. In 2014, he won the ‘World in Our Hands’ category of Wildlife Photographer of the Year and the ‘Nature: Singles’ category of World Press Photo. www.brunodamicis.com
1 1. A lone wolf has a poor chance of survival, because hunting large prey can only be done in a pack. Here, three members greet each other after a night hunt. Their roles in the pack are defined through play and confrontation, and only rarely through fighting. In Europe wolves are more likely to hunt at night in order to avoid people. 2. A domestic cow glances at an adult male feeding on a dead horse – wolves will take any available prey. Researchers monitor tracks and use radiocollars to learn more about their behaviour, so that they can educate the people in the region about the best ways to minimise risk and ensure peaceful co-existence. 3. A lot of effort is being made to support farmers who are affected by wolves beyond just offering compensation. Measures such as electric fences and guard dogs are being used to deter packs and protect livestock. This Abruzzese mastiff wears a spiked collar to prevent wolves from biting its neck. 2
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A new theory could rewrite the laws of physics as we know them, and finally explain what dark matter is WORDS: PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS
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FEBRUARY 2018
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ILLUSTRATION: MAGIC TORCH
SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH GRAVITY
science Gravity
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science Gravity
Netherlands, is attracting so much attention. After all, others have previously suggested dark matter may be some kind of illusion. What sets Verlinde apart is his explanation for the source of the illusion. He believes it’s the result of nothing less than a fundamental misconception about the most familiar force in the Universe: gravity. It’s a claim that brings Verlinde up against the work of some of the greatest minds in science – including Albert Einstein, whose celebrated theory of gravity is one of the cornerstones of modern physics. Known as General Relativity, it has led to a host of triumphs, including the detection in 2015 of gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by the collision of two black holes.
THE TRUTH ABOUT GRAVITY
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CIENTIFIC riddles don’t come much more baffling than this: entire galaxies seem to be in the grip of something that affects their behaviour, but no one knows what this ‘something’ is. If it’s a form of matter, then it must be the most abundant matter in the cosmos, yet all attempts to get a sample of it have failed. Not even the Large Hadron Collider has seen a glimpse of it. It remains as enigmatic as its name: dark matter. Now, one theorist has provoked controversy with a devastatingly simple explanation for why dark matter still hasn’t been found: it doesn’t exist. But that’s not the only reason Prof Erik Verlinde of the University of Amsterdam, the
Verlinde has spent years piecing together clues from theory and observation to create a whole new vision of the force we call gravity. Now his ideas are being put to the test, with intriguing results. And at the centre of them all is the mystery of dark matter. Verlinde has been hailed as the intellectual successor to Einstein in the media, yet he sees his goal in more down to earth terms. “I’m just trying to explain where gravity comes from,” he says. That might seem a bizarre statement, coming a century after Einstein showed that gravity is the result of matter warping space and time around it. Yet, according
PHOTO: ILVY NJIOKIKTJIEN
RIGHT: Erik Verlinde argues that dark matter doesn’t exist
to Verlinde, this overlooks the fact that General Relativity remains just a description of the force we call gravity. It leaves unanswered the key question of exactly how matter affects space and time. To carry out his research, Verlinde has had to grapple with some of the deepest problems in science, including the quest for the so-called Theory of Everything – a theory that unites gravity with quantum mechanics that has been considered the holy grail of physics for decades. Theorists have long known that General Relativity cannot be the last word about gravity. That’s because it fails to incorporate the other cornerstone of modern physics, quantum theory. As well as describing the subatomic world with astonishing precision, quantum theory has been able to account for all the fundamental forces of nature apart from one: gravity. Since the 1950s, theorists have tried to marry the two views of nature to produce one overarching theory. The problem, says Verlinde, is that they are based on such radically different views of reality. For example, General Relativity presumes that it’s possible to pin down precisely where particles are and how they’re moving, while quantum theory shows that’s impossible. “So taking gravity into account gives us a bit of a problem,” explains Verlinde. For years, he worked on superstring theory, which many believe to be the most promising way of overcoming these problems. Yet, despite decades of effort and a host of mindboggling ideas, there is still no hard evidence that it works. This has led Verlinde down a different path in search of the truth about gravity. The origins of this truth lie in a series of surprising connections between gravity and an apparently unrelated part of science: thermodynamics, the physics of heat. In the early 1970s, theorists studying black holes – notorious for the intensity of their gravity – discovered they must also be packed with something called entropy. Widely used to understand the behaviour of hot objects, entropy reflects the number of ways of rearranging the constituents of objects without changing their appearance. Calculations showed that black holes contain the highest possible entropy that can be crammed into a given volume of space. But they also revealed something else. Common sense suggests that
science Gravity
So could the supposedly fundamental force of gravity also be emergent, its real origins being linked to entropy and those incredibly tiny Planck areas of space-time?
NEWTON AND EINSTEIN
PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Visualisation of dust falling into a black hole. The bright flash of light is Hawking radiation – one way in which black holes can lose mass
as it depends on the constituents of objects, the entropy of a black hole should depend on its volume. Yet theorists found it depends only on the hole’s surface area. Stranger still, the calculations suggest the black hole’s surface is made up of a vast patchwork of so-called Planck areas. Named after the eponymous German pioneer of quantum theory, Planck areas are far smaller even than a subatomic particle, and appear to be the building blocks of space-time itself. Pondering these mind-bending connections between the physics of heat and space-time, Verlinde began to wonder if they were hints of a radical new way of thinking about gravity. Heat was once thought to be a fundamental property of matter that exists in and of itself, like electric charge, for example, but it’s now known to ultimately be the result of collisions between the millions of atoms and molecules that make up a gas, liquid or solid. The faster the atoms and molecules that make up a material move, the more energy they have and the hotter the material appears. Thus heat is actually an ‘emergent’ property.
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In 2010, Verlinde created a stir among theorists when he published a paper showing how his theory could be used to accurately derive both Newton’s and Einstein’s laws of gravitation. “The similarities with other known emergent phenomena such as thermodynamics have been mostly regarded as just suggestive analogies,” declared Verlinde. “It is time we not only notice the analogy, and talk about the similarity, but finally do away with gravity as a fundamental force.” While intriguing, many theorists remained unconvinced the finding was anything more than a quirk of physics. Verlinde needed to come up with something that didn’t merely reproduce existing theories, but predicted something new – and testable. He now believes he’s found it with the enigma of dark matter. While hints of its existence emerged over 80 years ago in studies of clusters of galaxies, it was a discovery of a curious effect inside galaxies that first convinced astronomers to take dark matter seriously. According to Newton’s law of gravity, stars further from the centre of a galaxy should orbit more slowly than those closer in. But, during the 1970s, studies of stars within spiral galaxies showed that beyond a certain distance from the centre, this effect simply vanished. The most obvious explanation was that the stars were being affected by the gravity of an invisible cloud of matter surrounding the galaxies. It soon became clear that, whatever this stuff was, it couldn’t be made from the standard building blocks of matter. That sparked a global effort to detect a viable alternative, which continues to this day – with no success. This has led to growing suspicions that the most obvious explanation is simply wrong. In 1983, physicist Prof Mordehai Milgrom, of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, pointed out a curious
JARGON BUSTER
Swot up on your physics with our handy glossar y, by popular science writer Brian Cle gg
“IT IS TIM E WE NOT ON LY NOTICE TH E ANALOGY, AN D TALK ABOUT TH E SIMILARITY, BUT FINALLY DO AWAY WITH GRAVITY AS A FU N DAM ENTAL FORCE”
ENTROPY
Central to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of the disorder in a system. It reflects the number of different ways the components of a system can be rearranged. The letters making up the words on this page have low entropy – there’s only one way to arrange them (assuming each individual a, b, c, etc. is unique) to produce the text you’re reading. But, if you scramble the letters, it will have higher entropy, as there are lots of ways to arrange them jumbled up. The second law of thermodynamics reflects that it’s easier to go from an ordered page to scrambled letters than it is to go from a pile of letters to the contents of this magazine. Similarly, it’s easier to break an egg than to unbreak it.
FUNDAMENTAL FORCES OF NATURE
Physics recognises four fundamental forces: electromagnetism, which deals with interactions in matter and light; the strong nuclear force, which holds the particles of atomic nuclei together; the weak nuclear force, which is involved in nuclear decay; and gravity. All except gravity fit with quantum theory.
GENERAL RELATIVITY
The General Theory of Relativity, published by Einstein in 1915, explains how mass warps space and time, and how these warps influence the way that matter moves. It provides equations that give us a precise description of gravity, indirectly predicting phenomena like black holes, gravitational waves and the Big Bang.
GRAVITATIONAL LENSING
Einstein’s General Relativity predicts that massive objects warp space enough to make passing light curve around them. This means that large cosmic structures like galaxies can act like lenses. Light coming from behind the galaxy is bent around it towards the viewer, bringing distant bodies into focus.
the nucleus of an atom, using constants of nature such as the speed of light. If space is not continuous but made up of quanta – the minimum amount of a physical property that can be interacted with – it has been suggested that its quanta might be a Planck length across (see below for more on quantum theory). Below this distance, measurement would not be possible. A Planck area is a Planck length squared. In black hole theory, when a black hole absorbs a single bit of information, its event horizon – the boundary around it from which not even light can escape – expands by one Planck area.
QUANTUM THEORY
This theory describes the behaviour of light and matter on a very small scale – that of individual particles such as atoms, electrons and photons. The theory takes its name from its central idea that phenomena are not continuous in nature but are instead broken down into tiny indivisible chunks or packets called quanta. In classical mechanics, objects always exist in a specific place at a specific time. But in quantum theory we can only determine the probability of an object being in a certain place at a certain time. This seems counter-intuitive, but the theory is incredibly successful in explaining the interactions of light and matter.
STRING THEORY
String theory was devised to explain inconsistencies in particle physics. It is a leading approach in the attempt to produce the so-called Theory of Everything. In string theory, particles are replaced with vibrating strings, but, for the maths to work, there need to be nine spatial dimensions rather than the three we observe.
THERMODYNAMICS
MOND
Originally developed to provide a theoretical basis for the design and operation of steam engines, thermodynamics – literally the movement of heat – is now a fundamental area of study in physics. It has four laws, of which the most important are the first – ‘energy is always conserved’ – and the second ‘heat always moves from a hotter to a colder body’. The second law also shows that, on average, in a system that’s isolated from its surroundings, entropy stays the same or increases – to decrease it requires energy.
PLANCK AREAS
The amount of light energy emitted by a spiral galaxy such as the Milky Way is roughly proportional to its speed of rotation. The faster the galaxies spin, the brighter they are. This is known as the Tully-Fisher relation, named after the astronomers Brent Tully and Richard Fisher who discovered it.
This stands for Modified Newtonian Dynamics – a theory that expands on Newton’s laws of motion. It offers a potential explanation for the unexpected behaviour of spiral galaxies and galactic clusters usually attributed to dark matter. It is based on the idea that the effect of gravity behaves in a subtly different manner on a vast scale. Even so, it still doesn’t explain all the observed oddities – but then neither does dark matter.
German physicist Max Planck mathematically derived the Planck length, a unit of distance around 100 billion billion times smaller than
TULLY-FISHER RELATION
science Gravity
TESTING, TESTING
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BELOW: According to the Tully-Fisher relation, the faster a spiral galaxy spins, the brighter it will be
While intriguing, what Milgrom called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) simply replaced one mystery with another: where did this ‘critical acceleration’ come from? That’s what Verlinde decided to find out using his ideas of emergent gravity. “I quickly found a back-of-the-envelope calculation that might explain it, but I had to work for a number of years to make this more precise,” he says. He now believes he has succeeded. The key lies in the effect of the entire Universe on the vital ingredient needed for the existence of gravity: entropy. According to both Newton and Einstein’s theories, the entropy of objects like black holes increases with their area. But Verlinde has shown things change on the scale of the whole Universe, because of dark energy. First identified in the 1990s, dark energy is a kind of antigravitational force that is propelling the expansion of the Universe. Its origins remain mysterious, but calculations by Verlinde show that dark energy leads to entropy increasing with volume, not just area. That changes the behaviour of gravity at cosmic scales – and, says Verlinde, the result is an acceleration effect creating the illusion that dark matter exists. “In an expanding Universe, the gravitational laws have to be adjusted at the acceleration scale indicated by MOND,” he says. Unlike MOND, however, he has been able to calculate the effect using basic physics. Verlinde’s theory does more than explain why dark matter has never been found. Astronomers have long been puzzled by a ‘law’ linking the brightness of spiral galaxies to their spin rate. Known as the Tully-Fisher relation, it makes no sense using conventional theories of gravity, but Verlinde has shown that it’s a natural consequence of the link between gravity and entropy. Further evidence backing Verlinde’s theory comes from recent studies of the light from distant galaxies. According to Einstein, the gravity field of galaxies can bend the path of light rays. This is known as the ‘gravitational
lens’ effect. An international team of astronomers has found that this effect is consistent with the predictions of Verlinde’s theory, without the need for dark matter. Now the search is on for evidence that Verlinde’s theory does not just explain MOND, but outperforms it. And, here, some problems have emerged. Astronomer Dr Frederico Lelli and his colleagues at the European Southern Observatory have been studying the orbits of stars in galaxies, and they’re not behaving as expected. “Verlinde’s theory predicts a stronger gravitational pull than MOND in the inner regions,” explains Lelli. But this effect doesn’t seem to exist: “This seems to be a serious issue,” he says. The biggest problem facing Verlinde, however, is explaining a cosmic ‘coincidence’. Why does the amount of dark matter needed to explain galaxy rotation curves match the amount needed to explain observations of the early Universe? “The observational
PHOTOS: GETTY X2
fact about the galactic evidence for dark matter: it can also be explained if Newton’s law fails to accurately explain the motions of stars in the outer reaches of galaxies feeling an acceleration due to gravity at a rate less than a certain critical value: around 100-billionth that generated by Earth.
“WE’RE IN A PERIOD WHEN IT IS NECESSARY TO EXPLORE MANY NEW IDEAS, AND IT TAKES A LONG TIME FOR SUCH THINGS TO SETTLE OUT”
PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS is visiting professor in science at Aston University, Birmingham, the UK.
ABOVE: Visualisation of two black holes orbiting each other, warping space-time and emitting gravitational waves
evidence for dark matter from a variety of methods is all amazingly consistent,” says astrophysicist Prof Neta Bahcall of Princeton University, the USA. The simplest explanation is that dark matter really does exist, but just hasn’t been found yet. But Verlinde points out that his work on the nature of gravity is far from complete. “To explain these effects, one has to develop the theory to the point where one can describe the cosmological evolution of the Universe,” he says. “I am currently working on these ideas, but it will take some time.” Given the huge pay-off if he’s right, many scientists are willing to cut Verlinde some slack. “We’re in a period when it is necessary to explore many new ideas,” says astronomer Prof Stacy McGaugh of Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, the USA. “And it takes a long time for such things to settle out.”
science Space
P
AYPAL founder and Tesla boss Elon Musk isn’t a man who thinks small – nor is he short of a few million dollars to chuck at any obstruction in his path. Which is why SpaceX – the company he founded in 2002 with a view to developing cheaper, faster, longer-distance space travel, and ultimately colonising Mars – has become the world’s leading private spaceflight provider. The list of spaceflight ‘firsts’ that SpaceX has racked up over the course of the past 15 years is a long one. Among other achievements, it was the first private company to put a liquidfuelled rocket into Earth orbit (Falcon 1, 2008); the first to send a spacecraft to the ISS (Falcon 9, 2012); the first to put a satellite into geosynchronous orbit (Falcon 9, 2013), and the first to relaunch and land a ‘used’ orbital rocket (Falcon 9, 2017). As you can see, the reusable Falcon 9 rocket has been the key to many of SpaceX’s successes. Long term, Musk’s eyes remain firmly fixed on the Red Planet, but, in the meantime, let’s take a closer look at this 69.9m-tall behemoth, which has now racked up 38 successful flights and is fast becoming the go-to option for getting payloads and people into space…
SPACE TOURISM
GETS REAL Elon Musk has pencilled in a date in 2018 to send two tourists around the Moon and back on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Here are 10 things you need to know before you buy yourself a ticket… Words: COLIN STUART
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PHOTO: SPACEX
When SpaceX launched a communications satellite into orbit in March 2017, they made a little piece of space history. It was the first time an orbital rocket had be reused – it had already been to space and back in April 2016. The Falcon 9’s first stage – the bit with most of the fuel and the main engines – is brought back to the ground and collected to fly again. This could be a game-changer for space exploration because that’s the most expensive part of the rocket. Previously, each time you wanted to go to space you had to fork out hundreds of millions of dollars for a brand new rocket. Now the same one can be used multiple times. SpaceX is offering its customers a discount of up to 30 per cent if they opt to fly their payload on a reused Falcon 9, cutting the cost of getting to space even further.
IT’S REUSABLE
science Space SpaceX engineers inspect one of the Falcon 9’s interstage sections prior to assembly
IT COULD INSPIRE A GENERATION IT’S RELIABLE The Falcon 9 rocket boasts a 95 per cent success rate. There have been 41 launches since the first in 2010, and all but two achieved their stated goals. One failed to reach orbit, the other exploded on the launchpad during a pre-flight test. This compares well to the rest of the rocket industry, where the average failure rate is also 5 per cent. NASA’s Space Shuttle, which ferried astronauts to and from orbit, had a success rate of 98.5 per cent, with the famous Challenger and Columbia disasters notable black marks. The Russian Soyuz rocket, which is currently the only way to get people to the International Space Station, has seen over 1,700 launches and has a 97 per cent success rate. If SpaceX wants to start using its technology to send people to space, then perhaps it will have to boost its success rate a little to bring it in line with these other benchmarks.
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NASA’s Apollo missions did a lot more than just land 12 astronauts on the Moon. A whole generation watched on as human beings ventured out onto a new world for the very first time. Those unprecedented steps fired up the imaginations of countless young people worldwide, many of them turning to careers in science, maths and engineering as a result. But humans have languished in low Earth orbit ever since Apollo 17 departed from the lunar surface in 1972. Yes, we have the International Space Station, but don’t underestimate the power of seeing humans push new boundaries. If private space companies can return people to the Moon, or even send them to Mars, their exploits will be beamed around the world in an era now equipped with HD cameras, social media and 24/7 news channels. The inspirational effect of those missions would be unrivalled. Who knows what this generation might be inspired to do next?
IT’LL KICK-START NEW INDUSTRIES
PHOTO: SPACEX X2
In the past, the huge costs of space launches meant only those with the broadest shoulders could afford the astronomical sums involved. That used to mean governments. But governments are funded by taxpayers, many of whom are sceptical about the merits of space exploration when they see more pressing concerns closer to home. SpaceX is blazing a trail for the true commercialisation of space by proving that it can be done well for less. Now other companies are also springing up, looking for a slice of action. Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are already putting their money on the line. The global space industry is growing rapidly, consistently outpacing even the Chinese economy. As a result, companies that were priced out of space before are beginning to think that it might be affordable after all. The fleets of satellites that these companies inexpensively put into orbit will help run innovative new technologies, including autonomous vehicles and super-fast internet connections.
IT’S POWERFUL The power behind the Falcon 9 is the Merlin engine, which is built in-house by SpaceX. Nine of these engines are clustered together in the first stage, while the second contains a single Merlin that’s modified to fire in the vacuum of space. The engines burn a mixture of rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen. On a typical launch, the first stage engines burn for 162 secs, and the second stage engine burns for 397 secs.The powerful Merlin is one of the most efficient engines ever built. Having nine of them in the first stage also offers some built-in safety. On other rockets, if an engine fails during launch, the lost thrust can destroy the payload’s chance of successfully reaching orbit. But the Falcon 9 is designed so that two of the nine Merlin engines in the first stage can fail and the launch won’t be affected. The healthy engines can burn longer, picking up the slack to save the mission.
A Merlin engine being prepared for testing. The Falcon X carries 10 of these engines
science Space
FALCON 9: HOW IT WORKS The Falcon craft have been a decade in the making. Here’s what you need to know about the rocket and the capsule DRAGON SPACECRAFT
FLIGHTS BY MISSION OUTCOME 15 12.5
PRESSURISED SECTION
10
Success
7.5
Partial failure Loss during flight
5
Also referred to as the capsule, this is designed to carry both cargo and humans into space
Loss before launch
2.5 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
FLIGHTS BY LANDING OUTCOME 15
TRUNK
Dragon’s trunk supports the spacecraft during ascent to space, carries unpressurised cargo and houses Dragon’s solar arrays. The trunk and solar arrays remain attached to Dragon until shortly before re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere, when they are jettisoned
Ground pad success
12.5
Drone ship success
10
Ocean success Parachutes failure
7.5
Ground pad failure
5
Drone ship failure
2.5
Ocean failure No attempt
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
ROCKET EVOLUTION
NINE MERLIN ENGINES
With its nine first-stage Merlin engines clustered together, Falcon 9 can sustain up to two engine shutdowns during flight and still successfully complete its mission
FALCON 1 FALCON 9 V1.0 2006-2009 2010-2012 58 FEBRUARY 2018
FALCON 9 V1.1 2013-2014
FALCON 9 V1.2 (FT) 2015-PRESENT
FALCON HEAVY NOV 2017?
FALCON 9 LAUNCH TIMELINE
PARTING OF THE WAYS
BACK DOWN TO EARTH
Once the rocket reaches an altitude of around 60km, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage – home to nine Merlin engines – falls away from the Dragon spacecraft, just as the Saturn V rockets fell away on the Apollo missions. Unlike the Saturn V, though, the Falcon 9 will return to Earth to be reused on future missions.
OFF INTO SPACE
As the Dragon spacecraft heads off on its adventures, Falcon 9 first completes a flip manoeuvre to turn around 180°. Then there’s a short engine burn to propel it back towards Earth. As it approaches Earth’s atmosphere, aerodynamic fins are deployed to guide it, after which there’s another very quick ‘entry burn’. Some adroit manoeuvring later, the rocket is ready for its vertical, bottom-first landing.
The second stage of the Falcon 9, which is equipped with a single Merlin engine that’s been modified to fire in the vacuum of space, fires up once the first stage has been jettisoned. It burns for only a little over 6.5 minutes, but that’s enough to propel the Dragon spacecraft on to its final destination.
PAYLOAD SEPARATION
FAIRING SEPARATION
PHOTOGRAPH: JYOTHY KARAT
PHOTO: SPACEX X4 ILLUSTRATION: ACUTE GRAPHICS
BOOSTBACK BURN
STAGE SEPARATION
FLIP MANOEUVRE
GRID FINS DEPLOY
ENTRY BURN ASCENT AERODYNAMIC GUIDANCE
LAUNCH VERTICAL LANDING
science Space
IT CAN LAND AT SEA So far, all launches have taken place from one of three land-based launch sites. However, some landings have taken place out at sea. After five unsuccessful attempts, the first flawless landing on a floating drone ship came in April 2016. This is key because landing at sea requires less fuel than returning to the launch site, and expending less energy in the landing means there’s more energy available to reach a higher orbit. Touching down on water is also safer if anything goes wrong. The two floating barges – Of Course I Still Love You and Just Read The Instructions – are named after spaceships in the Iain M Banks novel The Player Of Games. The former is stationed in the Atlantic Ocean to pick up rockets launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the latter in the Pacific to collect missions launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, USA.
A Falcon 9 rocket touches down one of the two offshore landing platforms
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IT’LL LAUNCH PEOPLE ONE DAY
SpaceX has already successfully used its re-usable Dragon capsule to deliver cargo to the International Space Station – the first time that was done by a private company. Launched on top of the Falcon 9 rocket, its true purpose is to send people into space. Four windows will provide the lucky astronauts with a stunning view. The next version of Dragon – Dragon 2 – will make its first delivery to the ISS in November this year. It’ll be launched on the new Falcon Heavy rocket, which will also be making its maiden flight. Elon Musk has even announced his intention to send two paying customers around the Moon in a Dragon 2 capsule and return them to Earth. Remarkably, he says this will happen at the back end of 2018. Given that only one government has ever achieved this feat before, it is some statement of intent.
PHOTOS: SPACEX X2, GETTY
IT’LL BOOST SPACE TOURISM
Even if two paying punters don’t end up getting sent around the Moon in a week-long mission next year, it’s easier to see SpaceX launching tourists into Earth orbit. In the decades to come, travelling into space will become as common as getting on a plane. The first trans-Atlantic flights cost thousands of dollars in today’s money, but now the ocean can be crossed for a few hundred. Similarly, a successful launch of customers into orbit by a private company will generate even more competition and drive down the price for all of us. Don’t be surprised if the children in school now are holidaying in space for a few days later in their lives. For the price of a round-the-world cruise or a top-of-the-range car, they could be looking down on the rest of us from orbit as they float in a Dragon capsule.
science Space
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THERE’S STILL A FEW KINKS TO IRON OUT
PHOTO: SPACEX
There’s a reason why many commentators baulked when Elon Musk announced his vision of a Moonshot as early as this year. Space travel is still difficult, especially with heavy payloads beyond Earth orbit. NASA managed it in the 1960s and 70s, but only by throwing a huge amount of money at the problem. In the years running up to the first Moon landing, NASA’s budget was over 4 per cent of the GDP of the USA – the largest economy in the world. As a private company, SpaceX’s books are secret, so we don’t know how much money it’s pumping into space exploration or how likely it is that its efforts will ever be profitable. If all goes to schedule then SpaceX should deliver astronauts to the International Space Station next year, and a lot will depend on how that goes. Glitches could put back any subsequent human flights significantly, but it wouldn’t be the first time SpaceX has done something unprecedented.
IT COULD TAKE US TO MARS ONE DAY
It’s no secret that Elon Musk’s ultimate goal is to get people to Mars. However, that feat is leagues ahead of escorting astronauts into Earth orbit. Musk’s vision involves SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). The aim is to eventually park up to 1,000 spaceships in Earth orbit, each with a crew of 100. They’ll await the optimal window to head for Mars and depart en masse. This happens every 26 months when the gap between the planets is narrowest. Musk’s publicly stated ambition is to get a million people to Mars within the next 50 to 100 years. The Red Planet still presents significant hurdles, however. The radiation exposure on the six-month voyage would be unacceptably high, so the crew will need shielding. Slowing down sufficiently to land safely on Mars is a real challenge, too, as is keeping a crew supplied with enough food, water and energy for such a long journey. COLIN STUART is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. His books include 13 Journeys Through Space And Time, Why Space Matters To Me and Physics In 100 Numbers.
SOLVing THE PROBLEM By 2050, there could be more plastic in the sea than fish. With Blue Planet II, the TV show, we take a look at some genius inventions that could help clean up our oceans WORDS: JOSH GABBATISS
PHOTO: GETTY
T
HERE are over five trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans. The floating island of rubbish that’s supposedly found at the centre of the Pacific Ocean, dubbed the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, has captured the public’s imagination, but even this doesn’t do justice to the problem. In reality, if you stood on a boat at that site, you would see no enormous plastic island, but rather endless tiny fragments floating on the surface of the ocean. According to one estimate, this plastic soup covers an area twice the size of the continental United States. As plastic moves through our seas, it breaks down into smaller pieces – the kind of pieces that can easily be swallowed by marine life. And the problems continue beneath the surface. Scientists are increasingly finding deposits of plastic at the bottom of the oceans, even as far down as the 10km-deep Mariana Trench in the Pacific. The facts are horrifying, but many of the impacts that plastic will have on ocean ecosystems, marine creatures and, by association, us, remain to be seen. Scientists and entrepreneurs are currently working on ways to halt the flow of plastic into our oceans, and get rid of the stuff that’s already there, before the problem gets even worse.
CAPTURE IT
Perhaps the most natural response to the plastic problem is to try to clean up what’s already there. “Of course, clean-up is really important,” says Prof Richard Thompson, head of the International Marine Litter Research Unit at Plymouth University, the UK “and it’s our first reaction as humans when we’ve made a mess.” Such reactions vary wildly in scale, from local ‘beach cleans’ to largescale, high-tech projects launched by the likes of The Ocean Cleanup. The Ocean Cleanup was initially conceived by the then 18-year-old Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat. His highly ambitious project aims to use huge barriers to passively trap plastic as it moves around ocean gyres – the large circulating currents that keep the floating plastic in place. By anchoring the barriers in deep, slow-moving water, the idea is that the system will move slower than the
science The Plastic Issue
The barriers that The Ocean Cleanup will deploy measure 1-2km in length and aim to capture larger plastics before they degrade
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plastic surrounding it, allowing the debris to accumulate against the barrier. The team behind the project estimates that deployment of their systems could clean up approximately 50 per cent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within five years. It’s an exciting proposal, and one that has captured people’s imaginations, most notably venture capitalists like Peter Thiel who have followed through on this enthusiasm with sizeable cash injections. In total, The Ocean Cleanup has received $31.5m in donations since its inception back in 2013. The team is aiming to roll out a pilot study in the North Pacific around March 2018, and their first fully operational system will be launched later in the year. While it may be appealing to the great and the good of Silicon Valley, The Ocean Cleanup has attracted its fair share of criticism from the scientific community. Concerns have been raised over everything from the viability of the proposed barriers to their effects on local ecosystems. Perhaps the biggest issue raised, however, is that glamorous initiatives like Slat’s draw attention away from the key problem, which is the sheer quantity of litter entering the seas. “It’s a little bit like you’re filling the bath, you leave the taps on and go downstairs to make a cup of tea,” says Thompson. “Then you come back upstairs to find the bath is overflowing – do you start by mopping up the floor, or do you start by turning off the tap?”
What worries Thompson and others is that projects like The Ocean Cleanup overcomplicate an issue that requires basic work to be done first. “If I were a rich philanthropist with money to invest in solving the problem, I would be putting 99 per cent of my money into stopping the flow, and 1 per cent into clean-up,” he says. Dr Matthew Savoca, who studies the effects of plastic pollution on marine life at the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center, the USA, has a more positive take. “Assuming it doesn’t scoop up more ocean life than plastic, why not give it a shot?” he says. “However, I think [The Ocean Cleanup] would be most effective at or near the mouths of large commercial harbours and at the mouths of rivers, since we know that’s how most plastic gets out to sea in the first place.” While this is not the stated aim of that project, a far smaller device – the Seabin – has been designed by two Australians to clean up rubbish in just such areas. Using solarpowered pumps, Seabins sit at the surface of the water and suck in the debris that accumulates around harbours and other seaside structures. Another suggestion for plastic collection involves underwater drones. These autonomous vehicles could whizz around plastic-saturated areas of the ocean, swallowing rubbish with their circular ‘jaws’ while keeping fish away using a sonic transmitter. These are ingenious solutions, and maybe a bona fide success story will help to ease the
PHOTOS: ERWIN ZWART/THE OCEAN CLEANUP, KOSUKE ARAKI, ALAMY
“If I were a rich philanthropist, I would be putting 99 per cent of my money into stopping the flow (of rubbish), and 1 per cent into clean-up”
WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?
Can we reduce our reliance on plastic? Here are five innovative materials that are in development
DIOXIDE AND SUGAR 1CARBON
PACKAGING 4EDIBLE
As plastics tend to be made using fossil fuels, the search for alternatives is part of the journey towards a more sustainable future. Currently, 4 per cent of global oil production goes into plastic, but scientists are exploring ways to bring this down to zero. A sugar- and carbon dioxide-based substitute for the plastic polycarbonate (used for spectacles lenses, DVDs and greenhouses), has been developed by a team at the University of Bath. Not only does their method bypass fossil fuels, but the resulting material is transparent, strong and biodegradable.
Food and drink packaging is going to require a huge overhaul if we are to solve the plastic problem. One viable option could be packaging replacements that are just as edible as the products they contain. An example is Skipping Rocks Lab’s ‘Ooho!’, an edible sphere of water made from seaweed extract that you can pop into your mouth (4). The US Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has developed a replacement for the thin plastic films used in food packaging, made from the milk protein casein. Not only are these films biodegradable, sustainable and edible, they are also far better at preventing food spoilage than plastic. Talk about win-win.
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2AGAR
Easily extracted by boiling red algae, agar is used to make confectionery in Japan. In a project called Agar Plasticity, the Tokyo-based design collective AMAM suggested that this gelatinous substance could be a viable plastic alternative. By heating agar, pouring it into moulds and then freezing it, the team was able to make a selection of plastic-like products and packaging (the bottle pictured has been wrapped with the agar ‘plastic’). The designers are now looking to partner with industry so that they can access the scientific and technical knowhow to take their idea to the next level.
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3FUNGI
The bulk of a mushroom’s body consists of a mass of underground filaments called the mycelium. By employing mycelia grown on agricultural waste, New York company Ecovative Design is creating a new plastic alternative. A mixture of fungi and their food source can be placed into a mould, such as food packaging or a piece of furniture. Then, once the mould has become filled with a dense mass of mycelia filaments, it is heat-treated to kill off the fungi, leaving a product that is durable but also totally biodegradable.
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FEATHERS 5CHICKEN
Enormous quantities of feathers are produced as a by-product of the poultry industry, and they are generally treated as waste. However, despite their soft and fluffy structure, feathers are composed almost entirely of keratin, a tough protein also found in animal hooves and horns. This means that, in theory, they could be used as strong, structurally sound, natural replacements for regular plastics. Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the USA, have attempted to harness this potential, by pounding feathers into a fine powder, then mixing with chemicals to make the keratin molecules bind together.
science The Plastic Issue
WHERE OUR PLASTICS GO
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ILLUSTRATION: RAJA LOCKEY
tension between those developing the projects, and the people who want to prevent the plastic getting there in the first place. After all, as Savoca points out: why not do both?
GOBBLE IT UP WITH MICROBES
Bacteria are potentially the most versatile creatures in existence, capable of making a home in pretty much any environment on Earth. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that, in recent years, scientists have found evidence that some have evolved the capacity to break down plastics. Last year, for example, a Japanese team identified a bacterium capable of biodegrading PET – a plastic found in everything from polyester clothing to water bottles – prompting speculation that bacteria could be employed to stem the tide of plastic pollution by munching through it. Dr Linda Amaral-Zettler, a microbial ecologist working on the ‘plastisphere’ – the community of creatures living on ocean plastics – says it’s wrong to think of plastic as a sterile environment. “When you do the experiments, you find there are some microbes that are incredibly well suited to colonising plastics,” she explains. Her work has shown distinct genetic differences between bacteria inhabiting 70 FEBRUARY 2018
ABOVE LEFT AND RIGHT: A total of 5,000 tonnes of litter was cleared from a 2.5km-long stretch of Mumbai’s Versova beach over the course of 85 weeks. Before the volunteers set to work, waste was piled over 1.5m high RIGHT: Seabins are designed to collect rubbish from harbours and ports, and can suck in 1.5kg of floating waste per day
plastic and those in the surrounding water, so the concept of bacteria adapting to life in the Plastic Age is not that far-fetched. “But it’s one thing to colonise, it’s another to actually break down and digest plastic,” she adds. While plastics do degrade naturally through UV radiation and physical processes, and bacteria may be playing some role in this, it doesn’t mean all the plastic is simply vanishing into their tiny bodies, never to be seen again. In fact, some microbes might even be breaking down the plastic into ever smaller particles, which are not only harder to detect and clean up, but could be damaging marine ecosystems. Plasticmunching microbes are an intriguing area of research, and certainly worth exploring further. But with the plastic piling up fast, we might not be able to rely on bacteria to do our dirty work for us.
PHOTOS: ALAMY, AFROZ SHAH
science The Plastic Issue
TURN IT INTO SOMETHING ELSE
be transformed into more specialist products such as clothes. Some companies, for example, melt down plastic bottles and turn them into fibres that can be woven into fabrics, a process that uses 50 per cent less energy than producing polyester, the plastic most widely used in clothing, from scratch. Plastics can also be used as fuel, with new technologies allowing us to efficiently convert them into diesel and gasoline. By heating plastic in a controlled way, coupled with a catalyst, it is possible to produce fuel that doesn’t even need refining and is ready to use.
Ultimately, plastics are not our enemy. They are durable, lightweight, inexpensive, and incredibly useful. The major issue is that around 40 per cent of the plastic we produce is going into single-use items, such as cotton buds, drinking straws, carrier bags and plastic forks, which have a long life following disposal. Fortunately, we’re beginning to see more projects that repurpose discarded plastics. Not only can plastics be recycled to make the usual suspects, such as packaging, but they can
All of this means less plastic leaking out of the system and ending up in the oceans. Eventually, we could see a fully circular ‘plastic economy’, though this would require major changes at an industry level in order to make plastic easier to recycle and reuse. JOSH GABBATISS is a science writer based in London.
HOW YOU CAN HELP AVOID SINGLE-USE PLASTICS
The culprits here should be familiar to everyone: carrier bags, bottles and drinking straws. Purchase a ‘bag for life’, carry a reusable bottle, and sip drinks straight from the glass.
GIVE UP CHEWING GUM
Chewing gum is made from synthetic rubber – a plastic – and shockingly around 100,000 tonnes of the stuff is discarded every year. Is minty-fresh breath really worth that?
GO ON A BEACH CLEAN
Organisations conduct cleans up and down the country, removing rubbish from the beaches and raising awareness of the ocean environment.
RECYCLE!
We’ve all heard this one by now, but currently only a third of recyclable plastic used by even UK consumers is recycled. So swot up on your local rules and get into the recycling habit!
GO MICROBEAD -FREE
In the UK this year a ban is coming into force for even products such as sunscreen and make-up, so read ingredients lists.
history Knights Templar
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR GOD’S ELITE WARRIORS Dan Jones tells the story of a crack unit of holy hard-men who spent 200 years defending crusaders’ interests in the Middle East with unblinking ferocity
The Templars’ Tunnel running underneath Acre (today Akko in Israel), site of the military order’s last stand. Rediscovered in 1994, tunnels linked the Templar fortress to the main port and customs house
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n a cripplingly hot day at the start of July 1187, Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria, stood beside his son al-Afdal and peered across the battlefield towards a red tent on a hill. The sultan’s face was pale with worry. The armies before him had been fighting for hours, tortured by near-unbearable heat, dust and smoke, which billowed up from the desert scrub Saladin’s own men had set alight. Thousands of men and horses lay dead. The enemy – a vast force led by the Christian king Guy of Jerusalem – was badly battered and falling back, but until the king’s red pavilion fell, victory would not be complete. Al-Afdal, youthful and bullish, cheered every Christian charge that the Muslim army repulsed. Saladin scolded him. “Be quiet!” he said. “We have not beaten them until that tent falls.” Moments later, the sultan’s angst turned to tearful jubilation. The tent collapsed, King Guy was captured and the battle of Hattin was over. The Christians’ holiest relic – a fragment of the True Cross – was seized. The dead were left to rot where they lay, while the living were led off in disgrace: the lowliest Christian prisoners for slaves, and the more valuable for ransom. But there was one category of captives who received quite different treatment from all the rest. A reward of 50 dinars was offered to anyone who could present the sultan with a member of the military orders: Hospitallers and Templars. These knights and sergeants were the elite special forces within the armies of the cross. They were the most dedicated and highly trained warriors in the Holy Land. And Saladin had special plans for them.
In 1187, the Order of the Poor Knights and of the Temple of Solomon was about 68 years old. The Order had first been assembled in 1119 at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by a French knight called Hugh of Payns. Hugh had travelled to the east around the time that Jerusalem fell to the Christian armies of the First Crusade, and he stayed there: seeking a way to combine his skill as a soldier with his yearning for religious purpose. With a small number of like-minded men – later accounts said there were nine – Hugh established a brotherhood of religious warriors: skilled fighters who took oaths of chastity and poverty. They dedicated themselves to protecting Christian pilgrims on roads around the holy city, which were menaced by brigands preying on vulnerable travellers touring unfamiliar countryside. This fraternity of holy hard-men soon gained official recognition. The then-ruler of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, put them up in the al-Aqsa Mosque, which they identified with the biblical temple built by Solomon. This was how the Templars gained their name.
SHUTTERSTOCK
BAND OF BROTHERS
history Knights Templar
PAPAL TAX BREAKS
For survival, the brothers relied on charitable handouts, and they quickly became expert at soliciting these – particularly in western Europe, where they built up a large network of profitable estates donated by supporters of the crusading movement. In the 1120s, the order was granted a quasi-monastic rule to live by, designed by the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. In the 1130s, the pope granted them sweeping tax breaks and an official uniform of white or black tunics emblazoned with a cross. By the 1140s, the Templars had begun to expand their mission of merely providing roadside rescue for pilgrims. In parallel with the Hospitallers, who branched out from providing medical services in Jerusalem to assuming military duties, the Templars manned castles throughout the Holy Land and assisted in raids on Muslim cities such as Damascus. At the other end of the Mediterranean they had been drafted into the Reconquista: the Christian campaigns for control of the Muslim states of al-Andalus, in southern Spain. The Templars were by now a self-sustaining paramilitary organisation, a crack squad of hardened and dedicated soldiers, able to fight across all terrains and oath-bound to serve God and their brothers. In modern terms, they were the equivalent of the SAS, the Navy SEALS or the French Foreign Legion. “They were the fiercest fighters of all the Franks.” This was the Muslim chronicler Ibn al-Athir’s assessment of the Templars. Saladin captures the Holy Cross from a crusader army at the battle of Hattin in 1187, as depicted in Matthew Paris’s Chronica maiora. Following the victory, the Muslim leader would inflict a terrible vengeance on the Knights Templar
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The Knights Templar were able to fight across all terrains. They were the equivalent of the SAS, the Navy SEALS or the French Foreign Legion
The seal of the Knights Templar, who were, according to one Muslim chronicler, “the fiercest fighters of all the Franks”
(By ‘Franks’, he meant the western Christians in the Holy Land.) Ibn al-Athir was around 27 years old in 1187 and, like his contemporary Saladin, he knew just how competent – and dangerous – the Templars could be. After all, history fairly buzzed with examples. In 1148, the Templars had saved the French armies of the Second Crusade from annihilation. Tens of thousands of ill-disciplined troops led by King Louis VII had tried to cross hostile territory in Asia Minor on foot and horseback, on their way to Syria, where they planned to liberate the city of Edessa. Bedraggled and badly led, they were prey to repeated attacks from Turkish horsemen, who inflicted a particularly terrible defeat on the crusaders at Mount Cadmus, near modern-day Denizli in Turkey. Hundreds were killed and the king only escaped capture by hiding on a boulder. In desperation, the French king handed over military command of the entire expedition to a Templar named Gilbert. He was one of only 50 or so brothers among the vast procession, but Gilbert’s leadership was inspired. He divided the pilgrims into battalions, each with a single brother in charge. All the able-bodied were given a crash-course in military conduct, and shown how to hold their shape and discipline under attack. As a result, the French survived the hard trek east, and, on arrival in the Holy Land the Templars even raised an emergency loan to keep Louis’s troubled campaign afloat. In the years that followed, the Templars were trusted to defend castles around Gaza in the
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE TEMPLARS Hugh of Payns and eight other knights band together in Jerusalem, agreeing to protect Christian pilgrims outside the city. They are officially recognised in 1120. Their base is the al-Aqsa mosque, which they call the Temple of Solomon.
Alfonso I ‘the Battler’, king of Aragon, dies and leaves one third of his kingdom to the Templars, drawing the order into the Reconquista.
1119 1129
Pope Innocent II decrees that the Templars are only answerable to papal authority, and grants them the right to wear the sign of the cross on their chests.
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A coin depicting Alfonso I and, on the reverse, a cross
During the Second Crusade to liberate the city of Edessa, the Templars repel Turkish attacks and shepherd a French army all the way to the Holy Land.
The first Templar Rule is written at a church council in Troyes. Templars are committed to a life of celibacy, poverty and military exercise, and banned from knightly frivolities such as hunting with birds or wearing pointed shoes.
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Templars wear their distinctive uniforms in a French mural
REX SHUTTERSTOCK, CLASSICAL NUMISMATIC GROUP INC - WWW.CNGCOINS.COM/BRIDGEMAN/ALAMY
1187 Richard the Lionheart conquers Cyprus and sells it to the Templars. But the order cannot hold it peacefully and quickly sell it on to Guy of Lusignan, the former king of Jerusalem.
1191
A medieval depiction of the battle of Hattin, a black day for the Templars
On 4 July, Saladin defeats a huge Christian army at the battle of Hattin. He then orders the summary beheading of all Templars captured by his forces.
A 14th-century illustration shows Guy of Lusignan departing for Cyprus
author Wolfram von Eschenbach c1200 German casts Templar-like figures as the Templars join the Fifth Crusade in the Nile Delta, fighting on board armoured galleys. On Friday 13 October, agents working for King Philip IV arrest every Templar in France. In 1312, the order is disbanded and its property confiscated.
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defenders of a mysterious item known as the Holy Grail.
Mamluk armies attack the last crusader 1291 outpost in the city of Acre. The Templar
1307
master William of Beaujeu is killed leading the defence.
history Knights Templar a psalm: ‘‘Not to us, O lord, not to us, but to your name give the glory, for your steadfast love and faithfulness.” The sight and sound of these men charging in their red-crossed white and black cloaks was rightly feared throughout the Holy Land.
SUICIDALLY PROUD
Discipline was paramount. The order’s famous black-andwhite flag was only to be lowered when the last man defending it was dead 76 FEBRUARY 2018
south, where Christian territory gave way to Egyptian lands. Further north, they guarded the passes through the Amanus Mountains, which controlled the routes from Asia Minor into the Christian principality of Antioch. They advised secular leaders on military strategy, but were also pointedly independent, carrying out kidnapping missions and raids of their own as they pleased. Even the Assassins – the shadowy Shia terrorist sect who lived in the Syrian mountains and specialised in spectacular public assassinations of leaders of all faiths – would not touch the Templars, and paid them a fat fee to be left alone. The Templar Rule, which originally resembled a Cistercian monk’s order of daily routine, was heavily revised around 1165 to become more of a military handbook: setting the Templars’ battlefield protocols, and emphasising the importance of discipline and obedience. The order’s famous black-andwhite flag was only to be lowered when the last man defending it was dead. “No brother should leave the field… while there is a piebald banner raised aloft; for, if he leaves, he will be expelled from the house forever,” it read. When they rode into battle, the Templars sang
THE TEMPLARS FIGHT BACK
Nearly, but not quite. It took several years for the Templars to rebuild their numbers and their military reputation, but they managed it. When Richard the Lionheart arrived in the Holy Land to lead the Third Crusade in 1191, he revived the order’s fortunes, installing new leaders from his own entourage and ensuring that the Templars rode either at the vanguard or rearguard of his army as it marched down the coast from Acre to Jaffa, reclaiming cities Saladin had conquered. He briefly handed
BRIDGEMAN X 2
Knights Templar are arrested on the orders of the “cruel and conniving” French king Philip IV, in a scene from the 14th-century Chroniques de France ou de St Denis
When Saladin’s men had finished rounding up Templars and Hospitallers after the battle of Hattin in 1187, around 200 prisoners had been delivered. These included the Templar grand master, Gerard of Ridefort, an impulsive and suicidally proud leader who repeatedly led his men into fights against impossible odds, yet somehow always emerged with his own life. He would do so again now, as Saladin ordered him to be imprisoned and exchanged for the Templars’ castle at Gaza. The rest were not so lucky. Saladin had witnessed the Templars’ bravery first hand several years previously, when the commander of their besieged fortress at Jacob’s Ford met his death by deliberately riding headlong into a burning section of the castle. Now, wrote his secretary and biographer Imad al-Din: “He wished to purify land of these… unclean orders, whose practices are useless, who never give up their hostility and who have no use as slaves… He ordered that each would have his head cut off and be erased from the land of the living.” Instead of committing the job to a professional headsman, Saladin asked for volunteers from his religious entourage. Sufis, lawyers and scholars stepped forward for the chance to decapitate an infidel, with predictably gruesome results. Some deaths were swift. Others were painful and slow, as inexperienced clerics hacked away with blunt blades and no technique. Many, wrote Imad al-Din, “proved themselves ridiculous and had to be replaced.” Saladin sent a letter to Baghdad containing news of his extermination of the Christian military orders. “Not one of the Templars survived,” he wrote, with satisfaction. And he was very nearly correct.
Mamluk cavalry train for combat in a military manual from 1371. It was against these Egyptian slave-soldiers that the Templars of the Holy Land made their final stand – defending the crusader city of Acre in 1291
the Templars a military dictatorship on Cyprus, although they found the island ungovernable and sold it on. And, when Richard left the Holy Land for Europe in 1192, he was said to have travelled incognito, wearing Templar uniform. The order remained at the military heart of the crusades for another century. In 1218–19 they starred in the Fifth Crusade to Damietta in Egypt, deploying armoured galleys in the water of the Nile Delta, as the Christian armies attempted an amphibious siege of the city. Two generations later they were back again, having helped fund and provision another crusader army with designs on Damietta, this time led by Louis IX of France. Throughout the 13th century, the Templars continued to be involved in the Reconquista, helping King James I of Aragón to conquer Ibiza and Mallorca between 1229 and 1235, and the kingdom of Valencia by 1244. Then, at the end of the century, when the Christians were being swept from the Holy Land by an Egyptian slave-soldier regime called the Mamluks, the Templars provided the very last line of defence. Their huge fortress in Acre was the last bastion to hold out against Mamluk forces storming through the breached walls in 1291, in what turned out to be the crusaders’
final stand. In 1307, however, the order was destroyed by a cruel and conniving king of France, Philip IV. Philip used a popular wish for the Templars and Hospitallers to be merged into one military super-order as a pretext for investigating their practices and then confiscating their wealth. Their collapse was swift and dramatic, as the king’s lawyers and papal inquisitors accused the brothers of corruption, blasphemy, and sexual crimes. By 1312, the Templars had been disbanded. Their last master, James of Molay, was burned at the stake as a heretic in Paris in 1314. Other orders survived the decline of crusading. The Hospitallers continued the fight against the church’s enemies from a new base on the island of Rhodes, while the
German Teutonic Order governed a semi-autonomous state in Prussia for centuries. The Mamluks, who were themselves somewhat like an Islamic military order, ruled Egypt and Syria until they were swept aside by the Ottomans in 1517. Why did the Templars fall? Part of the answer lies in the weakness of their last master, James of Molay; part in the cruel caprice of Philip IV. But what is seldom noted is that the Templars, for all their wealth and privilege, never established for themselves a geographical base that they could defend against all assaults, even from their own side. The brothers were famed for their bravery, dedication and piety but these were not enough to save them when Philip IV attacked. Had they established themselves as the rulers of Cyprus when they had the chance in 1191, their history might have been different. But they did not, and the Knights Templars’ shocking demise now dominates our memory of an order that was, in its day, better known by Ibn al-Athir’s assessment: “The fiercest fighters of all the Franks.” DAN JONES is a historian, author and TV presenter.
history Indian Mythology
Kubera TREASURER OF THE GODS
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K
UBERA is no longer worshipped today as he once was in ancient India. He is the pot-bellied king of the yakshas, and closely related to the rakshasas, and associated with great wealth, often known as the treasurer of the gods. If you go the Reserve Bank of India building in New Delhi, you will find on either side of the gate the image of Yaksha and Yakshini symbolising the wealth generated from
Myth is a belief, an article of faith, which cannot be verified scientifically. Believers think it is true; non-believers feel it is false. While science restricts itself to ‘how’ questions (how did the world come into being, how are we born), myth answers ‘why’ questions (why does the world exist, why do we live, or die). Fiction is nobody’s truth. Fact is everybody’s truth. Myth is somebody’s truth. Mythology is the vehicle of myth; it is a set of stories, symbols and rituals that communicates the myth that binds a community. The community transmits these stories, symbols and rituals over generations. Religious mythologies speak of god, demons, heaven, hell, soul, and rebirth. Secular mythologies speak of rights, justice, equality, and diversity. Mythologies from India are the major mythologies that originated in India: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Belief in rebirth, hence karma, is common to all three of them.
industry and agriculture respectively, indicating how yakshas and their king Kubera are closely associated with wealth. On temple walls, we find images of yakshas, strange gnome-like misshapen beasts, very fat, with pot bellies and dwarfish features. We learn of Kubera for the first time in the Shatapatha Brahmana, a ritual manual explaining how various Vedic yagnas have to be conducted. It is dated to a few centuries before the Buddha, so roughly 2,800 years ago. In it, he is described as the leader of robbers and misshapen gnomes, who live in the forest. But, over time, he becomes a deity, worshipped alongside Shri, the goddess of wealth, who we now know as Lakshmi. Yakshas were linked to water bodies and trees, which are necessary for survival, which explains their close association with Lakshmi, and with fertility in general. They were also associated with gems, and metals, so all kinds of wealth – water, plant wealth and mineral wealth. Yakshas were worshipped with flowers and coloured powder and fragrant paste and lamps under trees, as rocks and besides rivers. Scholars believe the practice of puja began first as yaksha-puja. What was first the practice of primitive forest tribes eventually became mainstream Brahmin ritual as the old yagna practices faded and new practices were adopted as Vedic thought spread from the Gangetic plains to the rest of India. In early texts, yakshas received blood sacrifices and were feared; but, later, they became less malevolent and more friendly, and red powder was used instead of blood. Wild yakshas converted to more gentle forms when they met Buddhist and Jain monks, we learn in the Jatakas and Agamas.
Place in Buddhism and Jainism
Sketches: Devdutt Pattanaik
Buddhists and Jains rejected Vedic rituals, and preferred the monastic ways, but they did not reject Kubera or Lakshmi. Both of them
were given important positions in the monastic orders. Their image was placed on either side of the Buddha, leader of the Buddhists, and the Jinas, the great teachers of the Jains. Yaksha-Yakshi couples were seen serving the sages while they meditated. Many Buddhists and Jains were merchants. And, while they appreciated the value of giving up desire as stated by the Buddha and the value of austerity as recommended by the Jinas, they also knew the value of wealth in the world. Hence, Kubera was an important deity for them. Merchant communities visualised Kubera as ruling in his kingdom of Alaka in the North and sitting on nine treasures (nava-nidhi). He had two queens: Nidhi, goddess of treasures, and Riddhi, goddess of growth. His pet mongoose, it was said, would spit out gemstones. The presence of the mongoose is significant, because the mongoose is the enemy of the snake, and snakes, especially nagas, were believed to produce gems on their hoods. Kubera is supposed to be so rich that he is nara-vahana, which means the one who rides a human being. All other gods travel on animals – Shiva on a bull, Vishnu on a hawk, Lakshmi on an elephant, and Durga on a lion – but Kubera rides a man. This indicates perhaps how man has become a slave of wealth.
In the Ramayana and the Mahabharata
By the time the Ramayana is written in Sanskrit, roughly 2,000 years ago, we learn that Kubera’s grandfather is Pulatsya, his father is Vaishrava. Vaishrava had two wives: Ilavila, who gave birth to Kubera, and Kaikesi, who gave birth to Ravana. Thus Kubera was Ravana’s older brother. Kubera, we are told, built the golden city of Lanka and had a flying chariot called Pushpak Viman. Ravana defeated him in war, and claimed both his golden city and his flying chariot. Kubera was forced to take refuge in the North, with Shiva, and to build a new city Alaka.
Scholars believe the practice of puja began first as yaksha-puja
history Indian Mythology
Clearly, there was a time when yakshas and rakshasas were seen as the same, but, over time, yakshas became the good cousins and rakshasas the bad cousins. One can speculate that these were forest tribes; those who supported the Vedic ways were seen as yakshas and those who rejected the Vedic ways were seen as rakshasas. It is significant that both yakshas and rakshasas tend to be closely associated with Shiva, and less with Vishnu, reflecting Shiva’s more wild ways and Vishnu’s more refined ways.
The stories of Kubera
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Clearly, there was a time when yakshas and rakshasas were seen as the same, but, over time, yakshas became the good cousins and rakshasas the bad cousins
WIKICOMMONSX2
In the Mahabharata, when the Pandavas drink water from a lake without permission, they are killed by the yaksha who resurrects them after Yudhishtira agrees to answer all the yaksha’s questions. Thus, yakshas are closely associated with water bodies here. In the Mahabharata, a yaksha called Sthunakarna plays a key role in transforming Shikhandi from a woman into a man. Thus, yakshas were linked to magic. In vaastu-shastra, the occult science of direction, the south is associated with death and change and, hence, the land of rakshasas, while the north is the direction of growth, prosperity, permanence and, hence, the yakshas. This reveals the tension between rakshasas and yakhshas as described in the Ramayana.
There are many stories of Kubera, of how he knew when to spend and when not to spend. In peace time, he would collect even grains of sand that would be left behind by farmers on the farm. In crisis, during floods, he would not hesitate to use sacks of rice to create dams, knowing fully well that the rice would be destroyed by this decision. Once he became so proud that he felt that his wealth could never be depleted. To teach him a lesson, Ganesha went to his house and ate all his food, reminding Kubera that material wealth can go away. Another time, he was boasting about how money can do anything. Shiva’s consort, Devi, then plucked out one of his eyes and ate it. Replace it, she said. Kubera could not; he realized that wealth cannot replace all things. Yakshas play a very important role in folk tales. In the Buddhist Jatakas, Manibhadra and Purnabhadra are leaders of the yakshas who live in the North and the South respectively. Among Jains, Manibhadra is seen as a vira, or guardian spirit. In Kalidasa’s Meghadutam, we learn of a yaksha exiled from Alaka, the city of yakshas, asking the clouds (megha) to be his messenger (duta) and give a message to his beloved, describing the sites along the way. Scholars are convinced that the notion
of the pot-bellied elephant-headed Ganesha has its origin in ancient yaksha-worship. Touching the large belly of the yaksha was supposed to be lucky. The laughing Buddha image from Zen Buddhism is closely associated with the yaksha murtis of Hinduism. Yakshas are very similar to the dwarves of Viking mythology and the goblins of Irish mythology. Essentially, they were earthly creatures, feared for their form, but sought for their treasures. Yakshas were water gods. Where there was water, there was wealth and, hence, yakshas. Together with Nagas and Gandharvas, the yakshas were creatures of the wilderness, to be found outside human settlements, once worshipped under trees, next to waterfalls, or in caves, by ancient Indians in the quest for fertility. Later, as religion became more and more organised, these deities became lesser gods and relegated to the sides of the sacred pantheon. Today, we find them on temple walls, in the sides, besides the main shrine. But their time is slowly coming back as we move from a more socialist economy to a more capitalist economy. Notice how all over India, there is a rising popularity of Feng-Shui symbols like toads on a heap of gold coins, dragons, rising bamboo shoots, fat potbellied monks and gods of fortune. These are all water deities. These are all Kubera’s subjects, yakshas from the north-eastern land called China.
About the author
Devdutt Pattanaik is a writer, illustrator and lecturer of mythology, who draws attention to its relevance in modern times. Based in Mumbai, he has over 30 books, and over 800 articles to his credit. His latest children’s books include The Girl who Chose: Ramayana for Children (Puffin) and The Boys who Fought: Mahabharata for Children (Puffin). To know more, visit www.devdutt.com
nature Tawny Owls
tawny tactics By thinking outside the box, a Yorkshire artist is gaining unique insights into the lives of his local tawny owls, discovers Amy-Jane Beer Photos by Robert Fuller
Young tawny owls often perch together so the adults can keep a watchful eye on them. Parents will defend their offspring vigorously from predators.
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BBC Wildlife
November 2017
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HE theme from The Great Escape has been in my head for days, ever since I scooted down the tunnel leading from Robert Fuller’s house to his new wildlife hide. Access is via a trolley – you lie down and haul yourself along by a rope, just like Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough. As well as getting you into the hide unnoticed, it’s also jolly good fun. The view from the hide is pretty unusual. To the right is a drystone structure with a den for stoats and a wooden maze to test their flexibility. To the left, an artificial badger sett is under construction. Behind us, a weasel snoozes in a heated nestbox.Outside is a bird table loaded with defrosted day-old chicks, strapped down so they can’t be carried off – Robert wants his visitors to feed where he can see them. Tonight, we’re concentrating on tawny owls, which Robert has been watching, photographing and painting here for 18 years. “They’re challenging,” he says. “Really secretive. The first time I saw one on a fence-post just down there I ran for my camera but, of course, when I got back it had gone. I built a nestbox out of an old stump, mounted it in a tree and there have been tawny owls there ever since.” This was good for the owls but, for Robert, getting good photos means luring the birds into the open. “The supplementary feeding started when I decided to help a young male kestrel,” he recalls. “I began putting out mice that I caught for him. When he had a family, I put the food out late at night so he’d have something first thing. It wasn’t long before the owls cottoned on and soon I was feeding them every night, too.” Robert’s expertise with owls soon became local common knowledge and people started bringing him ‘rescued’ owlets. Most of these were tawny owls. “The thing about tawnies is they fledge too soon, and, end up on the floor,” says Robert. “People assume they’ve been abandoned when, in fact, the parents are still close by.” Hand-rearing is a last resort because owlets have so much to learn from their parents. Since Robert knew the adult pair he was feeding would never struggle to find food, he decided to try fostering the owlets with them.
November 2017
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“We were winging it,” he admits. “We didn’t have nestbox cameras then, so we had no idea what was going on inside. But tawny owls are phenomenal parents and they’re used to rearing chicks of varied ages because their own broods naturally hatch over several days.” These days, when spring ‘orphans’ arrive, those that are large enough are ringed by Jean Thorpe – an amazing woman who rehabilitates most of North and East Yorkshire’s injured raptors – and Jack Ashton-Booth, another local raptor specialist. Robert transfers the owlets to the box on the first night, which occasionally means adding more than one at a time. Does that mean the parents can’t count or recognise their own? “No, they can’t. They’re pretty stupid really,” he chuckles. “They’re not colonial, so there’s no real benefit in recognising their own chicks. They have such a strong urge to nurture – much better than barn owls. You wouldn’t want a barn owl as a mother, but the tawnies are formidable.” Formidable is no exaggeration. Pioneering bird photographer Eric Hosking famously lost an eye to a tawny owl he had been watching and Robert is regularly attacked when returning
owlets to the box. “It’s like someone throwing half a brick at you. A half-brick with claws. I’ve been punctured on my back and my head. I used to wear a chainsaw helmet with a visor, but they come in so hard, I was worried they might hurt themselves. So now I wear a leather hat with ear flaps, a visor and two buffs around my neck.”
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FAMILY LIFE IS COMPLICATED
Earlier that evening, we’d walked down the valley to a nestbox, one of three made from tree stumps and now home to tawny and barn owls, and kestrels. On the way, Robert explained that last year the tawny pair raised 10 chicks – four of their own and six surrogates. Last year, however, didn’t start so well. The female laid three eggs, but one failed to hatch. The first owlet to emerge was killed by the male, which unusually, supporting two families in 2017. “He started pinching food from the nest to take to the other brood, which had already hatched,” says Robert. “I
FEBRUARY 2018
November 2017
Tawny owl chicks often end up on the ground when fledging. 1
BOTTOM: Barn owl chicks have white down and dark eyelids.
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WHEN DOES A BABY OWL NEED HELP? TAWNY OWLS
GROUNDING: For fledging tawny owls, grounding is an occupational hazard. Often a chick can climb back into its tree, so it should only be taken to a vet or rehab centre if it’s obviously injured or unwell. If not, return the chick to the nest or a nearby branch. Chicks smaller than a clenched fist are more vulnerable, but taking them into care may rob them of the natural upbringing they need. If in doubt, ask a local wildlife rehabilitation expert.
THIS PAGE: 1. An adult tawny snoozes in a kestrel nestbox 2. Two owlets make themselves at home in Robert’s nest stump FACING PAGE: 1. A male and female perch side by side, having re-stablished their territory by driving the young birds out of the area
think he got confused. He arrived in the box, the female raised up to show him his baby and he just took it.” The female tried to intervene but it was too late. So, as it turns out, only one of the owlets she is caring for is the pair’s own. The first surrogate owlet also perished after being attacked by sheep. “That happens a lot,” explains Robert. “You’d think the main risk to fledglings on the ground would be foxes, badgers or stoats, but no. Sheep see them moving and trample or head-butt them into the ground.” Like many of the birds released on Robert’s patch, last year’s adoptee owls came from Jean Thorpe. None of them are true siblings. “You can see they’re different,” Rob tells me. “Normally owlets in a family have similar coloration, but these ones are a mixture – some are really pale.”
SAFETY FIRST: If you do decide to pick up a tawny owl, put on a hat, gloves and goggles or a visor. Be vigilant for the parents – some won’t hesitate to attack if they are nearby. If you sense an airborne assault, don’t look up.
BARN OWLS You can tell barn owl chicks from tawnies by their pure white down and dark eyelids (tawny owls’ are pink). Barn owls fledge later and don’t ground as often, but are less able to self-rescue so may need help returning to the nest. As a more stringently protected species, however, a licence is required to touch them unless they’re injured or suffering.
Ann & Steve Toon/naturepl.com
2. Robert checks a rescued owlet before introducing it into a nestbox
Robert is regularly attacked. “It’s like someone throwing half a brick at you. A half-brick with claws.”
WET PLUMAGE: It’s different if a bird is wet, as waterlogged down loses all of its insulating volume. Following overnight rain, Robert brings any grounded chicks he finds inside to dry off on top of the boiler in a closed cardboard box lined with shredded newspaper. He returns them to their nest the same evening.
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We arrive under a glorious spreading wych elm. “They love this tree,” says Robert. “The way the branches twist creates level perches with good shelter. They only really use the nestbox when there are no leaves on the trees, so, after the young fledge, they’re out all the time. There’s one now.” I crane my neck. Robert has to guide my eye – at first all I can see is leaves and branches, but then I see the owlet. It’s big, almost fully grown. Its plumage is cinnamon and buff, fluffy on the chest, but developing the tree-bark adult texture on its back and sides. Its face swivels in the surrounding hood of feathers, like the bezel of a watch. Robert sets up a telescope and I take a squint. The ‘wise owl’ idea is nonsense; these aren’t brainy birds by any measure. But you can see why they have gained that reputation. Their big eyes appear all-seeing. Having spotted one chick, we quickly see another, and another. In a few minutes, all five are accounted for, then Robert spots their mother, watching us. I can clearly see the fleshy pads of her toes pressing into the branch, while the scalpel-tips
FEBRUARY 2018
The ‘wise owl’ idea is nonsense But you can see why they gained that reputation 1. A young owl comes to feed in front of Robert
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2. Robert reproduces the owls on canvas 3. A young owls’ cryptic plumage helps it avoid predators, such as buzzards. 4.Tree stumps make great nestboxes, although they are heavy 4
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1. A female tawny broods her own owlets and surrogates 2. Wet chicks are brought inside to dry off before being returned to their nest
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of her talons rest lightly on the bark. Tawny owls have moved from a ‘Green’ to ‘Amber’ listing due to their declining numbers, though the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) points out that standard survey methods (the species’ last national survey was in 2005) may be unreliable for such secretive birds. Bad weather, infanticidal parents and sheep aren’t the only threats. Over 65 per cent of dead tawnies reported to the BTO are killed by traffic. This is a skewed statistic, because road fatalities are more likely to be recorded than other deaths, but the risk is still significant, especially as roadsides are good places to find carrion or hunt small prey. If an owl killed on a road is a parent, the entire brood may be doomed.
SERIOUS RISK
Disease is a serious problem too, especially trichomonosis. This is caused by a protozoan parasite that infects the moist tissues of birds’ mouths and throats. It’s the same condition that has devastated greenfinch numbers, but it’s also common in pigeons (where it’s known as
canker) and birds of prey (in which it’s called frounce). Like kestrels and sparrowhawks, tawny owls eat dead or sickly birds and are thus highly susceptible. As the infection progresses, lesions on the throat prevent feeding. “It’s really unpleasant – they’re weak and wheezing, and if you open the bea,k it’s all yellow inside,” says Robert. “It affects whole families, because parents feed infected prey to their young, or they die and the owlets starve.” After confirming the family are safe and well, we go to check on its neighbours. Another huge nestbox, a few trees along, is home to barn owls. They’ve managed to foul the lens of the camera mounted inside the box, so Robert has to clean it. There are eight owlets inside, he tells me, as he scales the ladder. He reaches in and immediately a fury of hissing erupts – the same sound as air escaping from several inflatable mattresses.
CUTE… BUT TOUGH
Robert ducks as a shuttlecock of white feathers explodes over his shoulder and parachutes into the grass. “Oops. Keep an eye on that one!”
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he grins. “I’ll get it back in a minute.” Five minutes later, the lens is clean again, the owlet is safely back in the box and we’re heading back to the ‘Great Escape’ hide. Soon after 10pm, the calling starts: a chorus of ‘kerrr-icks’ all around us. The female appears on a fallen branch at the end of the garden and is joined by an owlet, then I make out the silhouettes of two more on a high feeding table. After a minute or two, the adult takes off and flies towards us. Her huge wings are cloud-soft, but she lands with a heavy clunk on the table. She seems as surprised as I am and looks down at her feet, bobbing as if trying to work out whether they really are as big as they look. I suppress a giggle and she turns towards us. There’s something teddy-bearish about her round face and obsidian eyes. Then she bends, seizes one of the day-old chicks and pulls. She lifts her wings for balance, revealing muscular legs that flex to take the strain. I hear sinew ripping as the meal is dismembered. This is one badass teddy-bear. They’ll keep coming until September, Robert expects. “The adults parent them until August, but then things start to break down and by October it’s war.” Autumn is the time for young to find territories of their own. These chicks might not go far though. Young from previous years have moved to the next valley, where Robert has erected more nestboxes. 88 FEBRUARY 2018
1. A male tawny arrives with a meal for a youngster
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2. A young tawny owl takes cover from mobbing blackbirds under Robert’s car 3. Grounded owlets can end up waterlogged in bad weather and unable to fly
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“They remember this place and sneak back for food when they have their own young. I know it’s them because I find day-old chicken remains in their boxes.” There must be special satisfaction in knowing so many of these birds would not have survived without help. “Yes, it’s magic,” agrees Robert. “Rescuing them is one thing, but a natural start is the only way they can learn everything they need to know. My job is to help them stay wild.” AMY-JANE BEER is a natural-history writer and regular BBC Wildlife Q&A contributor.
PUZZLE PIT CROSSWORD NO. 41
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Across 8 Otherwise (4) 9 Seizes or arrests (10) 10 Nun's headdress (6) 11 See __ __ __ : be in complete agreement about? (3,2,3) 12 Rebukes, reproaches or denounces (8) 14 Fears (6) 16 Devoted followers (4) 17 Articles of faith (5) 18 Only fair (2-2) 19 Justification (6) 21 Stinging arachnid (8) 23 Threatening evil (8) 26 Runs away to marry (6) 27 Dull and uninspiring, in a way? (10) 28 Stadium section (4)
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Down 1 Unable to read or write (10) 2 Loathes or spurns (8) 3 Vocation (6) 4 Fencer's blade (4) 5 Decapitated (8) 6 "B" in B.C.? (6) 7 Indolently (4) 13 Oozes through (5) 15 Found out, unearthed or invented? (10) 17 Understand or interpret (8) 18 Sustains, maintains or keeps up (8) 20 ___ work: is a lazy person, in a way? (6) 22 Headed the batting order (6) 24 Terrible Russian (4) 25 Decays or putrefies (4)
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SOLUTION OF CROSSWORD NO. 40
HOW IT’S DONE The puzzle will already be familiar to crossword enthusiasts, 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 English. Good luck!
R I B S L A C U M B I L I C Y A O T M O L I O C G B O N Y I C O R N O C K N E O C F C E R E B R U Y M X U P E R I C A
C H R Y M A D U S L A R T E L A R N P A E P I G L E S V E N E A
L Y N X
O T
K E R
E C A P O W R I T S M M A N D I B O R D I U M
A N V I L N T T I S H U R I C L E R I A T I N Y T S H K B R A I N E N L E
Brain teasers Puzzles
PUZZLE PIT
PICTURE SEARCH
F THE MAZE O T U O Y A W R U O FIND Y
In 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. Picture Search See many of them youby can In the how jumble below, the words represented each offind. the 16 pictures are hidden either horizontally, vertically or diagonally forward or backLook outalways forindescriptive wards but a straight line. Seenames. how many of them you can find? Look out for descriptive names..
N W A L R U S H E U H T S
H R Y G L N F D J M A E E
H E R G L A S S L B N S A
Q F W D Q S B Q A R D T H
B R F T D T L Y P E B T O
C I D O O R B E E L A U R
O G N I M A L F N L G B S
S E D I R W S M I A L E E
P R E T I B R T O L S O H
E A H S C E H S E D K L V
A T M M E R Y P C R H Q S
R O D C S R Y X E R U B Y
I R O N C Y M B A L I I W
Solution to Picture Search
SCRAMBLE
Cymbal, flamingo, glass, handbag, Nepal, refrigerator, rice, ruby, seahorse, spear, strawberry, test tube, toaster, umbrella, volleyball, walrus
move one Solve the four anagrams and r ordinary fou form to letter to each square rked with an ma ers lett the nge words. Now arra riddle or to the r to asterisk(*) to form the answe ted ica . fill in the missing words as ind *
GSUEE BCKAA
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AEIVRR EIRVHT
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_ - Voltaire (3,..,5) The __ is the avenue to the ___
HEAD & TAIL
the form to fill the blank in Look at the clue part of nd ord. The seco of a compound w st part of the next fir the answer is the answer, etc. Haul off
Cart
match Not a home Strategy sounding Loud and re Cultivated Wild celery or source Foundation
90 FEBRUARY 2018
Roots
BBC KNOWLEDGE QUIZ
ENIGMA CODE
See how you fare in the general knowledge quiz given below.
DOUBLE BARRELLED
What word can be placed in front of the five words shown to form, in each case, another word?
L E A D E R
Enigma code
W I D T H
Each colour in our code represents a letter.
W
When you have cracked the code you will be able to make up seven words.
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A G E
The clue to first word is given to help you get started.
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S T A N D
The Clue : Prison
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official
W A G O N
Solution to Enigma Code :
W
BRAIN TEASERS
1) 1) Only one word in the English language has a single letter repeated 6 times. What is it? 2) What’s black when you get it, Red when you use it. And white when you’re all through with it? 3) What is the largest possible number you can write using only 2 digits - just 2 digits, nothing else?
for Finland. If the plane was to crash in Sweden, where would the survivors be buried? 5) Two bankrobbers rob the local bank. They then hop into their car and scurry off to their hideout 20 miles away. When they get there, they realise that one of their tyres had been completely flat the whole time. How did they get to their hideout without noticing?
4) A group of Englishmen is travelling on a German plane, piloted by an Norwegian, bound
PICK & CHOOSE of sets of letters sing the right combination Solve the six clues by cho and only in ers can be used only once given below. Each set of lett cifies how many spe r at the end of the clues the order given. The numbe the solution. sets of letters are used in 1.
Nonsense
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Hg in the periodic table
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Harry Houdini was a famous one
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Counting frame
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Meant
3) What is the capital of Gabon? a) Libreville b) Kigali c) Mogadishu 4) Who was the last man to walk on the moon? a) Buzz Aldrin b) Alan Bean c) Eugene Cernan
Warden, Wander, Wonder, Onward, Toward, Wanted, Answer
W
2) What was the name of Shylock’s wife in Shakespeare’s the Merchant of Venice? a) Leah b) Portia c) Titania
5) Which rock star is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris? a) Jimi Hendrix b) Jim Morrison c) Kurt Cobain 6) What is the SI unit of radioactivity? a) Coulomb b) Geiger c) Becquerel 7) Who is the co-founder and CEO of Twitter? a) Jack Dorsey b) Omid Kordestani c) Paul Allen
Brain Teasers: 1 Indivisibility. 2. Charcoal . 3. 9 to the power 9, this is 9x9x9x9x9x9x9x9x9 or 387,420,489. 4. You do not usually bury survivors. 5. The flat was the spare tyre in the trunk.
W
1) Who was the first President of Israel? a) David Ben-Gurion b) Chaim Weizmann c) Yitzhak Rabin
Pick & choose: 1. Gibberish, 2. Mercury, 3. Escapologist, 4. Abacus, 5. Intended, 6. Montague
The clue: Prison official
Ratings: 1-3 Poor, 4-5 Fair, 6-7 Excellent
BBC Knowledge Quiz: 1. b) Chaim Weizmann, 2. a) Leah, 3. a) Libreville, 4. c) Eugene Cernan, 5. b) Jim Morrison, 6. c) Becquerel, 7. a) Jack Dorsey
Each colour in our code represents a letter. When you have cracked the code, you will be able to make seven words. The clue to the first word is given to help you get started.
Double Barrelled: Band Enigma Code: Warden, Wander, Wonder, Onward, Toward, Wanted, Answer Head & Tail: Cart-Away-Game-Plan-Gent-Eel-Grass-Roots Scramble: Segue, aback, arrive, thrive. Answer: The ear is the avenue to the heart - Voltaire Picture Search: Cymbal, flamingo, glass, handbag, Nepal, refrigerator, rice, ruby, seahorse, spear, strawberry, test tube, toaster, umbrella, volleyball, walrus
Solutions:
6. Romeo's family in Romeo and Juliet ESC CURY ABA
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UZBEK TREASURE returns home
92 FEBRUARY 2018
A huge glazed tile stolen from the 12th-century Chashma-i Ayub monument near Bukhara in Uzbekistan has been returned after it surfaced in a London gallery. The decorative Islamic calligraphic tile, which dates from the 13th century, is just over half a metre high and was stolen in 2014.
THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
found object History