Science News - 29 January 2022

COVID-19’s Diabetes Link | Neandertal Landscaping
MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE s JANUARY 29, 2022
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VOL. 201 | NO. 2
Features
16 Materials for Modern Life
COVER STORY A century of material developments
and manipulations gave us products with plenty
of sought-after properties and some unintended
consequences. By Carolyn Wilke
24 Mental Gymnastics
Superstar athletes are shining a spotlight on mental
health as researchers study how to give elite
competitors a psychological boost on and off the field.
By Ashley Yeager
24
News
6 The coronavirus’s ability to 9 Excavated furnaces 12 The ice shelf keeping
infect fat cells hints at why demonstrate that Antarctica’s “doomsday”
some COVID-19 patients metalworking goes way glacier from sliding into
develop diabetes back in the Arctic the sea may collapse
within five years
8 Neandertals that lived 10 NASA’s Parker Solar
125,000 years ago earn Probe is pushing past 13 Scientists built a robot
the title of oldest known the sun’s boundaries that strikes fear into the
landscapers hearts of invasive fish 4
11 Enceladus’ plumes
Sea level rise might have may come from slush 14 Imaginary numbers
brought an end to Viking within the Saturnian are a real necessity in Departments
society in Greenland moon’s icy shell quantum physics
2 EDITOR’S NOTE
4 NOTEBOOK
A desert gecko survives on
insect migrants; millipedes
are no longer a lie
FROM TOP: DAVID SINCLAIR PHOTO; PARHAM BEIHAGHI; JOY NG/GSFC/NASA
29 REVIEWS & PREVIEWS

If you’re stuck at home,
try a citizen science
project to pass the time
31 FEEDBACK
32 SCIENCE VISUALIZED
Fossils provide a peek at
Australia’s wetter past
COVER The stuff of

daily life — how we live,
work, communicate and
travel — is dramatically
different from decades
ago. John Lamb/The Image
10 Bank/Getty Images
www.sciencenews.org | January 29, 2022 1

EDITOR’S NOTE
It’s time to manage

PUBLISHER Maya Ajmera
EDITOR IN CHIEF Nancy Shute
EDITORIAL
elite expectations EDITOR , SPECIAL PROJECTS Elizabeth Quill

NEWS DIRECTOR Macon Morehouse
FEATURES EDITOR Cori Vanchieri
MANAGING EDITOR , MAGAZINE Erin Wayman
The Winter Olympics start soon. We get another chance DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR Emily DeMarco
ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR Ashley Yeager
to watch and marvel at astounding feats of endurance, ASSOCIATE EDITOR Cassie Martin
ASSOCIATE DIGITAL EDITOR Helen Thompson
strength and precision (assuming the Beijing Games AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT EDITOR Mike Denison
CIVIC SCIENCE FELLOW Martina G. Efeyini
proceed amid the pandemic). ASTRONOMY Lisa Grossman
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES Bruce Bower
Just six months ago, a stunned world witnessed BIOMEDICAL Aimee Cunningham
U.S. gymnast Simone Biles announce she was pulling out of several events in EARTH AND CLIMATE Carolyn Gramling
LIFE SCIENCES Susan Milius
the Summer Games because her mind and body weren’t in sync. She had seri- MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, SENIOR WRITER Tina Hesman Saey
NEUROSCIENCE , SENIOR WRITER Laura Sanders
ous worries that she could get hurt while performing her high-risk maneuvers. PHYSICS , SENIOR WRITER Emily Conover
SOCIAL SCIENCES Sujata Gupta
“When Simone Biles made her announcement, I really felt for her,” says STAFF WRITERS Erin Garcia de Jesús, Jonathan Lambert
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Aina Abell
associate news editor Ashley Yeager. “There’s a lot of anxiety and judgment in SCIENCE WRITER INTERN Freda Kreier
CONTRIBUTING CORRESPONDENTS
sports. And a lot of your identity is wrapped up there.” Yeager, who was a Laura Beil, Tom Siegfried, Alexandra Witze
Division I swimmer at the University of Tennessee, remembers the pressures. DESIGN
CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER Stephen Egts
Eager to know what researchers had learned about elite athletes and men- DESIGN DIRECTOR Erin Otwell
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tal health since she competed in the pool 15 years ago, Yeager dove into the ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Chang Won Chang
research. She found recent studies suggesting the value of teaching mindful- SCIENCE NEWS FOR STUDENTS
EDITOR Janet Raloff
ness and training people to pay attention to the now rather than brood over MANAGING EDITOR Sarah Zielinski
ASSISTANT EDITOR Maria Temming
past mistakes (Page 24). It was heartening, she says. “These issues haven’t just WEB PRODUCER Lillian Steenblik Hwang
emerged, but now it seems like there are efforts to help more people.” Among SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE
PRESIDENT AND CEO Maya Ajmera
athletes, who Yeager admits are a proud bunch, there’s not a lot of sharing CHIEF OF STAFF Rachel Goldman Alper
about struggles. But she hopes the data on how common anxiety and depres- CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Kathlene Collins
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sion are among athletes will encourage individuals to get help. CHIEF, EVENTS AND OPERATIONS Cait Goldberg
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“We’re not just athletes or entertainment, we’re human too,” Biles said on CHIEF ADVANCEMENT OFFICER Bruce B. Makous
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August 4 while still at the Tokyo Games. “We have emotions and feelings and CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Dan Reznikov
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ADV E RTI SE M E NT
NOTEBOOK
Excerpt from the Vulture bees

January 29, 1972 forage for protein
issue of Science News from a piece of
rotting chicken in
a Costa Rican jungle.
Microbes in the bees’ guts
50 YEARS AGO protect the insects from
becoming sick, scientists say.
Marijuana
usage high THE SCIENCE LIFE
Approximately 24 million
Americans have used mari-
How meat-eating vulture bees avoid food poisoning
juana at least one time. A Mention foraging bees and most people as well as 30 or so of two other types of
national survey reports will picture insects flitting from flower to local bees — one that feeds on only flow-
that more than 8 million flower in search of nectar. But in the jun- ers and one that dines on both flowers
are still using the drug.… gles of Central and South America, some and rotting meat. All bees were stored
Usage figures are 33 percent bees have a taste for decaying flesh. in alcohol to preserve the insects’ DNA
higher than the [National These vulture bees are “the weirdos of for analysis, as well as the DNA of any
Commission on Marijuana the bee world,” says entomologist Jessica gut microbes.
and Drug Abuse] had Maccaro of the University of California, Strictly meat-eating bees had
expected, but … after age 25 Riverside. Most bees are vegetarian. between 30 percent and 35 percent
pot smoking falls off rapidly. Scientists have puzzled over why vul- more acid-producing gut bacteria than
ture bees seem to prefer rotting carcasses strictly vegetarian bees and the ones
UPDATE: Americans’ interest to nectar (SN: 2/14/04, p. 101). Now, that sometimes eat meat, the team
in marijuana has grown over Maccaro and colleagues think they have found. Some types of microbes showed
the last 50 years. Since 1972, cracked the case by looking into the guts up only in the solely carnivorous bees.
the number of people age of these stingless buzzers. Similar acid-producing bacteria in the
12 and older in the United Vulture bees (Trigona spp.) have a lot guts of vultures and hyenas kill toxin-
States who, in their lifetimes, more acid-producing gut bacteria than producing microbes in rotting meat,
have inhaled or ingested the their vegetarian counterparts do, Maccaro keeping the animals from getting sick.
drug has increased more than and colleagues report in the December The microbes probably do the same for
fivefold, to 126.5 million as mBio. And those bacteria are the same the meat-eating bees, the team says.
of 2020, according to the types that protect vultures and hyenas The health benefit extends beyond
National Survey on Drug Use from getting sick on rotting meat. individual bees, says evolutionary ecolo-
and Health. The gain in users To probe the bees’ insides, Maccaro’s gist David Roubik of the Smithsonian
happened as the perceived colleagues trekked into a Costa Rican jun- Tropical Research Institute in Balboa,
danger of marijuana dropped gle. Since vulture bees feed on almost any Panama. Vulture bees regurgitate some
over time (SN: 6/14/14, p. 16). dead animal, including lizards and snakes, of the meat into nests, where it serves
And unlike in the 1970s, older the researchers cut up store-bought as food for young bees. Acid-loving gut
adults are getting in on the chicken and suspended the raw flesh from bacteria end up in this food reserve,
action, though prevalence has tree branches with string. Roubik says. “Otherwise, destructive
risen among adults of all ages. “The funny thing is we’re all vegetarians,” bacteria would ruin the food and release
Of the 49.6 million people who says entomologist Quinn McFrederick, also enough toxins to kill the colony.”
reported using pot in 2020, of UC Riverside. “It was kind of gross for In the end, Maccaro says, it’s hard to
about 47 percent were ages us to cut up the chicken.” That gross fac- know which evolved first — the gut bac-
tor quickly intensified in the warm, humid teria or the bees’ ability to eat meat. But
Q. MCFREDERICK
26 to 49, and about 24 percent

were 50 or older. jungle: The meat turned slimy and stinky. the bees probably first turned to meat
Bees took the bait within a day. The team because of intense competition for nec-
trapped about 30 strictly meat-eating bees, tar, she suspects. — Sharon Oosthoek

SCIENCE STATS Predicted relative recovery rates for tropical forest attributes
Tropical forests can regain ground fast 100 Soil carbon

Soil nitrogen
When farmland is left alone, nature can make a surprisingly
quick comeback. After just 20 years, tropical forests that were 80
cleared for agriculture can recover by nearly 80 percent in certain
Relative recovery (percent)

Species richness
key domains, including biodiversity and soil health, researchers
report in the Dec. 10 Science. An analysis of 77 regrowing forests 60
across the Americas and West Africa found that soil bounced
back fastest: Carbon and nitrogen levels nearly reached those of
old-growth forests — which show no signs of human use in at least 40
100 years — within a decade after abandonment (see graph, right). Attribute group
After 37 years, regrowing forests had nearly as many plant species Species composition Soil
on average as old-growth forests. But it may take 120 years for 20
Biodiversity
the species composition, or relative abundance of each species, Aboveground biomass Structure
to rebound, the team estimates. Total aboveground biomass may
0
also take 120 years to rebound. Seeds and stumps left after clear- 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
ing probably sped up recovery, the team says. Recovery could be Time (years)
slower on more intensely farmed land. — Jonathan Lambert SOURCE: L. POORTER ET AL/SCIENCE 2021
MYSTERY SOLVED
Scientists have
discovered the Spider gecko diet divulges
first millipede
with at least desert diversity
1,000 legs. The A handful of small geckos have spilled their guts
specimen (shown),
a 1,306-legged for science, revealing how the creatures get by in a
female member part of Earth’s hottest landscape.
of a newfound Surface temperatures in the Lut Desert in Iran,
species, is the
leggiest creature home to the Misonne’s spider gecko (Rhinogecko
on Earth. misonnei), soar past 65° Celsius more frequently
than anywhere else on the planet. The extreme
heat makes it difficult for life to thrive, and for
years, ecologists have regarded the desert as
mostly barren.
FIRST To find out how the gecko (one shown below)
sustains itself, entomologist Hossein Rajaei of
Finally, a millipede that lives up to its name
FROM TOP: C. CHANG; P.E. MAREK ET AL/SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 2021; PARHAM BEIHAGHI
the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History

Millipedes, as we’ve known them, have been a lie. The Latin name for in Germany and colleagues analyzed the stomach
the arthropods implies an impressive set of 1,000 feet. Yet no millipede contents of six geckos. Within the digestive soup
with more than 750 legs has ever been found, until now. The first milli- stewed DNA from 94 species, about 81 percent
pede that lives up to its moniker uses 1,306 legs to tunnel through soil of which hail from outside the Lut, the team
deep beneath Western Australia, researchers report December 16 in reports November 18 in the Journal of Zoological
Scientific Reports. Dubbed Eumillipes persephone, it’s the leggiest crea- Systematics and Evolutionary Research. The
ture ever known to crawl Earth. Found in miners’ prospecting drill holes, outsiders were mainly flies, moths and wasps
the specimen and seven other long, threadlike millipedes were sent to migrating from more temperate locales. There’s
entomologist Paul Marek of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg for a closer look. more living here than meets the eye, Rajaei says.
While inspecting a 95-millimeter-long female under a microscope, he — Jude Coleman
realized he beheld something special. “Oh, my God, this has more than
1,000 legs!” he thought. The team suspects E. persephone’s elongated, leg-
packed body helps it maneuver through soil in up to eight directions at
once, like a tangled strand of mobile pasta. E. persephone still holds many
secrets, but Marek is sure of one thing: “Textbooks are going to have to be
changed,” he says.“We finally have a real millipede.” — Jonathan Lambert

the COVID,” she says. “I was drinking intensive care unit had high blood sugar.
News
BODY & BRAIN
gallons of water.” But she knew that
excessive thirst can be a sign of diabetes.
So she checked her blood sugar. A person
is considered diabetic when levels of glu-
cose reach 200 milligrams per deciliter
Preexisting diabetes is a risk factor for
poor outcomes from COVID-19. But like
Sullivan, many of the patients that Lo
and his colleagues were seeing did not
have diabetes before they got ill. People
of blood. Sullivan’s was over 500. sometimes develop diabetes as they age,
Does COVID-19 Sullivan is not alone. In a study of but Lo’s patients with high blood sugar
trigger diabetes? more than 3,800 hospitalized COVID-19
patients, just under half developed
were often in their 30s and 40s, he says.
And blood glucose levels were incred-
The coronavirus may cause high blood sugar levels. Many of the ibly high, sometimes more than twice
fat cells to miscommunicate patients, like Sullivan, were not previ- the level that indicates diabetes.
ously diabetic, cardiologist James Lo Such sky-high levels of blood sugar
BY TINA HESMAN SAEY and colleagues reported in the Nov. 2 Cell were associated with a 15 times higher
Nola Sullivan recently marked an Metabolism. About 91 percent of the intu- risk of intubation and 3.6 times higher
inauspicious anniversary. A little more bated COVID-19 patients in the study had risk of death compared with people with
than a year ago, on November 16, 2020, high blood sugar, as did almost 73 percent COVID-19 who had normal blood sugar
the 57-year-old from Kellogg, Idaho, of people who died of the disease. levels, Lo and colleagues found.
came down with COVID-19. Lo’s group, based at Weill Cornell “We don’t know if the high blood sugar
“I lost my taste and smell, with a Medicine in New York City, and oth- is causal of the bad outcome or reflective
very bad head cold, body aches, muscle ers are now working to identify what’s of the bad outcome,” says Pajvani, who
spasm, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, diar- causing high blood sugar in people with wasn’t involved in the study. Still, he and
rhea,” she says. It took a month for her COVID-19 and what to do about it. other doctors aren’t totally surprised by
muscle spasms and a lingering head- the connection between COVID-19 and
ache to go away. She missed nearly three Sugar spikes high blood sugar, or hyperglycemia.
months of work. Her senses of smell and In March and April 2020 — months before High blood sugar has been documented
taste still haven’t fully returned. “I still Sullivan caught COVID-19 — Columbia in people with acute respiratory distress
have the fatigue,” she says. “It’s horrible. University Irving Medical Center in New syndrome, or ARDS, caused by injuries
I’m nauseous all the time.” York City was full of COVID-19 patients. or infections with viruses or bacteria.
Sullivan has another lasting reminder Endocrinologist Utpal Pajvani says he ARDS is a condition in which the lungs
of her battle with the coronavirus too: noticed that “a lot of those people, but not can’t supply enough oxygen to the body.
diabetes. a majority, were coming in with very high COVID-19 patients with ARDS and
When she finally returned to work blood sugars. For some of those people, high blood sugar spent three times as
at the pharmacy where she’s a techni- this was brand new for them.” long in the hospital as people with ARDS
cian, she noticed she was thirsty all the Lo too noticed that many of the caused by COVID-19 and who had nor-
time. “I just thought that was part of COVID -19 patients in his hospital’s mal blood sugar levels, Lo and colleagues
found. But weirdly, people with hyper-
glycemia who had ARDS caused by
COVID-19 were less likely to die than
hyperglycemic people with ARDS due
to other causes.
“The outlook was still bad, just not
as bad in the group with ARDS and
COVID, which is surprising,” says Ralph
DeFronzo, an endocrinologist and chief
TOM WERNER/DIGITALVISION/GETTY IMAGES
of the diabetes division at the University

of Texas Health Science Center at
San Antonio, who was not involved with
Lo’s study.
Finding a culprit
Exactly what sends blood sugar soar-
After a bout with COVID-19, some people are left with diabetes and must monitor
their blood sugar levels with finger pricks and testing devices. ing in people with COVID-19 has been
a mystery. Some evidence has suggested

that the coronavirus infects cells in the
pancreas that make insulin, a hormone
that lowers blood sugar levels by sig-
naling cells to take in sugar and burn it
for fuel. But in Lo’s study, people with
COVID-19 who had high blood sugar
still made high levels of C-peptide, a bit
of protein that is made alongside insulin
in pancreatic cells. High C-peptide lev-
els indicate that the patients’ pancreatic
cells were producing insulin.
These people’s blood sugar was still
high, though. So if the pancreatic cells
Fat cells, like these human cells seen in a light microscope image, do more than store lipids
weren’t the problem, something else (blue-green). Fat also makes hormones that can help regulate metabolism. COVID-19 may
must be going wrong. disrupt production of some fat hormones, causing diabetes in some people.
That something else may be that
fat cells infected with the coronavirus Medicine. That’s yet another clue that fat back at a group of patients, but didn’t
send the wrong message to other cells, is involved in severe disease. match their characteristics and limit
ultimately leading to high blood sugar, For instance, autopsies revealed that other variables from the beginning, the
Lo and colleagues suggest. Lo’s team the coronavirus had infected the fat cells work can’t definitively show the cause of
discovered that COVID -19 patients of nine of 18 men who died of COVID-19, COVID-19–related diabetes. “This gives
had low levels of adiponectin, a hor- researchers in Germany reported in the us a great hint of the type of study to do,”
mone produced by fat cells that helps Jan. 4 Cell Metabolism. All nine of the he says.
other cells heed insulin’s call to take in men with coronavirus in their fat were
sugar. People with obesity also often overweight or obese. The researchers A lasting legacy
make low levels of adiponectin, possi- also found the virus in the fat cells of Whether coronavirus infections cause
bly explaining why they are at risk for five of 12 women who died of COVID-19, diabetes or simply unmask the con-
poor outcomes from COVID-19. Levels but those women were not all over- dition in susceptible people, such as
of several other hormones produced weight or obese. people who are overweight or obese, is
by fat cells were also out of whack, the Inspired by Lo’s work, the German not yet clear, DeFronzo says. Alemán
researchers found. team uncovered evidence that corona- agrees. “A lot of these patients have an
The results suggest that the high blood virus infection also affects fat cells’ underlying state of insulin resistance,
sugar levels of people with COVID-19 ability to metabolize some lipids, lead- likely prediabetes, but then acute illness
result from insulin resistance — a con- ing people with COVID-19 to develop in the form of COVID-19 tips [them]
dition in which cells ignore insulin’s higher levels of triglycerides in their over to diabetes.”
message to take in glucose — brought on blood. That’s yet another clue that fat Doctors may be able to counteract
by a dearth of fat hormones rather than isn’t working properly in some people high blood sugar by giving COVID-19
by an inability to produce insulin. with COVID -19. And these changes patients drugs called thiazolidinediones
The coronavirus can infect fat cells, in fat may contribute to more severe or glitazones, which make cells more
the researchers’ experiments with disease. sensitive to insulin’s action. DeFronzo
hamsters and with cells grown in lab Obesity is often associated with says he hopes to test one of those drugs,
dishes showed. Damage done to fat inflammation in fat and other tissues. called pioglitazone, in COVID -19
cells directly by the virus, or indirectly Coronavirus infection may make that patients with high blood sugar. The aim
by inflammation instigated to fight the inflammation worse, tipping the scales is to prevent the worst outcomes from
virus, may interfere with fat cells’ abil- toward messed-up hormone produc- COVID -19, but patients’ high blood
ity to make normal hormone levels and tion and eventual diabetes, Alemán sugar may linger.
help maintain steady blood sugar levels, says. Lo’s findings “lend credence to the For Sullivan, changing her diet and
Lo says. idea that adipose is the reservoir for this taking medication have helped her con-
MICROSCAPE/SCIENCE SOURCE
Experiments by other researchers low-grade inflammation that then gets trol her blood sugar levels. “I’ve lost
have also indicated that the corona- triggered by COVID,” Alemán says. almost 60 pounds,” she says. But “they
virus can replicate in human fat, also But the conclusion is not a slam dunk, say that the diabetes will probably be for
known as adipose tissue, says José Pajvani says. “This is an example of very life.” s
Alemán, an endocrinologist at the New good research done in very difficult set- Trishla Ostwal contributed reporting to
York University Grossman School of tings.” But because the study looked this story.

NEWS
HUMANS & SOCIETY whether its roots extend to the Stone Age.
Regular fire use by members of the
Neandertals shaped European terrain Homo genus began around 400,000
The hominids are the first known to have left marks on nature years ago (SN: 5/5/12, p. 18). Until now,
the earliest evidence of H. sapiens occu-
BY BRUCE BOWER constructing shelters, the team says. pations associated with increased fire
Neandertals took Stone Age landscaping “We might be dealing with larger and setting and shifts to open habitats date
to a previously unrecognized level. less mobile groups of [Neandertals] than to around 40,000 years ago in Australia,
Around 125,000 years ago, these close commonly acknowledged,” Roebroeks 45,000 years ago in highland New Guinea
human relatives transformed a largely says, thanks in part to rising tempera- and 50,000 years ago in Borneo.
forested area bordering two central tures after around 150,000 years ago Analyses of lake cores and stone-tool
European lakes into a relatively open that cleared ice sheets from resource-rich sites in southern-central Africa indi-
landscape, archaeologist Wil Roebroeks locations such as Neumark-Nord. cate that fires set by increasing numbers
of Leiden University in the Netherlands Whether Neandertals at Neumark- of H. sapiens kept the landscape open
and colleagues say. Analyses of pollen, Nord set fires to clear large tracts of even as rainy conditions conducive
charcoal, animal fossils and other mate- land, a practice that has been observed to forest growth developed around
rial previously unearthed at two ancient among some modern hunter-gatherers, 85,000 years ago. Open environments
lake basins in Germany provide the oldest is unclear. The geologic remnants of still predominate in this part of Africa,
known evidence of hominids reshaping many small campfires may look much paleoanthropologist Jessica Thompson
their environments, the team reports in like those of a small number of large fires, of Yale University and colleagues
the Dec. 17 Science Advances. Roebroeks says. reported in the May 7 Science Advances.
The excavated areas are located within Finds at Neumark-Nord add to a Humans and Neandertals had likely been
a site called Neumark-Nord. Neandertals’ debate about when Homo sapiens and modifying their ecosystems “for a very
daily activities there had a big environ- their relatives began to have a domi- long time,” Thompson says.
mental impact, the researchers suspect. nating influence on the natural world. Pollen preserved in ancient sediments
Those pursuits, which occurred over Some scientists regard this period as a at Neumark-Nord indicate that grasses
about 2,000 years, included setting camp- new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene. and herbs, signs of an open landscape,
fires, butchering game, making tools and It’s unclear when this epoch began and appeared around 125,000 years ago,
HUMANS & SOCIETY Geophysical Union’s fall meeting.

Vikings first colonized Greenland in
Greenland Vikings 985. Settlers arrived during the Medieval
faced rising seas Warm Period, when conditions there and
across Europe were unusually temperate
Climate change might have for a handful of centuries. By 1350, the
hastened the society’s end climate took a turn for the worse with the
beginning of the Little Ice Age, a period
BY FREDA KREIER of regional cooling that lasted well into
In 1721, a Norwegian missionary set sail the 19th century.
The last written record
for Greenland in the hopes of convert- Researchers have long speculated that of Greenland’s Vikings
ing the Viking descendants living there a rapidly changing climate could have describes a wedding in
to Protestantism. When he arrived, the dealt a blow to Greenland’s Norse soci- this former church.
only traces he found of the Norse society ety. The island probably became much
were ruins of settlements that had been colder in the last 100 years of Norse sea level around Greenland tends to rise
NUMBER 57/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CC0 1.0)
abandoned 300 years earlier. occupation, which would have made when the ice sheet grows. That’s because
No known written record explains farming and raising livestock difficult, the ice pushes the land down while grav-
why the Vikings left or died out. But a says Boyang Zhao, a paleoclimatologist itationally pulling on nearby seawater.
new simulation of Greenland’s coastline at Brown University in Providence, R.I, Simulating the impact of the weight of
indicates that as the island’s ice sheet who was not involved in the work. the ice and its tug on the water, the team
started expanding around that time, sea Lower temperatures, Borreggine and found that sea level rose enough to flood
levels rose drastically, Harvard geophysi- colleagues say, would have had another the coast by hundreds of meters in some
cist Marisa Borreggine and colleagues impact on Greenland: the expansion of areas at the start of the Little Ice Age.
reported December 15 at the American the island’s ice sheet. Counterintuitively, Between the time the Vikings arrived

Roebroeks and colleagues say. Stone HUMANS & SOCIETY
artifacts — some showing signs of having
been heated — and animal bones display- Arctic ironmaking
ing butchery marks date to the same time
at Neumark-Nord, when Neandertals but
got an early start
not H. sapiens inhabited Europe. Ancient hunter-gatherers were
Stone tools and bone fragments with metalsmiths, new finds show
signs of heating, burned wood, charred
seeds and dense patches of charcoal BY BRUCE BOWER
particles suggest that Neandertals had Hunter-gatherers who lived more than
Discoveries from
frequently set fires near the lakes. 2,000 years ago near the top of the world northeastern Sweden,
Pollen from two other sites in the same appear to have run ironworking opera- including this molded bronze
part of Germany, where researchers previ- tions as advanced as those of farming buckle (front and back shown), have
uncovered advanced iron production and
ously found small numbers of stone tools societies far to the south. metalworking among hunter-gatherers
suggesting a limited Neandertal presence, Excavations at two sites in northeast- who lived there more than 2,000 years ago.
show that forests dominated there when ern Sweden uncovered ancient furnaces
Neandertals inhabited Neumark-Nord’s and fire pits that hunter-gatherers used At the first Swedish site, Sangis,
grasslands. That strengthens the view that for metalworking. A mobile lifestyle Bennerhag’s team uncovered a rectan-
Neandertals altered the Neumark-Nord did not prevent hardy groups based in gular iron-smelting furnace consisting of
landscape rather than settling there after or near the Arctic Circle from organiz- a stone frame and clay shaft. Holes in the
forests had shrunk, Roebroeks says. ing large-scale efforts to produce iron frame served as inlets for air blown on
Archaeologist Manuel Will of the and craft metal objects, archaeologist burning charcoal inside, probably by bel-
U niversity of Tübingen in Germany Carina Bennerhag of Luleå University lows placed on flat stones, the team says.
agrees. The findings “should be a wake- of Technology in Sweden and colleagues By-products of heating iron ore at high
up call” for the scientific community say. In fact, hunter-gatherers who moved temperatures were found in and near
to include archaeologists studying the for part of the year across cold, forested the furnace. Radiocarbon dating of fur-
Paleolithic record in efforts to identify regions apparently exchanged resources nace remains suggests iron production
the start of the Anthropocene, he says. s and knowledge related to metallurgy, the occurred between around 200 and 50 B.C.
extraction of metals from ores, the team Areas that hunter-gatherers occu-
reports in the December Antiquity. pied about 500 meters from the furnace
and when they left, there was “pretty Ancient hunter-gatherers at the two contained at least three fire pits where
intense coastal flooding, such that cer- Swedish sites “were more socially orga- iron was reheated and refined. There,
tain pieces of land that were connected nized and sedentary than we previously researchers found several iron items
to each other were no longer connected,” thought,” says Luleå archaeologist and and others made of steel, a bronze buckle
Borreggine says. This flooding also could coauthor Kristina Söderholm. Groups and metallic waste with copper droplets
have destroyed land used for farming. must have settled for substantial amounts on the surface, suggesting that different
S. NYGREN, © NORRBOTTENS MUSEUM, C. BENNERHAG ET AL/ANTIQUITY 2021 (CC BY 4.0)
Though archaeological evidence sug- of time at locations near crucial resources metals were produced at Sangis.
gests that Greenland’s Norse people such as ores, wood, clay and stone. Excavations at a second site, Vivungi,
relied on seafood more and more in the Many investigators regard ironwork- uncovered two iron-smelting furnaces
last century of their occupation, learning ing as an invention of large agricultural containing iron ore and by-products
to adapt may ultimately have been too societies in southwest Asia more than of iron production. Hunter-gatherers
difficult in the face of an increasingly 3,000 years ago (SN: 10/5/13, p. 11). repeatedly occupied this location from
harsh landscape, Borreggine says. From there, the technology has typically around 5300 B.C. to A.D. 1600, the sci-
The idea that rising sea levels may have been thought to have spread elsewhere, entists say, with iron production starting
been among the challenges these Vikings eventually being adopted by people in around 100 B.C.
faced has merit, Zhao says. “But there are northern Scandinavia and other Arctic Evidence of iron production by hunter-
still a lot of unsolved questions,” he says, areas between A.D. 700 and 1600. gatherers in southern Scandinavia over
including why exactly they left. But that view has been questioned 2,000 years ago already existed. So dis-
The last written record of this society in recent years. Increasing evidence coveries of similarly old ironwork farther
is a letter describing a wedding in 1408. indicates that small-scale societies mas- north make sense, says archaeometallur-
That couple moved to Iceland soon after. tered ancient technologies — including gist Thilo Rehren of the Cyprus Institute
Why the pair left is lost to history, but, as metallurgy — relatively early, says archae- in Nicosia. Preliminary work indicates
the new research suggests, sea level rise ologist Marcos Martinón-Torres of the that iron production also began in East
may have been part of the equation. s University of Cambridge. Asia over 2,000 years ago, he adds. s

NEWS
ATOM & COSMOS particles that emanates from the sun. back toward the surface of the sun.
The solar wind and other more dramatic Measurements showed that the Alfvén
NASA probe is the forms of space weather can wreak havoc critical surface is wrinkly. Decades ago,
first to visit the sun on Earth’s satellites and even on life
(SN: 2/27/21, p. 16). Scientists want to
scientists imagined the boundary as a
smooth sphere surrounding the sun like a
The spacecraft journeyed pinpoint how the wind gets started to bet- snow globe. More recently, some thought
into the solar atmosphere ter understand how it can impact Earth. it would be so ragged that it wouldn’t be
The Alfvén critical surface also may apparent when the spacecraft crossed it.
BY LISA GROSSMAN hold the key to one of the biggest solar Neither of those scenarios is correct.
For the first time, a spacecraft has made mysteries: why the sun’s corona, its wispy The surface is smooth enough that the
contact with the sun. During a flyby last outer atmosphere, is so much hotter than moment of crossing was noticeable,
year, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe entered the sun’s surface. With most heat sources, Kasper said. But Parker crossed in and
the sun’s atmosphere. temperatures drop as you move farther out of the boundary three times. The
“We have finally arrived,” Nicola Fox, away. But the sun’s corona sizzles at more longest trip lasted about five hours,
director of NASA’s Heliophysics Science than a million degrees Celsius, while the while the shortest was only half an hour.
Division in Washington, D.C., said surface is only a few thousand degrees. “The surface clearly has to have some
December 14 in a news briefing at the fall In 1942, physicist Hannes Alfvén pro- structure and warp to it,” Kasper said.
meeting of the American Geophysical posed a solution to the mystery: A type of That structure could influence every-
Union. “Humanity has touched the sun.” magnetic wave might carry energy from thing from the way solar eruptions leave
Parker left interplanetary space and the solar surface and heat up the corona. the sun to the way the solar wind inter-
crossed into solar territory on April 28, It took until 2009 to directly observe such acts with itself farther out from the sun,
2021, during one of its close encounters waves, in the lower corona, but they didn’t says solar physicist Craig DeForest of the
with the sun. While there, the probe took carry enough energy there to explain all Southwest Research Institute in Boulder,
the first measurements of exactly where the heat (SN: 4/11/09, p. 12). Solar physi- Colo., who is a member of the Parker team
this boundary, called the Alfvén criti- cists have suspected that what happens but was not part of these measurements.
cal surface, lies. It was about 13 million as those waves climb higher and meet the “That has consequences that we don’t
kilometers above the sun’s surface, phys- Alfvén critical surface might play a role in know yet, but are likely to be profound.”
icists reported at the meeting and in the heating the corona. But scientists didn’t Parker will make several more close
Dec. 17 Physical Review Letters. know where this frontier began. approaches to the sun over the next few
“We knew the Alfvén surface had to With the boundary identified, “we’ll years and should cross into the corona
exist,” solar physicist Justin Kasper of now be able to witness directly how cor- again and again, solar physicist Nour
the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor onal heating happens,” Kasper said. Raouafi of the Johns Hopkins Applied
said at the briefing. “We just didn’t know As Parker crossed the invisible bound- Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., said
where it was.” ary, its instruments recorded a marked in the briefing. But the boundary might
Finding this layer was one of Parker’s increase in the strength of the local not be in the same place every time. As
main goals when it launched in 2018 (SN: magnetic field and a drop in the den- the sun’s activity changes, the level of the
JOY NG/GSFC/NASA
7/21/18, p. 12). The Alfvén critical surface sity of charged material. Out in the solar Alfvén critical surface is expected to rise
marks where packets of plasma can sepa- wind, waves of charged particles gush and fall as if the corona is breathing in and
rate from the sun and become part of the away from the sun. But below the Alfvén out, he said. That’s another thing that sci-
solar wind, the speedy stream of charged critical surface, some of those waves bend entists hope to see for the first time. s
In 2021, NASA’s Parker Solar

Probe (above in this illustration)
dipped below a crucial layer
that separates the sun’s outer
atmosphere, or corona (wavy
grid), from the rest of space.

ATOM & COSMOS contain salts, physicist Colin Meyer of
Dartmouth said at the meeting. The
Source of Enceladus’ plumes is in doubt quake idea couldn’t account for those
Sprays may come from the moon’s icy shell, not an interior ocean salts, and instead suggested that salts in
the melted ice would be left on the surface
BY LISA GROSSMAN directly test the contents of the ocean, as water escaped into space, he said, like
Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus sprays without needing to drill through the ice. the salt left on skin by evaporating sweat.
water vapor into space. Scientists have “That could be true,” Buffo says. But the But Meyer, who has studied the physics
thought that the plumes come from a simulations suggest “you could be sam- of sea ice on Earth, realized that pockets
deep subsurface ocean — but that might pling this slushy region in the middle of of meltwater in the ice shell could con-
not be the case, new simulations suggest. the shell, and that might not be the same centrate salts. He, Buffo and colleagues
Instead, the water could come from chemistry as is down in the ocean.” applied computer simulations devel-
pockets of watery mush in the moon’s icy Enceladus has beguiled planetary sci- oped for sea ice on Earth to the observed
shell, researchers reported December 15 entists since NASA’s Cassini spacecraft icy conditions on Enceladus. The team
at the American Geophysical Union’s fall revealed the moon’s dramatic plumes in found that this moon could easily gener-
meeting. 2005. At the time, researchers wondered ate pockets of mush within its shell and
“Maybe we didn’t get the straw all the if the spray originated on Enceladus’ icy vent the salty contents into space.
way through the ice shell to the ocean,” surface, where friction from quakes could The findings’ implications “are huge”
says planetary scientist Jacob Buffo of melt ice and let it escape as pure water for proposed life-finding missions to
Dartmouth College. “Maybe we’re just vapor into space. Later evidence collected Enceladus, says planetary scientist Emily
getting this weird pocket.” by Cassini convinced most scientists that Martin of the Smithsonian National Air
The hidden ocean makes Enceladus the geysers erupt from shell fractures and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. If
one of the best places to search for life that reach down to a salty, subsurface sea the plumes don’t tap into the ocean, that
in the solar system. Concepts for future (SN: 9/6/14, p. 15). could shift scientists’ perspective on what
missions to Enceladus rely on the idea One of the most convincing pieces of the plumes indicate about Enceladus’
that taking samples of the plumes would evidence was the fact that the plumes interior, Martin says. “That’s a big deal.” s

NEWS
EARTH & ENVIRONMENT tant place to study for near-term sea level
rise,” Scambos said. So in 2018, research
Ice shelf could collapse within 5 years groups from the United States and the
Loss of buttressing could hasten demise of ‘doomsday’ glacier United Kingdom embarked on a five-year
project to try to anticipate the glacier’s
BY CAROLYN GRAMLING the ice shelf in the last two years suggest imminent future by planting instruments
The demise of a West Antarctic glacier that brace won’t hold much longer. Warm atop, within, below and offshore of it.
poses the world’s biggest threat to sea level ocean waters are eating away at the ice This pull-out-all-the-stops approach is
rise before 2100 — and an ice shelf that’s from below (SN: 5/8/21 & 5/22/21, p. 14). leading to other discoveries, including the
holding it back from the sea could col- As the ice shelf loses mass, the underbelly first observations of ocean and melting
lapse within three to five years, scientists is retreating inland and will eventually conditions right at a glacier’s grounding
reported December 13 at the American retreat completely behind the underwater zone, where a land-based glacier begins
Geophysical Union’s fall meeting. mountain pinning it in place. Meanwhile, to jut out into a floating ice shelf. Scien-
Thwaites Glacier is “one of the larg- fractures and crevasses, widened by these tists have also spotted how the rise and
est, widest glaciers in Antarctica — it’s waters, are snaking through the ice like fall of ocean tides can speed up melting
huge,” Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at cracks in a car’s windshield, shattering by pumping warm waters farther beneath
the Cooperative Institute for Research and weakening it. the ice and creating new melt channels
in Environmental Sciences in Boulder, This deadly punch-jab-uppercut and crevasses in the ice’s underside.
Colo., told reporters. Spanning 120 kilo- combination of melting from below, As Thwaites and other glaciers
meters across, the glacier is about the ice shattering and losing a grip on the retreat, some scientists have pondered
size of Florida. If the whole thing slid pinning point is pushing the ice shelf whether the glaciers might form tall ice
into the ocean, it would raise sea levels to imminent collapse, within as little cliffs along the edge of the ocean — and
by 65 centimeters (more than two feet). as three to five years, Erin Pettit, a gla- whether the potential tumble of such
Right now, its melting is responsible for ciologist at Oregon State University in massive blocks into the sea might lead
about 4 percent of global sea level rise. Corvallis, said. “The collapse of this ice to devastatingly rapid sea level rise, a
But a large portion of the glacier is shelf will result in a direct increase in sea hypothesis known as marine ice cliff
about to lose its tenuous grip on the sea- level rise, pretty rapidly,” Pettit added. instability (SN: 3/2/19, p. 6). Predicting
floor and that will dramatically speed up “It’s a little bit unsettling.” how likely such collapses are, research-
Thwaites’ seaward slide, the researchers Satellite data show that over the last ers say, depends on our understanding of
said. The eastern third of the glacier is 30 years, the flow of Thwaites Glacier the physics and dynamics of ice behav-
braced by a floating ice shelf, an exten- across land and toward the sea has nearly ior, something about which scientists
sion of the glacier that juts out into the doubled in pace. The collapse of this have historically known very little.
sea. Right now, the ice shelf’s underbelly “doomsday” glacier alone would alter The Thwaites collaboration is tackling
is lodged against an underwater moun- sea levels significantly, but its fall would this problem. In simulations of the fur-
tain located about 50 kilometers offshore. also destabilize other West Antarctic gla- ther retreat of Thwaites, glaciologist Anna
That pinning point is helping to hold the ciers, dragging more ice into the ocean Crawford of the University of St. Andrews
ice in place. and raising sea levels even more. in Scotland and colleagues found that if
Data collected beneath and around That makes Thwaites “the most impor- the shape of the land beneath the glacier
dips deep enough in some places, that
Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier (shown) poses the greatest near-term threat to sea level rise. An ice could lead to some very tall ice cliffs. But,
shelf helping to slow the glacier’s slide into the sea may collapse within five years, scientists say. the team found, the ice itself might also
deform and thin enough to make the for-
mation of tall ice cliffs difficult.
The collaboration is only at its halfway
point, but data collected so far already
promise to help scientists better esti-
mate the near-term future of Thwaites,
including how quickly and dramati-
cally it might fail, Scambos said. “We’re
watching a world that’s doing things we
JAMES YUNGEL/NASA
haven’t really seen before … because

we’re pushing on the climate extremely
rapidly with carbon dioxide emissions,”
he said. “It’s daunting.” s

LIFE & EVOLUTION
A robot spooks
invasive fish
Fear may render some
exotic species less harmful
BY JONATHAN LAMBERT
Invasive mosquito fish are often fearless.
Free from the predators of their native
range, these fish run rampant, throw-
ing naïve ecosystems from Europe to
Scientists designed a robotic fish (above left) to mimic largemouth bass, a natural predator of
Australia out of whack. To keep the fish mosquito fish (right). In lab experiments, the robotic fish induced fear that led to behavioral, body
in check, scientists are trying to strike and reproductive changes in the mosquito fish, which are an invasive threat around the world.
fear back into the hearts of these swim-
mers with a high-tech tool: robots. invasive species considered problematic, the safety of their home aquariums,
In a laboratory experiment, a robotic this doesn’t work,” he says, and can often fish exposed to the robot were less
fish designed to mimic one of mos- harm native species too. active and more anxious — exhibited by
quito fish’s natural predators increased The problem isn’t necessarily the seconds-longer freeze responses — than
fear and stress responses in the fish, presence of mosquito fish in these mosquito fish that weren’t exposed.
impairing their survival and reproduc- ecosystems, Polverino says, but their The cumulative stress taxed the fish’s
tion, researchers report December 16 in wanton behavior enabled by a lack of bodies too. Exposed fish lost energy
iScience. predators. Predation would prevent reserves, becoming slightly smaller
While robofish won’t be deployed their numbers from ballooning, but fear than nonexposed fish. Exposed males
in the wild anytime soon, the research of predation alone can influence prey became more streamlined, potentially to
highlights that there are “more creative behavior in ways that ripple throughout quicken escape behaviors, the research-
ways of preventing unwanted behavior an ecosystem. Polverino and his col- ers say. And the sperm count of scared
from a species” than simply killing it, says leagues wanted to see if a robotic fish fish decreased by about half, on average.
Michael Culshaw-Maurer, an ecologist at crafted to mimic one of mosquito fish’s “Instead of investing in reproduction,
the University of Arizona in Tucson who natural nemeses, the largemouth bass they’re investing in reshaping their body
wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s just (Micropterus salmoides), could be just to escape better after only six weeks,”
wonderful seeing work in this area.” as scary and take some of the bite out of Polverino says. “Overall, they became
Native to parts of the eastern and mosquito fish’s negative impact. less healthy and less fertile.”
central United States, mosquito fish In the lab, the researchers set up The long-term impact that such
(Gambusia spp.) were let loose in fresh- 12 tanks that each housed six mosquito robotic predators would have on wild
water ecosystems around the world fish (G. holbrooki) with six tadpoles of mosquito fish and their neighbors
during the last century in a foolhardy the motorbike frog (Litoria moorei), a remains unclear. That’s beside the point
effort to control malaria. But instead of species native to Australia that is com- for Polverino, who says the main contri-
eating malaria-transmitting mosquito monly harassed by mosquito fish. After a bution of this study is showing that fear
larvae, introduced mosquito fish mostly week of acclimatization, the team trans- has significant consequences that may
gobble up the eggs and gnaw at the tails ferred each group to an experimental reduce the survival and reproduction of
of native fish and amphibians. The tank for one hour twice a week for five invasive species.
International Union for Conservation weeks. There, half of the groups faced a “Our plan is not to release hundreds of
of Nature calls mosquito fish one of robotic predator designed to recognize thousands of these robots in the wild and
the world’s most destructive invasive and lunge at mosquito fish when they got pretend they will solve the problem,” he
species. too close to the tadpoles. says. But there may be more than one
Efforts to combat mosquito fish, and Fear of the robot altered the behavior, way to scare a mosquito fish. Giving the
many other introduced, invasive spe- shape and fertility of the mosquito fish, fish a whiff of their predator, for exam-
cies, usually rely on mass killing with both during exposure and weeks later. ple, might induce similar changes.
traps, poison or other blunt methods, Mosquito fish facing the robot tended “These are not invincible animals,” he
G. POLVERINO
says Giovanni Polverino, a behavioral to cluster together and not explore the says. “They have weaknesses that we can
ecologist at the University of Western tank, while the tadpoles, free of harass- take advantage of that don’t involve kill-
Australia in Perth. “For most of the ment, ventured farther out. Even in ing animals one by one.” s

NEWS
MATTER & ENERGY particles that Alice and Charlie receive. A

real quantum theory, with no imaginary
Physics requires imaginary numbers numbers, would predict different results
Quantum theory based on only real numbers fails in new tests than standard quantum physics, allowing
the test to discern which one is correct.
BY EMILY CONOVER build quantum theory using real numbers Fan and colleagues performed such an
Imaginary numbers might seem like only, avoiding the imaginary realm with experiment using photons, or particles of
unicorns and goblins — interesting but versions called “real quantum mechan- light, they report in an upcoming paper
irrelevant to reality. ics.” But without an experimental test in Physical Review Letters. By studying
But for describing matter at its roots, of such theories, the question remained how Alice, Charlie and Bob’s results com-
imaginary numbers turn out to be essen- whether imaginary numbers were neces- pare across many measurements, Fan,
tial. They seem to be woven into the sary or just a useful computational tool. Navascués and colleagues show that the
fabric of quantum mechanics, the math A type of experiment called a Bell test data could be described only by a quan-
describing the realm of molecules, atoms resolved a different quantum quandary, tum theory with complex numbers.
and subatomic particles. A theory obey- proving that quantum Another team of physi-
ing the rules of quantum physics needs mechanics requires entan- “From the early cists ran an experiment
imaginary numbers to describe the real glement, strange quantum days of quantum based on the same concept
world, two experiments suggest. linkages between particles
Imaginary numbers result from tak- (SN: 9/19/15, p. 12). “We
theory, complex using a quantum computer
made with superconduc-
ing the square root of a negative number. started thinking about numbers were tors, materials that conduct
They often pop up in equations as a math- whether an experiment of treated more as electricity without resis-
ematical tool to make calculations easier. this sort could also refute a mathematical tance. That test also found
But everything we can actually measure real quantum mechanics,”
about the world is described by real says theoretical physicist
convenience than that quantum physics
requires complex numbers,
numbers, the normal figures we’re used Miguel Navascués of the a fundamental the team reports in another
to. That’s true in quantum physics too. Institute for Quantum building block.” upcoming paper in Physical
Imaginary numbers appear in the inner Optics and Quantum JINGYUN FAN
Review Letters.
workings of the theory, but all possible Information–Vienna. He But the results don’t
measurements generate real numbers. and colleagues laid out a plan for an rule out all theories that eschew imagi-
Quantum theory’s prominent use of experiment in the Dec. 23 Nature. nary numbers, says theoretical physicist
complex numbers — sums of imaginary In this plan, researchers would send Jerry Finkelstein of Lawrence Berkeley
and real numbers — was disconcerting pairs of entangled particles from two dif- National Laboratory in California. The
to its founders. “From the early days ferent sources to three different people, research eliminated certain theories
of quantum theory, complex numbers named according to conventional phys- based on real numbers, namely those that
were treated more as a mathematical ics lingo as Alice, Bob and Charlie. Alice still follow the conventions of quantum
convenience than a fundamental build- receives one particle and can measure it mechanics. It’s still possible to explain
ing block,” says physicist Jingyun Fan of using various experimental settings that the results without imaginary numbers
the Southern University of Science and she chooses. Charlie does the same. Bob by using a theory that breaks standard
Technology in Shenzhen, China. receives two particles and performs a spe- quantum rules. But those theories run
Some physicists have attempted to cial type of measurement to entangle the into other conceptual issues, making
them “ugly,” he says. Still, “if you’re will-
To explain the real world, imaginary ing to put up with the ugliness, then you
numbers are necessary, according to an can have a real quantum theory.”
experiment performed by physicists Despite the caveat, other physicists
including Ya-Li Mao (shown with
the experiment) of the Southern agree that the quandary of imaginary
University of Science and numbers remains compelling. “I find it
Technology in China. intriguing when you ask questions about
why is quantum mechanics the way it
is,” says Krister Shalm of the National
Institute of Standards and Technology in
Boulder, Colo. Asking whether quantum
theory could be simpler or if it contains
anything unnecessary “are very interest-
J. FAN
ing and thought-provoking questions.” s

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ADV E RTI SE M E NT
FEATURE
MATERIALS
FOR MODERN LIFE Chemistry, engineering and the chance bounty of nature.” A rash of potential
products included aromatics, flavorings, nitro-
physics made a century of glycerin for dynamite, plastics, drugs and more.
new things By Carolyn Wilke Petroleum-based ice creams never became the
new big thing, yet the last century has witnessed
A
1920s science headline, “Ice cream a dramatic leap in humans’ ability to synthesize
from crude oil,” may best capture the matter. From our homes and cities to our elec-
era’s unbridled enthusiasm for chem- tronics and clothing, much of what we interact
istry. “Edible fats, the same as those with every day is made possible through the
in vegetable and animal foods … and equally manipulation, recombination and reimagination
nutritious … can be obtained by breaking up the of the basic substances nature has provided.
molecules of mineral oil and rearranging the “The world is unrecognizable from 100 years
PEETERV/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
atoms,” exclaimed Science News Letter, the pre- ago,” says Anna Ploszajski, a materials scien-
decessor to Science News, in 1926. Synthetic ice tist and author of the 2021 book Handmade: A
Our vehicles, buildings, cream was just one of the wonders that could lie Scientist’s Search for Meaning Through Making.
clothing and phones are around the corner. And that, she says, is “simply because of the mate-
very different than they Petroleum would become increasingly valuable, rials that we have around, let alone all of the new
once were because of
new materials developed the article continued, “as a source of substances ways we use them.”
over the last century. for which man has hitherto been dependent upon At the turn of the 20th century, organic chemists

To celebrate our 100th anniversary, we’re highlighting some of
the biggest advances in science over the last century.
To see more from the series, visit the Century of Science site
at www.sciencenews.org/century
Alongside this new science came new and

improved scientific tools. Scientists can now see
materials at a much finer scale, with the electron
microscope making individual atoms visible.
X-ray crystallography unveils atomic arrange-
ments, allowing for a better understanding of
materials’ structure. With equipment such as
chromatographs and mass spectrometers, today’s
scientists can untangle mixtures of chemicals and
identify the compounds within. Francis Aston
first took advantage of a mass spectrometer in
his study of isotopes in 1919, but for a long time
the tool was seen by some chemists as, according
to a description by mass spectrometrist Michael
Grayson, “an unexplainable, voodoo, black magic
kind of a tool.”
Many new materials were birthed from basic
curiosity and serendipity. But new techniques
also made way for targeted innovation. Today,
materials can be designed from scratch to solve
specific problems. And explorations of the prop-
erties of solid substances — for instance, how
“The iPhone
matter interacts with heat, light, electricity or contains about
learned how to turn coal into a variety of magnetism — along with iterations of design have 75 elements
industrial chemicals, including dyes and per- further contributed to the stuff that surrounds from the periodic
fumes. Later, motivated by wartime demand, us, giving way to transistors, eyeglass lenses that
chemists honed their craft with poison gas, explo- darken in sunlight, touch screens and hard disk
table — a huge
sives and propellants, as well as disinfectants and drives. Explorations into how matter interacts proportion of all
antiseptics. As a result, World War I was often with biological tissues have yielded coronary the atoms that
called “the chemist’s war.” And at a fundamental stents, artificial skin and hip replacements that we know about
level, the new century also ushered in greater include metal mélanges that are tough and non-
understanding of chemical bonds and the atom, reactive when they sit against bone.
in the universe
its constituents and its behavior. The outputs of such efforts are all around us. are in an iPhone.”
In the decades that followed, approaches in Take air travel, and the global interconnectivity ANNA PLOSZAJSKI
chemistry and physics combined with engineer- it introduced. It’s possible thanks to alloys that
ing to give rise to a new field, now called materials are lightweight and robust. And today’s personal
PETER DAZELEY/THE IMAGE BANK/GETTY IMAGES
science. An extensive survey of the field, put connectivity — via smartphones and computers —
together by the National Academy of Sciences in came with transistors made of silicon. Their
the 1970s and titled “Materials and Man’s Needs,” small size and low power requirements
described the pace of research: “The transitions brought computing to our office desks,
from, say, stone to bronze and from bronze to iron and then into our homes and pockets. An
were revolutionary in impact, but they were rela- abundance of plastic housewares and comfy
tively slow in terms of the time scale. The changes athleisure clothing options are made possible
in materials innovation and application within the via improvements in polymers.
last half century occur in a time span which is rev- Yet innovation hasn’t come without con-
olutionary rather than evolutionary.” sequences. For each tale of progress, there

FEATURE | MATERIALS FOR MODERN LIFE
are stories of the marks people have left on this catalysts to bust the big molecules of heavy fuels
planet. While enabling humans to flourish, into smaller ones to improve performance. But as
many new substances have become pollutants, an avid road racer, he had a special interest in high-
from PCBs to plastics. However people go about quality gasoline. He studied hundreds of catalysts
addressing these environmental problems, other until he landed on aluminum- and silicon-based
new materials will likely be part of the solutions. materials that could do the busting more effi-
ciently than an existing process that relied on heat.
Going places When he tested his gasoline in his Bugatti racer, he
It was the summer of 1940, the early days of the reached speeds of 90 miles per hour.
Battle of Britain. Nazi Germany’s air force, the In the following decades, catalytic cracking and
Luftwaffe, began a months-long attack on the improvements to the process Houdry pioneered
British Isles that eventually included the nightly would contribute to the reign of automobiles. Cat-
bombing raids known as the Blitz. Going into the alytic cracking still produces much of the gas that
battle, the Luftwaffe believed it had the upper cars guzzle today.
hand; in battles in France, the Germans had domi- But all that driving soon took a toll on the
nated in the air. Little did they know the Allies had environment. When the hydrocarbon mol-
a secret weapon — in their fuel tanks. ecules in gasoline burn, the engine exhaust
As Germans began flying over England, they contains small amounts of harmful gases: poison-
were surprised to find the tables had turned. The ous carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide that can
British Spitfires and Hurricanes that the Germans cause smog and acid rain, as well as unburned
had outmaneuvered in France could now climb hydrocarbons. Los Angeles and other car-packed
higher and fly faster thanks to fuel made with a cities choked on smog in the 1940s and ’50s.
newly developed process called catalytic cracking. Houdry looked again to catalysts to deal with
Catalysts boost chemical reactions by reduc- the pollution that internal combustion engines
ing the energy needed to get them going. French caused. He designed a catalytic converter.
mechanical engineer Eugene Houdry had devel- “When first considered, the problem seems
oped a catalytic process in the 1930s to make simple,” Houdry wrote in a 1954 patent applica-
high-octane fuel, which can withstand higher tion. “A great number of catalysts can be used
compression and allows engines to deliver more for the reaction. By simply placing one of these
power. Simply increasing the octane rating of catalysts in the exhaust line under controlled con-
aviation fuel from 87 to 100 gave the Allies a cru- ditions, the exhaust fumes can be cleaned.” The
cial edge. catalysts, precious metals such as platinum or
Houdry wasn’t the first to attempt using palladium, provide docking sites for the harmful
gases to hang onto; there, reactions involving oxy-
FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF SCIENCE HISTORY INSTITUTE; RETRO ADARCHIVES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
gen convert them to less harmful forms.
In the 1950s, Houdry outlined a series of reac-
tions, materials and conditions necessary for a
working catalytic converter. But he was ahead
French mechanical of his time. For years, the adoption of catalytic
engineer Eugene Houdry converters in automobiles was stymied by leaded
(below) developed
catalytic cracking in the gasoline, which gummed up the catalysts’ sur-
1930s. This 1940s ad says faces. Finally, with the passage of the Clean Air
that 90 percent of all Act of 1970, which led to requirements for cata-
aviation fuel made by
catalytic cracking came lytic converters and lead-free fuel, the air in cities
from the Houdry Process began to clear.
Corporation. For air travel to serve the masses, a different
dilemma needed solving: lightening the load. The
earliest airplanes gained lift at the turn of the 20th
century on wings of fabric and wood, but to really
soar, airplanes needed light but strong materials.
The first aircraft designed for passengers — the
Ford Trimotor, nicknamed the Tin Goose — took
to the air in 1926 with help from aluminum alloys.
Alloys have existed since ancient times.

Astronauts in the Apollo 11 command module (left) were protected from high temperatures during re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere (center)
by a heat shield made of Avcoat, a reinforced plastic made from an epoxy resin within a honeycomb fiberglass network. A new NASA spaceship
called Orion, destined to take people to the moon and beyond, uses Avcoat tile blocks bonded onto its heat shield (right).
Bronze Age artisans combined copper with arsenic Making connections

or tin in crucibles to make tools, jewelry and more. For a testament to the power of materials to
From there, advances coincided with the ability connect us, just look at an iPhone. “The iPhone
to melt metals at higher and higher temperatures, contains about 75 elements from the periodic
eventually leading to steel. Scientists since have table — a huge proportion of all the atoms that we
studied how materials’ structures and proper- know about in the universe are in an iPhone,” says
ties — including desirable features like strength, Ploszajski, the materials scientist.
bendability and resistance to corrosion — vary with Some of those are rare-earth elements, a set of
composition, temperature and processing. 17 metallic elements mostly on the outskirts of the
The fuselage of the Tin Goose contained a newly periodic table. Though they are difficult to mine
developed alloy named duralumin, a contraction and process, rare earths are sought after because
of “Dürener” (for the company that originally they lend unusual magnetic, fluorescent and elec-
made it) and “aluminum.” trical properties to materials made from them.
In 1926, Science News Letter described the Neodymium, for example, mixed with other met-
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, TRANSFERRED FROM NASA; NASA; NASA; SCIENCE NEWS LETTER
promise of materials such as duralumin for safer als makes the strongest magnets known. These
dirigibles, which would carry large numbers of magnets make your cell phone vibrate and its
passengers into the air: “Of these sound materials, speakers produce sound.
strong and light girders must be built. So light that Despite the hazards associated with mining
a man can carry one of them in his hand and yet them, these elements show up in a lot of other
In 1948, Science News
so strong that they will carry loads of thousands 20th century applications too. Rare earths are in Letter reported that “the
of pounds.” color televisions, camera lenses, fiber-optic cables, glass vacuum tube in
Dirigibles and duralumin were just the begin- nuclear reactors, nickel-metal hydride batteries, your radio has its first
rival in 40 years”: a
ning. The 20th century saw an explosion in the aircraft engines, PET scanners and much more. germanium transistor.
types of alloys and their applications, from stain- A more familiar element — silicon — is the rea-
less steel cutlery to the titanium alloys used in son cell phones and laptops are available in such
prostheses and pacemakers to crucial compo- a widespread way.
nents of vehicles. Today’s jet engines are built As a semiconductor, silicon conducts electric-
of superalloys, which can withstand infernal ity better than ceramics and glass do, but not as
temperatures. well as metals. This in-between status makes it
Plastics and composites have also helped planes possible to control how electrons zip around a
shed weight. Composites combine materials semiconductor, a control that’s ideal for creating
with very different properties — such as glass and electrical switches for circuits in radios, televi-
plastic — by suspending one in the other or sand- sions or computers. In the 1930s and ’40s, these
wiching them together, for instance. Because and other electronic devices relied on bulky,
they can be tuned to be light and strong, com- breakable glass vacuum tubes to control electric
posites have made their way into parts all over current flow. Decades of semiconductor research
planes, from the engine to the wings. Boeing’s 787 pointed to a more reliable, slimmer way.
Dreamliner, which debuted in 2007, is made up of The first semiconductor switch, dubbed the
50 percent composites by weight. transistor, was made of germanium and invented

at Bell Laboratories in 1947. But teams at Texas

Instruments and Bell Labs were both eyeing
silicon, which holds up under higher tempera-
tures. Silicon is also less likely than germanium
to leak current when a switch is off. Though the
two teams independently developed silicon tran-
sistors, Texas Instruments’ Gordon Teal gets
the credit as his announcement came first, in
May 1954.
At a conference in Dayton, Ohio, toward the end
of the day’s talks, Teal matter-of-factly revealed
his company’s success. “Contrary to what my col-
leagues have told you about the bleak prospects
for silicon transistors,” he said, “I happen to have In the 1920s, German chemist Hermann Staudinger
showed that small molecules can link up in chains to form
a few of them here in my pocket.” His announce- very large molecules. The discovery helped set the stage
4
billion
kilometers
ment, which followed other talks suggesting that
the devices were years away, jolted the audience,
which stampeded to the back of the room for cop-
ies of Teal’s talk, and out to the telephone booth
for a boom in synthetic materials, including plastics.
to relay telegraph dispatches in the 1840s. The

first live telephone traffic sent through fiber-
to share the news. optic cables was in 1977 in Long Beach, Calif. Now
Approximate
length of Our attention-sucking phones are right in front e-mails from abroad arrive nearly instantaneously
all the glass of our faces. But out of sight are the fiber optics thanks to thin-as-hair optical fibers.
strung out in that relay messages around the world in a flash. The list of materials that helped put oceans of
the world’s
optical cables All the glass strung out in the world’s optical information at our fingertips goes on and on. All
cables could tether Earth to Uranus and then of these developments, including today’s lithium-
some, stretching some 4 billion kilometers. These ion batteries and more, led to today’s abundance
cables ferry messages across countries and conti- of electronic devices (SN: 1/21/17, p. 22). But ever
nents and across the seafloor. Optical fiber “really more improvements, and our constant urge to
has strung the world together in a new way,” says upgrade, creates a new problem: “How do we
FROM TOP: ETH-BIBLIOTHEK ZÜRICH, BILDARCHIV, FOTOGRAF: UNBEKANNT, PORTR_14413-016-AL, PUBLIC DOMAIN MARK;
Ainissa Ramirez, a materials scientist and author unmake this stuff and recycle those substances
of the 2020 book The Alchemy of Us (SN: 4/25/20, safely?” Ploszajski asks.
p. 28). Messages from across the Atlantic used to
come by boat, she says, then came copper cables A plethora of plastic
In a quest to really grasp the omnipresence of
plastics, Susan Freinkel, author of the 2011 book
Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, pledged to go a day
without touching any. Glimpsing her plastic
toilet seat, Freinkel gave up the experiment mere
moments after it began. Instead, she spent the day
cataloging all the plastic stuff she encountered.
Plastics covered her body — in yoga pants,
sneakers and eyeglasses. Plastic made up the
entire interior of her minivan and parts of kitchen
appliances. Plastic packaging protected her food,
and after eating, she dumped her trash in a plastic
bin. Even the walls around her contained plastics,
from the paint to the synthetic insulation.
MARIO FOURMY/SIPA VIA AP IMAGES
Today, we’re awash in plastics. Yet at the begin-

ning of the 20th century, only a handful of plastics
had made their way into homes.
Google’s Dunant subsea cable connects The story of commercial plastics began in the
Virginia Beach with France (it’s shown landing 1860s, when John Wesley Hyatt, seeking a substi-
on the French coast in 2020) and can deliver
250 terabits per second across the Atlantic Ocean. tute for the ivory popularly used in billiard balls,
landed on a material later called celluloid. At the

heart of celluloid, however, was the natural sub-
1 2
stance cellulose.
The first fully synthetic plastic, Bakelite, arrived
in 1907. It was a fluke discovery by Belgian-born
chemist Leo Baekeland, who was seeking an
alternative to the natural shellac that insulated
electrical cables. Celluloid was a suitable substi-
tute for ivory and tortoiseshell, but sleek, shiny
Bakelite gleamed with modernity. It quickly
made its way into a host of products, including
the casings for radios, jewelry and telephones.
A new era of innovating on nature’s materials,
3
rather than merely mimicking them, was born,
Freinkel writes.
Yet it wasn’t until the 1920s that researchers
started to understand plastics’ chemical nature.
Plastics are made of polymers, large molecules
made of repeating units. At the time, what gave
natural polymers like cellulose, shellac and rubber
their properties remained unknown. So inventors
seeking new human-made substitutes relied on
trial and error to make something similar. Credit
for changing all that goes to the German organic
chemist Hermann Staudinger.
From experiments on natural rubber, Staudinger
showed that large, heavy molecules could be
formed by linking many smaller molecules into
chains. As Science News Letter put it in 1953, when
Staudinger was awarded the Nobel Prize in chem- 4
istry: “The way the molecules regiment themselves
determines the differences between springy rub-
ber, hard plastic and tough fiber.” It might sound
FROM 1 TO 4: BRUNO VINCENT/GETTY IMAGES; DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY/SCIENCE HISTORY INSTITUTE;
obvious today, but Staudinger’s finding was contro-

versial. Chemists at the time thought that what we
now call macromolecules were simply aggregates
of smaller molecules.
KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES; BEN MARTIN/GETTY IMAGES
Staudinger’s ideas gradually gained accep-

tance and formed a basis for new research on
polymers. In the following decade, industrial
chemists worked to figure out the chemical reac-
tions needed to create new polymers, plastics
among them. One early success story was nylon, a
carbon-based polymer patented in 1938 as a sub-
stitute for silk. American women were introduced
to nylon stockings in 1940. Within a year, nylons
grabbed 30 percent of the hosiery market.
But it was World War II that drastically
increased demand for plastics. The military
turned to the new industry to make substitutes 1. Bakelite, the first fully synthetic plastic, was invented in 1907 and used in casings
for telephones, radios and jewelry, among other products. 2. In a photo from the
for strategic materials such as glass, brass or Dow Chemical Company, two models demonstrate the sturdiness and durability
steel, Freinkel says. Nylon was needed for mili- of Styrofoam, invented in 1941. 3. The resistance of nylon stockings is tested in
tary uses, so women offered up their stockings to 1940, the year women in the United States were introduced to the product.
4. Arthur Melin (left) and Richard Knerr (right), cofounders of the U.S. toy company
be recycled. Wham-O, introduced their Hula-Hoop, made of Marlex polyethylene, in 1958. The
“Great piles of stockings retired after faithful toy’s popularity boosted demand for the high-density plastic.

Held in New York City, the first National Plastics

Exhibition featured wares made of the wonder
material. “Thousands of people lined up to go to
this trade show and walk through this conference
hall and gawk at stuff that had an almost magical
quality,” Freinkel says. Visitors saw durable nylon
fishing line and window screens in a riot of colors.
Mass-produced plastic offered “a new way to have
the good life on the cheap.”
We’ve come a long way from the days of
celluloid and Bakelite. Tens of thousands of plastic
compounds exist today. The world now produces
in excess of 380 million metric tons of plastic a
year — that’s more than a hundred pounds of
The Tupperware parties of the 1950s exemplify what author Susan Freinkel calls the what’s typically very lightweight stuff for every
“flood of plastic into everyday life” — and the enthusiasm that came with it. person on the planet every year.
and intimate service are awaiting resurrection — Consequences

thousands of pounds of them,” reported Science By the mid-1960s, researchers started noticing
News Letter in 1943. plastic pieces in the ocean, Freinkel says. Today,
Though small at the start of the war, the plas- plastic pollution is found virtually everywhere, in
tics industry got better at making its wares and bits wafting in the winds, high in Mount Everest’s
380+
million
metric tons
boosted production. Processes such as injection
molding, which spurts melted plastic into a mold
“sort of like a Play-Doh Fun Factory,” Freinkel
says, made it possible to mass-produce plas-
snow and as trash piling up on the seafloor.
Plastics are the quintessential example of the
journey from material marvel to environmental
nuisance. But they’re not the only problem.
tic. A technique called blow molding, invented The organic chemistry advances of the early
Amount of plastic in the 1930s and based on the same principle 1900s made new and exciting materials possible,
produced per year
as glass blowing, offered a quick way to form but also allowed people to make more and more
plastic bottles. materials that weren’t recyclable, says Thomas
As wartime demand dried up, the plastics indus- Le Roux, a historian at the French National
try began to bring its products to the people. “You Center for Scientific Research in Paris and
start to get this flood of plastic into everyday life,” coauthor of the 2020 book The Contamination
Freinkel says. of the Earth. By the 1970s, new disposable prod-
The promise of plastic was on display in 1946. ucts, from pens to razors to packaging, signaled
Plastics, which help make modern life convenient,
FROM TOP: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; LUIS ACOSTA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
are polluting lakes, rivers and oceans, as shown here
on the beach of Costa del Este in Panama City.

an ease of life. “It was modern to throw away what September September
we buy,” he says. 1987 2019
The consequences of this easy-come, easy-go
relationship with our stuff soon appeared in the
environment. Our unabated demand for fossil
fuels, used not only as fuel but as raw materials
for making plastics, releases emissions that con-
tribute to Earth’s changing climate.
Many of our modern substances were created
to solve problems, says Mark Jones, a chemist
and member of the National Historic Chemical
Landmarks committee of the American Chemical Total ozone (Dobson units)
Society. For instance, before the 1930s, air con- 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
ditioning and refrigeration relied on ammonia,
which is flammable and toxic. That changed with Clearly chemists and materials scientists have CFCs’ creation
the introduction of Freon and other chlorofluoro- contributed to these problems. But they will inevi- In 1985, scientists
discovered a hole in the
carbons, or CFCs for short, which were created by tably be part of finding solutions as well. There’s ozone layer, created by
chemists in the 1920s. These molecules appeared a cyclical nature to the promise and perils of new chlorofluorocarbons
to have little effect on living things. “They were molecules and materials. “The entire history of in the stratosphere.
The Montreal Protocol
presumed to be incredibly safe,” says Jones, who chemistry is, ‘Hey, look what I can do! Darn, I wish turned things around:
recently retired from Dow Chemical. I hadn’t done it that way! But I have another way 2019 saw the smallest
But Freon and its CFC cousins had unforeseen I can do it.’ And that keeps us kind of moving for- ozone hole ever
recorded (compared
consequences on the atmosphere when they ward,” Jones says. above with 1987).
escaped air conditioning and refrigeration sys- Chemists are now creating plastics that will
tems. In the 1980s, scientists discovered a hole break down after use and can be recycled more
in Earth’s ozone layer that forms when CFCs rise easily (SN: 1/30/21, p. 20). Materials scientists
to the stratosphere, break down and react with are developing better membrane materials to fil-
ozone, destroying it. In solving one problem, ter pollutants out of water (SN: 11/24/18, p. 18).
humankind found itself with another. Engineers are deploying new materials to capture
The history of science offers up abundant carbon dioxide at smokestacks.
examples of solutions begetting new problems. New iron-based catalysts could someday convert
Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, useful insu- captured carbon dioxide into jet fuel, potentially
lators in electronics, can cause serious health cutting greenhouse gas emissions from air travel
problems, including cancer, when they enter the (SN: 1/30/21, p. 5). And researchers continue to
environment. The compounds that allow food to innovate to turn more and more of the solar spec-
slide out of kitchen pans without sticking belong trum into energy, and so cut our reliance on fossil
to a family that has earned the title “forever chem- fuels (SN: 8/5/17, p. 22).
icals” for the tendency not to degrade. Lithium Chemistry and materials innovation can’t solve
mining, which has increased with demand for all our problems. People’s choices also matter.
lithium-ion batteries, guzzles water and can release Weighing the risks and rewards that come with
harmful chemicals that contaminate ecosystems new materials will require recognition of the
and poison drinking wells. Other battery ingre- potential problems, regulations to combat them,
dients, such as cobalt, are mined unethically — willpower, collaboration and collective action.
sometimes using child labor. History holds plenty of lessons, but it’s not yet
Perhaps the largest unintended consequence clear whether we’ll learn from them. s
that humankind faces today is climate change.
Human activities — factories, mining, growing Explore more
food, traveling, using air conditioning and heat- s François Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux. The
ing to keep indoor climates comfortable — have Contamination of the Earth. MIT Press, 2020.
released greenhouse gas emissions that have s Ainissa Ramirez. The Alchemy of Us.
NASA OZONE WATCH
heated the world by around 1.25 degrees Celsius MIT Press, 2020.
since preindustrial times. The world is already
experiencing extreme weather events linked to Carolyn Wilke is a freelance science journalist
climate change. based in Chicago.

FEATURE
U.S. Olympian Simone Biles

and other elite athletes are
prioritizing mental health.
Over the last decade,
researchers have identified
some tools to help competitors
on and off the field.
MENTAL
gymnastics
Elite athletes need support to manage anxiety, depression and

other mental health challenges By Ashley Yeager
n yellow poster board, blue letters spell Dani Rojas faced the yips — suddenly unable to
O BELIEVE, a nod to the Emmy-winning

TV show Ted Lasso. The sign hangs
above psychologist Tommy Minkler’s
office door at West Virginia University, a reminder
to trust in the work he’s doing to help elite athletes.
nail his usually flawless penalty kicks — a therapist
was called in. In real life, when the twisties hit
U.S. gymnast Simone Biles at last summer’s
Olympics in Tokyo, she withdrew from five of six
event finals. Biles’ mental block was petrifying; one
In the show, Lasso, an American football coach, wrong move on the uneven bars or a failed flip on
is recruited to head an English football team. the balance beam could cause a devastating injury,
His experience coaching American football, an or even death. Her decision to withdraw from com-
utterly different game than soccer, leaves him petition after years of intense training shocked the
lacking overseas, so he relies on his positive atti- world, from commentators to armchair athletes.
LOIC VENANCE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
tude and folksy charm to bond with his players. On Elite athletes are expected to be unflappable.
his first day coaching, Lasso posts the BELIEVE Admitting vulnerability is “so fundamentally at
sign above his office door. The team often rallies odds with being a competitor,” retired U.S. figure
around the sign just before hitting the field. skater Sasha Cohen, who won a silver medal at
But belief alone can’t get athletes to the goal the 2006 Winter Olympics, explained in the 2020
when they run into the psychological speed HBO documentary The Weight of Gold. Sport is war.
bumps or full-on roadblocks that can arise during Competing at the elite level requires strategy and
training and competition. When Lasso’s striker posturing. “You need to show the world you are

strong. You need to show your competitors you are U.S. figure skater Nathan
strong,” Cohen said. “If you were to say, ‘Oh, I have Chen, preparing to com-
pete in the 2022 Winter
mental health issues,’ that just cracks the facade.” Olympics in Beijing, says
In society, those cracks are often seen as he was inspired by Biles’
weakness, a faulty perception that prevents ath- actions at the Summer
Olympics, stating: “We
letes from talking about their problems. That are important as people,
stigma is, in fact, the strongest barrier to athletes not just athletes.”
seeking help, says psychiatrist João Mauricio
Castaldelli-Maia of the University of São Paulo.
He and colleagues reviewed 52 studies on mental
health and elite athletes in the British Journal of
Sports Medicine in 2019.
Reactions to Biles’ decision made clear that the
stigma still exists. She faced backlash after with-
drawing from several Olympics events, as did
Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka, who pulled out the Ted Lasso enthusiast. Their life is not all about
of the 2021 French Open to focus on her mental winning medals or championships. Mindfulness
health. But amid the vitriol, Biles and Osaka had and ACT help athletes “learn more about them-
supporters, including fellow athletes who were selves and engage differently with their thoughts
inspired by these choices. “I didn’t even know that and emotions,” he says. It teaches them to be Prevalence of mental health
was an option,” U.S. figure skater Nathan Chen, a better people. issues in elite athletes
medal favorite at the upcoming Winter Olympics, Disorder Prevalence
said of Biles’ decision, at an October news briefing. Team tests
The International Olympic Committee, the On the women’s lacrosse field at Marymount Depressive
4–68%
U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and other University in Arlington, Va., players toss the ball symptoms
sports organizations have begun to acknowledge with an intense focus on their grip of the lacrosse Generalized
the importance of mental health. Just because stick, the snap of their wrists and the weight of the anxiety
14.6%
elite athletes are at peak physical fitness, their ball as they catch it and pass it on. To an outsider, disorder,
mental fitness is not guaranteed. Since 2018, the drills might seem routine, but the women were self-reported
sports-governing agencies, including the IOC, and paying extra attention to the task. The focused 0–19% in
health organizations have released a rash of posi- attention is a result of experiments that Minkler Eating men
tion statements on the mental health symptoms, (a former lacrosse coach), Washington, D.C.–based disorders 6–45% in
such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders, psychologist Tim Pineau and colleagues have run women
that are common among elite athletes, the factors with the team in the last few years.
SOURCE: C.L. REARDON ET AL/BR. J. SPORTS
contributing to those symptoms and the psycho- The researchers wanted to know if mindfulness MED. 2019
logical tools that might help competitors on and training could improve player performance and
off the field. overall well-being. With buy-in from the school’s A sizeable problem
There’s also been an explosion of research into athletic director and lacrosse coach, Pineau led Athletes can be reluctant
to report mental health
elite athletes’ mental health in the last few years, the players through six weeks of mindfulness problems because of
says sports and clinical psychologist Carolina training during preseason, then monthly follow- stigma. In a 2019 consen-
Lundqvist of Linköping University in Sweden, ups over several seasons. sus statement from the
International Olympic
citing a 2020 analysis in International Review The mindfulness sessions started with sta- Committee, data on
of Sport and Exercise Psychology. The research tionary meditations focusing on breathing and mental health disorders
points to two promising psychological tools. self-compassion, then progressed to mindful yoga in elite athletes were
limited, but depression
One is mindfulness — paying attention to, or and walking, and finally to throwing and catch- and anxiety rates ap-
staying in, the present moment without judgment. ing exercises. Along with the meditative work, the peared similar to the
TIM NWACHUKWU/GETTY IMAGES PLUS
Another is acceptance and commitment therapy, or players talked about what they’d learned in group general public’s. Eating
disorder rates were
ACT. In conjunction with mindfulness, the therapy discussions, describing how they used the train- higher in athletes.
trains a person to accept difficult thoughts or feel- ing to let go of mistakes. The coach reported that
ings rather than actively work to get rid of them. the players were more focused on the second-to-
Studies have shown that these tools can improve second decisions of the game, rather than dwelling
athletic performance — and, importantly, lead to a on something that had gone wrong.
richer life off the ice or the court. In post-training surveys, players reported feel-
Athletes “are human beings first,” says Minkler, ing that they could slip into that state of being

FEATURE | MENTAL GYMNASTICS
training. Jha and her colleagues measured the

players’ focus in the lab by having them hit the space
bar on a keyboard when they saw certain numbers
on a computer screen, such as 2 or 4. Players were
told not to hit the bar when they saw other num-
bers, like 3. The stronger their attention, the better
players were at not hitting the space bar when the
number 3 flashed across the screen.
After measuring baseline attention of the play-
ers, the researchers divided the players into two
groups: one worked through a four-week training
with mindfulness meditations, while the other
received four weeks of relaxation exercises. Mind-
fulness exercises focused on bringing attention
back to the present moment whenever the mind
strayed; relaxation exercises focused on relieving
tension, without focusing cues.
In previous experiments with emergency medi-
The women’s lacrosse totally immersed in the game, what is often called cal and military professionals, Jha had found that
team at Marymount a flow state or being in the zone, much more easily high stress, poor mood and perceived threats can
University used mindful-
ness with stationary after the mindfulness training. And they said they disrupt focus. In this study, she had the Miami
meditation, yoga and were less anxious about playing lacrosse. Before players complete their mindfulness or relaxation
throwing and catching training, the team had four wins and 15 losses. In work during preseason training, the grueling
exercises over several
seasons. Players’ anxiety the season after the training, the team won more physical workouts that help coaches decide who
levels dropped and the games than it lost and qualified for the regional gets cut from the team.
team started winning conference championship. The next season, the When given the computer attention test after
more games than it lost.
team won the regional conference championship, preseason training ended, the players didn’t focus
the researchers reported in 2019 in the Journal of as well as before. And they reported being more
Sport Psychology in Action. anxious, more depressed and less happy overall,
The findings reinforce results from a mindful- a result of being stressed from the physicality of
ness study with the University of Miami football football training, Jha says.
team, the Hurricanes. Amishi Jha, a neuroscien- Although their focus declined in the high-stress
tist at the university, teamed with Hurricanes setting, the attention of players who regularly
head coach, Al Golden, and his players to track practiced mindfulness exercises dropped less
how well they paid attention during preseason drastically than those who regularly practiced
relaxation exercises, Jha and colleagues reported
Practice boost The longer the University of Miami in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement in 2017.
Hurricanes practiced mindfulness, the less their ability to “Attention is the fuel for our ability to not just
pay attention dropped during a period of intense physical
training. SOURCE: J.D. ROOKS ET AL/J. COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT 2017 think and do cognitively demanding tasks, but
to regulate our emotion and connect” with other
Association of mindfulness practice time
people, Jha says. Protecting the ability to pay atten-
with attention in college football players
0.3 tion can protect mental health, she explains in her
2021 book Peak Mind, which explains how to build
Change in attention score
(compared with baseline)
0.1 mental “muscles” in as little as 12 minutes a day.

FROM TOP: DAVID SINCLAIR PHOTO; T. TIBBITTS
–0.1 Learned discipline

Meditative trainings are like a push-up for the
–0.3 mind. It takes practice, Minkler says. “You can’t
meditate once for 10 minutes and say, ‘I’m mindful
–0.5 and in the present,’ just like you wouldn’t go in the
weight room and do five push-ups and say, “That’s
–0.7 it, that’s all I need to do,’ ” he says. “You have to
75 175 275 375 work at it. You have to be disciplined.”
Time practicing mindfulness (minutes) Graham Mertz, quarterback for the University

of Wisconsin–Madison, has said he’s seen results
with mindfulness training. After what he felt was
a disappointing season in 2020, Mertz began
working with the Wisconsin Badgers’ director of
meditation training, Chad McGehee. That train-
ing helped Mertz figure out how to reset himself
mentally between a game’s offensive plays, he
told the Wisconsin State Journal. There’s roughly
40 seconds between plays, and Mertz says he
spent a lot of time identifying “anchors” to bring
his attention back to the moment and leave the
play that just happened in the past.
The best approach he found was to take a
deep breath, close his eyes and rub his finger-
tips together. The Badgers finished the 2021 sea-
son with eight wins and four losses, plus a win in
December’s Las Vegas Bowl.
Mertz’s story, while just one person’s expe-
rience, supports Minkler’s and Jha’s findings, triathletes competing to represent Malaysia at During its 2014
which suggest mindfulness could be an essen- international competitions. All three struggled season, the University
of Miami Hurricanes
tial tool that athletes should pack in their bags with self-doubt. football team tested
for game day. But the work comes with caveats. Over six weeks, he walked each athlete through mindfulness and
Analyses have shown that mindfulness research- a mental training on mindfulness so each learned relaxation to improve
attention and emotional
ers tend to overreport positive findings. And for to notice and label their thoughts and emotions, well-being.
some people, studies suggest, focused breathing especially negative ones, and then accept those
and other mindfulness exercises can bring up thoughts without judgment. Then each athlete
past trauma, causing distress, Minkler says. Hav- identified his values and what he wanted to be
ing clinical psychologists on hand to work with remembered for, should his career end the next
athletes who have this reaction to mindfulness day. Yau and each athlete then discussed how to
training is important. use mindfulness and thought acceptance during a
race to stay focused on performance without get-
No judgments ting wrapped up in what competitors were doing.
Acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT, is The training “does help me with reducing
another technique counselors are using to help anxiety and overthinking,” says triathlete Edwin
athletes improve not only their performance but Thiang, who worked with Yau. Thiang says he’s
their overall mental health. The goal of ACT is to still surprised by how vital the training is, espe-
teach athletes to separate their competitor iden- cially in high-stakes races. It calms him down and
DOUG MURRAY/ICON SPORTSWIRE/CORBIS/ICON SPORTSWIRE VIA GETTY IMAGES
tity from their personal one. helps him stay focused.

ACT does not attempt to change negative The other athletes who worked with Yau agree.
thoughts, such as “I suck today,” but to acknowl- One triathlete said he found it easier to accept
edge the thought as something completely thoughts of self-doubt when a competitor over-
independent of who or how talented the athlete took him. Before the mental training, the athlete
is. By accepting the negative thought, rather than would slow down in such situations, giving up
getting stuck in a downward spiral of trying to hope of finishing high in the rankings. After the
combat it with counterarguments, an athlete can training, he identified his self-doubt as an emo-
bring her focus back to the race or game at hand. tion, not a reality. By shifting his attention back
For a triathlete, who can spend up to 17 hours to the mechanics of either swimming, biking or
swimming, biking and running in a race, letting running, he could keep the pace he set for himself
go of the detrimental self-talk can be extremely during the race. Another of the triathletes
important when a competitor moves in front, or reported that the training helped him stay
when the race is long and an athlete wants to give committed to physical training, Yau and col-
up, says Eugene Koh Boon Yau, a psychiatrist at the leagues reported in the May 2021 Journal of Sport
University of Putra Malaysia in Seri Kembangan. Psychology in Action.
In the last few years, Yau worked with three Those results align with a study that pitted

FEATURE | MENTAL GYMNASTICS
mindfulness and elements of ACT against get extremely upset or sad and were better able
some of the traditional, performance-focused to cope with changes and try creative approaches
psychological tools athletes have been taught to tasks than the players trained with traditional
for decades, such as visualization, relaxation sports psychology tools.
(similar to what was used in Jha’s study) and Extending that idea further, Minkler argues that
positive self-talk. In that experiment, 18 women’s performance problems rarely have anything to do
basketball players at a Division III university in with technical skills. Mental hang-ups in training
New Jersey were divided into two groups. One and competition are often related to interpersonal
worked through relaxation and stress manage- issues, like relationships with teammates, coaches
ment exercises developed by psychologist Richard or loved ones. Mindfulness and ACT can help ath-
Suinn and described in the 1986 book Seven Steps letes work through those issues to bring their focus
to Peak Performance. The other group worked back to their sport, he says.
through exercises for mindfulness and Mertz, the Wisconsin quarterback,
acceptance of thoughts described in the would agree. He said he began to real-
2007 book The Psychology of Enhancing
Human Performance: The Mindfulness-
Acceptance-Commitment (MAC)
Approach by psychologists Frank Gardner
minutes
12
ize during his mindfulness training
that he was focused so intently on foot-
ball, he was neglecting the other parts
of his life. He learned to pay attention
Minimum daily
and Zella Moore. mindfulness practice to what he needed to do for his mental
A month after the study ended, MAC- time it takes to build health, whether it was focus a bit more
mental “muscles”
trained players had dips in anxiety, on prepping for the season or just tak-
substance use, eating issues and overall psycho- ing some time to have fun. His overall mental
logical distress, along with gains in emotional health improved as a result, he said.
regulation. Players trained in traditional psycho- Researchers using these techniques say they’ve
logical skills had less improvement in those areas, seen similar off-the-field benefits for their
Princeton University psychologist Mike Gross and student-athletes, including improved focus on
colleagues reported in 2018 in the International readings for class and better communication with
Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. friends and family. With those results in mind, Jha
On the court, mindfulness paired with elements say she’d like to test how mindfulness and ACT
of ACT can quickly keep players moving and help training might work for Olympic teams.
them stay in the game, especially if they make a She has, in fact, had several briefings with
mistake, Gross says. “There’s less … of those men- U.S. and Australian Olympic team representatives
tal gymnastics or the tug-of-war in the mind” about her mindfulness training. Ideally, she says,
that can mess up a player even more. In fact, the she would train Olympic coaches to work with their
MAC-trained players, he says, were less likely to athletes, and then track the competitors’ perfor-
mance and psychological health and attention.
Drop in distress One month after training, the mindfulness-acceptance- That kind of study is even more relevant after last
commitment approach, or MAC, eased behavioral difficulties and emotional distress year’s very public experiences of athletes such as
more than traditional psychological training, PST, among a group of female collegiate
basketball players. SOURCE: M. GROSS ET AL/INTL. J. SPORT EXERC. PSYCHOL. 2018 Biles and Osaka, she says.
“These people we see as pillars of excellence
Influence of MAC versus PST on psychological
distress in female college basketball players [are experiencing] extremely dysfunctional
0.8 mental states,” Jha says. “How do we have the
Mean psychological distress score
mental fitness match the physical excellence?”

0.7 Studies on mindfulness and ACT hint that a
match-up is achievable, and the training might
0.6 benefit not only elite athletes but every one of us.
“Athletes at the elite level are aspirational,” Jha
0.5 says. They show us that physical training is neces-
PST
sary for physical health, and they’ve reminded us
more recently that the mind, like the body, “needs
0.4
training to stay fit,” she says, “and we can train it.” s
MAC
T. TIBBITTS
0.3
Pretraining Post One month later Explore more
Study time period s Amishi P. Jha. Peak Mind. HarperOne, 2021.

REVIEWS & PREVIEWS
EXPERIENCES
Stuck at home? Give one of these

citizen science projects a try
For many of us, it’s the height of winter, with harsh weather
and the pandemic keeping us inside. If you’re looking for
a new way to pass the time, why not help science?
Researchers from a range of disciplines rely on the power
of crowdsourcing to collect and analyze data. From transcrib-
ing weather logs dating back to the Victorian era to classifying
African animals caught by camera traps, here are just a few
ways to put your free time to good use. — Erin Wayman
Solar Jet Hunter

AIM: Build a database of solar jets
HOW TO HELP: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or
SDO, has been monitoring the sun’s activity for more than a
decade. Studying the sun’s outbursts, including the narrow
jets of plasma that erupt from the surface, will help scientists In the Solar Jet Hunter project,
better understand space weather and crack solar mysteries citizen scientists search for jets
of plasma erupting from the sun
(see Page 10). But first, researchers need to find those jets. in images like this one, taken
That’s where you and other armchair astronomers come in. by NASA’s Solar Dynamics
Just go online, review sequences of SDO images, determine if Observatory.
solar jets are visible and document details about the events.
In addition to helping scientists study the sun, the dataset Frog Find
could help create a computer program that could speed up AIM: Monitor threatened frogs
future solar jet identifications. HOW TO HELP: To keep tabs on frog species vulnerable to
Start hunting at bit.ly/SolarJetHunter extinction, scientists in Australia have deployed acoustic
monitoring devices in several of the country’s national parks.
Weather Rescue At Sea Researchers are seeking volunteers to listen in on hours of
AIM: Extend the climate record further back in time recordings. Just hop online, review a field guide of frog calls
HOW TO HELP: To put today’s climate change into perspective, and start identifying amphibians in audio clips.
scientists need a long-running record of global temperatures. Categorize croaks at bit.ly/FrogFind
That record is pretty good for the 20th century, but becomes
spottier in the 19th century. To fill in the gaps, researchers are Prickly Pear Project Kenya
digitizing weather logbooks from ships that sailed in the AIM: Assess the impacts of an invasive plant
mid-1800s. Anyone with an internet connection (and willing HOW TO HELP: Invasive prickly pear cacti are spreading
to read old-timey cursive handwriting) can help transcribe throughout East Africa. To learn how the plants may be
the wealth of data locked away in these books. altering the behavior of native wildlife, ecologists set up
Transcribe observations at bit.ly/WeatherRescueAtSea camera traps in Kenya. Citizen scientists can help document
what’s present in more than 100,000 photos. After taking an
Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & online tutorial, you can catalog everything from the
Snow Network aardvarks to the zebras that you see.
AIM: Improve the quality of precipitation data ID animals at bit.ly/PricklyPearProject
HOW TO HELP: Because rain and snowfall are so variable over
even short distances, the best way to accurately assess pre- Finding Rico
cipitation is to get as many on-the-ground measurements as AIM: Identify genius dogs
possible. That’s the aim of this network of volunteers HOW TO HELP: In 2004, researchers introduced the world to
across the United States, Canada and the Bahamas who Rico, a border collie that recognized about 200 spoken words
make daily precipitation measurements in their backyards. (SN: 6/12/04, p. 371). Now, scientists are looking for more
With a project-approved rain gauge and some online train- high-vocabulary dogs to study canine intelligence and lan-
ing, you can collect data that’s useful to everyone from guage skills. If your pooch seems to know at least 20 objects
farmers and city managers to the National Weather Service. by name, the team wants to hear from you.
NASA
Set up a weather station at www.cocorahs.org Get in touch at bit.ly/FindingRico

SOCIETY UPDATE
REGENERON SCIENCE TALENT SEARCH
CONGRATULATIONS
TO THE TOP 300
SCHOLARS OF 2022
Society for Science is proud to announce this year’s Top 300
scholars in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the oldest and
most prestigious science and math competition in the United
States for high school seniors. The scholars were selected from
1,804 entrants and come from 185 American and international high
schools in 37 U.S. states, China, Singapore and Switzerland. Each
scholar receives a $2,000 award with an additional $2,000 going
to their respective schools.
Naisha Agarwal • Ayush Agrawal • Armaan Ahmed • Julie Alan • Claire Andreasen • Derek Araki-Kurdyla • Jacqueline Atchley • Neha Ayyalapu • Edith Bachmann
• Anjana Balachandar • Sohini Banerjee • Seyun Bang • Maggie Bao • Ayaan Bargeer • Max Bee-Lindgren • Ryan Belkin • Harshal Bharatia • Aurrel Bhatia • Disha
Bhattacharya • Pratiksha Bhattacharyya • Atreyus Bhavsar • Steven Blank • Mai Blaustein • Yanna Bravewolf • Michelle Brown • Elijah Burks • Daniel Cai • Victor
Cai • Natalie Calman • Eric Cao • Madison Carson • Lawrence Chai • Karly Chan • Sara Chan • Varun Chandrashekhar • David Chang • Samantha Chavira-Prieto •
Eileen Chen • Jeffrey Chen • Sabrina Chen • Caitlin Chheda • Nathan Chi • Ethan Chiu • Benjamin Choi • Jaiyoun Choi • Lauren Choi • Neil Chowdhury • Andrew Chu
• Jonathan Chung • Rose Cioffi • Ryan Clairmont • Kevin Cong • Levi Cruz • Jason Cui • Srihitha Dasari • Riju Dey • Emily Dodd • Ryan Doherty • Brooke Dunefsky
• Efe Eroz • Lindsay Fabricant • Alice Feng • Amy Feng • Aliya Fisher • Orion Foo • Abraham Franchetti • Harrish Ganesh • Rithvik Ganesh • Shyam Ganesh Babu
• Andrew Gao • Wilson Gao • Dimple Amitha Garuadapuri • Lara Gastelumendi-Franco • Arko Ghosh • Shaurnav Ghosh • Prabuddha Ghosh Dastidar • Rohan
Ghotra • Emi Gilmer • Aanya Goel • Ram Goel • Siya Goel • Maggie Graseck • Maya Groothuis • Audrey Gruian • Richard Gu • Bella Guerra • Joshua Guo • Karen
Guo • Phillip Guo • Riya Gupta • Reem Hamdan • Vivien He • Garrett Heller • Heloise Hoffmann • Sheryl Hsu • Alexander Hu • Mulin Huan • Eric Huang • Grace
Huang • Ryan Huang • William Huang • Haedam Im • Samuel Iskhakov • Michael Jacob • Fiona Jiang • Theodore Jiang • Yanan Jiang • Sonya Jin • Samuel Jung •
Arjan Kahlon • Shreyas Kar • Su Kara • Mithra Karamchedu • Riley Keating • Andrew Kelly • Cyrus Kenkare • Jui Khankari • Selin Kocalar • Vivek Kogilathota • Nikitha
Kota • Jeremy Kotlyar • Sophie Krajmalnik • Emma Kratcha • Kaivalya Kulkarni • Rishi Kumar • Ethan Labelson • Enrique Labre • Zoe Lakkis • Henry Lane • Daniel
Larsen • Paridhi Latawa • Sachi Laumas • Kathryn Le • Aaron Lee • Rachel Lee • Abigail Lev • Sydney Levy • Jennifer Lew • Bangzheng Li • Eric Li • Jennifer Li •
Jerry Li • Krystal Li • Victoria Li • Julianna Lian • Jessica Liang • Brandon Lin • Ann Liu • Francis Liu • Frank Liu • Seton Liu • Steven Liu • Donald Liveoak • Ricardo
Lopez • Roberto Lopez • David Lu • Christopher Luisi • Amber Luo • Larissa Ma • Varun Madan • Atulya Mandyam • Rohit Mantena • Gilbert Mao • Evelyn McCreery
• Ada Metaxas • Eli Meyers • Benjamin Miao • Vaibhav Mishra • Ashini Modi • Dheepthi Mohanraj • Soyoun Moon • Ella Moore • Genevieve Morange • Benjamin
Nachod • Ron Nachum • Varsha Naga • Alexa Nakanishi • Yash Narayan • Kento Nishi • Nyasha Nyoni • Comfort Ohajunwa • Gabrielle Oliva • Jerry Orans • Amara
Orth • Suraj Oruganti • Dhruv Pai • Katherine Panebianco • Khushi Parikh • Hannah Park • Ryan Park • Nithin Parthasarathy • Rishab Parthasarathy • Roshni
Patel • Shivani Patel • Sidhya Peddinti • Katherine Pflieger • Kannammai Pichappan • Rachel Pizzolato • Emily Pizzorusso • Christopher Prainito • Jacqueline
Prawira • Anika Puri • Pravalika Putalapattu • Sasvath Ramachandran • Navya Ramakrishnan • Vale Rasmussen • Janice Rateshwar • Neil Rathi • Aseel Rawashdeh
• Brandon Recce • Desiree Rigaud • Luke Robitaille • Ashlyn Roice • Samuel Rossberg • Hrishika Roychoudhury • Varsha Saravanan • Olivia Schmidt • Sarah
Schubel • Harshita Sehgal • Maxwell Selver • Arnav Shah • Cameron Sharma • Maya Sharma • Natalie Shell • Daniel Shen • Isabel Shi • Sophia Shi • Eiki Shido
• Nina Shin • David Shon • Ankit Singhal • Savar Sinha • Arnab Sircar • Ashwin Sivakumar • Aaron Song • Kevin Song • Lucas Sosnick • Vivek Sreejithkumar
• Robert Strauss • Shannon Su • Mark Takken • Cameron Takmil • Wanli Tan • Siddharth Tiwari • Ava Tsapatsaris • Waris Tuchinda • Nishi Uppuluri • Annika
Vaidyanathan • Pratik Vangal • Keelan Vaswani • Sophie Vaughan • Alexandra Vesselinov • Jay Vogel • Alexandra Volkova • Oliver Walsh Fuchs • Aimee Wang
• Atticus Wang • Ella Wang • Ethan Wang • Ethan Wang • Franklin Wang • Isabel Wang • Lucia Wang • Sunny Wang • Susan Wang • Winnie Wang • Gene Weng
• Anthony Wong • Ethan Wong • Leo Wylonis • Zoe Xi • Daniel Xia • Vivian Xiao • Katherine Xie • Nathan Xiong • Jessica Yan • Ali Yang • Heran Yang • Margaret
Yang • Christine Ye • Olivia Yeroushalmi • Han Youn • Xinkai Yu • Zara Yu • William Yue • Renee Zbizika • Michael Zeng • Gary Zhan • Alexander Zhang • Allison
Zhang • Anya Zhang • William Zhang • Kevin Zhao • Luke Zhao • Andrew Zhou • Emily Zhou • Leon Lee Zhou • Zachary Zitzewitz • Yuqiao Zou • Ethan Zuo
FEEDBACK
Ice Sculpts Rock Art | Challenges of School COVID-19 Testing Nuclear wonders batteries” (SN: 12/4/21, p. 4).
MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE s NOVEMBER 20, 2021
A new particle accelerator at the Facility for Reader Ann Hoffenberg wanted to
P Symm xplined | Pluto’s Dark Side Rare Isotope Beams will help scientists un- know how the recycled batteries out-
lock the inner workings of atomic nuclei and performed the new ones.
MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE s DECEMBER 4, 2021
explore how elements form in the cosmos, The researchers don’t know exactly
Emily Conover reported in “In search of why the recycled batteries’ cathodes
extreme nuclei” (SN: 11/20/21, p. 20). perform better, but they think it’s
Outer Conover reported that a rare variety of because the recycling process used in
Limits
Scientists seek atoms with
lithium, called lithium-11, has two extra the study made the material’s micro-
MIND-ALTERING
extreme nuclei that could
offer clues to the cosmos
neutrons that form a wide halo around structure more porous, Wilke says.
Therapies Can psychedelic drugs ease
the nucleus, expanding the nucleus’ size. When a battery is discharged and
depression, PTSD and other
mental health disorders?
Reader Bob Conover, no relation to recharged, it goes through stages of
NOVEMBER 20, 2021 & DECEMBER 4, 2021 Emily Conover, asked how lithium-11’s shrinking and expanding. The more
halo neutrons can expand the nucleus. porous material seems to endure that
In quantum physics, a neutron isn’t process better, which is important for
localized to one spot within a nucleus, battery performance, she says.
Emily Conover says. Instead, it is
described by a wave function, which Signal senders
gives the probability of finding a neu- Cells called neuroids crawl around
tron in a given place. Each halo neutron sponges’ digestive chambers and send
in lithium-11 has a wave function that messages, a communication system that
is spread out much more than a normal offers hints about how nervous systems
neutron in a nucleus, she says. That evolved, Laura Sanders reported in
makes the nucleus large, in the sense “Brainless sponges may have echoes of a
that it can collide with another nucleus nervous system” (SN: 12/4/21, p. 32).
even when the two nuclei are separated Sanders reported that in the studied
by a relatively large distance. While the sponges, some hairlike cilia — which
halo neutrons are weakly bound to the help keep the animals fed by moving
nucleus, they are indeed bound. nutrients through feeding chambers —
near neuroids were bent at angles that
Ticktock suggested the cilia were no longer
An atomic clock detected how general moving. Reader James Wilcox won-
relativity warps time across a millimeter, dered why the cilia get bent.
revealing the extreme precision achievable The researchers suspect that the
by such clocks, Emily Conover reported bent shape indicates a sort of freeze,
in “Gravity warps time on tiny scale” Sanders says. Neuroids might send
(SN: 11/20/21, p. 10). small packages of chemical signals that
Reader Richard Boyer wondered if the stop the cilia’s normal movement, put-
accuracy of a wristwatch changes as a ting the brakes on the sponge’s meal.
person swings the watch-wearing arm.
“As you swing your arm, your watch
could tick very, very slightly faster or
slower,” Conover says. “That’s because
each point in Earth’s gravitational field
will have a specific rate of time deter-
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Oldie but a goodie
Connect with us Lithium-ion batteries with recycled cath-
odes can last longer than batteries with
new cathodes, Carolyn Wilke reported in
“Recycled materials can make long-lasting

SCIENCE VISUALIZED
Rare fossils preserve

Australia’s wet history
A new trove of thousands of insect,
plant and other fossils offers an
unprecedented snapshot of Australia’s
wetter, forest-dominated past.
The fossils were found at a site
called McGraths Flat in southeastern
Australia, vertebrate paleontologist
Matthew McCurry and colleagues
report January 7 in Science Advances.
Long ago, much of Australia was car-
peted with rainforests. Then, during
the Miocene Epoch, about 23 million to
5 million years ago, Earth underwent a
climatic upheaval. For Australia, that
1 mm meant drying out, with shrubs, grasses
and deserts expanding into once-lush
territory.
McGraths Flat, which is located in
New South Wales, formed during that
transition, between 16 million and
11 million years ago. Now shrubland,
the site was part of a temperate for-
est around a small lake, says McCurry,
of the Australian Museum Research
Institute in Sydney.
The fossils, including of a parasitoid
wasp (top) and fern leaf (middle), were
encased within layers of an iron-rich
mineral called goethite, preserving the
remains in astonishing detail. Scanning
electron microscopy let the team zoom
in on some fossils, including of a crane
fly (bottom left), revealing the units,
or ommatidia, of its compound eye
1 cm (bottom right). — Carolyn Gramling
5 mm 50 µm
ALL: M.R. MCCURRY ET AL/SCIENCE ADVANCES 2022
32 SCIENCE NEWS | January 29, 2022 See fossils from Australia’s McGraths Flat at bit.ly/SN_McGrathsFlat
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