3 Days to Pluto, and on to the Nearest Star? p.

32

SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS

®
NOVEMBER 2016

Final days of
the Ice Age
giants p.38

PLUS
A Checkmate for Cancer p.46

Hunt for Missing Moon Data p.68

BONUS
ONLINE
Why You Can't Resist CONTENT
the Office Doughnuts p.28
CODE p.5
 RICH REWARDS.
SAVE
$165

15 Fine Festive Reds – Worth $234.99 – Just $69.99 (plus $19.99 shipping & applicable tax)

Let us send you 15 truly impressive reds to see you through
the holidays in style. And save $165 today, as your special
introduction to the WSJwine Discovery Club.
Start with the Barbanera’s “absolutely phenomenal” 98-Point
Super Tuscan (top critic Luca Maroni). Then taste Opi Sadler’s
acclaimed Argentine Malbec and gold-medal Cabernet from
Raymond, “one of the iconic wineries of Napa” (Parker). Just
three stars in an exceptional reds lineup (with equally delicious
whites and mixed options available for the same great price).
How can we make such a generous offer?
Because we believe you’ll be impressed and come back for more.
But that’s entirely up to you. If you like what you taste, we’ll tell
you about a dozen exciting new finds every three months. You
can change wines, skip cases, delay delivery or cancel anytime.
Each future case is just $149.99 (saving you at least 20%) and
comes with detailed tasting notes and serving advice, plus our
money-back guarantee.
No risks, just rich rewards – give it a try today.

ORDER NOW AT wsjwine.com/rewards or call 1-877-975-9463 quote code 8007004

WSJwine is operated independently of The Wall Street Journal’s news department. Offer available to first-time Discovery Club customers only and limited to one case per household.
Licensed retailers/wineries only accept and fulfill orders from adults at least 21 years old and all applicable taxes are paid. Delivery is available to AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, IA, ID, IL, IN, LA, MA,
MI, MN, MO, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OR, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, WI, WV, WY and DC. Please go online for full terms and conditions. Void where prohibited by law.
 Contents
NOVEMBER 2016
VOL. 37, NO. 9

Astronaut Alan Bean removes the fuel element of the Lunar Module during
the Apollo 12 mission on the moon. See page 68 for related story.

4 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Website access code: DSD1611
Enter this code at: www.DiscoverMagazine.com/code
3 Days to Pluto, and on to the Neares tar?
to gain access to exclusive subscriber content. p.32

SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS

FEATURES

32 Alpha Centauri or Bust

The nearest star system is 4.37 light-years away. But an ambitious and innovative
new idea — involving lasers and nanospacecraft — could get us there in the next
40 years. BY STEVE NADIS

38 Mammoth Island
In the middle of the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska, sits an island that was
once home to a special population of mammoths. Now, researchers are digging
deep to reconstruct the past and unearth the cause of the creatures’ demise.
BY JESSICA MARSHALL ON THE COVER
3 Days to Pluto, and on to the
46 Checkmate Nearest Star? p.32
Most doctors ight cancer from the outside with radiation and chemotherapy. But Mystery on Mammoth Island p.38
James Allison is ighting it from the inside by hacking patients’ immune systems. A Checkmate for Cancer p.46
The results are changing the cancer game. BY KENNETH MILLER Hunt for Missing Moon Data p.68
Why You Can’t Resist
52 Trailblazers the Office Doughnuts p.28
Etched into stone in the Canadian province of Newfoundland are the earliest Photo of the Milwaukee Public Museum Hebior
traces of trails made by a living organism. Those irst steps may have set an Mammoth by Bill Zuback/Discover. Background:
Vibrant Image Studio/Shutterstock; Starshot
evolutionary course that changed everything. BY ROBERT MOOR illustration by Roen Kelly/Discover

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

6 EDITOR’S NOTE
Making Tracks,
Leaving a Trail
Although we humans tend to focus
on ourselves, other species made their
marks on Earth long before us.
7 THE CRUX
The tree of life sprouts some
new branches, a herpetologist
recalls the inspiration for a
conservation program that
gives frogs a leg up, a grad
student calculates a new
answer for a classic physics
problem, and more.
PROJECT APOLLO ARCHIVE/NASA
abdominal pains. Scans come up
short. Could the answer lie in her
past? BY TONY DAJER
24 BIG IDEA
Brewing Life
Scientists are cooking up early-Earth
conditions to igure out how life got
its start. BY JONATHON KEATS
28 MIND OVER MATTER
Siren Song of Food
If you’re trying to shed some
pounds, take a look around. Your
environment is more important than
you think. BY TAMAR HASPEL
60 ORIGIN STORY
64 PROGNOSIS
he Heart of Mississippi
Why are African-Americans more
likely to experience heart disease?
Doctors are turning to the Magnolia
State to ind out. BY JEFF WHEELWRIGHT
68 HISTORY LESSONS
he Missing Moon Files
Researchers race against the clock
as they try to recover long-lost lunar
data before it disappears for good.
BY JULIA ROSEN
74 20 THINGS YOU DIDN’T
KNOW ABOUT . . .
Bridges

Trading Places They connect our world, on both large

20 VITAL SIGNS Long before the Chinese Silk Road, and small scales. The Romans built
Low Blow the Indian Ocean was teeming with ones that have stood the test of time.
A young woman goes to three seafarers creating a sophisticated And they can even entertain us, in a
different hospitals because of severe trading network. BY ADRIANNE DAGGETT sense. BY GEMMA TARLACH

November 2016 DISCOVER 5

 Discover
SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS

Editor's Note ®

BECKY LANG Editor In Chief

DAN BISHOP Design Director

Making Tracks,
EDITORIAL
KATHI KUBE Managing Editor
GEMMA TARLACH Senior Editor
BILL ANDREWS Senior Associate Editor
MARK BARNA Associate Editor

Leaving a Trail ERIC BETZ Associate Editor

LACY SCHLEY Assistant Editor
DAVE LEE Copy Editor
ELISA R. NECKAR Copy Editor
AMY KLINKHAMMER Editorial Assistant
The track was huge. The BRIDGET ALEX AAAS Mass Media Fellow
creature’s hoof had left troughs Contributing Editors
in the putty of mud along the DAN FERBER, TIM FOLGER,
trail. This was not from some LINDA MARSA, STEVE NADIS,
ADAM PIORE, COREY S. POWELL,
wandering horse. I bent down and JULIE REHMEYER, ERIK VANCE,
studied the prints left by a moose STEVE VOLK, PAMELA WEINTRAUB,
JEFF WHEELWRIGHT,
in the Wyoming foothills. Just a DARLENE CAVALIER (SPECIAL PROJECTS)
few feet away, the comparatively
ART
dainty wedged tracks of a deer ERNIE MASTROIANNI Photo Editor
were a little crustier, crumblier, ALISON MACKEY Associate Art Director
older. And leaning down closer to DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
the trail, I could barely make out CARL ENGELKING Web Associate Editor
NATHANIEL SCHARPING Web Staff Writer
the faded doggy-like paw prints
Bloggers
from a coyote. MEREDITH CARPENTER, LILLIAN FRITZ-LAYLIN,
As a 13-year-old, learning JEREMY HSU, REBECCA KRESTON,
JEFFREY MARLOW, NEUROSKEPTIC,
animal tracking — among other ELIZABETH PRESTON, SCISTARTER,
biology, ecology and hydrology CHRISTIE WILCOX, TOM YULSMAN
lessons in the wilderness at ADVERTISING
the Teton Science School — STEVE MENI Advertising Sales Manager
888 558 1544
I remember feeling how small, smeni@discovermagazine.com

yet integral, humans are in the Rummel Media Connections

history and biology of the planet. We’re a blip among creatures KRISTI RUMMEL Consulting and Media Sales
608 435 6220
that came before us. Two stories in this issue touch on this concept. kristi@rummelmedia.com
MELANIE DECARLI Marketing Architect
We delve into why a mammoth population persisted on a remote BOB RATTNER Research
island in the Bering Sea (see page 38), surviving for thousands DARYL PAGEL Advertising Services
of years longer than other mammoth groups. We’re there as a KALMBACH PUBLISHING CO.
multidisciplinary team of scientists seeks to solve the mystery CHARLES R. CROFT President
STEPHEN C. GEORGE Vice President, Content
of what inally doomed the giant mammals. And we take you to DANIEL R. LANCE Senior V.P., Sales & Marketing
the coast of Newfoundland as one writer follows the fossilized JAMES R. MCCANN Vice President, Finance
footprints of what are considered the Earth’s earliest nomads NICOLE MCGUIRE Vice President, Consumer Marketing
JAMES SCHWEDER Vice President, Technology
(see page 52). ANN E. SMITH Corporate Advertising Director
It’s stories like these that remind me of the eons of life that have MAUREEN M. SCHIMMEL Corporate Art Director
KIM REDMOND Single Copy Specialist
populated this Earth before us. And we’ve got the luxury of being MIKE SOLIDAY Art and Production Manager
able to delve into the science and interpret that natural history.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
In the U.S., $29.95 for one year; in Canada, $39.95
for one year (U.S. funds only), includes GST, BN 12271
3209RT; other foreign countries, $44.95 for one year
(U.S. funds only).

Feel free to send comments and questions
Becky Lang
to editorial@discovermagazine.com
CUSTOMER SALES & SERVICE
800 829 9132
Outside the U.S. and Canada: 813 910 3616
Customer Service: Discover@customersvc.com
Digital: Discover.Digital@customersvc.com
Back Issues: Discover.SingleCopy@customersvc.com

CONNECT WITH US EDITORIAL INQUIRIES

WILLIAM ZUBACK/DISCOVER

editorial@discovermagazine.com
21027 Crossroads Circle, Waukesha, WI 53186
facebook.com/DiscoverMag
twitter.com/DiscoverMag
plus.google.com/+discovermagazine

6 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 THE
CRUX
The Latest Science News & Notes

MATHEMATICAL BEAUTY
These branching columns, seen from below, were conceived by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí to support the complex vault of his world-
famous La Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain. Gaudí drew inspiration from natural structures, such as trees, and mathematical
concepts, like U-shaped hyperbolas and parabolas. He knew the results would not only look mesmerizing, but also would make for strong
arches; they don’t need internal bracing or external buttresses. Gaudí, who worked on the basilica from 1883 until his death in 1926, was
among the first to use these equilibrated structures as design elements.  ERNIE MASTROIANNI; PHOTO BY SYLVAIN SONNET/HEMIS/ALAMY

November 2016 DISCOVER 7

 THE
CRUX Bacteria

Tree of Life
Bacteria branch out on this
Actinomyces
odontolyticus: Found
in the human mouth;
Staphylococcus:
Causes a common
hospital-acquired
infection.
Lactobacillus:
Probiotic also
used to
make
yogurt
hosts a parasitic CPR
updated phylogenetic diagram. bacterium, TM7x, that
and cheese.
has such a small genome
it cannot synthesize
Jillian Banfield never meant to amino acids on its own.
reinvent the tree of life. But after
two decades of studying microbial
communities, the University
Chlamydia:
of California, Berkeley, Culprit of a
geomicrobiologist realized common
sexually
that previous iterations of transferred
the tree, which shows how infection.
organisms are genetically
related, neglected
vast swaths of life’s Leptospirillum:
diversity. Half the Bacterium found in
world’s bacteria acidic mine drainage;
provides a habitat
were missing, for other organisms
because they that can only survive
the harsh environment
can’t be cultured in its biofilm.
in the lab. “They
depend on other
organisms for many
basic requirements,”
Banfield says. (She and Helicobacter:
her colleagues have Organism
identified them only shown to
cause
by piecing together stomach
fragments of their DNA cancer.
brought in from the wild.) E. coli and
Salmonella: Causes
Informed by more than of food poisoning.
1,000 newly sequenced
types of microbe, Banfield’s
new tree reveals the diversity
and long lineage of bacteria,
which, along with eukaryotes Archaea
and archaea, represent the three
Salmonella
main domains of life. It also reveals
how tightly interconnected many
organisms are.  JONATHON KEATS
Methanogens:
Archaea that
make the potent Lokiarchaeota: Recently
The genetic tree of life is divided into three greenhouse gas discovered on the floor of
domains: Bacteria, Archaea and Eukaryotes. methane. the Arctic Ocean; shows an
unprecedented degree of
Bacteria and Archaea, while genetically distinct,
genetic overlap with
are both Prokaryotes, single-celled organisms lacking eukaryotes; may therefore
a membrane-bound nucleus. Eukaryotes include be a descendent of our
plants and animals and have more complex cells with common ancestor with
simple microorganisms.
a nucleus and other organelles enclosed in a membrane.

8 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Candidate Phyla
Radiation (CPR):

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES; RON SUMNERS/DREAMSTIME; TOMONORI KINDAICHI ET AL./FEMS MICROBIOLOGY ECOLOGY, 2016, VOL. 92, NO. 6; ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; CARL R. WOESE INSTITUTE FOR GENOMIC BIOLOGY/UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS;
Branch of bacteria
announced only in 2015;
represents about half of
the domain’s diversity
— and a third of the
diversity of life on Earth.

CENTRE FOR GEOBIOLOGY (UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN, NORWAY) BY R.B. PEDERSEN; CDC/BETTE JENSEN; CDC/JANICE CARR; TREE OF LIFE: LAURA HUG AND JILLIAN BANFIELD. RIGHT COLUMN FROM TOP: NASA, ESA, J. HESTER, A. LOLL (ASU); PROJECT APOLLO ARCHIVE/NASA
Saccharibacteria:
Only CPR member
that has been
successfully grown
in isolation in a lab.

A nearby star went supernova in the year 1054 and created the Crab Nebula.
But even closer supernovas could have changed history entirely.

Woesebacteria: Named after

Carl Woese, who, based on his earlier
work, created the first modern tree of
Supernovas
life in 1990 by separating life into the
three domains. Close to Home
The death throes of nearby stars might have
Eucarya
Bacteria Archaea influenced evolution on Earth.
Humans have observed supernovas — the violent explosions
that herald death for massive stars — for millennia. Now, using precise
chemical measurements of seafloor rock and moon samples, scientists
have shown that nearby supernovas rained down radioactive iron and
potentially influenced life on Earth.
Anton Wallner of the Australian National University led a team
The first genetic that measured 60Fe — a kind of iron ejected by supernovas — in
tree establishing sediment and rock samples from the bottom of the Indian, Pacific
the three domains.
and Atlantic oceans. The team found that 60Fe levels spiked some
40 times higher in seafloor material that was roughly 2 million years
old, with another significant rise 7 million years ago. The researchers
suspect each iron spike happened when the fallout from a supernova
Carl Woese explosion hit Earth. Another team of researchers led by Leticia Fimiani
of the Technical University of Munich also found 60Fe in lunar soil
samples collected by Apollo astronauts. Fimiani’s team suggests that
the iron isotopes originated from the same
supernova events.
Eukaryotes Both supernovas occurred beyond the
maximum distance, roughly 25 light-years,
for a supernova to have catastrophic effects
on life on Earth. However, even these distant
explosions might have ionized the planet’s
atmosphere and produced an uptick in the
frequency of lightning. Similar supernovas
almost certainly hit the early Earth.
Lightning from these events might have
assembled new chemical compounds from
Deep-sea
vents where the atoms and molecules already present Alan Bean and Pete Conrad
Lokiarchaeota in the atmosphere, altering evolution. (reflected in visor) collect
was found.  KATHERINE KORNEI samples during Apollo 12.

November 2016 DISCOVER 9

 THE
CRUX ReDISCOV ER
W he
BUDreD’s Y?
BY JEFF
WHEELWR
IGHT ILLUST
RATION
Tracking
a
wolverine lost
odyssey on his
through
grazing were
Canada. curtailed,

Buddy Lost
BY ERIC Perhaps wolverines
stole down
Sometime
in 2008 a
HANC OCK the Americ Wyoming 300 live
and the Casca today in Mont from
the moun
tains of
young male
wolverine
an West. ton. The
young male de range ana, Idaho
in northern and
went west Idaho. No left his home surprise, that
and then one but the distan reached Califo Washing-
powering south, keepin saw him go. He proba in the agenc Scientists ce he travele rnia was
over obstac g bly y was have d isn’t unhea a big
a major
river, les, as wolve to the highest groun listing should in the process radio transm captured wolve rd of.
rines tend d and of determ rines and
smooth sailingthe Snake, and a be inaliz ining if the itters attach let them
through major highw to do. He forded analysis,
issued last ed. Accor
ding to the federal
revealed
beeline migra ed. This kind go with
Traversing the empti ay, its curren year, the agency’s males movin tions of of tracki
a ness of easter I-84, then had t habitat wolverine hundreds ng has
near Truck distance of 500 miles, n Oregon. predicted by the middl may lose
a third of covering
g farther
and faster of miles
ee, Calif., that reduce e of the centur 20 miles with
had been in the centra he inally reache dennin d snowpacks y. The agenc Young male in a day.
than female
s, often
decad l Sierra Nevad d a forest g; that
As the larges es since a wolverine a more isolate home ranges would would hurt female y — often wolverines
(weasel) t terrest roamed these range. It d spaces be presse s’ older males typically
leave their
family, wolve rial members of woods. retreating
snow; that
as anima
ls moved d into tighte
r,
females set
up
kick them
out birthplaces
peaks, but
especially
rines are
creatures
the Muste
lidae physiologica warmer tempe higher with verine, testos shop close to home. — while young
ball bodies of snow. of snow, l stress. ratures would the where the terone spikin A 2-year
are perfec Their thickl cold and Of course cause g in his blood -old male
, females are, wol-
blizzards. tly constr y furred, snowpacks, long before climat , does not

and Found
Their ucted to bowling- he’s lucky, but he takes
legs, let them paws, seemingly retain most wolve
unbridled
trapping
e change
threatened he
two or three. lands in a territo his best shot know
bound over too big for heat during rines from and poison the Robert Inman ry where he can and if
through. the snowp their stubby on in the the contin ing had driven mate with
Snifing a ack witho northern ental U.S. , a resear
a wolverine dead deer Colorado, Rockies, cher for
bores down buried benea ut breaking Michigan, but the thin Wolverines hung the Wildli
fe
throttle. like a tunne th an avalan gone by Minnesota populations
(Wolverines che, the middl in
was alive.) are ling machi
southernmo e of the 20th and the North
Since female scavengers, eating ne on full
st group, century. east were
late in winter s bear their anything by a chang those in Wolverines
time, the young in that once e in the Sierra in the
maintain sites they snow chamb sheep. Biolog their food supply Nevad
their snow
cover long
select for
denning ers ists think — deer, elk a, were hurt
In short, have to by livesto those anima and
change’s
no snow,
no wolve
into spring
to protec Sierra. When
ck grazin
g in the ls were pushe bighorn
threat
Service found to snow levels,
rines. On
the basis
t the kits.
to lower winter came high summer meado d out
wolverines the U.S. of climat range, little and the ws of the
species in Fish and e Although carrion remai livestock were herded
the contin warranted Wildlife a furtive
ental U.S. listing as 1930s, few ned for wolve
in 2010. a threatened the last conir probably surviv rines.
As of this specimen med Sierra ed throug
46 January, in 1922. wolverine h the

As a lonely wolverine approaches his maximum

But over was shot
the past as a
50 years,
as trappi
ng and high-e
levation

life expectancy, this could be his last winter.

47

California’s lonely
wolverine was
Eight years ago, a young male wolverine from Idaho felt sorry for Buddy. He grew middle-aged, caught on camera
surprisingly showed up near Truckee in California’s Sierra then old. last winter.
Nevada range. Wolverines had been absent there for 80 years. Each winter, when she’d bait her cameras,
Discover profiled the animal in March 2014, in the article Shufelberger feared she might not see
“Where’s Buddy?” Buddy again. After all, why would he stick around? Besides, as a
“Buddy” was the nickname given by wildlife biologist Amanda predator living near humans, he risked being injured, poisoned,
Shufelberger, who works for Sierra Pacific Industries, a lumber trapped or shot.

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE

company. Young wolverines migrate to empty territories to find
mates and start new populations. Buddy set up shop on a snowy
mountaintop owned by the timber company.
It turned into an odd kind of love triangle. Each winter,
Shufelberger kept tabs on Buddy with motion-sensitive trail
cameras, which she set near trees baited with raw chicken. She
never saw him during the summer or, for that matter, in the
flesh. Also, she never recorded a female wolverine.
The media ran stories about “the lonely wolverine.” People
She spotted him as usual in February 2015. Then a whole
year passed. Last March, to Shufelberger’s relief, her camera
caught him once again as he snuffled about his “magic chicken
tree.” Buddy was now approaching 10 years old, an age most
wolverines never reach.
“I hope there’s a female,” Shufelberger says. “Is she just shy
and not coming on camera?” Most likely there isn’t a hidden
female. “We’re getting to the point where I won’t expect to see
him next winter,” she says.  JEFF WHEELWRIGHT

10 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

SPECIAL OFFER FOR NEW CUSTOMERS ONLY

Please send me the Uncirculated 90-coin set of
✗ YES! 1999-2008 Statehood, 2009 D.C. & U.S. Territories
and 2010-Date National Park Quarters for ONLY $29.95 –
reg. $178.00, plus FREE Shipping (limit 5 sets). Also send my
FREE Lincoln Bicentennial 4-coin set (one per customer, please).

You SAVE! You SAVE!

Add Custom Add Custom
Statehood Quarter, America’s
D.C. & U.S. National Park
Territories Display Quarter Display
Statehood Quarters D.C. & U.S. Territories National Park Quarters Folders and SAVE Folders and SAVE
Over 10% at $3.50 Over 10% at $3.50
each (reg. $3.95). each (reg. $3.95).
C O M P L E T E Uncirculated
Order Deadline: 12:00 Midnight, December 31, 2016

90-Coin Collection
Never to be minted again!
QTY DESCRIPTION

90-Coin Quarter Set (limit 5 sets) $29.95

Statehood Display Folders – SAVE Over 10% $3.50
National Park Display Folders – SAVE Over 10% $3.50
PRICE TOTAL

FREE Shipping!
D on’t miss a unique event in U.S. coinage
history! Since 1999, America’s quarters
have featured special statehood, territory and Method of payment:
Merchandise TOTAL $

Charge my:
national park designs – struck for 10 weeks each ❏ Check or Money Order payable ❏ VISA ❏ MC
and then never again! You can still get ALL 90 to Littleton Coin Company ❏ AMEX ❏ DISC
quarters released to date in mint Uncirculated
condition for only $29.95 – 83% OFF the Card No. Exp. Date____/____
regular price of $178.00, plus FREE SHIPPING.
Order by deadline and also get a FREE
Uncirculated 4-coin set of 2009 Name ______________________________________________
Lincoln Bicentennial cents! Please print clearly
SAVE You’ll also receive our fully illustrated
Address _______________________________ Apt#________
83 % catalog, plus other fascinating selections
from our Free Examination Coins-on-
Approval Service, from which you may City ____________________ State _____ Zip ___________
purchase any or none of the coins – return
balance in 15 days – with option to cancel at
any time. Order now and SAVE 83%! E-Mail ___________________________________________
Please send coupon to:
Mail coupon or order at
©2016 LCC, LLC

Littleton Coin Co., Dept. 4JW401

®

www.LittletonCoin.com/specials 1309 Mt. Eustis Rd, Littleton NH 03561-3737

Yours FREE!
45-Day Money Back Guarantee of Satisfaction when you order by deadline America’s Favorite Coin Source • TRUSTED SINCE 1945
 W H AT Do you know what this is? Pop
THE...? over to page 18 for the answer.
TED KINSMAN/SCIENCE SOURCE

November 2016 DISCOVER 11

LOWEST PRICE EVER

P RI SMS on DRÆ Leaf Vacuums!
Princeton International School of Mathematics and Science

A STEM focused, International Boarding and Day High School

Rated #1 in Vacuum Power

Easy, 1-Hand Dumping
Stores Flat in Minutes
Converts to a Utility Trailer
The ALL NEW DR® Leaf Vacuum
• STEM 3.0 education including two years of original research requirement. is designed from the top
down to make yard cleanup RATED
• Small class size taught by best in ield faculty with research experience.
easier, faster, and more
thorough than ever before. 1
#
in VACUUM
And for a limited time we POWER
• Our students are currently attending the following colleges and universities:
93746X © 2016

are offering them at

Brown, Caltech, Cornell, Duke, MIT, Notre Dame, Oberlin, Rensselaer incredible low introductory prices!
Polytechnic Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, UC Berkeley, FREE SHIPPING 1 YEAR TRIAL
University of Michigan and many others. SOME LIMITATIONS APPLY

Call for FREE DVD and Catalog!

For more information or to schedule a visit, please TOLL-FREE
contact the Admissions Ofice at (609)454-5589 877-200-8681
or see the PRISMS website at www.prismsus.org DRleafvac.com
 THE
CRUX PERSONA L
The Lazarus
Frog
A small frog in a dark rainforest gives one
scientist hope for endangered amphibians.
Jonathan Kolby knows extinction is final. The
James Cook University herpetologist studies
global frog populations and their decline from
the widespread and deadly chytrid fungus. Now
Kolby hopes to give endangered frog populations
a leg up by allowing them to develop natural
resistance against chytrid in temporary captivity.
An unusual brown frog in Honduras’ Cusuco
National Park inspired his approach. He first
spotted it while surveying amphibians with
students back in 2007.
IN HIS OW N WOR DS
It was about 10:30 or 11 at night.
Everyone was getting a little tired. We
were about to head back, and I saw a
frog. It was this little brown frog, pretty
nondescript. I jumped into the mud and
totally missed it. For the next half-hour,
I proceeded to crawl around in the river.
Eventually I gave up. It was gone.
In 2008, I had one chance to get
back to this same location. I couldn’t
believe my eyes when I got there. On
that very same rock was a little brown
frog. I thought I was hallucinating. I
dove down and caught it.
Jonathan Kolby’s discovery image of Craugastor
milesi, the Miles’ Robber Frog, showed this
amphibian wasn’t all the way gone.
12 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Researcher Jonathan Kolby goes vertical at Cusuco National Park in search of tree frogs.
It was Craugastor milesi, the Miles’ Rescue and Conservation Center. If
Robber Frog. At that time, only two we keep these species alive in the wild
species of frogs had been declared over many, many years, by captive
extinct in Honduras, and this was one breeding and reintroduction and
of them. It was an amazing moment. head-starting, we could have these
I study amphibian chytrid fungus, and strong survivors begin to come back
this was one of the species we believe and repopulate the environment.
has disappeared likely because of this  AS TOLD TO ASHLEY BRAUN
disease back in the ’80s as it swept
through Central America.
Five years later in 2013, I found a
second one. This was on the other side
of the park. Something caught the
corner of my eye. I knew there was
a frog watching me. I started staring
at this big muddy puddle, waiting for
another movement. Then I saw the
little nose come above and look at me.
It was another Miles’ Robber Frog,
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KATIE GARRETT; JONATHAN KOLBY (3)
miles away from the last one.
Neither one tested positive for
chytrid, although I know it’s highly
prevalent throughout this park.
There may have been a very dramatic
population crash when this disease
swept through, but some animals were
hanging on. There’s still hope.
Frog rescue labs went up in the summer at the
It’s exciting for me because I’m Honduras Amphibian Rescue and Conservation
establishing the Honduras Amphibian Center.
 When Mars
Tipped Over
How a bulge of volcanoes
shaped the Red Planet.

For hundreds of millions of

years, lava bubbled up from the
depths of Mars, forming a staggering
volcano system called the Tharsis
Bulge. Its four major volcanoes near
the equator — including Olympus
Mons, the solar system’s largest —
are all taller than Mount Everest.
And now, new research reveals that
the bulge’s massive size had serious
consequences for the Red Planet.
According to a French-led team,
the bulge made Mars tip over some
3 billion years ago. Its outer layers,
the crust and mantle, rotated until
the enormous volcanoes traveled about Four massive volcanoes make up the Tharsis
20 degrees, from the polar regions Bulge on Mars. The largest of the four,
down toward the equator. Olympus Mons, is at bottom right.
The research, published in Nature,
rewrites the first billion years of early atmosphere for a while, driving
Martian history. The team’s climate precipitation on a wet planet. But by
modeling contradicts existing theory the time the Tharsis volcanoes let out
by showing that the river valleys seen their final breath, the heat was gone,
on Mars could’ve flowed while Tharsis and the planet was abandoned to an
was still forming, instead of emerging endless, dry winter — a world not too
TOP: ESA/DLR/FU BERLIN/JUSTIN COWART. BOTTOM: SYLVAIN BOULET ET AL./MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS LTD/NATURE/VOL 531, MARCH 17, 2016

afterward. And the eruption of water- different from what we see today.
rich gases would’ve helped fuel Mars’  ERIC BETZ

Valley
Networks

Tharsis 20º
TPW
Tharsis
New research indicates that the load of Mars’ Tharsis bulge caused the planet’s outer layers to
rotate. As a result, the planet’s axis reoriented — a phenomenon called true polar wander (TPW)
— and tipped about 20 degrees, as this image shows. (Warmer colors denote higher elevations.)

DID YOU Death isn’t the end — at least for some genes.
KNOW? Postmortem studies conducted on mice and
zebrafish by geneticists at the University of
Washington revealed that hundreds of the animals’
genes remain active, continuing to synthesize
molecules and perform other tasks, up to 96 hours
after the animals’ death.

November 2016 DISCOVER 13

 THE
CRUX

Around a Strange Sun

Explore the alien landscape of Earth’s nearest neighbor. Habitable Zone
To calculate where liquid surface
After decades of failed searches, astronomers from the water can exist, astronomers
combine a star’s heat with the
Pale Red Dot project found a planet around our nearest star,
sunlight reaching a planet’s surface.
Proxima Centauri. This world, Proxima b, is roughly Earth-sized But even a Goldilocks-perfect orbit
and nestled in its star’s habitable zone — the region where is no guarantee of life. Mars is in our
oceans can exist. But that’s about where the similarities end. sun’s habitable zone and was left
barren without an atmosphere.
Proxima Centauri is a cool, tiny red dwarf star. To stay warm,
Proxima b’s orbit is tighter than Mercury’s.  ERIC BETZ

Habitable zone

Mercury’s orbit Sun Proxima Centauri

Darkness
and Light Proxima b orbit
Proxima b’s close-in
orbit may mean
the planet is
tidally locked, with
one side stuck in
sunlight, the other
in eternal night. If
By the Numbers
so, life’s best chance 11. 2 The number of Earth days
is in the twilight it takes Proxima b to orbit its sun
between the two,
bathed in a kind of
— that’s a short year!
everlasting sunset.
1.3 The minimum mass of the
newly discovered planet, compared
with Earth.

4.6 million Distance (in miles)

from Proxima b to Proxima Centauri.
Compare that with 93 million miles
from Earth to the sun.

SOURCE: NATURE; DOI:10.1038/NATURE19106

Proxima b’s radius might be 10% larger

Uranus
than Earth’s, assuming a rocky composition.

Saturn
Habitable zone

Earth

Jupiter Mars

Mars
Neptune
Earth Proxima b
Mercury Venus (artistic representation)

14 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Red Dwarfs Everywhere
If the Milky Way had just 100 stars — it’s
more like 100 billion — 75 would be red
dwarfs. Finding a roughly Earth-sized world
in the habitable zone next door means those
other small suns might harbor similar planets.
LARGE ORBIT DIAGRAM: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER AFTER ESO/M. KORNMESSER/G. COLEMAN. SOLAR SYSTEM DIAGRAM: ROEN KELLY/DISCOVER. EARTH, PROXIMA B, PROXIMA CENTAURI: PHL@UPR ARECIBO/NASA EPIC TEAM. SUNSETS: PHL@UPR ARECIBO. SUN: SDO

A Drab Planet
If Earth orbited a red
dwarf star, its light
would make our
pale blue dot take
on more of a drab, Earth around Earth around
Sun Proxima Centauri greenish-yellow tone. the sun a red dwarf
as it appears as it appears
in Earth’s sky in Proxima b’s sky

Sunset on Earth Sunset on Proxima b

Sun

Actual size
difference
Proxima b hugs tight to its tiny red dwarf star. So sunsets would look redder
and darker, with the sun appearing three times larger than our own. Stranger still:
Proxima
If one side of Proxima b forever faces its star, the sun would never set.
Centauri
£

ON THE WEB
Readers respond
Proxima b is the nearest exoplanet
we’ll ever find. When news hit the
web, Discover readers were pumped,
to say the least.
“Why go there at all?
Just build a giant kick-ass
telescope and look at it.”
— Brian Hurren
“This is as good as it gets, in “Very promising. It would
our own backyard!” — Joanna Leigh take technology we
haven’t invented yet, but
it is at least theoretically
“Although very interesting . . . I believe it will
possible that we could
be uninhabitable. Nice dream, though. We
should continue trying to find a habitable
send an unmanned probe
planet that parallels our own.” — Sharlyn to Proxima b.”— Erik Bosma
“Hopefully there is intelligent life on this new planet.
They must have it somewhere.” — Michael

Sending an unmanned probe to Proxima b may happen sooner than you think. Read about it on page 32.

November 2016 DISCOVER 15

 THE
CRUX SCIENCE SM ACK DOW N

Journey Through
the Center
of the Earth
A student calculates a more realistic answer
to a classic physics homework problem.
Imagine drilling a hole through Earth,
hopping on a train powered by gravity alone
and traveling through from one end to the
other. How long would you spend on that
“gravity train” before popping out on the
other side?
It’s a question physics professors have been
asking students for decades, and they always
expect the same answer: 42 minutes, 12 seconds.
One graduate student claims to have shaved a If Mexico’s Cave of the Swallows cut through
few minutes off that traditional travel time. In Earth, classic physics says that if you dove in,
it would take about 42 minutes to pop out the
Science Smackdown, we let a prof and the grad other end. A new approach shortens that trip.
student duke it out.  SARAH SCOLES

Earth’s Density Is Equal Gravity Is the Same

All the Way Through
In 1966, physicist Paul Cooper calculated
how long the train would spend falling
from one side of Earth to the other. People
have been thinking about this hypothetical
scenario — pondering the motion of mass
inside Earth — since Robert Hooke first
proposed an earlier, pre-train version of
it to Isaac Newton in the 17th century,
says Purdue University mathematician
Alexandre Eremenko.
The traditional solution,
Acceleration
All the Way Through
Alex Klotz, a doctoral student at the time
and now a postdoctoral researcher at MIT,
doesn’t buy that answer. “I remember just
looking at a graph of what the inside of
the Earth is like in terms of density and
trying to figure out how that would affect
the time it takes to fall,” he says.
The crust, where we live, is much less
dense than the mantle below,
which is less dense than
the core. When he

based on Cooper’s calculation, Mantle considered Earth’s true

FROM TOP: OMER MEI-DAN; GABRIEL KOCHER; ROEN KELLY/DISCOVER; BENGUHAN/SHUTTERSTOCK

simplifies things by pretending composition, and the
Earth is equally dense varying accelerations
Researcher Alex Klotz reimagined the
from crust to core. At the Core this composition calculation for this classic problem, altering
beginning of the ride, created, Klotz assumptions about gravity and density.
gravity is strongest, speeding found the train’s
Deceleration

the train along. As the trip takes just 38 constant the whole trip. It works because
train descends, gravity will minutes. But, more gravity doesn’t change drastically until
decrease by the same amount interestingly, he could the train gets halfway to the core. At
for every mile the train falls. also get this new result that point, the contraption is moving
At the halfway point at the by ditching density and so fast that the seconds spent near the
core, gravity is lowest and making his own center hardly matter. So by this reasoning,
begins to act as a brake, slowing the simplification: Klotz says, the gravity train needs an
train as it approaches the destination. Gravity stays updated schedule.

DID YOU If you’ve said, “I do,” your heart owes you. Researchers from the University of East Anglia
KNOW? found that individuals who are married are up to 14 percent less likely to have a fatal
heart attack. Marriage is also associated with a reduced number of hospital stays in general.

16 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Amazing price
breakthrough!

ADVANCED
HEARING AID TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OUR
45-DAY RISK-FREE TRIAL!

TECHNOLOGY Hearing is believing and

we invite you to try this
nearly invisible hearing aid

For Less Than $200

with no annoying whistling
or background noise for 45-DAY
yourself. If you are not RISK-FREE TRIAL

How can a hearing aid that costs less than
$200 be every bit as good as one that sells
for $2000 or more? The answer: Although
tremendous strides have been made in
Advanced Hearing Aid Technology, those
cost reductions have not passed on to you.
Until now...
Since Medicare and most private
insurance do not cover hearing aids,
The result of his research efforts is the
MDHearingAid PRO® with the same kind
of Advanced Hearing Aid Technology
incorporated into hearing aids that cost
thousands more at a small fraction of the price.
Over 75,000 satisfied PRO customers
agree: High quality FDA registered
Hearing Aids don’t have to cost a fortune.
The fact is, you don’t need to spend
completely satisfied, simply
return it within that time period for a
100% refund of your purchase price.
Here Are 6 Reasons To Call Now!
1. Lowest-Priced FDA-Registered
Hearing Aid In America
2. Doctor Designed, Audiologist Tested
3. World-Class Components from
the U.S.A. and Europe—no
cheap generic components

ENT physician Dr. Cherukuri made it his
personal goal to come up with a game-
changing solution that customers could
actually afford.
He took apart and evaluated many of the
expensive hearing aids and concluded that
the reason for these obscenely high prices
were due to layers of middlemen, heavy
mark-ups and unnecessary costly features.
thousands for a medical-grade hearing aid. 4. Free One-On-One After-Sale
MDHearingAid PRO® gives you a Support Online Or by Phone.
sophisticated high-performance hearing aid 5. The Real Deal—Not an inferior
Sound Amplifier
that works right out of the box with no
6. Free Batteries For One Year Plus
time-consuming “adjustment” appointments.
Free Shipping
You can contact a hearing specialist
conveniently-online or by phone—even
after sale at no cost. No other company
provides such extensive support. Nearly
Invisible
Now that you know... why pay more?

Doctors and patients agree: BATTERIES INCLUDED!

“BEST QUALITY SOUND” “LOWEST AFFORDABLE PRICE” READY TO USE RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX!
“I have been wearing hearing aids For over 25 years and these are the best behind- the- ear aids I have Tested by Leading Doctors and Audiologists
tried. Their sound quality rivals that of my $3,500 custom pair of Phonak® Xtra digital ITE” — Gerald L. The MDHearingAid PRO® has been rigorously
tested by leading ENT physicians and audiologists
“I have a $2,000 ReSound® Live Hearing aid in my left ear and the MDHearingAid PRO® in the right ear. who have unanimously agreed that the sound
I am not able to notice a significant difference in sound quality between the two hearing aids” quality and output in many cases exceeds more
— Dr. May, ENT Physician expensive hearing aids.

For the Lowest Price Call Today

www.MDHearingAid.com
800-631-5219 PROUDLY ASSEMBLED IN THE

Use Offer Code CW65 and get FREE Batteries for 1 Year Plus FREE Shipping
FROM DOMESTIC & IMPORTED COMPONENTS

© 2016
 THE
CRUX
INBOX
Questioning a Star’s Stability
A letter to Yvette Cendes, author of “The Weirdest Star
in the Universe,” from the July/August issue:
As an amateur astronomer, to me the weirdest thing in the
article was that a red giant star could envelop a neutron star and
continue to exist as a Thorne-Žytkow object (TZO).
It would seem to me (I’m not a physicist) that the neutron
star, being surrounded by the red giant and as it approached
the higher-density center, would rapidly collect enough mass
to explode as a supernova or collapse as a black hole. These
situations are mentioned as possibilities, but to my simplistic
mind, they would be almost certain probabilities within less than
“a few thousand (or a million) years.” Perhaps the explanation
suggested for the X-ray source 1E161348-5055 is the answer, but
it still perplexes me that the system could remain for so long.
Could the neutron star’s slow rotation be explained partially
by the accretion of mass, emitting X-rays and blowing gaseous
mass away, slowing the inevitable event but approaching the
critical value for destruction?
What do the experts say about this?
Ed Jones
Friendswood, TX
A high-speed strobe froze the brief, 1/20,000-of-a-second moment of this balloon bursting. The balloon contained a
W H AT few milliliters of water that turned into vapor during inflation. When the balloon popped, the air inside expanded,
THE...? cooled and turned the vapor into water droplets inside the balloon’s ragged remains. (See close-up on page 11.)
18 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Yvette Cendes responds:
The short answer is no one knows for sure, and how a TZO
remains stable is an open area of debate. The current theory is
neutrinos are involved — we know they’re responsible for a lot
of cooling in “normal” neutron stars. However, others argue
neutrino cooling is not sufficient, and some sort of explosion
should occur. Ultimately, though, a lot of TZO theory was a bit
older when the discovery of the candidate TZO was made, and
needs to be updated to explain the details.
Sorry I can’t give you a definitive answer — I wish I had one.
But if it’s any consolation, lots of experts wish they had one, too.
Wake-Up Call
A response to “Everything Worth Knowing: Antibiotic
Resistance,” in the July/August 2016 issue:
I was unaware and startled by how readily bacteria can become
resistant to our antibiotics . . . scary! The amount of antibiotics
consumed in the U.S. alone — 7.7 million pounds by people and
an additional 29.9 million pounds consumed by farm animals, in
2011 — is astounding.
M. Oxford
Addison, TX
TED KINSMAN/SCIENCE SOURCE
 BOOKS

SCIENCE
AND
THE CITY THE
The Mechanics
Behind the BEASTS
Metropolis IN OUR
By Laurie MIDST
Winkless More than half of American THE LION IN
Physicist households have at least one THE LIVING
cat or dog, but rarely do we re- ROOM
Winkless ally appreciate these furry friends How House Cats
ofers an easy- as evolutionary masterpieces. Tamed Us and Took
Horowitz, who runs Barnard Over the World
SPACEMAN reading crash THE College’s Dog Cognition Lab in By Abigail Tucker
An Astronaut’s course on the ALIENS New York, focuses on the develop-
ment and potential of dogs’ most
Unlikely Journey to engineering ARE
Unlock the Secrets
and day- COMING! impressive sense: scent. Take a black
Lab mix, for example, that helps
of the Universe The Extra- marine biologists collect orca scat
By Mike Massimino to-day ordinary in Puget Sound by sniffing it out
Astronauts do Science
operations Behind Our up to a nautical mile away. In Lion,
extraordinary things — journalist Tucker pulls together the
but this funny, endearing of our urban Search for
latest research into how and why
Life in the
memoir reveals that at centers, and Universe cats allowed us to domesticate
least one of them is an them. She also explores the
ordinary guy at heart. previews By Ben Miller sometimes-disturbing conse-
Consider Massimino’s what the It’s a great big quences of that relationship,
first impressions of the universe, and odds from controversial feral
space shuttle: “It wasn’t cities of the are we’re not alone cat colony programs to
some tin can being future might in it. An actor and enthusiasts who create BEING A DOG
launched into orbit. comedian armed with new breeds based Following the
It was a real, honest-to- be like. a degree in quantum on deleterious Dog into a
God spaceship.” NASA physics, Miller makes mutations. World of Smell
rejected him twice, but a solid case for the By Alexandra
Massimino persevered existence of extrater- Horowitz
and was eventually restrials. Whether
accepted. During his 18 it’s an objective look
years with the program, at UFO encounters,
he made it into space detailing the chal-
and played a key role
MURDER AND THE MAKING
lenges of contacting
in repairing the Hubble aliens or explaining
OF ENGLISH CSI
telescope. Through it how life on Earth can By Ian Burney and Neil Pemberton
all, he never lost his inform our search, his
down-to-earth attitude, snappy, conversational
History bufs and forensic nerds alike
reflected on every page style will keep you will delight as science historians
of this delightful read. turning the pages.
Pemberton and Burney present
a thoughtful
THE VOICES WITHIN analysis of the
The History & Science
of How We Talk to Ourselves key players
By Charles Fernyhough and events
When you acknowledge your inner voice, does it sound
like you? Does it narrate your life and experiences with that helped
actual words? Or is it a mishmash of words and images? crime scene
Those are just some of the questions Fernyhough
tackles in his exploration of our inner speech. From
investigation in
explaining the hurdles of studying our internal dialogue Britain develop
to setting the record straight on schizophrenia and
“hearing voices,” this book is a must-read for those
into what it
 ALL REVIEWS BY GEMMA
TARLACH AND LACY SCHLEY seeking to understand the voices in their heads. is today.

November 2016 DISCOVER 19

 Vital
Signs
Low Blow
Severe belly pain lands a
young woman in the hospital
not once but three times — yet
abdominal scans find nothing.
BY TONY DAJER
→ “She’s back.”
Jackie, our seen-it-all triage
nurse, gave me the look.
A wave of moaning, a basso pro-
fundo, found my body’s frequency and
set it vibrating. The source, a 28-year-old
woman, lay on the ambulance gurney,
clutching her belly. The rumble illed the
space around her. The husband, gamely
standing by her side, quickly answered
the registrar’s questions.
Jackie illed me in.
“Belly pain. Lots of Dilaudid [an
opioid pain medication] last night.
Abdominal CT negative.” She raised her
eyebrows. “Good luck.”
The patient had landed in our
hospital the day before in extreme pain,
and here she was again. Uppermost in
my mind was that 15,000 Americans
died last year from narcotic overdoses
— most originally hooked by a doctor’s
prescription.
Ten minutes later, I stood at the foot
of her bed and asked, somewhat inanely,
“Where does it hurt?”
Her hands still cupped gingerly over
her abdomen, my patient kept moaning.
“You had several doses of Dilaudid
last night, no?” I asked.
“It helped for a while,” the husband
said. “But today it came back hard.
Our family doctor did an internal exam
and thinks there may be an appendicitis
the scan missed.”
The eyes swayed me. Her lids were
half-closed, her gaze remote, as if the
outside world lay far beyond the horizon
of her pain.
“Oooooh,” she rumbled, dropping
an octave.
20 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Overnight, her
sodium had tanked
from borderline-low
to very abnormal.
I noticed the scar on the right side of
her neck. “That’s where they inserted
the central venous line,” the husband
explained. “At the irst hospital, to give
her concentrated saline solution.”
“That’s unusual,” I said, not quite
believing him.
“Her blood sodium level was very
low.”
“Did they make a diagnosis?” I
asked. Healthy young women don’t see
a drop in their blood sodium levels for
no reason.
“They weren’t sure. But they got it
back up.”
“We’ll start some pain medication
right now,” I said, wrapping up my
exam. Her abdomen was tender
everywhere.
Dilaudid — hydromorphone — is
10 times more potent than morphine,
and the top pick among drug-seekers.
But it’s what she needed. We were the
third hospital she had visited in the
three weeks since the pain started.
I perused the records our ER had
gathered the day before. At that irst
hospital, her sodium level had been
critically low, and they kept her a full
week; the husband was spot on. After a
slew of other tests, they discharged her
with oxycodone, a potent oral narcotic.
The pain’s origin remained mysterious.
Five days later, it surged back. At hos-
pital No. 2, the sodium was also low.
During an equally fruitless work-up,
more salt and Dilaudid was pumped
in. They released her — diagnosis still
unknown — three days later.
And then she came to us.
WHEN SODIUM TANKS
My colleague Louis, compact and
engineer-precise, sat down next to me.
“I saw her yesterday,” he said.
“You think she’s drug-seeking?” I
asked, although my own gut feeling at
this point said no.
“The abdominal scan was negative,
so we went with functional pain. Lots
of people have abdominal pain we never
explain. I’m guessing there’s more,
though,” Louis said evenly.
“Their doc saw her today and sent her
back,” I told him.
9NONG/SHUTTERSTOCK
An hour later, her lab results came up.
Overnight, her sodium had tanked from
borderline-low to very abnormal.
Louis glanced at the screen.

The Rarest Love on Earth
Celebrate your one­in­a­billion love with a gemstone 1000 times rarer than diamonds.
T here are more than seven billion people on earth, yet you
managed to ind the one person who was right for you. We
think it’s fair to say that’s pretty rare. So what’s the perfect way to
show her that you know how lucky you are, to show her you
understand that the love you share is a rare and precious thing?
With one of the rarest gemstones on earth, that’s how.
Our Kibo Tanzanite Ring features a trio of vivid violet-blue
tanzanite gemstones, set in .925 sterling silver and surrounded by
lab-created DiamondAura® rounds. he enchanting deep blue of
tanzanite is so rare, it occurs in just one place in the entire world: a
small location in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania.
In fact Henry Platt, past president and chairman of Tiffany &
Company, called Tanzanite “The most important gemstone discovery
in over 2,000 years”.
HUGE SAVINGS
TAKE 82% OFF THE
KIBO TANZANITE RING
WHEN YOU USE YOUR OFFER CODE
And it was only discovered by chance, when Maasai tribesman saw
lightning strike the plains, revealing the once-hidden blue treasure
just beneath the surface. Your love is just that kind of happy accident.
Let her know you’re glad that lightning struck.
Tanzanite is 1000 times rarer than diamonds and supplies
are extremely limited. “Experts estimate that our tanzanite
.25 ctw genuine Tanzanite • 28 brilliant­cut accent DiamondAura® stones • .925 sterling silver setting • Whole ring sizes 5–10
Stauer…Afford the Extraordinar y.
Limited quantity...
less than 769 in stock.
Call Today!
“I love this ring. I plan on getting some Tanzanite earrings now!”
— Lee from Florida
deposits will have run out in less than 30 years,” says prominent
mining company TanzaniteOne. With our industry contacts
we’ve been able to secure a limited supply and offer the Kibo
Tanzanite Ring for the rare price of $59. But once the world’s
supply of tanzanite is gone, it’s gone for good. So call today, and
celebrate your once-in-a-lifetime love with a once-in-a-lifetime gift.
Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. Experience the rare
beauty of the Kibo Tanzanite Ring for two months. If it fails to
create sparks simply send it back within 60 days for a complete
refund of the item price. We want you head over heels.
Kibo Tanzanite Ring (1 ctw) 399*
Offer Code Price Only $59 + S&P Save $340!
You must use the offer code to get our special price.
1­800­333­2045
Offer Code: KBR129­01
Please use this code when you order to receive your discount.
Stauer ® 14101 Southcross Drive W., Dept. KBR129-01,
Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.stauer.com
* Special price only for customers using the
offer code versus the price on Stauer.com
Rating of A+ without your offer code.
 Vital
Signs
“OK, let’s think syndromes.” He
logged on to the clinical research
website UpToDate.com. “Recur-
rent abdominal pain? How about
porphyria?” he said, ingering the
keyboard.
“Why not?” I smiled, thinking an
answer of “unicorn” was about as likely.
He pulled up the page. We read
together. “Abdominal pain is the most
common symptom. Associated indings
include hyponatremia [low sodium].”
“Huh,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”
“Neither did I,” Louis admitted.
“Porphyria?” I said, incredulous. “But
it’s inherited. You got the family history
yesterday, right?”
“Twice. Me and the surgery consult.
An aunt had brain cancer. That’s all.”
A CLOGGED-UP FACTORY
Hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying
essence of blood, is a shape-shifting
agglomeration of four heme molecules
and four proteins (globins). Heme holds
the iron that binds oxygen, which, in
turn, colors it scarlet.
Protein
To make heme, (globin) Hemoglobin
eight enzymes work
along a molecular
conveyor belt. It’s
a tightly coupled
process, and prob-
lems can arise if any
enzyme malfunctions Iron
bound
or gets overwhelmed. to heme
Then, partially
processed molecules
can back up at that
enzyme’s station like Red blood cell
Model Ts waiting for
their wheels. Worse, the absence of
inished product at the far end can rev
up enzymes at the front to crank out
even more half-inished components.
Porphyria is the family name for
diseases of faulty heme production.
Damage any of the eight enzymes, and
you get a different type of porphyria.
The flaw usually lies in a mutated gene
for one of the two copies of the enzyme
— which reduces, but does not cancel,
22 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
overall production of heme. Derived
from the Greek word for purple, the
term porphyria stems from the red or
brown color that patients’ urine can turn
during an acute attack.
Unfortunately, those uninished
heme precursors are toxic, especially to
nerve cells. Four of the porphyrias are
classiied as acute. They attack nerves
throughout the body in muscle, skin,
brain, intestines and even the heart.
The remaining porphyrias are mainly
dermatologic, causing rashes.
Acute intermittent porphyria (AIP),
the most common acute porphyria,
affects 1 in 20,000 people. It stems
from a defect in the conveyor belt’s
third enzyme. Although abdominal
pain is its hallmark, it can also provoke
anything from psychosis to rapid pulse
to anxiety to muscle weakness to chest
pain to constipation. The mutation
may not cause disease in every carrier,
leading to “skips” in the family history.
With one good gene and one bad, a
functional-enough No. 3 enzyme can
handle its share on the conveyor belt
until a stressor hits, or related
enzyme systems overload. Trig-
gers of acute attacks include
carbohydrate starvation (which
kick-starts the irst enzyme
on the conveyor belt), as well
as alcohol, stress and dozens
of drugs. Intriguingly, the Atkins
diet — all protein, no carbs — caused
a raft of new AIP cases.
The “intermittent” of AIP doesn’t
begin to describe it. The scattershot
symptoms are confusing enough, but
the syndrome’s timing is downright
ridiculous. A patient’s irst attack may
not hit until well into his or her 30s. The
next may not come for years. Worse, the
episodes may not even resemble each
other: Last year’s anxiety attack and fast
heartbeat might share nothing with this
year’s abdominal pain and low sodium.
Hyponatremia is thought to stem from
toxic effects on the hypothalamus, the
central area of the brain that regulates
water and salt excretion.
Timely diagnosis isn’t just about pain
relief; unchecked, AIP can cause perma-
nent neurological damage or death.
A STRONG CLUE
We asked again.
“Are you sure no one in your family
had an illness, odd attacks, that came
and went?”
Through her fog of pain, our patient
perked up. “Oh. My mother. When she
was a teenager, something attacked her
nerves and blood vessels.”
“Where’s your mother-in-law?” I
asked the husband.
“Overseas,” he replied.
“Call her,” I urged. “Ask if she’s heard
the term porphyria.”
A few minutes later, he came running
over.
“Yes.”
“Holy cow!” I yelled.
Louis ordered the diagnostic test: uri-
nary porphobilinogen (PBG). The result
would take a day or two. The deinitive
treatment for three of the four acute
porphyrias is intravenous hemin — the
assembly line’s end product — to shut
down runaway production. For starters,
we admitted the patient to the intensive
care unit to treat the low sodium. The
strongly positive PBG came back the
next day. She received glucose and a full
course of hemin. Complete recovery
took a slogging 10 days.
I called the ER directors at hospitals 1
and 2 with the diagnosis. Great teaching
case, I told them, but wrapped inside
that statement was the question: How
do you pass up a clue like that ultra-low
sodium level?
In the end, what most puzzled me
was, if the mom knew, and the daughter
sort of knew, why hadn’t the porphyria
clue popped right up? Maybe, Sherlock,
it’s how you ask the question. D
Tony Dajer is director of the emergency
TIMONINA/SHUTTERSTOCK
department at New York-Presbyterian/Lower
Manhattan Hospital. The cases described in
Vital Signs are real, but names and certain
details have been changed.
 “My friends all hate their
tt ge W

Co
Bu ig -NE

N act
on r

o
nt
s
B LL

r
cell phones… I love mine!” FR
A

s
EE
Car
Here’s why. Charg
er

Say good-bye to everything you hate about cell phones. Say hello to the ALL-NEW Jitterbug Flip.

Monthly Plan $14.99/mo $19.99/mo

“Cell phones have gotten so small,
I can barely dial mine.” Not the Monthly Minutes 200 600

new JitterbugÆ Flip. It features a larger Operator Assistance 24/7 24/7

keypad for easier dialing. It even has a Long Distance Calls No add’l charge No add’l charge
larger display so you can actually see it. Voice Dial FREE FREE
“I had to get my son to program it.” Nationwide Coverage YES YES
Your Jitterbug Flip set-up process is Friendly Return Policy1 30 days 30 days
simple. We’ll even program it with your
More minute plans available. Ask your Jitterbug expert for details.
favorite numbers.
“I’d like a cell phone to use in an emergency, but I
“I tried my sister’s cell phone…
don’t want a high monthly bill.” The Jitterbug Flip
I couldn’t hear it.” The Jitterbug Flip
has a plan to fit your needs… and your budget.
is designed with a powerful speaker and
is hearing aid compatible. Plus, there’s an “Many phones have features that are rarely
adjustable volume control. needed and hard to use!” The
Jitterbug Flip contains easy-to-use
“I don’t need stock quotes, Internet sites
features that are meaningful to you.
or games on my phone. I just want to
A newly designed built-in camera
talk with my family and friends.” Life
makes it easy and fun for you to
is complicated enough… The Jitterbug
capture and share your favorite
Flip is simple.
5Star Enabled memories. And a new flashlight
“What if I don’t remember a number?” with a built-in magnifier helps you
12:45P
Friendly, helpful Operators are available 24 see in dimly lit areas, the Jitterbug
Mon Oct 17
hours a day and will even greet you by name Flip has all the features you need.
when you call.
Enough talk. Isn’t it time you
“My cell phone company wants to lock me in found out more about the cell
a two-year contract!” Not with the Jitterbug Flip. phone that’s changing all the rules?
There are no contracts to sign and no penalty if you Call now, Jitterbug product experts
discontinue your service. are standing by.
Available in
Red and Graphite.

Order now and receive a NEW Jitterbug Flip Cell Phone

Call toll-free to get your Jitterbug Flip.
FREE Car Charger for your Jitterbug Flip – Please mention promotional code 104611.
a $25 value. Call now!
1-877-600-0835
www.jitterbugdirect.com
We proudly accept the following credit cards:
47665

IMPORTANT CONSUMER INFORMATION: Jitterbug is owned by GreatCall, Inc. Your invoices will come from GreatCall. Plans and Services require purchase of a Jitterbug phone and a one-time setup fee
of $35. Monthly fees do not include government taxes or assessment surcharges and are subject to change. Coverage is not available everywhere. 5Star or 9-1-1 calls can only be made when cellular service
is available. 1We will refund the full price of the Jitterbug phone and the activation fee (or setup fee) if it is returned within 30 days of purchase in like-new condition. We will also refund your first monthly
service charge if you have less than 30 minutes of usage. If you have more than 30 minutes of usage, a per minute charge of 35 cents will be deducted from your refund for each minute over 30 minutes. You
will be charged a $10 restocking fee. The shipping charges are not refundable. There are no additional fees to call GreatCall’s U.S.-based customer service. However, for calls to a GreatCall Operator in which
a service is completed, you will be charged 99 cents per call, and minutes will be deducted from your monthly rate plan balance equal to the length of the call and any call connected by the Operator. Jitterbug
and GreatCall are registered trademarks of GreatCall, Inc. ©2016 GreatCall, Inc. ©2016 firstSTREET for Boomers and Beyond, Inc.
 Big
Idea

Brewing
Life
Lab-grown comets and
hydrothermal vents are helping
scientists unravel life’s strange
origins on a young, sterile Earth.
BY JONATHON KEATS

→ In Jeffrey Bada’s laboratory at

the University of California,
San Diego, there’s a cardboard box
containing the earliest evidence of
how life began on Earth. The box
holds hundreds of tiny vials illed with
grimy, brown residues collected in the
early 1950s by a University of Chicago
graduate student named Stanley
Miller. Each vial is marked with a page
number corresponding to a notebook
where Miller recorded an experiment
undertaken with his adviser, the Nobel
Prize-winning chemist Harold Urey.
Their goal was to synthesize amino
acids — the building blocks of life — as
they might have been created on early heir goal was to blower to make an apparatus with
Earth. The results launched a hunt two interconnected chambers, one
for life’s origins that’s now uncovering synthesize amino representing the ocean and the other

BEAKERS: JAY SMITH. OCEAN: WILLYAM BRADBERRY/SHUTTERSTOCK. CLOUDS: GENCHO PETKOV/SHUTTERSTOCK

these building blocks in surprising
places, like the surface of comets and in
deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
A LABORATORY EARTH
The modern origin question has
bedeviled scientists since Charles
Darwin proposed his theory of
evolution in the 19th century. If all
modern species evolved from earlier
life-forms, the branching must have
begun with some common ancestor.
Darwin speculated that our microbial
Eve arose from a “warm little pond
with all sorts of ammonia and
phosphoric salts.” Eight decades later,
Urey sought to be more precise. He
enlisted research on early planetary
conditions to show how interactions
acids  the building
blocks of life  as
they might have been
created on early Earth.
between the atmosphere and oceans
might have produced an organic
“primordial soup.”
Inspired by a 1953 lecture in
which Urey outlined his ideas, Miller
proposed to cook up the soup in a
lab. Urey was skeptical. At 23 years
old, Miller had scant experience as an
experimentalist. Urey gave him one
year and a budget of under $1,000.
Miller instructed the campus glass
standing in for the atmosphere. During
the experiment, a flame boiled the
ocean water, simulating evaporation.
The steam traveled through a tube into
the atmospheric flask, which contained
hydrogen, methane and ammonia.
An electric spark simulated lightning.
A second glass tube condensed the
vapor, making the humid atmosphere
rain back down into the ocean.
Within less than a week, the clear
liquid darkened. Miller analyzed the
brew and found ive amino acids, which
are the organic constituents of proteins.
Published in the May 15, 1953, issue
of Science, the results galvanized
scientists and generated global head-
lines. The New York Times credited
Miller and Urey with inventing

24 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 INTRODUCING

A RECHARGEABLE HEARING SOLUTION!

HEAR THE SOUNDS THAT MATTER.

*SLHY*OVPJLPZHYLJOHYNLHISLZ[H[LVM[OLHY[ZV\UKHTWSPÄJH[PVUWYVK\J[
(PSAP). With patented pre-formed sound tubes and ultra soft ear domes,
ClearChoice PSAPs are simple, convenient, and designed to be discreet
Dual
and comfortable behind your ear. Designed for comfort and customization Charging
^P[OT\S[PWSLKPNP[HSZL[[PUNZMVYIL[[LYSPZ[LUPUNPUKPќLYLU[LU]PYVUTLU[Z;OL Base
Included
technology inside every ClearChoice PSAP improves the quality of lower, softer
sounds as well as dampening loud noises. The ClearChoice PSAP comes with
a rechargeable dual base charging station. Simply place into the holder to
recharge at night while you sleep. No more fumbling with tiny batteries.

CONVENIENT Delivered directly to your home

EASY TO USE Simply place in the holder to recharge at night
NEVER BUY BATTERIES AGAIN!
COMFORTABLE Patented pre-formed sound tubes & ultra-soft
ear domes
EXPERIENCE
INVISIBLE Virtually invisible behind the ear design
CLEARCHOICE WITH
ADJUSTABLE Volume control and three programs for better
listening...even in noisy environments OUR 45-DAY
100% DIGITAL Digital technology improves lower, softer sounds IN-HOME TRIAL
and dampens loud noises

Call Toll Free 1-888-771-8525 and Mention Code DIS-1116R

www.cchearinghelp.com
We always recommend you consult a physician, audiologist, or other licensed professional for a complete hearing examination.
 Big
Idea
“a laboratory Earth.” Time dubbed the
experiment “semi-creation.”
And it turns out that Miller under-
reported the richness of his prebiotic
soup. When Bada’s lab inherited the
leftover residues after Miller’s death
in 2007, Bada examined them using
modern instruments. He detected more
than eight times the number of amino
acids found by Miller.
The surprising success of the Miller-
Urey experiment has made it a classic
in many textbooks, but there was also
a problem at its core — namely, Urey’s
hypothesis that the early atmosphere
was flush with methane and ammonia.
“In fact, it was carbon dioxide with
nitrogen, or carbon dioxide with a
little methane,” Bada says. Miller
knew about the problem, and when he
replicated his experiments in the 1980s
using a more plausible mix of gases,
most turned up no amino acids.
SEEDING AN RNA WORLD
About a decade after Miller’s
unsuccessful second attempt, the
European Space Agency added a
young German chemist named
Uwe Meierhenrich to its Rosetta
26 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
A 23-year-old Stanley Miller (top) poses with
his life-brewing contraption. Decades later,
Scripps researcher Jeffrey Bada (middle) made
his own primordial soup experiments. He also
re-examined Miller’s original samples (bottom).
mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov–
Gerasimenko. Meierhenrich helped
develop instruments that allowed the
Philae lander to probe the comet’s
surface for organics. But to test Philae’s
abilities, he’d need a comet on Earth.
Meierhenrich found what he
needed at Leiden University in the
Netherlands, where astrochemists
were making artiicial cometary ice to
test how these dirty snowballs form.
Their technique was akin to Miller’s
simulated primordial soup. The Leiden
scientists replicated the frigid vacuum
of interstellar space, then introduced
the chemicals found in cometary ice and
hit them with ultraviolet light like that
emitted by stars. This process produced
mere micrograms of comet, but it was
enough to test Rosetta’s instruments.
The equipment worked impeccably —
and detected 16 amino acids.
Although researchers suspected
they’d see amino acids on 67P —
having already detected them in
certain primitive meteorites — nobody
expected that the organics would
form instantaneously in a simple
ice analog on Earth. As doubt grew
over the Miller-Urey experiment,
Meierhenrich’s research lent strong
support to an alternative hypothesis:
that the organic ingredients of life
came from outer space.
And support for a cometary origin
has only grown since Meierhenrich
published his initial results in 2002.
Twelve years later, the Philae lander
descended onto 67P and detected
organics that matched the ice
from Leiden.
FROM TOP: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY, UC SAN DIEGO (2)
Earlier this year, Meierhenrich’s
lab at the University of Nice Sophia
Antipolis reported another major
advance in Science. Analyzing ice
analogs with a new technique called
multidimensional gas chromatography,
they detected the chemical ribose — no
ordinary organic. The complex sugar is
the chemical backbone of RNA, which
is widely acknowledged as the genetic
regulator of life before DNA. Many
researchers even theorize an “RNA
world” that predates our own. These
molecules would have evolved into the
irst living organisms.
Ribose is also dificult to produce.
Living cells do it well, but the principal

TOP: ESA/ROSETTA/NAVCAM, BEAKER: JAY SMITH. BOTTOM: COURTESY UWE MEIERHENRICH/INSTITUT DE CHIMIE DE NICE
Comet 67P (top) holds many building blocks for
life. German chemist Uwe Meierhenrich made
similar ingredients in a laboratory comet.
inorganic process for making complex
sugars is called the formose reaction.
It requires careful lab preparation
of concentrated formaldehyde.
Meierhenrich thinks that a similar
reaction naturally takes place in
interstellar space — without the fussy
chemistry. “You see this in cometary
ice,” he says. “You do not see this on
the surface of early Earth.”
CHEMICAL GARDENS
However scientists do see the formose
reaction in at least one terrestrial
environment. In 2011, researchers at
the Max Planck Institute of Colloids
and Interfaces synthesized ribose
in conditions simulating a hydro-
thermal vent.
Alkaline hydrothermal vents are
found on the seafloor near where
tectonic plates meet. Hot water seeps
up from beneath the Earth’s crust,
transporting a rich mix of minerals
that provide chemical sustenance to
communities of microbes. Explorers
irst saw a cluster of these white
chimneys near the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge in the early 2000s. Ever since,
researchers have theorized that such
vents could have nurtured the earliest
life on Earth.
“You have a kind of one-stop
shopping,” observes Linda McGown,
a chemical biologist at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute. The vents provide
the energy source, raw materials
and environment for chemicals to
concentrate and reactions to take place.
McGown’s lab is testing this idea
by growing mineral chimneys in
glass vessels and seeding them with
organics. Last year, her team showed
that vent-dwelling ribonucleotides —
molecular RNA precursors — can
form into short chains of RNA.
Placing her “chemical gardens” under
high pressure, to simulate conditions
on the ocean floor, only improves the
eficiency of RNA formation. And
while McGown’s bench-top experiment
required lab prep of the chimneys’ raw
materials to obtain RNA linkages,
her newest research shows that
unprepared minerals will do the trick
in pressurized conditions.
Nevertheless, McGown refuses
to conclude that Darwin’s “warm
little pond” must have actually been
a hot hydrothermal vent. Given
ongoing uncertainty about early Earth
conditions, she believes in keeping an
open mind.
Her pragmatism is shared by
Carnegie Institution mineralogist
Robert Hazen, one of the most widely
respected researchers in the study of
life’s origins. Instead of seeing alternate
theories as competitive, he contends
that “the organic molecules come from
many sources.” Space and Earth both
contributed to life.
New possibilities are even percolat-
ing inside the old Miller apparatus.
Revisiting Miller’s unsuccessful experi-
ment from the 1980s, Bada discovered
that high acidity inhibits the formation
of amino acids in a carbon dioxide
atmosphere. By increasing the realism
of the early Earth simulation with the
addition of carbonate minerals, he’s
managed to boost the pH and make
amino acids in abundance.
All these potential pathways to
life on Earth might mean we’ll never
reach a deinitive solution to Darwin’s
original conundrum. However, the
wealth of opportunities helps resolve
a related question that is equally
profound. “The universe is pregnant
with molecules ready to form and
organize,” Hazen says. Searching for
the source of life on Earth, Miller and
Urey discovered the plausibility of life
throughout the cosmos. D
Jonathon Keats’ latest book is You Belong
to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the
Future (Oxford University Press).
November 2016 DISCOVER 27
 Mind
Over
Matter
Siren Song
of Food
To lose that extra weight,
think less about food and
more about environment.
BY TAMAR HASPEL
→ One pound a week.
It’s a common weight-loss goal
thought by experts to be reasonable.
By that reckoning, I should have lost
780 pounds in the 15 years I tried to
lose weight. But I didn’t. Instead, I lost
a paltry 25 — an inglorious rate of a
half-ounce per week.
Or that would’ve been the rate,
had I used the entire 15 years to shed
those 25 pounds. But that’s not how
it happened. I couldn’t lose them,
I couldn’t lose them, I couldn’t lose
them. And then, suddenly, I could.
What flipped the switch wasn’t a diet
or an exercise plan. It was a book
contract. Because the day I signed it,
I quit my job.
Working from home, I’d be out
of reach of the doughnuts in the
conference room or the jar of mini
Snickers on my colleague’s desk.
I igured that might make it easier to
lose weight. And it did.
Turns out there’s a body of research
on just that subject — the siren song
of food — and I’m not alone in
my inability to navigate temptation
successfully. One 2011 study of college-
age women found that overweight
participants tended not to overeat
when they weren’t actively tempted.
However, according to the study’s
authors, “the probability of overeating
… increased rapidly as the number
of good-tasting high-calorie foods
increased.” Don’t I know it.
So what makes some of us all but
powerless in the presence of a cruller?
28 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
I’m not sure we
humans like to think of
ourselves as inhabiting
the same evolutionary
plane as slobbering
dogs, but we’re not
so diferent. Just like
them, yes, we need
food, but we also like it.
A SLAVE TO THE SYSTEMS
Hedy Kober, who runs Yale
University’s Clinical and Affective
Neuroscience Lab and co-authored
a 2016 research review on how we
respond to food, sums it up: “Food
cues. They make you eat more.” Those
cues run the gamut. There’s the sight
of food, the smell of it, even just a
picture of it — they all make us want
it. Just like the classic example of dogs
drooling at the ring of a dinnertime
bell, it’s out-and-out Pavlovian — a
conditioned response to a stimulus.
If Ivan Pavlov himself rose from the
dead to check our salivary glands as
we walk past a Cinnabon, there’d be
no surprises.
I’m not sure we humans like to think
of ourselves as inhabiting the same
evolutionary plane as slobbering dogs,
but we’re not so different. Just like
them, yes, we need food, but we also
like it. And that’s what makes food so
tempting. “It’s true in your life, it’s true
in my life, and it has a neurobiological
explanation,” Kober says.
Two different systems in the brain
govern our food decisions. Our
homeostatic system regulates our need
for food and is controlled mainly in
the hypothalamus (in the lower region
of the brain). It regulates hormones
that make us feel hungry or full and
responds primarily to internal signals
about our energy balance.
The other — our hedonic reward
system — is all about the liking. It’s
complex and involves many parts of
the brain, and it’s not even close to
completely understood. But research
has clearly shown that it makes us
IKON IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
want to eat, even when we’re not
hungry. The two systems aren’t
completely separate, and hunger can
amp up our hedonic reward system.
Yet no amount of satisfying that
hunger will shut it down.
This is how you make a splash...

Send in the Aquamarines

Claim your share of the legendary “sailor’s gem” that was once
considered more valuable than diamonds or gold!

W hen the sun turns up the heat, you need

a necklace that will make a splash. Ever
since ancient times, sailors have sworn by
aquamarine for protection on the open
water. We guarantee it to turn heads,
by land or by sea. And today you
don’t have to leave shore to reap
the benefits of this legendary
blue gem, because your
ship has come in.
Today, you can wear this spectacular 300 total EXCLUSIVE
carat Maré Aquamarine Necklace for only
$79! We’ll even throw in a pair of Stauer®
Hāna Sunglasses (a $99 value) to show how
FREE
Stauer® Tortoise-
much value you can still get for your dollar. designed Hāna
Ladies Sunglasses
Claim your “Mermaid’s Treasure.” On (Polarized &
any vessel crossing the oceans, there was UV Lens)
no more precious cargo than aquamarine. -a $99 value-
Sailors paid handsomely for its power, with purchase of
considering it their most valuable Maré Necklace
commodity. In scientific terms, the
chemical composition of our Maré
Necklace beads are cousins to precious
emeralds. They begin life as geological
twins underground, colorless until
something sparks a change. Sprinkle in a
dash of minerals and one becomes vivid
green and the other becomes brilliant blue.
That’s the beauty of chemistry.
A legend among luxury jewelers. Named
for the Latin words for “water of the sea,”
aquamarine shines with all the colors
of the ocean. Each bead is like 
a droplet of the sea frozen in “A wonderful purchase.
space and time. Walk into the Will compliment many colors.”
most exclusive retail jewelers — Diana, Streetsboro, OH To show exquisite
and you’ll find aquamarine in a details, necklace
shown is not
place of honor. Fifth Avenue thinks Maré Aquamarine Necklace (300 ctw) $179* exact size.
nothing of offering a strand of aquamarine “pebbles” for Offer Code Price Only $79 + S&P Save $100!
nearly $12,000. But with a color this captivating, you FREE Stauer Hāna Sunglasses with necklace purchase
deserve more than a dollop. That’s why we collected the
bluest stones from three continents, polished them to You must use the offer code to get our special price.
perfection and arranged them in this double-stranded,
300-carat masterpiece.
1­800­333­2045
Offer Code: MAN319­07
Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. Try the Maré Please use this code when you order to receive your discount.
Necklace for 60 days. If you don’t fall in love, send it back
for a refund of the item sale price. You can even keep the $99
Hāna sunglasses, no hard feelings. But once your wear 300
Stauer ®
14101 Southcross Drive W., Dept. MAN319­07,
Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.stauer.com
* Special price only for customers using the
carats of aquamarine, you’ll find that there’s no better way to offer code versus the price on Stauer.com
without your offer code.
make a splash without getting wet! Rating of A+

St auer…Afford the Extraordinar y.

 Mind
Over
Matter
I’ve been there.
I remember afternoon
meetings when there
was no earthly reason
I should be hungry,
staring down the damn
cruller. The meetings were
long. I stood no chance. I
am Pavlov’s dog. We’re all
Pavlov’s dogs.
Or maybe we’re
Pavlov’s secretaries. One
workplace study, done
about a decade ago,
involved 40 secretaries
and jars of candy.
Researchers put candy
jars, some clear and
some opaque, either
right on the secretaries’ desks or
about 6 feet away. When clear jars
were on the desk, the participants
ate an average of 7.7 candies. When
the jars were opaque, or far away,
they ate fewer. But when the jars
were both opaque and out of reach,
consumption dropped 60 percent.
A 60 percent drop, just by
rejiggering the jar. Out of sight,
out of reach, out of mind.
A 2016 study published in the
journal Appetite looked at this concept
as well, but in Google’s millennial-
friendly workplace where food and
drink are available at any time. Before
collecting data, the researchers saw that
most people who came into the break
room took a drink. So in half the
break rooms, they put snacks next to
the drinks. In the other half, the snacks
were farther away. When the food was
alongside the drinks, twice as many
men and one-third more women helped
themselves to the treats.
Even when food is right in front of
you, other cues also matter. You know
that chocolate-chip-cookie smell? In
one 2008 study, people trying to eat less
actually ate 50 percent more cookies in
the presence of the scent.
Which brings up an important
caveat. Some of us, myself included,
30 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
I remember afternoon
meetings when there
was no earthly reason I
should be hungry, staring
down the damn cruller.
he meetings were long.
I stood no chance.
I am Pavlov’s dog.
We’re all Pavlov’s dogs.
are more susceptible to food cues
than others. And there’s good
evidence that heightened responses
to those cues can predict whether we
put on a few pounds. In one 2015
study, researchers gave adolescents
chocolate milkshakes and used
fMRI scans to see how their brains
reacted. “Elevated” responses — those
that indicated a higher afinity for
chocolate milkshakes — predicted fat
gain three years later.
But it’s not limited to just teens
and milkshakes. Over and over,
neuroimaging studies ind correlations
between patterns of response to food
cues and BMI or weight gain.
A DIET-FRIENDLY
ENVIRONMENT
So where do we go
from here? Maybe we
manipulate those food
cues — not just our diets
— to try and make a dent
in our obesity epidemic.
A head-slappingly
simple way to tackle
the issue? “Changing
your environment is
one potent solution,”
Kober says.
Boy, have I changed
mine. Step into my
kitchen, and all you’ll
ind are ingredients. No
pastries, no crackers and
absolutely no crullers. On those rare
occasions when I do have dangerous
foods in the house — you can’t say
no when your neighbor is selling
Girl Scout cookies — I’ve been
known to ask my husband to hide
them and bring them out in limited
quantities when my back is turned. It’s
embarrassing, but it works. (Except
when I ind the forgotten sleeve of Thin
Mints, months later, in the ile drawer
with the taxes.)
Once you step outside the domain
where you have control, though, it
gets more complicated. It’s not a
coincidence that the barbecue joint has
a smoker going, or that the grocery
store gives out samples, or that there’s
an entire profession — food styling
— dedicated to making food look
delicious in pictures. So who decides
whether — or how — we should limit
exposure to food cues like advertising?
Kober believes these are the kinds of
hard questions we should be asking.
Despite the temptations out in the
world, in the nearly 20 years since I’ve
IKON IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
had a J-O-B, I’ve kept the weight off —
but it’s been a ight. So if you see me, do
me a favor. Hide the jar. D
Tamar Haspel writes about food, health
and science.
 Better Way To Sleep
PURE COTTON KNIT TeePJsTM
Tee-PJs are not ordinary
nightshirts. They are made
with a special soft cotton
knit that moves as you move
for the ultimate in sleeping
and lounging comfort.
NO BIND NO BUNCH
NO BUTTONS
NO SIDE SEAMS
QUALITY MADE
IN THE USA!

TeePJs – the most

comfortable sleeper
you’ve ever worn or
your money back!
Great for Ladies, too.
COLORS: White or Soft Blue.
SIZES: To fit 90- 300 lbs.
Specify man/lady
and height/weight
for a perfect fit.
Add $2 per nightshirt
for XXXL.
$27.95 ea. 2 for $51.90 (Save $4)
Long sleeve style (not shown):
$31.95 ea. 2 for $59.90 (Save $4)
Please give order code Z126 S&H: add $6.95 for 1 or $9.95 for 2
Send check or use Visa/MC/Discover/AMEX

Cotton Comforts Since 1955

- Dept. 204
11570 SE Dixie Hwy, Hobe Sound, FL 33455
(Ship to FL add tax ) 1-800-890-7232
HUGE SELECTION OF COTTON SLEEPWEAR, ROBES
AND UNDERWEAR - www.nightshirt.com

Discover
SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS

M AG A Z I N E

PACIFIC NORTHWEST & NATIONAL PARKS OF THE AMERICA’S

SAN FRANCISCO
August 17-26, 2017
• Enjoy 2 minutes and 2 seconds of totality at
a specially selected viewing location in central
Oregon.
• Discover some of the Paciic Northwest’s
most notable cities, including Seattle, Bend,
Portland, and San Francisco.
• Explore Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market,
nearby Mount St. Helens, the Columbia River
Gorge, Crater Lake and Redwood National
Park, and cross the Golden Gate Bridge.
AMERICAN WEST
August 16-28, 2017
• View 2 minutes of totality in the stunning sky
above Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
• Visit Lowell Observatory, journey through
red rock country around Sedona, marvel
at the cliffs of Zion National Park, enjoy
a storied lodge in Yellowstone, visit the
Grand Canyon, pay your respects at Mount
Rushmore, and much more.
• Enjoy the best of regional cuisine and
accommodations in Salt Lake City and
Jackson Hole.
MUSIC CITIES
August 14-22, 2017
• Experience 2 minutes and 40 seconds of
totality near Nashville, Tennessee, the best
viewing location in the country.
• Enjoy 4-star accommodations in New Orleans,
Memphis, and Nashville.
• Tap your toes to traditional jazz, go behind
the scenes at RCA’s recording studios, visit
Graceland and the Grand Ole Opry, and
much more. It’s a feast for the eyes —
and the ears!

See all the tours at DiscoverMagazine.com/trips-tours

 LPH A RI
A NTAU T
CE or BUS
A fleet of tiny
probes could
reach the nearest
star system within
our lifetime.
BY STEVE NADIS
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROEN KELLY

November 2016 DISCOVER 33

“For the first time in human history, we can do more than just gaze
at the stars,” declared philanthropist and high-tech entrepreneur
Yuri Milner on April 12. “We can actually reach them.”
Milner, a Russian native, was named
after cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who
exactly 55 years earlier became the
irst man in space and the irst to orbit
Earth. Milner was hoping to bring
another historic irst to fruition. At a
press conference held atop New York
City’s One World Trade Center, he
unveiled Breakthrough Starshot, a
program with a bold agenda: to launch,
within 20 years, a fleet of spacecraft that
would within another 20 years reach the
nearest star system, Alpha Centauri,
4.37 light-years away.
Milner wasn’t just talking a good
game; he was backing it with his own
money, $100 million in research and
development funding to demonstrate
the feasibility of this wild idea. It
might take another $10 billion to
pull off the actual mission, but the
main point Milner stressed during
the press conference was that such
an endeavor is within our grasp,
assuming reasonable improvements in
existing technology.
He also brought along some heavy
hitters to help make this case, including
cosmologist Stephen Hawking, former
astronaut Mae Jemison, Harvard
University astrophysicist Avi Loeb
and former head of the NASA
Ames Research Center Pete Worden.
Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner wants to
launch tiny probes to the nearest star system.
“Today,” Hawking said, “we commit
to the next great leap into the cosmos,
because we are human and our nature
is to fly.”
REACHING FOR THE STARS
The enterprise got a boost on Aug. 24
when astronomers at the European
Southern Observatory in Chile
announced the discovery of an Earth-
like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri,
one of three stars in the Alpha Centauri
system. “This announcement provides
even more motivation for our mission,”
claims Worden, who left NASA in 2015
to become executive director of the
Starshot program. “Today we can make
a better case for Starshot than we could
have just a month ago.”
While the excitement among Milner,
Worden and their peers is palpable,
they are not ignoring the immense
technological issues that lie ahead. Yet
two key ideas at the heart of this plan
make the sci-i dream of interstellar
travel scientiically plausible. The irst
is limiting the spacecraft’s size so it
weighs just a gram or two, allowing it to
accelerate to unprecedented speeds. That
strategy would, of course, require leaving
people behind and going strictly robotic.
The second idea is to leave the fuel
behind as well, and propel the spacecraft
solely with light. (Although photons
are massless, they can still impart
momentum.) This approach contributes
to the goal of attaining speeds far
beyond what conventional, chemical-
powered rockets could ever muster.
The general concept of sail-bearing
spacecraft — akin to the clipper ships of
old, hurled across the seas by wind — is
not new. Johannes Kepler alluded to
this prospect in a 1610 letter to Galileo:
“With ships or sails built for heavenly
winds, some will venture into that great
vastness.” While the physicist and sci-i
writer Robert Forward further developed
the idea in the 1960s, it remained far
from practical implementation.
During the media announcement,
Milner cited recent critical advances that
make sailing to the stars conceivable.
Thanks to the dramatic decrease in the
size of microelectronic components,
researchers can now create suitably tiny
space probes equipped with cameras,
a power supply and navigational and
communication capabilities. These
“nanocraft” would be attached to
ultrathin sails about a few square meters
in area and weighing a few grams.
A conventional rocket would carry
hundreds to thousands of these
BREAKTHROUGH INITIATIVES (2)

nanocraft into space, releasing them into

high-Earth orbit. Then a ground-based
laser array with a combined capacity of
The Breakthrough Starshot announcement included a bevy of space celebrities. From left to
right: Yuri Milner, cosmologist Stephen Hawking, physicist Freeman Dyson, Cosmos Studios CEO 100 gigawatts of peak power, spread out
Ann Druyan, astrophysicist Avi Loeb, astronaut Mae Jemison and NASA researcher Pete Worden. over a dry, high-altitude site like Chile’s

34 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 A ground-based laser array in a high-altitude site like Chile’s Atacama Desert, shown in this artist’s rendering, could send 100 gigawatts of power to
orbiting space probes, enough to accelerate them to a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Atacama Desert, would zap each sail,
one at a time, for a few minutes. This
would cause each wafer-like probe to
accelerate to 20 percent of the speed
of light (or about 134,000,000 mph) —
about 1,000 times faster than today’s
fastest space vehicles. The diminutive
space probes would be inexpensive
and, therefore, expendable; some
could be lost due to technical glitches
or collisions with space junk without
jeopardizing the entire mission.
It may sound crazy, but this plan
might work. The stars could be within
our grasp, as Starshot enthusiasts claim
— although it will still take tremendous
progress to get there.
FROM DREAM TO REALITY
So how close is this project to an actual
liftoff ? Of the three technologies
central to the effort, the space probe
is the furthest along. At the April
announcement, Milner held up a small
wafer — less than 2 square inches in size
and roughly 4 grams in mass — that
can already meet many of the critical
speciications. Designed by Harvard
researcher Zachary Manchester, about
half the wafer consists of a solar cell
for generating electricity, and the rest
includes a small microprocessor, a
radio transceiver and magnetometer,
and a gyroscope for navigation and
orientation. It’s all built from off-the-
shelf components at a cost of about
$25. “The world’s smallest satellite,”
Manchester calls it, “and probably the
cheapest, too.”
He hopes to get 100 of his satellites
into space later this year, courtesy of
a NASA educational program, to test
radio communication methods in space.
For future experiments, he wants to
add more functionality to the probes

HOW TO REACH INTERSTELLAR SPACE

1 A conventional rocket carries nanocraft

into high-Earth orbit. Once in space,
a launcher releases thousands of the
3 The accelerated probes
then coast through
interstellar space toward . . .
tiny probes.
Alpha Centauri
star system
OORT CLOU
12
fee
t

D
TOP: BREAKTHROUGH INITIATIVES

2 A ground-based laser array zaps each sail, one at

a time for a few minutes, causing each probe to
accelerate to 20 percent of the speed of light (about
134,000,000 mph).

November 2016 DISCOVER 35

 Magnetometer
Gyroscope
Radio
Solar cell
Antennas Microcontroller
Harvard researcher Zachary
Manchester designed the
“chipsat,” a tiny probe that may
reach the nearest star system.
using cameras, while eventually
trying out laser communications
techniques. “Zac’s work was one of
the key things that convinced Yuri
and me that this might be feasible,”
says Worden.
Other aspects of this venture,
however, are further from realization.
That includes the proposed laser array,
consisting of a large number (thousands,
if not millions) of modest-sized ground
lasers all pointed at a minuscule
target, thousands of miles in the sky.
“No one has ever done this on the
scale we’re talking about,” says Philip
Lubin, a physicist at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. But there
are no fundamental physics barriers,
Lubin adds, “and there is now a credible
path forward.”
It’s a tricky problem, nevertheless.
“For an array of one or several
square kilometers, a laser on one side
would see a different atmospheric
density than a laser on the other
HOW FAR AWAY IS ALPHA CENTAURI?
Earth Jupiter
1 AU 5.2 AU
Voyager 1
136 AU
Beginning of Oort Cloud
2,000 AU
36 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
The tiny probes
could reach Pluto
in three days,
rather than the
9.5 years it took
New Horizons
to get there.
side,” explains Harvard astrophysicist
James Guillochon. “We would need
to correct for all of those differences.”
Furthermore, Guillochon notes, the
laser light hitting the sail has to be
exactly on target. “You want an even
distribution of energy on the sail so it
doesn’t deform.”
This leads to what may be the plan’s
foremost challenge: coming up with
a sail of a few square yards that’s
suficiently strong, thin and lightweight.
It also has to be highly reflective and
absorb less than 1/100,000 of the
incoming light so that it doesn’t melt.
While no material yet devised meets
all of the technical requirements,
researchers have made progress on
individual parts of the problem.
After being sped up with laser beams,
the Starshot probes would coast for the
next 20 years, although it wouldn’t be
smooth sailing. The nanocraft would
face additional obstacles, primarily in
the form of dust and gas encountered
en route to the Alpha Centauri system.
Princeton astrophysicist Bruce Draine
estimates that the small spacecraft
would sustain about a million collisions
per square centimeter with dust
grains during the journey — each
one potentially a disaster at those
speeds. Fortunately, there are ways of
mitigating the damage. A beryllium
Neptune K U I P E R B E LT
30 AU
End of Oort Cloud
50,000 AU
or graphite coating could protect the
electronics, and as another precaution,
researchers could reduce the number
of collisions by folding up the sail after
the nanocraft is beyond the reach of
Earth-based lasers. The craft could also
be directed to fly sideways, led by its thin
edge to present less of a target.
Worden hopes to sponsor a series
of space experiments of increasing
complexity in the coming years. Early
experiments would involve solar sails,
pushed strictly by sunlight, which have
flown before. Others would involve
pushing sails with lasers, which has not
yet been done. “There’s a whole range
of things we hope to do,” Worden says,
“and we’ll build up gradually over time.”
SEEING THE SIGHTS
There will be a lot to see along the way.
Rather than being focused on a single
destination — Alpha Centauri’s stars
— this program, says Worden, “is really
about a journey.”
We’ll start by exploring our own
backyard, the solar system, and move
on from there, says Loeb, who heads the
Starshot advisory committee. After all,
he notes, the tiny probes “can reach Pluto
in three days, rather than the 9.5 years
it took New Horizons to get there.” The
program could sacriice some of the
multiple probes, he says, sending them
“very close to targets we’re interested
in. For example, we could fly through
the plumes [of Enceladus] and see if we
could detect the ingerprints of life.” The
probes could also fly through the rings of
Saturn or other harsh environments.
“With cheap, fast spacecraft,” says
Guillochon, “we could send one out to
ZACHARY MANCHESTER
every asteroid in the asteroid belt or to
every Pluto-like object in the outer solar
system. With these small craft ready
Beginning of
Oort Cloud
2,000 AU
 OUR STELLAR NEIGHBORS
Saturn Uranus
Jupiter
Neptune
Starshade

KUIPER BELT

“Edge” of the solar system,

the Oort Cloud:
4.6 trillion miles
OORT
CLOUD To Proxima

iles
Centauri

m
on
r illi
t
1.2
Alpha
Nearest star, Centauri A Alpha
Proxima Centauri: Centauri B
24.7 trillion miles 1.0
billio
mile n Researchers at the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope in Arizona test a 4-inch
s
starshade, designed to precisely block out a star’s light, but not the light
of orbiting planets.

to launch, we could have hundreds of
missions, each of them to a brand-new,
never-before-seen world.” Speaking
of new worlds, he says, “If Planet
Nine exists, this would be one way to
get there quickly.”
There is no timetable set for missions
like this, but if all goes according to
plan, after 20 years of practice within
the solar system, scientists may inally
be ready for the irst extra-solar
target, the Alpha Centauri system.
It has three separate stars to survey.
Proxima Centauri is the nearest,
and the other two, Alpha Centauri
A and B, are similar to our sun in
mass and luminosity.
TOP RIGHT: NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORP.
surface. There’s also an unconirmed
planetary sighting near Alpha Centauri B.
University of Colorado astrophysicist
Webster Cash, meanwhile, is trying out
an innovative technique to see such
planets directly. Cash, who participated
in a Starshot workshop in April, is
reflecting light from a telescope on
Arizona’s Kitt Peak to a smaller,
secondary telescope 1.5 miles away. In
between, he’s placed a screen called a
starshade to block the light of a test star
to detect dimmer planets orbiting it.
“The Starshot mission,” he says,
“helps motivate those of us who want
to look for planets; if and when we ind
planets, that will really motivate the
down. Ideally, the probe’s instruments
will gather information about the newly
found planet and relay it back to Earth,
using the sail as an antenna to facilitate
transmission. Even traveling at light
speed, that data would take more than
four years to arrive, a wait that no
amount of technology can lessen.
It’s an ambitious undertaking,
to be sure, and success is not
guaranteed — but where space travel
is concerned, when is it ever? “We’re
kind of where we were 40 years ago
with gravity wave detectors,” Worden
says. “People wondered if we could
ever do this. It took decades, but they
gradually made it work.”

What might a space probe see when
it gets there? Proxima’s planet, dubbed
Proxima b, is an obvious target. The
rocky world of roughly Earth’s mass is in
a tight orbit around its dim star, located
in its “habitable zone.” Liquid water,
and thus possibly life, might exist on its
mission. And that’s the whole idea —
to get everything moving forward.”
So, barring any setbacks, the irst
Starshot spacecraft would hopefully
approach the Alpha Centauri system
sometime around 2056. It would keep
flying past, having no means of slowing
Starshot could be similar, he hopes.
It wouldn’t be the irst time a giant leap
began with a seemingly small step. D
Steve Nadis, a contributing editor to Discover
and Astronomy, is co-author of From the Great
Wall to the Great Collider.

It’s a long way to the nearest star system. Humanity’s current distance record belongs to the Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977,
and that’s still only about 136 times the distance between Earth and the sun. Proxima Centauri’s almost 2,000 times farther. Voyager 1
136 AU

OORT CLOUD

Proxima Alpha
Astronomical Unit (AU) = 92,956,000 miles Centauri Centauri A
266,000 AU 279,000 AU

November 2016 DISCOVER 37

 MAMMOTH
ISLAND
The Ice Age giants of St. Paul Island
outlived those on the mainland for
millennia. What finally drove them
to extinction?

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY JESSICA MARSHALL

38 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
An iconic example of the Ice Age
megafauna of North America, the
mammoth went extinct soon after
humans arrived on the continent
— except for isolated populations.
WOOLLY MAMMOTH PHOTO BY STEPHEN WILKES,
COURTESY OF THE ROYAL BC MUSEUM AND
ARCHIVES, VICTORIA, BC, CANADA

November 2016 DISCOVER 39

 O
ne day thousands of
years ago, on a tiny
island in the middle of
the Bering Sea, a woolly
mammoth made a fatal
misstep. It fell into a pit-
like cave with no escape,
and there it died.
In 2003, another
animal entered the cave
— with a ladder. As he
explored the space with his colleagues, Russell Graham,
a paleontologist from Pennsylvania State University,
lifted a rock near the back. There he found a single,
pristine tooth from the mammoth, oblong and bumpy
and as big as a loaf of bread. “It looked like you had
just taken it out of the animal’s mouth,” says Graham, a
tall, broad-shouldered man. With a beard and a slightly
shuffling gait, he seems a bit of mammoth himself.
He had handled hundreds of mammoth teeth in
his career, but this tooth, from the Alaskan island
of St. Paul, was special. It would send Graham and
a multidisciplinary team of experts on a quest to
reconstruct the animal’s environment and solve a
mystery — one that has
implications for species
facing climate-induced
extinction today.
The mystery began when
carbon dating established
the tooth was just 6,500
years old. That’s several
millennia fresher than
any mammoth ind on the
North American mainland.
Paleontologist Russell Graham The date made Graham
returned to St. Paul in 2013, a decade wonder: After the
after finding an unexpected tooth.
animals persisted
ST. PAUL ISLAND
Lake Hill
on this wind-battered speck of land for so many
millennia after mainland populations perished, what
inally killed them off ?
Back in the 1960s, Paul Colinvaux, a British-born
ecologist, had collected a sediment core from a
lakebed on St. Paul. The preserved layers in the core
revealed that the site held a sediment record stretching
back at least 14,000 years — and the spot, Lake Hill,
was only a quarter of a mile away from the cave where
Graham had made his discovery. The answers to
Graham’s questions might well lie in the dark mud of
that lakebed.
A decade after he found the tooth, Graham returned
to St. Paul with his team of experts, ready to glean clues
from new sediment cores about the intertwined history
of the island and its mammoths.
GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF A MYSTERY
Weather complicates the early spring expedition to the
largest of the Pribilofs, a cluster of volcanic islands
poking up from the Bering Sea. Upon the team’s arrival
to St. Paul, rain quickly turns to snow and they’re
forced to stay in the island’s lone town. It’s home to
most of St. Paul’s 500 residents, the majority of them
Aleuts whose ancestors were brought here by Russian
traders more than two centuries ago to work the
northern fur seal killing ields.
The team waits for the clouds to lift over the town’s
skyline: the Russian Orthodox church’s onion dome,
the brightly colored houses and the seafood processing
plant. Blue-gray Arctic foxes native to the 40-square-
mile island appear without fear outside home base,
a research station run by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.
At last, a bright morning arrives and the researchers
head to Lake Hill, a crater lake encircled by a snow-
covered rim. Graham’s team drills a hole through a
foot of ice. Members thread together meter-long
sections of pipe attached to a tube, or corer.
With a splash they drive the assembly through
the water and push it into the lakebed.
Minutes later, the pipe is
retrieved, the inal meter
plugged with sediment
layers preserved just as they
were deposited.
ALASKA
Within the muck lies a
forensic record of what
SATELLITE IMAGE: USGS/NASA LANDSAT. MAP: JAY SMITH

Cave where Anchorage fell, washed or otherwise

mammoth tooth
was found in 2003
St. Paul Island, like the
rest of the Pribilofs,
was once part of
the North American
mainland. It was cut
off from the continent
beginning 11,000 years
ago as the sea level rose.
settled onto the bottom
of this lake: fungal spores,
fragments of plants, ancient
pollen, volcanic ash, the
Pribilof
remains of tiny crustaceans
Islands
— and maybe even DNA
Bering Sea from the mammoths
themselves, shed while
wallowing in the water. The

40 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
A resident of St. Paul holds a mammoth tooth found on the island (top left). The main settlement on St. Paul stands out in the snow on an early
spring morning (top right). Things get messy drilling to obtain sediment cores at Lake Hill with researchers Nancy Bigelow, Matthew Wooller,
Soumayha Belmecheri and Kyungsheol Choy (above, from left). The coring process is tricky in the extreme environment: Joints of the equipment
freeze quickly, requiring the use of a blowtorch to maintain functionality (above, right). The research team treks through the snowscape of
St. Paul Island to Lake Hill (below). The ice-covered crater lake has layers of sediment deposited over millennia that the scientists will use
to reconstruct the mammoth’s environment, from the vegetation to the climate. By understanding the circumstances in which the animals lived,
the team hopes to solve the mystery of why they died.

November 2016 DISCOVER 41

 University of Wisconsin-Madison guides the sixth
segment into a tube, he notices the mud changes from
a warm brown with a pudding-like texture to a blacker,
irmer consistency. The team estimates it corresponds to
deposits from roughly 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, spanning
the period when Graham’s mammoth died in the cave.
That means this segment could include the period of
extinction, if mammoth DNA is present in its lower,
older layers but absent from the top. “There’s mammoth
in there,” Williams predicts.

MAMMOTHS’ LAST STAND

At Lake Hill, researchers collect sediment cores by hand in a cold, messy
process. Each meter-long core is placed in a tube for transport and then
in a sleeping bag so the millennia-old mud won’t freeze, which could
compromise the fine layers laid down over time.
team will use these bits of evidence to build a picture of
how the island changed over millennia and, potentially,
determine when the mammoths went extinct.
Team members draw the sediment from below, meter
by meter, extruding it into plastic tubes. The tubes are
then sealed and tucked into a sleeping bag so they don’t
freeze, which could distort the layers’ ine resolution.
The work is messy, cold and physical. By day’s end,
frozen mud crusts on the researchers’ clothing and
clumps in their hair.
Each meter of cored sediment reaches further
back in time. As team member Jack Williams of the
St. Paul’s landscape of treeless tundra has likely changed
little since the end of the last ice age, some 12,000 years
ago. It’s easy to imagine where mammoths would have
stood on the gentle slope, using their tusks to clear the
snow while browsing for vegetation. In the summer, they
would have trampled tiny tundra wildflowers as they
lumbered to the lake, one of the main freshwater sources
on the island.
Researchers estimate that mammoths disappeared
from North America’s mainland 10,000 to 14,000 years
ago. But they persisted on St. Paul for millennia after
that. The animals also survived — for even longer
— on Wrangel Island, deep in the Russian Arctic.
Researchers there have found teeth that are only
4,000 years old; the Wrangel mammoths were alive
as Egypt erected its great pyramids.
Like Wrangel, St. Paul hasn’t always been an island.
At the peak of the last ice age, around 21,000 years ago,
it was a volcanically active spot on the southern edge of
the Bering Land Bridge. Mammoths, saber-toothed cats,

NORTH AMERICAN MEGAFAUNA EXTINCTION based upon direct radiocarbon dates on bones or teeth

Woolly mammoth
Mammuthus primigenius 12,397 – 12,016

Columbian mammoth
Mammuthus columbi 12,919 – 12,189

American mastodon
Mammut americanum 12,800 – 12,687

*Beautiful armadillo
Dasypus bellus 13,017 – 12,728

*Stag moose
Cervalces scotti 13,276 – 13,011

Giant beaver
Castoroides ohioensis 12,823 – 12,673

Jefferson’s ground sloth

Megalonyx jeffersonii 13,180 – 13,034

Harlan’s ground sloth

Glossotherium harlani 14,128 – 14,788

*Flat-headed peccary
Platygonus compressus 13,070 – 12,775

Short-faced bear
Arctodus simus 12,971 – 12,725
0
0

0
0
00

00
00

00
0
,0
,0

,
,

,
12
13

11
14
15

*not pictured Years before present

42 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 short-faced bears and other large animals, or megafauna,
roamed the passage between North America and Eurasia.
Then, around 11,000 years ago, the climate began to
warm and sea level rose, swallowing the land bridge and
turning the area into an island over the next 2,000 years.
The mammoths were trapped, but their very isolation may
have protected them — at least for a while.
Researchers debate what caused the mammoths
to die out on the mainland at the end of the last ice
age. Some say it was the changing climate, while
others argue that humans were the culprits, hunting
mammoths to extinction.
Even within Graham’s team, there’s a friendly difference
of opinion. “To me, one of
the telling patterns is that the
timing of extinction around the
Researchers estimate that mammoths disappeared from
world roughly corresponds to North America’s mainland 10,000 to 14,000 years ago.
the timing of human migration
dispersion around the world,” But they persisted on St. Paul for millennia after that.
says Williams, who sees
humans as the major culprits. On the mainland of North
America, the arrival of humans, climatic changes and the
mammoth’s extinction happened at roughly the same time.
But mammoths weathered many other climatic shifts over
the hundreds of thousands of years they roamed Earth,
Williams notes.
Graham, on the other hand, thinks climate was the
driving force. Humans may have sped things up, he
says, but mammoths and other Ice Age megafauna
were on their way out anyway. “I think the extinctions
would have occurred whether humans came or not,” he
says. He believes each climate shift that the mammoths
survived actually weakened the species, pushing them
closer to extinction.
The cores of sediment from Lake Hill won’t settle the
general megafauna extinction debate: St. Paul’s isolation
likely sets it apart from whatever influence humans had on
the mainland mammoth population. There’s no evidence
that humans ever made it to this dot of an island before
Russian fur traders arrived in the late 1700s.
On St. Paul, at least, the more likely suspect is climate
change, though it’s also possible that the inal straw for
mammoths here was habitat loss: With increasing sea
levels, the island may have become too small to sustain its
megafauna population.
Determining what happened to St. Paul’s mammoths
isn’t purely a historical exercise. Many species worldwide
currently face the same pressures: changing climate,
human encroachment, rising seas. “This is hugely relevant
to today,” Williams says. “Can climate change alone cause
species to go extinct? Or is the story that climate change
is a stressor that makes populations more susceptible to
extinction when combined with other stressors?” The most
recent major die-off event, at the end of the Pleistocene
some 11,000 years ago, “has direct carryover to how we
think about the current wave of extinctions and how to
minimize them,” Williams says.

The end of the last ice age was

a dynamic time in North America.
Age of mammoth
tooth found on Glaciers melted, opening up new land
St. Paul Island in 2003 corridors, but sea levels rose, shrinking
land mass. Humans arrived from
Siberia, and North America’s massive
animals went extinct. Researchers
still debate why the megafauna died
off: Hunting by humans and climate
change are the main suspects.

to present
0

0
0
0

0
00

00

00
00
0

00
,0

7,

6,
8,

5,
9,
10

Years before present

ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; DATA COMPILED BY RUSSELL W. GRAHAM, THOMAS W. STAFFORD JR. AND H. GREGORY MACDONALD; SCALE REFERENCE: PREHISTORIC-WILDLIFE.COM

November 2016 DISCOVER 43

 After four days of coring — interrupted at one point
by a blizzard — the team has 400 pounds of mud in
45 meters of tubing to ship to a Minnesota lab, where
the next chapter in the mystery unfolds.

THE DETECTIVES
It’s May in Minneapolis when the team is reunited with
their mud at the University of Minnesota’s National
Lacustrine Core Facility — as the name suggests,
a repository for lake-based sediment cores. Staff at
LacCore have already sliced the cores in half and
taken high-resolution photos. Graham and colleagues
from various disciplines will spend three days cutting
the cores into tiny pieces using stainless steel spatulas.
They’ll divide the thousands of samples among
little plastic boxes to take back to their respective
labs, which spread across North America, as the
mammoths once did.
Beth Shapiro at the University of California, Santa
Cruz, gets irst dibs on the samples since her team
will take on the most sensitive test, at greatest risk of
contamination during handling: the search for ancient
mammoth DNA in the layers of sediment.
With the help of a graduate student, Williams will
look for a kind of mammoth proxy: sporormiella, a
fungus that lives in the dung of large herbivores, and
grains of ancient pollen that can reveal what kind of
vegetation once grew around the lake.
At the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Matthew
Wooller and colleagues will analyze the mud for the
remains of diatoms, water fleas and other tiny life to
learn about the water temperature and clarity over time.
With the mud distributed, the researchers disperse.
hey will spend more than two years analyzing and
discussing the muck as they try to pinpoint when the
mammoths went extinct, and to understand why.
Duane Froese at the University of Alberta will look
for layers of volcanic ash in the sediment that can be
linked to known eruptions in the region. This, along with
carbon dating of tiny plant pieces found in the mud, will
allow the team to put irm dates at points along the mud
core, calibrating it in time. Ash layers may also implicate
or rule out a volcanic eruption as the cause of the
mammoths’ extinction.
With the mud distributed, the researchers disperse.
They will spend more than two years analyzing and
discussing the muck as they try to pinpoint when the
mammoths went extinct, and to understand why.
IT’S A DATE
Shapiro’s team irst compares unclassiied DNA
sequences found in the sediment samples with the
genome of the mammoth’s closest surviving relative,
the African elephant. It’s a match. Even better: In
2015, they’re able to compare the sediment DNA with
newly-sequenced mammoth DNA from a separate team
of researchers. It was another match in all core samples
from 5,650 to 10,850 years old, the oldest sediment
they’d collected on St. Paul.
To rule out a random match, the team compares the
sediment DNA with that of a two-toed sloth, an animal
with zero chance of being found
in the Arctic in the last 12,000
years. As a further check on
their work, they also compare
the unclassiied sediment DNA
to that of the animals most
likely to contaminate a sample,
including humans. The DNA
sequences don’t align, which
makes Shapiro and her team conident that what’s in the
sediment really belonged to a mammoth.
Meanwhile, Williams’ team inds the sporormiella
they are looking for, as well as two other fungal spores
associated with dung that can serve as additional proxies
for an actual mammoth.
“Of the three spore types, two disappear from the
core’s sediment layers within 2 centimeters of each
other, which would be the equivalent of a few decades,”
Williams says of the mammoth dung-loving fungus. The
ancient mammoth DNA disappears at the same point.
“Having the proxies match that well is what you always
hope for but rarely attain,” he says.
When Froese’s lab identiies a core sample layer of
volcanic ash from a known eruption in the area 3,595
years ago, it gives added conidence to the teams’
timeline. The multidisciplinary effort establishes that the

44 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 At the National Lacrustine Core Facility in Minnesota, samples from the St. Paul Island sediment cores
are divided into plastic containers that will be sent to labs at institutions across the country (left).
Researcher Peter Heintzman (middle) is one of the team members involved in the effort. Not everything
from St. Paul Island is muddy: The team collected vegetation (right) to compare it with ancient pollen and
other clues to the environment stored in the sediment cores to learn how the island has changed over time.

mammoth’s extinction occurred 5,600 years ago, plus or
minus a century.
“We have one of the best constrained times of
extinction for mammoths anywhere — and maybe for any
prehistoric extinction,” Williams says.
With the end-date for the St. Paul mammoths now
conidently established, the researchers can use it to
solve the biggest part of the mystery: What inally killed
the animals?
THE FINAL BLOW
Graham and several of the other team members begin by
ruling out possible causes, such as a change in vegetation
to something less mammoth-friendly. Pollen in the core
samples reveal that herbaceous plants on the island gave
way to shrubs, but only after the mammoths’ extinction.
It’s possible that a climate shift changed the composition
of the plant communities — or the shrubs may have
become dominant simply because the mammoths were no
longer stomping around, keeping their growth in check.
The data does show a modest rise in temperature that
predates extinction. With the melting ice and rising seas
of the End-Pleistocene, the island began to shrink rapidly
until about 9,000 years ago. At that point, the rate of land
loss slowed until St. Paul reached its current size, smaller
than the city of San Francisco, around 6,000 years ago.
The shrinking island would have downsized the mammoth
population, too, as resources grew scarce.
But the inal straw, the team concludes, is something
of a surprise.
Beginning about 7,850 years ago, the variety and
number of diatoms and water fleas found in the
sediment change in a way that indicates the water was
becoming shallower and murkier. The lake began to dry
up — the modest bump in temperature was apparently
enough to increase evaporation. The mammoths were
losing their main watering hole. “Elephants need fresh
water every day,” Graham says. “They drink 70 to
200 liters per individual. There’s no reason to think
mammoths were different.”
Thanks to a combination of diminished island size,
rising temperature and perhaps the animals themselves
causing erosion and fouling their own water, the
mammoths died of thirst.
The team solved the mystery of the St. Paul mammoths’
demise. But why they persevered may, paradoxically, be
harder to answer. It’s reasonable to propose that their
isolation protected them from human activity — but
that idea is dificult to prove, and Graham suggests
mainland vegetation may have changed in ways St. Paul’s
didn’t. Either way, their isolation eventually came with a
downside: When environmental changes made the island
less habitable, they had nowhere to go. It’s a cautionary
tale about the vulnerability of island populations today.
“Usually we’d say this was an insigniicant climate
change, but on St. Paul, it turned out not to be,” Graham
says. While water was the crucial factor there, it could
be other limitations — habitat or availability of food —
for other species in other places. Graham adds: “This
research suggests that many island populations, not just
in the Bering Strait but throughout the world, could be
jeopardized by coming climate change.” D
Jessica Marshall is a writer based in Seattle.
Explore more of Mammoth Island through our writer’s eyes
at DiscoverMagazine.com/MammothIsland

November 2016 DISCOVER 45

 CHECK SCOTT DALTON

James Allison of MD Anderson Cancer

Center in Houston has figured out
how to defeat cancer at its own game.

46 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 How an
iconoclastic
cancer By the middle of her senior year at West Virginia University,
researcher Sharon Belvin knew something was wrong. The slim, blond
22-year-old was growing increasingly short of breath during
gamed the her daily runs, but doctors couldn’t pinpoint the cause.
Then, shortly before graduation, she discovered a hard
immune lump beneath her left collarbone. A biopsy identiied it
as melanoma — the deadliest form of skin cancer, killing
system and 10,000 Americans annually. Worse, a CT scan showed masses

unleashed a scattered throughout her chest. Belvin faced a crushing

prognosis: For Stage IV metastatic melanoma, average

potent new survival is measured in months.

Still, she was determined to ight. In May 2004, she returned
weapon home to New Jersey, married her high school sweetheart and
started chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer
against the Center in New York City. The treatment caused debilitating
nausea and neuropathy, but the shadows on her scans
disease. continued to multiply. That December, Belvin’s oncologist
informed her that the cancer had spread to her brain.
After surgeons used radiation to burn away the tumor,
she was switched to interleukin-2, a naturally occurring
protein that, in high doses, sends the body’s immune defenses
into overdrive. Although IL-2 triggers remission in a small
percentage of patients, its side effects are often horriic.
Belvin endured violent vomiting, peeling skin and episodes of
delirium, but she didn’t get better. As the cancer illed her chest
cavity with fluid, her hope began to drain away.
That’s when the oncologist told her about a clinical trial
just getting underway, of a medication called ipilimumab.
The drug’s mechanism of action was entirely new: Instead
of attacking cancer cells (like

MATE
chemo), or indiscriminately
revving up the immune system
(like IL-2), ipilimumab blocked
a single receptor on one type of
immune cell.
“Would you like to try it?” the
doctor asked.
“The choice was to do nothing
BY KENNETH MILLER and die, or take a chance,” Belvin
recalls. “It was the easiest decision I ever had to make.”
In September 2005, she received the irst of four 90-minute
infusions, spread over a 12-week period. The only adverse
effect was a daylong spell of shaking and sweating. Soon,
she felt well enough to walk her dog again. Her tumors were
shrinking dramatically, and they kept doing so for months after
her inal session.

November 2016 DISCOVER 47


Sharon Belvin
By September 2006, they’d vanished. After declaring
Belvin in remission, the oncologist introduced her to the
man behind ipilimumab, immunologist James P. Allison.
Belvin burst into tears. Then she hugged him so hard, she
nearly knocked off his glasses.
MOON SHOT MAN
That was Allison’s irst encounter with a patient whose
life he’d helped to save, and he still chokes up when he
recalls the moment. Over the past decade, he’s been
the recipient of many such embraces — as well as an
array of honors, including the 2015 Lasker-DeBakey
Clinical Medical Research Award, often a precursor
to a Nobel Prize. The class of medications that he
conceived, known as immune checkpoint inhibitors,
works counterintuitively: By turning off one of the
immune system’s built-in safeguards, the inhibitors
allow T cells — the system’s foot soldiers — to attack
tumors more effectively.
“Jim’s work has really allowed immunotherapy to
become a game changer for patients with cancer,” says
Elizabeth Jaffee, deputy director of the Sidney Kimmel
Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. Since
approving ipilimumab ive years ago, the Food and
Drug Administration has OK’d two similar drugs —
pembrolizumab and nivolumab — for melanoma and
48 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
certain lung cancers. Dozens more are in
development. At oncology conferences,
speakers use the phrase “paradigm shift”
when discussing these therapies.
Checkpoint inhibitors already produce
unprecedented rates of long-term remission
for a handful of hard-to-treat cancers, but
their potential is even greater: Because such
drugs modify the body’s response to cancer,
rather than the cancer itself, they could
theoretically be effective against almost any
kind of malignancy.
Allison’s brainchild — and the pioneering
research that led to its birth — has brought
him a renown that’s rare among his peers.
“He’s one of our rock stars,” says Jaffee. Yet
at 67, he remains true to his bar-band roots
— literally. Allison has played in blues-rock
groups since his 20s, and he currently fronts
an all-cancer-researcher combo called the
Checkpoints. Round-faced and rotund,
with long, gray hair and a scruffy beard, he
blows harmonica and contributes occasional
vocals, belting out classics like “Big Boss
Man” in a gravelly baritone.
In his day job, at the University of Texas
MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston,
Allison serves as chair of the immunology
department, deputy director of the
David H. Koch Center for Applied Research
of Genitourinary Cancers and executive
director of the immunotherapy division of
the Moon Shots Program, a multidisciplinary effort
tackling cancer mortality. In his cluttered ofice, a Willie
Nelson poster hangs amid the diplomas and trophies
— a memento of a long-ago jam with the master. In
conversation, Allison can seem shy and distracted until
he gets onto a topic that excites him. Then, his eyes
sparkle, and the words come at warp speed.
“I just like to have fun with it,” he says when asked
about his music, and he speaks of his scientiic pursuits
in almost identical terms. As with any good bluesman,
however, Allison’s sense of fun is informed by tragic
experience. To grasp the passion that drives his work, it
helps to glimpse the pain that shaped his youth.
CONFRONTING CANCER AT AN EARLY AGE
Allison grew up in the small oil town of Alice, Texas,
the youngest of three brothers. His father was a country
doctor, his mother a homemaker. She was seriously ill
for several years, but no one mentioned that she had
lymphoma until shortly before she died — with Allison,
who was 11, holding her hand. “I saw the burns on her
neck from radiation treatment,” he recalls, “but I didn’t
know what they were. Back then, people didn’t talk
KIERAN KESNER
about cancer.”
Over the next few years, Allison watched an uncle die
of melanoma, and another of lung cancer. Meanwhile,
 he began showing an obsessive interest in science — as
well as a rebellious streak. He got in trouble for talking
out of turn and playing hooky. When he learned that his
high school biology teacher refused to teach evolution
for religious reasons, he boycotted the class. A counselor
suggested he take a correspondence course from the
University of Texas instead. Studying solo in a room
near the gym, Allison stoically bore the taunts of jocks
and coaches.
He graduated early, at 16, and enrolled at UT Austin as
a premed. Soon, though, he realized that he didn’t want
to follow in his father’s footsteps. “I thought how scary
it was to be a physician and have someone’s life in your
hands,” he says. “In medicine, you have to be right all the
time. In science, you learn by being wrong.” He wound up
with a bachelor’s degree in microbiology, and he went on
to earn a Ph.D. in biological science.
Allison didn’t set out to be a cancer researcher; he
dreamed of solving some of the basic mysteries of
biochemistry. But in graduate school, when he was
assigned to tinker with the formulation of a common
chemotherapy for leukemia, his family history
prompted him to try an experiment of his own, one
that would deeply influence his career direction. Allison
wondered what would happen if he injected mice with
tumors after they were cured. To his astonishment,
the animals didn’t get leukemia again. Somehow, he
surmised, their immune systems had learned to kill
the tumors.
Allison didn’t set out to be a cancer
researcher; he dreamed of solving some of
the basic mysteries of biochemistry. But in
graduate school, his family history prompted
him to try an experiment of his own, one that
would deeply influence his career direction.
The notion of harnessing immune defenses to ight
cancer dates back to the 1890s, when a New York
surgeon named William Coley learned that some patients
with sarcomas went into remission after contracting a
Streptococcus infection. It seemed the body’s attack on
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS/MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTER
the microbes wiped out the tumors as well. Coley began
inoculating cancer patients with the same strain of strep; a
few died of the infection, but others emerged tumor-free.
When he switched to dead bacteria, patients’ survival rates
improved. Coley’s Toxin, as it became known, was widely
used for 40 years. But its results were unpredictable, and
the concept of cancer immunotherapy fell out of favor as
the ield focused on chemotherapy and radiation. Although
a few scientists continued to probe the potential of
immune-based approaches, their work was mostly ignored.
By 1973, when Allison inished his doctorate,
the mechanics of immunity were somewhat better
understood than in Coley’s day. For example, researchers
had recently identiied T lymphocytes, white blood cells
that destroy pathogens in several distinctive ways. Each
T cell, scientists believed, was programmed to recognize
a particular snippet of protein, or peptide, unique to
invaders such as bacteria, viruses or tumor cells. These
bits of protein are categorized as antigens, substances
capable of triggering an immune response. When a
T cell detects one, it morphs into a ighting machine,
zapping invaders with lethal chemicals, multiplying
into an army of identical killers or signaling other
immune-system troops to join the attack. Yet exactly
how T cells are activated remained largely a matter
of conjecture.
Those leukemia-resistant mice spurred Allison to
explore the immune system’s uncharted territory. He did
a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular immunology at
the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla,
Calif. Then, in 1977, he headed back to Texas, as an
assistant biochemist at MD Anderson’s new Cancer
Center Science Park in Smithville.
One of immunology’s great unknowns was how
T cells recognized the antigen that marked an invader for
destruction. Researchers presumed that each T cell bore
a receptor on its surface, shaped to it a foreign peptide
like a lock its a key. But no T cell antigen receptor (TCR)
had yet been identiied.
James Allison, late 1970s
Allison decided to go hunting. If a TCR was a hidden
lock, he reasoned, the logical way to ind it was to fashion
a key and poke around until something clicked. The kind
of key he had in mind had only recently been developed:
a monoclonal antibody. Researchers had discovered how
to custom-manufacture antibodies — naturally occurring
molecules that target speciic antigens — through
cloning. These designer antibodies could be used, among
other things, to detect and manipulate cellular receptors.
Allison began by injecting a mouse with lymphoma
tumors to trigger an immune response. He and two
colleagues then used spleen cells from the animal to grow
43 cell lines. Next, Allison’s team exposed the cell lines to
the mouse tumors. One of the 43 began producing a new
protein, which the researchers took to be an antibody to
November 2016 DISCOVER 49
 the tumor antigen. Chemical analysis showed Checkpoint Inhibitors at Work
that its structure resembled that of a protein A new class of drugs turns off the immune system’s safeguards in a couple of
different ways, so T cells — the foot soldiers — can attack tumors more effectively.
found on T cells.
In 1982, Allison published a paper in
The Journal of Immunology suggesting “the
possibility” that the look-alike protein on
T cells might be a TCR. Soon afterward, other cancer
antigens
researchers conirmed that it was. Armed cell
with his irst big discovery, Allison won a full
professorship at the University of California,
Berkeley, where he became co-chair of the
department of molecular and cell biology and blocks the
checkpoint
director of the cancer research lab.
antigen-
KILLING A KILLER presenting
Over the next few years, immunologists learned cell
that it took more than an encounter between
activation
a TCR and an antigen to trigger a T cell’s
1 
Two of the molecule
killer mode. In the late 1980s, researchers drugs act
to block
began to suspect that a second signal, from the inhibitory
an unidentiied player, was required before checkpoint on
T cells, boosting
activation could occur. It was Allison’s team T cell responses
T cells
that identiied a T cell protein called CD28 as against
the crucial co-stimulator — the gas pedal to the tumor cells.

TCR’s ignition switch. inhibitory

But controversy arose in 1991, when a team
led by pharmaceutical researcher Peter Linsley
identiied another protein molecule, CTLA-4,
which closely resembled CD28 and was found
only on activated T cells. Linsley theorized
that CTLA-4 was another co-stimulator.
Immunologist Jeff Bluestone, at the University
of Chicago, disagreed: His experiments
suggested that CTLA-4 subdued T-cell
activation. Allison, using different methods,
came to a similar conclusion. The molecule
seemed to function as a checkpoint, turning off the T cell
after a period of activity — perhaps to prevent collateral
damage to healthy tissue.
That got Allison thinking about the disease that took
his mother. Why didn’t the immune system nip every
cancer in the bud? Sometimes, he speculated, it was
because CTLA-4 deactivated T cells before they could
inish off a clump of tumor cells. If that were the case,
simply stomping on the gas, with immune stimulators
such as Coley’s Toxin, or the IL-2 initially used to treat
Sharon Belvin, would be of limited use. Inhibiting the
checkpoint — releasing the T cell’s metaphoric brakes —
might be a more productive approach, Allison thought.
In 1995, Allison’s team created a monoclonal antibody
designed to block the CTLA-4 receptor, effectively
shutting down the checkpoint. They injected it into
tumor-bearing mice. In the untreated control group, the
animals died; in the treated group, 90 percent rejected
their tumors and survived. “It was too good to be true,”
Allison later wrote. “I didn’t believe the initial results.” He
2
One molecule
drug
blocks
an inhibitory
molecule
on T cells.
This allows
activation
molecules to
function so
that T cells
can attack
cancer cells.
for disappointment. Then the tumors in most of the
treated mice again melted away.
Allison’s team went on to test anti-CTLA-4 against a
variety of cancers, both alone and in combination with
vaccines and chemotherapy. The responses continued to
be encouraging — and enduring. Because the checkpoint
inhibitor targeted T cells rather than tumor cells, cancers
didn’t readily respond by mutating and developing
resistance, a common problem with chemotherapy.
Meanwhile, each mouse retained an immunological
memory of the tumor it had vanquished, which
curbed recurrence.
After publishing his indings in 1996 in Science,
Allison went looking for a pharmaceutical company to
develop a CTLA-4 inhibitor for humans. He ran into a
wall. Since the demise of Coley’s Toxin, several types of
immunotherapy had showed promise in animal models,
only to fail in people. The few that worked either had
narrow applications or marginal success rates.
For two years, Allison got nothing but rejections, but
JAY SMITH

repeated the experiment. For two weeks, the tumors in all his old stubbornness kept him going. At last, a small
the mice continued to grow, and Allison braced himself New Jersey-based company called Medarex said yes.

50 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Its scientists began working with Allison to develop the
new medication. And by 2001, ipilimumab was ready
for testing.
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
In Allison’s ofice, there’s a drawing of him playing
harmonica, captioned “The Cancer Immunotherapy
Clinical Trial Blues.” The trials for ipilimumab involved
about 5,000 patients who had received the drug. In
2004, Allison moved from Berkeley to Memorial Sloan
Kettering to work with the scientists leading the study
— including Sharon Belvin’s oncologist, Jedd Wolchok.
The following year, Allison underwent a prostatectomy
for prostate cancer, and his middle brother died of the
disease. The return of the family curse underscored the
urgency of his research, and made its deliberate pace
harder to bear.
At irst, the trials went badly. Few patients made
progress by 12 weeks, the point at which chemotherapy
is usually assessed. But clinicians eventually found that
with ipilimumab, many tumors began shrinking later.
In fact, ipilimumab proved to be the irst medication to
signiicantly expand median survival rates in patients
with advanced melanoma — from six months to 11.
Padmanee Sharma
More important, nearly a quarter of patients survived for
more than three years. Most of that group was still alive
a decade later. And although some patients experienced
serious side effects, such as colitis or hepatitis, these could
usually be controlled with relative ease.
In 2011, the FDA approved ipilimumab for melanoma,
and the pharma giant Bristol Myers-Squibb — which
had acquired Medarex — began marketing it as
Yervoy. (Approval was later expanded to non-small-cell
lung cancers.) Soon afterward, Allison returned to
MD Anderson, lured by the opportunity to launch
the center’s $30 million Moon Shots immunotherapy
research program. He was also attracted by the prospect
of working more closely with the program’s scientiic
NICK DE LA TORRE
director, Padmanee Sharma, an oncologist and researcher
with whom he’d collaborated in the past. Sharma had
developed a new method for studying how tumors
with different characteristics respond to different
immunotherapies: She would treat patients before their
growths were surgically removed, then analyze the
tissue in her lab.
“We did some grants together, and then we started going
together,” Allison recalls. “At some point, we decided we
might as well get married.” They tied the knot in 2014.
Sharma emigrated from Guyana as a girl; a driven
personality formed during early struggles with poverty and
a serious injury, along with her obsessive brilliance, made
her an ideal match for Allison. “We both live and breathe
science and medicine,” she says with a laugh. “Jim gives
entire lectures on T cells in his sleep.”
Since Allison hatched the idea of blocking CTLA-4,
several more immune checkpoints have been identiied.
“What he showed us is turning the immune system on
isn’t enough; the crucial step is to make sure it doesn’t
turn itself off,” says Antoni Ribas, director of the tumor
immunology program at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive
Cancer Center. “Now we’re trying to understand which
brakes need to be taken out and which gas pedals stepped
on to achieve the maximum beneits.”
Pembrolizumab and nivolumab, for example, the newest
inhibitors to win FDA approval, target a checkpoint
Sharma had developed a
new method for studying
how tumors with diferent
characteristics respond to diferent
immunotherapies: She would treat
patients before their growths were
surgically removed, then analyze
the tissue in her lab.
called PD-1, through which tumors can induce a T cell
to deactivate. Studies show that PD-1 inhibitors are
effective for a larger proportion of melanoma patients than
ipilimumab alone — and, in combination with that drug,
they achieve a two-year survival rate of 80 percent. More
than 500 clinical trials are underway to explore the impact
of these and other checkpoint inhibitors on a dozen
varieties of cancer, alone or with other immunotherapies,
as well as conventional treatments.
For thousands of patients, Allison’s passion and
persistence have already paid off. “I owe Jim so much,”
says Belvin, now a personal trainer, health educator and
a mother of two. “As far as I’m concerned, he deserves
the world.” D
Kenneth Miller is a Los Angeles freelance writer who contributes
frequently to Discover.
November 2016 DISCOVER 51
Like pictographs from an alien
world, some of Earth’s earliest
animals appear as subtle marks on
Newfoundland’s Mistaken Point.
 ))
)

)
))

)
Half a billion
years ago,
a creature
slithered across
the seafloor for
the first time.
It may have
))

launched an
)

evolutionary
arms race.
BARRETT & MACKAY/GETTY IMAGES; ILLUSTRATIONS BY DAVID A. JOHNSON

BY ROBERT MOOR
)

November 2016 DISCOVER 53

 I
It is impossible to fully appreciate the value of a
trail until you have been forced to walk through
the wilderness without one. There is a practical
reason why, for more than a thousand years,
after the fall of Rome and before the rise of
Romanticism, little was more abhorrent to the
European mind than the prospect of a “pathless”
or “tangled” wilderness. Pathless wildernesses
still exist in the modern world, and at least some
have retained their power to elicit dread. I have
visited one such place. It lay on the northern rim
of a glacial fjord called Western Brook Pond,
on the island of Newfoundland, in Canada’s
easternmost province. If you want to be taught
(however harshly) the blessing of a well-marked
trail, go there.
To cross the fjord’s stygian waters, I had to hire a
ferryboat. On the far side of the fjord, the captain
dropped me and four other hikers off at the base
of a long ravine, where a series of animal trails
led through a dense fern jungle and up a granite
cliff face bisected by a waterfall. At the top of the
ravine, I found a vast green tableland. The trail I
had been following vanished altogether. Soaked in
sweat from the hike up, I took a moment to rest,
my feet dangling over the cliff’s edge. At the ragged
(Dickinsonia) western edge of the tableland, it abruptly dropped
hundreds of feet to the fjord’s indigo water.
54 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
But this hike was a mere diversion, a side trip.
My ultimate destination was a yet more baffling
and inaccessible wilderness: the distant past.
I was making my way to a rocky outcropping
on the island’s southeast corner, where I hoped
to ind the oldest trails on Earth. These fossil
trails, which are roughly 565 million years old,
date back to the dimmest dawn of animal life.
Now fossilized and faint, each one is roughly a
centimeter wide, like a ingertip’s errant brush
across the surface of a drying clay pot. I had read
all about them, but I wanted to touch them, to
trace their runnels like a blind man.
I hoped that encountering them up close would
resolve a question I’ve long harbored: Why do TOP: BARRETT & MACKAY/GETTY IMAGES. BOTTOM: SCOTT LESLIE/MINDEN PICTURES
we, as animals, uproot ourselves rather than
maintaining the stately ixity of trees? Why do
we venture into places where we were not born
and do not belong? Why do we press forward
into the unknown?
CARDINAL CRAWLERS
The world’s oldest trails were discovered one
afternoon in 2008 by Alex Liu, now a researcher
at the University of Bristol. He and his research
assistant were scouting for new fossil sites out
on a rocky promontory called Mistaken Point,
where a series of well-known fossil beds overlook
 Cenozoic Mesozoic
0

Cretaceous
100

200

300

Paleozoic
400

Cambrian
500

Ediacaran
600

Neoproterozoic
700

800

900

1000

1100

Mesoproterozoic
1200

1300
This rugged Newfoundland outcrop (above) is a hotbed of
research into the mysterious Ediacaran creatures. A hiker
explores Mistaken Point (left) where, 565 million years ago,
Ediacarans left imprints in the coastal rock. 1400

1500
the North Atlantic. Bordering one surface, Liu
noticed, was a small shelf of mudstone that bore
a red patina. The red was rust — an oxidized form 1600
of iron pyrite, which commonly appears on local
Precambrian fossil beds. They scrambled down the 1700
bluff to inspect it. There, Liu spotted what many
other paleontologists before him had somehow 1800
missed: a series of sinuous traces thought to be
left behind by organisms of the Ediacaran biota,
1900
the planet’s earliest known forms of animal life.
Paleoproterozoic

The ancient Ediacarans, which likely went

extinct around 541 million years ago, were 2000
exceedingly odd creatures. Soft-bodied and largely
immobile, mouthless and anusless, some were 2100
shaped like discs, others like quilted mattresses,
others like fronds. One unfortunate type is often 2200
described as looking like a bag of mud.
We can envision them only dimly. Paleon- 2300
tologists don’t know what color they were,
how long they lived, what they ate or how they
2400
reproduced. We do not know why they began
to crawl — perhaps they were hunting for food,
fleeing a mysterious predator or doing something 2500
else entirely. Millions of years

Soft-bodied creatures are rare in the fossil record (above).
And that makes Mistaken Point a key site for paleontologist
Alex Liu (right), who’s trying to understand the origins of
animal movement.
Despite all these uncertainties, what Liu’s trails
undoubtedly suggest is that 565 million years ago, a
living thing did something virtually unprecedented
on this planet — it shivered, swelled, reached forth,
scrunched up and, in doing so, began to move
across the seafloor, leaving a trail behind it.
A PATH LESS TRAVELED
As a boy, Liu loved dinosaurs, particularly those
in Jurassic Park. The romance of those craning
beasts, which he never fully outgrew, coupled with
his love of ieldwork and knack for geology, drew
him to fossil hunting. When he was pursuing his
master’s degree at Oxford, he had planned to study
ancient mammals, but he found the ield crowded;
his thesis project was spent studying the teeth of
Eocene-era elephants in Egypt. For his Ph.D. work,
(Swartpuntia) he turned to the much older and largely unstudied
Ediacaran biota. “If I had taken on a mammal
56 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
project, then I’d have been trying to answer
questions that people have looked at for hundreds
of years,” he said. “Whereas I knew that Ediacaran
stuff was new, uncertain. And that was more
enticing, really, because the questions are bigger.”
Of all the manifold questions surrounding
these elusive, soft-bodied organisms, the biggest
might concern the origins of animal movement.
Some paleontologists theorize that the irst
Ediacaran trail-maker may have set off a series
of morphological changes. This led animal
life, in its and starts, from a serene garden of
swaying anemone-like creatures to today’s violent,
skeletonized kingdom of sprinters, jumpers, fliers,
swimmers, diggers and walkers. It is rare in science
to run across a big new question, and harder still
to answer it, but Liu seemed to have this one by the
scruff of its neck.
For a respectable scientist, wading into the
murky world of the Ediacarans is a treacherous
endeavor. Information about that distant era
is extremely limited, and even the most basic
assumptions often prove unreliable. For instance,
we still do not know for certain which kingdom of
life the Ediacarans belonged to. At various times,
it has been proposed that they could have been
plants, fungi, colonies of single-celled organisms
or, according to the trace fossil expert Adolf
Seilacher, a “lost kingdom” called Vendobionta.
While most Ediacaran researchers tentatively agree
that they were animals, recently, some have begun
arguing that lumping all the known Ediacaran
species into one kingdom or another may be
too reductive, and each fossil must instead be
re-assessed one by one.
ALIEN EARTH
LEFT: ALEX LIU. RIGHT: EMMA LIU
As I sat next to him at dinner one night in the
Newfoundland town of Trepassey, it seemed odd
to me that Liu, a soft-spoken and exceptionally
careful researcher, was drawn to such a ield. Liu
told me he irst became interested in Ediacarans
 )) ) )
)) ) )
during a class in his second year at Oxford with

)))))
)))))
a professor named Martin Brasier, who spoke
inspiringly about the mysteries of Precambrian

) )) ) ) )
fossils. Brasier — who died in a car accident in

))))))
2014, at the age of 67 — was a Shiva-like igure
among Ediacaran paleontologists, slashing down
flimsy theories and widening the domain of that

)))))))))
))))))))
which cannot be deinitively stated.
In his 2009 book, Darwin’s Lost World, Brasier
briskly disassembled the principle of uniformity,
which broadly says that, natural laws being
uniform, fossils can be best understood by studying

))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
)))))))))))))))))))))))
living animals. Uniformitarianism has proved a
powerful tool in many ields, Brasier admitted, but
it ignores an organism’s profound interdependence
with its environment. The theory breaks down in
the Precambrian era, when the oceanic ecosystem
was radically different.
“The world before the Cambrian was, arguably, (Charnia)
more like a distant planet,” Brasier wrote.
To us land dwellers, even the present-day deep
sea is foreign, a crushing black space haunted by
spectral oddities: glass squids, carnivorous jellyish,
a fever dream of fluorescence. But in the time when
Ediacarans thrived, the oceans were stranger still. this theory. Around 530 million years ago, like a

)
The irst Ediacaran to begin crawling around symphony warming up, the fossil record began

) )
would have discovered a world devoid of predatory teeming with a cacophony of different fossil types.

) )
animals, with a seafloor covered either in thick Further back than that was nothing: silence. Some

))
bacterial mats or toxic sediment and, possibly, a scientists, like Roderick Murchison, a geologist

)
climate thawing from a worldwide glaciation event and devout Christian, believed that this lack of

) )
)
known as “Snowball Earth.” If that pioneering evidence was geologic proof of a biblical genesis.

)
)
) )
Ediacaran could see, it would have discovered an (“And God said, ‘Let the water teem with living

)) ) )
underwater desert patchily carpeted with gelatin. creatures ...’ ”)

)) )
Here and there it may have spotted other, non- Charles Darwin cautioned against this

)) ) )
mobile Ediacarans, which resembled fleshy leaves, interpretation, writing in On the Origin of Species

)
)
)
many-tendriled sea anemones or low, round blobs: that, “We should not forget that only a small

)
)
)
)))))
a whole world populated by brainless, jelly- portion of the world is known with accuracy.”

)))))
quivering do-nothings. He saw the entire geologic record as a history
The mystery Liu was trying to unravel — book stretching across multiple volumes. “Of this

)
)
regarding the origins of animal movement — is history we possess the last volume alone, relating

)
)
)
central to solving the larger mystery of how that only to two or three countries,” he wrote. “Of this )

)
)
alien planet transformed into the natural world volume, only here and there a short chapter has

)
)

)
)
we all know. been preserved; and of each page, only here and

)
)

)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
)))))))))))))))))))))))

Muscular locomotion could have allowed there a few lines.”

animals to graze on the beefsteak-like bacterial
mats and to attack other stationary organisms. The
invention of violence might then have kicked off
a biological arms race, prompting organisms to
evolve hard shells and sharp teeth, the shields and
swords that characterize the Cambrian fossil record.
This hardening of animal bodies eventually
led to the rise of trilobites and tyrannosaurs and
Eocene-era Egyptian elephants — and us.
Before the discovery of Ediacaran fossils, and
even for a while afterward, many prominent
scientists argued that complex life began at the
dawn of the Cambrian Period. Looked at from a
The truth, it now seems clear, is that Precambrian
animals had existed in great numbers but, being
soft-bodied, had not lent themselves to fossil-
ization. They crop up exceedingly rarely, in places
like Mistaken Point, where the geologic conditions
were just right.
CONQUERORS AND DEMONS
Liu’s plan was to begin our tour at a prominent
fossil site called Pigeon Cove, and then work our
way forward in time, covering about 10 miles on
foot and by car. We would visit each of the area’s
most impressive fossil beds, culminating at the
)) ) )

certain angle, the fossil record seemed to support surface where Liu had discovered the fossil trails.
))))
)))
)
 Windows open to the hard sea wind, we raced
across a landscape of stooped trees and yellowing
grass to Pigeon Cove, where we got out and hiked
down a dirt path to the seaside. There lay a flat
slab of rock, the size and texture of three cracked
concrete tennis courts, which sloped down into
the sea. Its surface was a swirl of gray, chalkboard
green and dusty eggplant. Impressed into it were
faint but distinct symbols. One looked like a
fleshy frond. Another looked like an arrowhead,
but in life probably resembled one of those
conical corn snacks sold at gas stations, with its
narrow end stuck into the ground. A third, which
paleontologists call a “pizza disc,” was just a
big, bubbly mess.
A few hours later, we made our way over to the
area’s most famous fossil bed, the blandly named
E Surface, which cantilevers out high over the
ocean. Before we stepped out onto the bedding
plane, we removed our shoes and put on polyester
booties to protect the fossils from erosion.
The Pigeon Cove surface had held about
50 fossils; E Surface held 4,000. They were
everywhere, a vast fossilized garden of fronds and
blobs and spirals, some bigger than a large hand.
Of course, it was not an actual garden; plants
would not appear in the fossil record for another
200 million years. For some reason, I was stuck on
this point. They looked like plants, I kept saying.
Oxford postdoc Jack Matthews, the youngest
member of Liu’s research group, explained that
this was because, this far in the past, the lines
between the kingdoms grow fuzzy. We, and every
organism currently living on Earth, he said, are at
Liu examines fossils the crown of the tree of life. Down at the base of
at Mistaken Point
by creating a string the tree lie the very irst single-celled organisms,
grid on the rock from which everything else sprang. So the further
surface. More than
half a billion years down the trunk of the evolutionary tree you look,
ago, this site held a the more organisms resemble one another.
seafloor ecosystem
teeming with “That’s when you get into the nitty-gritty
strange life forms. deinitions of what deines, say, an animal and
58 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Paleontologists gather around fossil traces left by some of
the first creatures to move themselves across Earth’s surface.
a fungus,” Matthews said. “They’re actually
biologically really close, but they just ‘decide’ to
stick their cells together slightly differently. And
just because one evolved to stick its cells together
differently than another, one mainly just grows on
dead trees, and the other has conquered the Earth.”
What, then, makes a conqueror? We have sex.
We eat life, not sunlight. We contain multiple cells,
which, in turn, contain nuclei, but lack rigid walls.
And, in almost every case, we grow muscles.
Muscles, I learned, are a crucial component
of Liu’s big question. While many kinds of
organisms (even single-celled ones) can swim,
reach, float, squirm and even roll, only animals
have developed muscle iber, which has allowed
us to move in a wider variety of ways and heave
around vastly more weight.
Liu’s trails, then, could help unravel the
question of when animal life began. Because if
something was big and strong enough to create
those trails 565 million years ago, it must have
had muscles, which means it must have been
an animal. In a neat coincidence, the same
summer Liu discovered the fossil trails, he also
unearthed a brand-new Ediacaran species with
noticeable muscle ibers — at 560 million years
old, by far the earliest muscles in the fossil record.
While he doesn’t believe it was responsible for
making the trails, it does provide evidence that
musculature was developed earlier than anyone
had previously thought. TOP: RUTH SCHOWALTER. BOTTOM: JACK MATTHEWS/UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
The new species was a ghastly looking thing, a
webbed, cupped hand reaching up from a slender
stalk, as if waiting to trap a passing foot. Liu
named it Haootia quadriformis, drawing from the
language of the island’s indigenous inhabitants,
the Beothuk. Haoot means, simply, “demon.”
HOMEWARD BOUND
Our rise through geologic time ended at the
bedding plane that bore Liu’s fossil trails. On a
rock wall facing the sea there protruded a waist-
high shelf. We hovered over the shelf, looking
down. Once again, I saw only a flat expanse of
 stone until Liu pointed out the trails subtly
etched into the rock.
Here, inally, was what I had come to see: the
world’s oldest trails.
They were easy to miss; it looked as if someone
had lightly dragged a pencil eraser through
drying concrete. Matthews opened his canteen
and poured some water over the rock, so the
trails would stand out in starker relief. Even
still, I came to understand how dozens of other
paleontologists had failed to notice them. All
around were large, distinct body fossils impressed
into grand sweeping surfaces. Liu’s trails were like
a poem carved onto a handrail in a stairway of
the Louvre.
We worked our way along the shelf, inspecting
yet more trails. Some were larger than others,
but none was wider than a thumbprint. Most
were relatively straight, but one peculiar trail
looped back on itself, like a snake in agony.
Liu believed that it provided further evidence
that the marks were not, as some had argued,
produced by a rock or shell being dragged by a
current along the seafloor.
I lightly ran my ingers over the trails. They
ALEX LIU
bore the distinct texture of life. Their surface was
These trace fossils hold evidence of Earth’s earliest known
muscles, which ultimately led to an evolutionary explosion.
(Tribrachidium)
patterned with a series of nesting arcs that looked
like repeating parentheses: (((((((
Liu thinks each arc was made by the creature’s
circular foot as it inflated with water and extended
forward, smearing the front edge of the previous
impression. At the end of some of the trails was a
small dimple called a “terminal impression,” which
might indicate the organism’s inal resting place.
Modern sea anemones creep along the seafloor
using a similar system of hydrostatic inflation.
And this, Liu thought, could provide a clue as
to why the irst animals made trails. Many of
the Ediacarans found on Mistaken Point were
believed to have lived their lives secured to the
ground by suction cup-like feet, with their fleshy
bodies extending out into the water column
to gather food. Modern animals with similar
body types typically prefer to latch on to a hard
substrate, like stone or, when available, glass.
In his lab, Liu had observed that when sea
anemones were forcefully pried loose from the
aquarium’s glass, they would creep across the
tank’s sandy bottom until they encountered
another hard, flat surface.
Liu’s best guess was that his fossil trails were
similarly formed: An Ediacaran was washed from
its rock and, mired in loose sediment, struggled
through the muck to regain its perch.
I had come to Mistaken Point hoping to gain
some understanding of why the irst animals
began to roam. I would have assumed the
trail-maker was propelled either by food, sex or
imminent danger. I hadn’t accounted for this
counterintuitive but perhaps equally primal need: From ON TRAILS:
AN EXPLORATION
the desire for stability.
by Robert Moor.
There is no sure way of knowing what the Copyright ©
ancient Ediacarans felt, or if they even could feel. 2016 by Robert
But here, written in stone, was a clue. In the end Moor. Reprinted
by permission
— or rather, in the beginning — the irst animals of Simon &
to summon the strength to venture forth may Schuster, Inc.
simply have wanted to go back home. D
 Origin
Story
Trading
Places
Long before the Silk Road or the
Roman Empire, the Indian Ocean
was awash with commerce.
BY ADRIANNE DAGGETT
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY GEMMA TARLACH
→ It’s a chapter of history nearly
forgotten: Intrepid merchants
and explorers traveled thousands of
miles, not along storied caravan routes,
but across the great blue expanse
of the Indian Ocean, exchanging
goods and ideas, forming bonds and
challenging our notions about the
ancient world.
“People think that it must have
taken a long time to get anywhere,
that it must have been dificult to
travel long distances, but that is not
true,” says archaeologist Marilee
Wood, whose research focuses on the
network’s glass bead trade. “This [ield
of study] is about opening that all up.”
In fact, by the time Marco Polo set
out to explore East Asia in the 13th
century, communities across Africa,
Asia and the Mediterranean had been
exchanging their wares for thousands
of years in a vast network driven
by the monsoon winds of the Indian
Ocean.
Early scholars presumed that the
Indian Ocean network had developed
to supply the Roman Empire’s demand
for exotic goods. However, new
evidence shows that the network
predates the Romans by
generations.
The Indian
Ocean system
developed
out of the
gradual
The ancient grain millet. integration
60 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
An early 20th century painting captures a dhow sailing along the East African coast. These
traditional boats plied the waters of the Indian Ocean for millennia, connecting continents.
During its peak,
the trade network
connected places as
far-flung as China,
Rome and southern
African kingdoms such
as Great Zimbabwe.
of earlier regional networks. By
3000 B.C., travelers in small canoes
and rafts moved between towns and
trading ports along coastlines from
Arabia to the Indian subcontinent.
By 2000 B.C., millet and sorghum —
grains imported from the East African
coast — were part of the cuisine of
the Harappan civilization, which
stretched across today’s Pakistan
and northern India. Archaeological
evidence and genetic studies suggest
that the irst major settlement of
Madagascar came not from Africa —
a short hop across the Mozambique
Channel — but from Indonesia,
4,000 miles away.
During its peak, the trade network
connected places as far-flung as
China, Rome and southern African
kingdoms such as Great Zimbabwe.
In terms of the sheer amount of
goods moved, the maritime trading
system rivaled its more famous inland
relative, the Silk Road.
A irst-century Greek manuscript,
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,
recorded trading depots and ports’
locations, goods and populations with
enough accuracy that researchers
today are able to match archaeological
sites with the text’s descriptions. For
example, using the text, one team
has determined a site in present-day
Eritrea was Adulis, an important TOP: MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY. BOTTOM: LCSWART/SHUTTERSTOCK
city in the early Christian empire of
Aksum. For more than a millennium,
farmers, shepherds and merchants
went there from surrounding villages
to exchange raw materials such as
ivory, salt and animal skins for Persian
glassware, Arabian spices and other
exotic products.
Many of these goods made their
way far inland. Archaeologists today
regularly recover small items like
glass beads, spindle whorls or Chinese
 THE BEST UNBEATABLE
YOU
SAVE
70%
PURE COTTON INTRODUCTORY
NON-IRON OFFER
$24.95
DRESS SHIRT REG $89.50

BAR NONE. PLUS,

FREE MONOGRAMMING
REG $10.95
ADD TIE FOR JUST $19.95
REG $69.50
WHITE 100% WRINKLE-FREE COTTON
4 COLLAR STYLES
BUTTON OR FRENCH CUFF
REGULAR, BIG & TALL & SLIM FIT
PERFECT FIT GUARANTEED

PAULFREDRICK.COM/BEST • 800.309.6000 PROMO CODE T6HSDA

NEW CUSTOMER OFFER. LIMIT 4 SHIRTS. IMPORTED. SHIPPING EXTRA. EXPIRES 11/30/16.

Direct from Locked Vaults to U.S. Citizens!

Original U.S. Gov’t

Morgan Silver Dollars
National Collector’s Mint announces a special limited release of 2,822 Morgan
Silver Dollars 95-138 years old at $29 each. Several prominent national retailers
charge $49-$69 MORE for a comparable Morgan Silver Dollar. These Morgans
are among the last surviving originals still in existence, and each coin is
guaranteed to be in mostly Brilliant Uncirculated to Fine condition. Due to
volatile fluctuations in the precious metals market, price can be guaranteed @
$29 each for one week only!
INVESTMENT
Each Morgan Silver Dollar contains .77344 oz. of Pure Silver, so increasing
prices of precious metals make every Morgan Silver Dollar more valuable. But
acquiring your own private cache of Morgan Silver Dollars is a long term
investment in so much more... in history... in American heritage... in the splendid
Only
rendering of Miss Liberty’s profile by designer George T. Morgan.
Phone orders will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis and a limit of 100
coins per customer will be strictly adhered to. Timely mail orders will be accepted
$
2900 each

if directed to: National Collector’s Mint, Dept. 5542, 2975 Westchester Ave, Ste 300,
Purchase, NY 10577-2500. THIS OFFER MAY BE WITHDRAWN AT ANY TIME CALL TOLL-FREE, ASK FOR EXT. 5542
WITHOUT NOTICE AT THE SOLE DISCRETION OF NCM.
You may order 1 Morgan Silver Dollar for $29, plus $4 shipping, handling and insur-
ance, 3 for $94 ppd., 5 for $154.50 ppd., 10 for $303 ppd., 20 for $599 ppd., 50 for $1480
1-800-799-6468
ppd., 100 for $2935 ppd. If you’re not 100% delighted with your purchase simply send National Collector’s Mint, Inc. is an independent,
us your postage paid return within 60 days for a refund of your purchase price. private corporation not affiliated with, endorsed, or
licensed by the U.S. Government or the U.S. Mint.
60-Day Money Back Guarantee! Offer not valid in CT or MN. © 2016 NCM, Inc. E1-E1G
 Origin
Story

Indian Ocean Trade

Less famous than the Silk Road — its land-based
parallel — the maritime web of commerce
and cultural exchange operated on seasonal
monsoon winds. The network grew out of
P E
U R O ancient regional routes and, by 2,000 years ago,
E connected Western Europe with East Asia.

e
m
ád es

Ro
1 As trade flourished along the network’s

)
(C ad
iz
G
routes, so did construction, such as this massive
fifth-century basilica in Adulis, a port city
in what’s now Eritrea on the Red Sea coast. Mediterranean Sea

y
ax
3

lle
ar

ry iv n
za Va
Ba s R iko
Ch

ga er
A

du r
In rba
RA

ta
BIA

Ba

lip
IA

ra
D

m
2
IN

Ta
a
A F

nê
uz
R I ERITREA

Ka
M

s
C 1

iri
A

lis

uz
7

du

M
A
ea

ne
3 The Persian
S

po
daric, a gold n

O
a
bi
coin minted in
Asia Minor, was

a
widely used

Ar
N OCEAN
DIA
in trade about
2,500 years ago. 8 N
4 Researchers Rhapta I
found Ming Northeast monsoon,
Dynasty porcelain December – March
2 This bust of a “priest king” from China among
from the Indus Valley site artifacts of Great Southwest monsoon,
Zimbabwe, capital 4 May – October
of Mohenjo-Daro is about
4,000 years old. Its carver city of a massive 56 Established trade routes
may have eaten millet southern African ca. 1st to 3rd century AD
imported from Africa via the kingdom.
Indian Ocean trade network.

porcelain at sites across Africa and Not only owning, but also giving signatures that vary by geographic
the Mediterranean. These foreign- away such exotic items appears to have location and can be traced back to
made objects — particularly those been critical in gaining political power their source.
easily transported, such as glass beads and building trust. Figuring out how the goods were

MAP: RICK JOHNSON/DISCOVER. FROM TOP: DAVID STANLEY/CREATIVE COMMONS 2.0; GRANGER, NYC;
— became a kind of currency in more moved is a little harder. Ships are rare

ways than one.
“It wasn’t like money, though you
could say beads the length of your
arm would get you a cow, or a certain
number of chickens,” Wood says.
MOVERS AND SHAPERS
Archaeologists still have many
questions about the Indian Ocean
exchange network. Tracing the
movement of goods from place
DEA/A. DAGLI ORTI/DE AGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES; SHADRECK CHIRIKURE, S. AFR ARCHAEOL REVIEW
inds, and inland caravans even rarer.
One thing scholars know for certain is
that the very nature of the ocean trade
made prolonged periods of interaction
necessary: The currents of the Indian
(2014) 31: 705. DOI:10.1007/S10437-014-9171-6; MARILEE WOOD (2)

“But it created a form to place is relatively easy. With Ocean change seasonally, and traders
of wealth and power. It pottery, for example, members of a had to wait for months until currents
built alliances.” single community tend to repeat the shifted in favor of the return voyage.
same decorative styles over time. For many seafarers, these foreign ports
5 Many types of Stone, clay and other became a second home.
glass beads found
in Africa, such raw materials, used However, outside of the ports
as garden roller to produce objects mentioned in a handful of ancient
beads (left) and
Mapungubwe ranging from anchors texts, it’s unclear just how merchants,
Oblate beads to gold bullion, and their goods, traveled inland.
(right), were made
thousands of miles
have unique Keilwe Rammutloa, a graduate
away, in Europe and Asia. chemical student at the University of Pretoria,

62 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 g
lin
ng

N 6 This exquisite gold rhino is one of many grave goods 7 Glass beads, filling a clay cup found
ua

A A
G

from burials at the site of Mapungubwe in southern in southern India, served as currency along
IN C
E Africa. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the city was a nexus some maritime and inland routes associated
H O
C
i

for local, inland commerce and Indian Ocean gold trade. with the Indian Ocean trade network.
ha

C
FI
an
N

C I
A
P
a
ur
ap
a dh
Vy

9
IN D O NESI AN
ISLANDS

9 On the Indonesian island of Sumatra, a

8 Modern tourists walk in the footsteps of traders and hoard of Chinese coins found in a river estuary
SOURCE: PHILIPPE BEAUJARD
sailors who, a thousand years ago, stopped to worship at attest to regional commerce routes combining
the Great Mosque of Kilwa Kisiwani, on Africa’s east coast. to create the greater Indian Ocean network.

is building a database to trace the
distribution of exotic goods at sites
across southeastern Africa. She’s
inding evidence that suggests
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; DEA/G. DAGLI ORTI/GRANGER, NYC;
Indian Ocean trade never truly Other forces, from unstable govern-
disappeared. Beginning in the 15th ments to international sanctions, have
century, however, with the expansion also stymied research in the past.
of European exploration and China’s “The political past of South Africa

members of indigenous communities
exchanged these items, often as gifts,
rather than professional merchants
establishing trade between towns.
Like Wood, Rammutloa has
uncovered a social aspect to the items.
Mapungubwe, for example, the irst
REYNOLD SUMAYKU/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; MARILEE WOOD
withdrawal from international
affairs, the world’s economic focus
shifted westward.
In the centuries that followed, few
researchers studied this early and
extensive trade network. Says Wood:
“It’s the European background of the
has left a huge gap,” says Rammutloa.
“It’s only now, after apartheid,
that we’re able to get involved in
international projects.”
Over the past decade, dozens of
regional research programs have
developed in coastal Africa, and

indigenous kingdom of southern
Africa, was rich in ivory and gold —
but bodies found in its cemeteries were
interred with glass beads from Persia
and porcelain from China.
“People used the materials to create
relationships,” says Rammutloa. “We’re
talking about humans here. Someone
gives you a gift, they’re negotiating a
role in your life. It creates a network.”
people writing the histories, including
our own. There’s more work being
done now, but part of the problem is
that we depend on written documents,
and there are a lot less [for the Indian
Ocean trade network]. It’s also a
question of language. I’m sure there
are a wealth of documents on it
hidden away in China, but someone’s
got to translate them.”
connected with peers in Europe and
Asia, in a way re-creating the trade
routes they study. Only now they’re
exchanging information rather
than goods. D
Adrianne Daggett received her Ph.D. in
anthropology from Michigan State University
and currently works for the South Carolina
State Historic Preservation Office.

November 2016 DISCOVER 63

 Prognosis

The
Heart of
Mississippi
Environment? Genetics?
Why does heart disease strike so
many more African-Americans?
BY JEFF WHEELWRIGHT

→ When you hear that Mississippi

is a red state, you think politics,
but red also applies to the toll of
its cardiovascular disease. Look at
the Centers for Disease Control and By no coincidence, this state also in Jackson, and he also does research

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JPC-PROD/SHUTTERSTOCK; UMMC PUBLIC AFFAIRS; MEGAN BEAN/MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY. MAP: CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC)
Prevention’s map of the death rates has the greatest portion of African- for the Jackson Heart Study, the
from heart disease down to the county American residents, close to 40 percent African-American version of the older,
level across the U.S. Colors range of the total population. Ervin Fox, more famous ongoing Framingham
from a healthy pale pink to deep a Harvard-trained cardiologist and Heart Study. Since 1948, thanks to
red — those areas are the sickest. epidemiologist, knows these statistics thousands of health histories collected
Mississippi is bathed almost entirely from multiple perspectives. Fox, 49, from the mainly white residents of
in crimson. Among Americans 35 and grew up in the Mississippi Delta Framingham, Mass., epidemiologists
older, Mississippians have the highest region, where the soil is rich and have learned how blood pressure,
mortality from heart disease in the cotton was king. smoking habits, cholesterol and a few
nation, ranging between 450 and 850 He treats patients at the University of other quantiiable factors can forecast
deaths per 100,000. Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) heart disease and stroke, two general
conditions comprising cardiovascular
Heart Disease Death Rates, 2011–2013 disease (CVD). The Jackson study,
Adults, Ages 35+, by County starting in 2000, was meant to
determine if the same variables applied
in the same way to black people.
The same factors do apply, says Fox,
but the weighting of them is different,
and the outcomes are worse.
African-Americans die dispropor-
tionately from CVD. If you are black,

Age-Adjusted
Average Annual
Rates Per 100,000
103.6 – 291.0
291.1 – 334.6
Mississippi has the 334.7 – 373.9
the nation’s highest 374.0 – 427.5
mortality rate from 427.6 – 1094.1 Ervin Fox (left) treats patients at the University
heart disease. Insuficient Data of Mississippi Medical Center. He also conducts
research for the Jackson Heart Study, directed
DATA SOURCES: NATIONAL VITAL STATISTICS SYSTEM; NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS by Adolfo Correa (right).

64 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 U.S. Stroke Death Rates, 2010
60
50
Per 100,000 persons
40
37.6 37.2
30
20
10
♂ ♁
0 Age (years)
Male Female
White
your risk of having a stroke is twice that
of a white person, and your relative
risk of dying from that stroke is even
higher. Although life expectancy for
both blacks and whites has improved in
recent decades because of better aware-
ness of CVD risk factors and better
treatments, the gains have been greatest
ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER AFTER HEALTH DISEASE AND STROKE STATISTICS – 2014 UPDATE: A REPORT FOR THE AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION
among whites — and black progress
has slowed or stopped. It’s almost a
truism in medicine that men have more
heart disease than women. “Yet today,”
Fox tells me, “CVD in black women is
as high as in non-Hispanic white males.
Deaths in African-American women
exceed those of white males.”
He gives a grim chuckle. “It’s so bad
it’s almost something to laugh at. Is it
environmental, or genetic, or related to
[public health] funding? The Jackson
Heart Study was established to help
answer these questions.”
ENVIRONMENT VS. GENETICS
Some 5,300 people from Mississippi,
who ranged in age from 21 to 84, signed
up for the study, the largest enrollment
ever of African-Americans in a research
project. About 70 percent of the group
is still being monitored 16 years later.
Their health picture relative to whites’
starts to head south when they reach 45
U.S. Incidence of Heart Attack or Fatal Coronary Heart Disease, 2005–2010
16
56.6
14
59.6
12
Per 1,000 persons
10
8 X
6
4 V
2 V
X Q
O
0 Q
♂ ♁ 35–44
Male Female
Black O White men
African-Americans
die disproportionately
from CVD. If you are
black, your risk of
having a stroke is twice
that of a white person,
and your relative risk
of dying from that
stroke is even higher.
or 50. “That’s the most productive time
of life,” Fox observes, “and that’s when
the disparity in blacks goes up to three
times as high for cardiovascular events
like heart attacks and strokes.”
Fox had named two biological actors,
the environment and genetics, which
oppose each other like feuding siblings
yet often ind themselves interacting. I
ask the Jackson study director, Adolfo
Correa, which one he thought was the
more influential in creating the health
disparity. Was it blacks’ and whites’
subtle genetic differences? Or were the
social, environmental and behavioral
factors of health — smoking, diet,
V
X
O
V Q
O
V
O Q
X
X
O Q
45–54 55–64 65–74 75–84
V Black men Q White women X Black women
DATA SOURCES: NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS; NATIONAL HEART, LUNG, AND BLOOD INSTITUTE
access to care, psychological distress,
racism — more powerful? Stress, too,
makes patients’ blood pressure rise, at
least temporarily, the Jackson studies
have found.
“The answer to that,” says Correa,
“depends on the objective. If you want
to change the risk proile of people,
you need to work on the environment.
The one thing you can work on is the
environment.” He went on to describe
efforts to educate Mississippians in
healthier living. “But also you need to
understand the genetics.”
Correa points me to a gene known as
APOL1. In Africa, those who have two
speciic variants of the gene gain some
protection against sleeping sickness,
which is caused by an environmental
parasite. But APOL1 carriers living
in the U.S. are more susceptible to
CVD and chronic kidney disease. The
inding stems from an analysis of 1,959
participants in the Jackson Heart Study.
While Mississippi has no sleeping
sickness, it does have lifestyle factors
leading to obesity, hypertension and
diabetes, which damage the heart and
kidneys. The Delta thus may host an
unfavorable synergy between evolution-
driven DNA and the 21st century
environment. Similarly, carriers in the
November 2016 DISCOVER 65
 Prognosis
Jackson study of one copy of the genes
that cause sickle-cell disease — a useful
trait against malaria in Africa — appear
to be more at risk for kidney disease.
READING THE HEART
Overall, scientists have linked dozens
of genes to cardiovascular conditions,
but organizing the indings by race or
ethnicity has barely started. Take, for
example, a condition called cardiac
hypertrophy, in which the left ventricle,
one of the two major chambers of the
heart, increases in size and thickness,
usually in concert with weight gain
and hypertension. Hypertrophy raises
the risk of heart attacks and strokes,
and it affects African-Americans
more frequently than whites. But the
relationships between the moving
parts — race, blood pressure, obesity,
enlarged heart mass and bad outcomes
— haven’t been clear.
Fox’s specialty is to read echocardio-
grams, basically ultrasound movies of
beating hearts. The sound waves pass
through the muscle walls and provide a
gauge of left ventricular mass (LVM).
Some 5,300 Jackson study participants
took two echocardiograms, eight years
apart. In succeeding years, as the group
on the whole put on weight and grew
hypertensive, there came an unfortunate
Jackson Heart Study researcher and cardiologist Ervin Fox watches as Shari Cook (foreground) and
Audrey Samuels take readings from a woman participating in the Mississippi heart study.
66 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Normal heart Cardiac hypertrophy
Right Left
ventricle ventricle
Hypertrophy raises the
risk of heart attacks and
strokes, and it afects
African-Americans more
frequently than whites.
But the relationships
between the moving
parts — race, blood
pressure, obesity,
enlarged heart mass
and bad outcomes —
haven’t been clear.
cascade of “events” such as heart
attacks, heart failure, strokes, arterial
blockage and chest pain. As lead
author on a 2015 paper, Fox described
the mathematical correlation between
body mass index, blood pressure and
ventricular mass during the initial
phase of the study. Later in life, those
who had shown the greatest change in
their LVM were more likely to experi-
ence a cardiac event.
Enlarged left
With LVM on the radar screen,
ventricle
investigators funded by the American
Heart Association are looking at
genes that control the growth of
the heart. Normally the genes shut
off in adulthood, but they appear
to start up again in CVD patients.
Investigators will check the stored
samples of the Jackson population for
a particular DNA pattern, then check
for the pattern in the Framingham
population as well. If the LVM growth
mechanism for blacks isn’t the same as
for Caucasians, this might be another
window into the health disparity.
Although aging isn’t talked about
much in cardiovascular research, age
of course is an important risk factor
for CVD. The initial Jackson cohort
included many who were over 65, and
that was 16 years ago. When does
normal mortality, I ask Fox, interfere
with studies of abnormal mortality?
Shouldn’t the focus shift to the sons
and daughters of participants, as
in Framingham?
“People are living longer,” he replies.
“It’s good to follow the disease in
aging. But technology has changed, our TOP: MONICA SCHROEDER/SCIENCE SOURCE. BOTTOM: UMMC PUBLIC AFFAIRS
awareness of risk factors has changed,
medications have changed. Yes, it would
be great to follow a young cohort,
growing up in the current environment
and strategies in medicine, and see how
they do.” If funding from the National
Institutes of Health is renewed in 2018,
the Jackson Heart Study hopes to enlist
another generation. D
Jeff Wheelwright is a contributing editor at
Discover.
Guaranteed the most
comfortable pillow you’ll ever own! ™

How Well Did You Sleep Last Night?

Did you toss and turn all night? Did you wake up with a sore
neck, head ache, or was your arm asleep? Do you feel like you
need a nap even though you slept for eight hours? Just like you,
I would wake up in the morning with all of those problems and
I couldn’t figure out why. Like many people who have trouble
getting a good night’s sleep, my lack of sleep was afecting the
quality of my life. I wanted to do something about my sleep Mike Lindell
problems, but nothing that I tried worked. Inventor & CEO
of MyPillow®
The Pillow Was the Problem
I bought every pillow on the market that promised to give
me a better night’s sleep. After trying them all, with no success,
I finally decided to invent one myself. I began asking everyone
I knew what qualities they’d like to see in their “perfect pillow.”
Their responses included: “I’d like a pillow that never goes flat”,
“I’d like my pillow to stay cool” and “I’d like a pillow that adjusts
to me regardless of my sleep position.” After hearing everyone
had the same problems that I did, I spent the next two years
of my life inventing MyPillow.

In the early days, Mike and his family

spent countless hours hand-making each
MyPillow. This hard work and dedication
to “doing it right” helped MyPillow become
a classic American success story.

MyPillow® to the Rescue

Flash forward eleven years and MyPillow, Mike Lindell’s
revolutionary pillow design, has helped 12 million people
improve the quality of their sleep. MyPillow has received
thousands of testimonials from customers about how
MyPillow has changed their lives.
“Until I was diagnosed with various sleep issues, I had no idea why
my sleep was so interrupted throughout the night. I watch Imus
each morning and heard endless testimonials about MyPillow.
I took his advice and ordered a MyPillow. Now I wake up rested
and ready to conquer the day ahead. Thank you for helping me
remember what it’s like to sleep like a baby!” - Jacqueline H.
Lindell has been featured on numerous talk shows,
including Fox Business News and Imus in the Morning.
Lindell and MyPillow have also appeared in feature stories
in major magazines and newspapers across the country.
MyPillow has received the coveted “Q Star Award”
for Product Concept of the Year from QVC,
and has been selected as the Official
Pillow of the National Sleep Foundation.
MyPillow’s patented interlocking fill
allows you to adjust the pillow to your
individual needs regardless of sleep position.

Unprecedented Guarantee and Warranty

I do all of my own manufacturing in my home state of Minnesota and all materials are 100%
made in the U.S.A. I’m so confident MyPillow will help you, I’m ofering an unprecedented
60-day money back guarantee and a 10-year warranty not to go flat! I truly believe MyPillow
is the best pillow in the world and that if everyone had one, they would
get better sleep and the world would be a much happier place. God Bless.

Don’t wait—Order MyPillow and get sleep you’ve been dreaming about!

Save 50% when you use promo code “discover”
BUY NOW AT: mypillow.com OR call 
 History
Lessons

The Missing Moon Files

Researchers scour old labs and archives, looking for invaluable lunar data before it’s too late.
BY JULIA ROSEN

PROJECT APOLLO ARCHIVE/NASA; BACKGROUND: VALENTIN AGAPOV/SHUTTERSTOCK

→ Seiichi Nagihara began to sweat
as he dug through long-forgotten
boxes in a cluttered basement
too late. The last scientists who worked
on the Apollo missions are aging fast,
as are the fragile magnetic tapes on
DATA ACQUISITION
Apollo 12 astronauts Charles “Pete”
Conrad and Alan Bean installed the
storeroom at a Columbia University which the data were recorded and the irst set of ALSEP instruments on
outpost in Palisades, N.Y. But the trim machines that can read them. the moon in 1969. More followed
54-year-old kept working. It was June Nagihara’s motivation to ind the on every mission (except Apollo 13),
2013, and he had come all the way information is simple: We’re not going until the inal moon landing in 1972.
from Texas to search for decades-old back to the moon anytime soon. This equipment monitored the moon’s
clues about the moon. “Until then,” he says, “that’s the only meager atmosphere, listened for the
Nagihara pawed through the dataset we’ve got.” faint rumbles of moonquakes and
yellowing iles of Marcus Langseth, asteroid impacts and measured lunar
a Columbia geologist who died
in 1997. Between the late 1960s
and mid ’70s, Langseth was in
charge of a project to study how
heat escaped from the moon’s
interior, using sensors deployed
by astronauts during
the Apollo missions.
This experiment
was just one part
of the Apollo Lunar
Surface Experiments
Package (ALSEP), the
only comprehensive
set of moon-based
studies humans have ever
conducted.
Nagihara, a geophysicist at
Texas Tech University, hoped
to reanalyze Langseth’s heat
data with modern analytical
techniques on computers
that scientists back then
could only dream of. But
as much as half of the
ALSEP data had gone
missing since Congress Apollo 15 astronaut
pulled the plug on the James Irwin (above),
helped deploy an
project’s funding in 1977. Apollo Lunar Surface
Now, Nagihara and Experiments Package
(ALSEP) dust scanner
a band of researchers- (bottom). Alan Bean
turned-detectives are of Apollo 12 deploys
one of the first ALSEP
racing to recover the experiments (top right),
lost data before it’s a kind of ion detector.

68 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 700+ Stores
Nationwide

R
PE ON
SUPER COUPON How Does Harbor Freight SUPER COUPON
SU UP Customer Rating
CO Sell GREAT QUALITY Tools
2500 LB.
ELECTRIC WINCH
WITH WIRELESS
REMOTE CONTROL
SAVE
20%
at the LOWEST Prices?
We have invested millions
of dollars in our own
state-of-the-art quality test
labs and millions more in
FREE WITH ANY PURCHASE
3-1/2" SUPER BRIGHT

OFF
ITEM 61258 shown $100 NINE LED ALUMINUM
comp at $159.99 61840/61297/68146 our factories, so our tools FLASHLIGHT
ITEM 69111
will go toe-to-toe with the 62522/62573
69052 shown
LIMIT 5 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior ANY
top professional brands.
purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be
SINGLE
And we can sell them for a
4
ITEM

$ 97
presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day.

R 7 FT. 4" x 9 FT. 6" Limit 1 coupon per customer per day. Save 20% on any 1 item fraction of the price because
PE ON
purchased. *Cannot be used with other discount, coupon or any

SU UP ALL PURPOSE WEATHER of the following items or brands: Inside Track Club membership,
Extended Service Plan, gift card, open box item, 3 day Parking Lot
we cut out the middle man VALUE
CO RESISTANT TARP Sale item, automotive lifts, compressors, floor jacks, saw mills,
storage cabinets, chests or carts, trailers, trenchers, welders, and pass the savings on to LIMIT 1 - Cannot be used with other discount, coupon or prior
ITEM 69249/69115/69137 Admiral, Badland, CoverPro, Daytona, Diablo, Earthquake, Franklin, purchase. Coupon good at our stores, HarborFreight.com or by
calling 800-423-2567. Offer good while supplies last. Shipping
69129/69121/877 shown Grant’s, Holt, Jupiter, Lynxx, Maddox, Portland, Predator, Stik-Tek,
StormCat, Union, Vanguard, Viking. Not valid on prior purchases. Non-
you. It’s just that simple! & Handling charges may apply if not picked up in-store. Non-
transferable. Original coupon must be presented. Valid through
Customer Rating transferable. Original coupon must be presented. Valid through 2/11/17.
Come visit one of our 2/11/17. Limit one FREE GIFT coupon per customer per day.

700+ Stores Nationwide.

SAVE
64% comp at $8.48 CO
R
PE ON
SU UP

Customer Rating
2.5 HP, 21 GALLON
125 PSI VERTICAL
AIR COMPRESSOR WOW SUPER
COUPON WOW
RAPID PUMP® 1.5 TON
ALUMINUM RACING JACK
SUPER
COUPON
LIMIT 7 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior
purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be ITEM 69252/60569 shown
presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day.

R 12" SLIDING COMPOUND SAVE

68053/62160
62496/62516 SAVE
$60
PE ON
$337
• 3-1/2 Pumps Lifts
SU UP
DOUBLE-BEVEL MITER SAW Most Vehicles
CO WITH LASER GUIDE • Weighs 34 lbs.

Customer Rating ITEM 69091/67847 shown Customer Rating

SAVE 61454/61693/62803 29 PIECE TITANIUM
$259
ITEM 69684 shown
61969/61970 NITRIDE COATED SAVE
HIGH SPEED STEEL 78%
DRILL BIT SET Customer Rating
ITEM 5889/62281/61637 shown

comp at
comp at $497 $59.97 comp at $119.99
comp at $399

LIMIT 4 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior
purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be
presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day.
LIMIT 3 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior
purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be
presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day.
LIMIT 5 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior
purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be
presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day.
LIMIT 4 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior
purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be
presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day.

R TORQUE WRENCHES TWO TIER 20 TON 1500 WATT DUAL

PE ON R
PE ON
R
PE ON
R
PE ON
SU UP SU UP
COLLAPSIBLE SU UP
SHOP PRESS SU UP
TEMPERATURE
O Customer Rating HEAT GUN
C CO EASY-STORE CO CO
• Accuracy
STEP LADDER ITEM 32879/60603 shown (572°/1112°)
DRIVE ITEM within ±4%
SAVE SAVE ITEM 67514
Customer Rating
Customer Rating • Pair of arbor
plates included
1/4"
3/8"
2696/61277
807/61276 60% 40% ITEM 62340/62546
63104/96289 shown
1/2" 62431/239 Item 239
• 225 lb. capacity
SAVE SAVE
YOUR CHOICE
shown
99 comp at $33.66 $215 comp at $369.99
71% Customer Rating
comp at $31.47
comp at
$29.99
LIMIT 4 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling LIMIT 3 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling LIMIT 9 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior 800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior 800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior
purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt. purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt. purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be
LIMIT 7 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day. presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day. presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day.
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior
purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
SUPER COUPON R 10 PIECE DRAGONFLY R
Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be
presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day.
W OW TTS
PE ON SOLAR LED STRING LIGHTS
SU UP
PE ON
SU UP 26", 4 DRAWER
SUPER COUPON 900 PEAK/7 RUNNING WA
00
W-1
OW
PORTABLE POWER PACK
2 HP (63 CC) 2 CYCLE
GAS RECREATIONAL
CO Customer Rating ITEM 62689
60758 shown SAVE
CO TOOL CART
ITEM 95659 shown
3-IN 74%
WITH JUMP STARTER GENERATOR 61634/61952
SAVE ITEM 69381 SAVE Customer Rating
ITEM 38391/62376
62306 shown
$73 60338 shown
$209 • 580 lb. capacity
Customer Rating comp at
SAVE Customer Rating
comp at $163.06 comp at $26.99 $319.01
20%
$4799 $59.99
LIMIT 4 - Good at
our stores or HarborFreight.c
used with other discoun
om or by calling
t or coupon or prior
800-423-2567. Cannot be from original purchase with original receipt.
LIMIT 8 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior
LIMIT 4 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount or coupon or prior
comp at purchases after 30 days last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must
be purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt. purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
Offer good while supplies per customer per day. Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be Offer good while supplies last. Non-transferable. Original coupon must be
2/11/17. Limit one coupon
presented. Valid through presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day. presented. Valid through 2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day.

stores or HarborFreight.c
om or by calling • 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed • 700+ Stores Nationwide • HarborFreight.com At Harbor Freight Tools, the "comp at" price means that the same
item or a similar functioning item was advertised for sale at or
LIMIT 5 - Good at ourused with other discount or coupon or prior above the "comp at" price by another retailer in the U.S. within the
800-423-2567. Cannot be from original purchase with original receipt. • Over 30 Million Satisfied Customers • Lifetime Warranty • 800-423-2567 past 180 days. Prices advertised by others may vary by location.
purchases after 30 days coupon must be
last. Non-transferable. Original No other meaning of "comp at" should be implied. For more
Offer good while supplies2/11/17. Limit one coupon per customer per day. On All Hand Tools
presented. Valid through • No Hassle Return Policy information, go to HarborFreight.com or see store associate.
 History
Lessons
heat flow. All together, the
14 experiments operating
across ive landing sites
threw open a window into
the workings of our lonely
natural satellite.
As the years wore on,
some of the instruments
winked out, but most
outlasted their budget, and
eventually the program lost
support from Congress.
In 1974, NASA began
to dismantle ALSEP’s network of
scientists and engineers, and in 1977,
the agency shut down the range
stations that received radio data from
the lunar instruments.
After the project ended, much of
the data got lost despite preservation
efforts. For every experiment, NASA
made copies of the data: The agency
kept one version and sent the other to
project scientists like Langseth. Most
of the surviving ALSEP data comes
from researchers, who processed the
raw data and archived the results
with NASA. However, many of these
records end in 1974 and are often
incomplete. Langseth’s contribution,
for example, contained only what he
needed for his work — one out of
every seven measurements collected by
the heat flow sensors, and no raw data.
That was ine, in principle,
because NASA had backup copies
of everything. However, scientists now
cannot ind most of these archival
tapes. NASA records show they were
sent to the National Archives, but the
space agency withdrew most of them
again in 1980. That’s where the paper
trail ends. Yosio Nakamura, a retired
geophysicist at the University of Texas
at Austin who worked on ALSEP’s
seismic experiments, suspects NASA
recalled them for possible reuse
during a tape shortage, then lost
track of them.
Fortunately, data from the inal
years of the project survived intact,
thanks largely to Nakamura. In 1976,
70 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Marcus
The technology used
to handle ALSEP data
now seems ancient.
Computer rooms
(above) would
store data on
actual tapes, such
as this seven-track,
half-inch-wide reel
(right). Yet that data,
like the seismic plot
(far right), can still lead
to new lunar insights.
he last scientists who
worked on the Apollo
missions are aging
fast, as are the fragile
magnetic tapes on which
the data were recorded
and the machines
that can read them.
as NASA was running out of money,
researchers at the University of Texas
at Galveston — where Nakamura
worked at the time — took over the
task of producing archival tapes.
These remained at the university
after ALSEP ended, although some
thought they didn’t hold much value,
Nakamura says. “Some people were
saying, ‘Those are old data, they
are of no use.’ ”
Nakamura disagreed; he foresaw
a day when future researchers could
unlock new insights in the old data.
th
Langse
So, in the early 1990s,
he sought support from
NASA to preserve the tapes
he saved from Galveston.
NASA, again citing a tight budget,
turned him down, but the Japanese
Aerospace Exploration Agency
eventually gave Nakamura a grant to
condense about 9,000 tapes into just
80 cassettes. These data, which include
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: HAMISH LINDSAY; LAMONT-DOHERTY EARTH OBSERVATORY/COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; NASA; YOSIO NAKAMURA
a full record of the passive seismic
experiments as well as everything from
the last 19 months of the project,
remain the most complete record of
raw ALSEP data in existence.
MOON-SHAKING FINDINGS
Without seeing the missing data, it’s
impossible to say how valuable they
might be. But the ALSEP data we do
have offer some hints.
When lunar seismic data were irst
collected and analyzed in the 1970s,
researchers like Nakamura interpreted
them by eye, holding the jagged lines
of seismograms over a light table.
“During the mission, all we had was
a big computer with 24 kilobytes of
memory — a very small fraction of
what you have on your cell phone,”
Nakamura says.
Recently, he and other researchers
have reanalyzed the data with great

303 FIFTH AVE., SUITE 1603, NEW YORK, NY 10016
1)0/&
ŷŸű
t
'"9
ŷŸű
INFO@SADIGHGALLERY.COM
WWW.SADIGHGALLERY.COM
22602
29305
30609
25579 25985
31442
25979
40328
34496
43847
46379
32813 46883
30608
22602 Egyptian Carnelian scarab amulet. ½” 2040-1786 BC.$100
25579 Egyptian Green soapstone scarab. 1 ½” 663-525 BC $120
25979 Egyptian Mummy and lotus beads on a modern 22kt gold
plate collar necklace and earrings settings. 15” 600-300 BC...$120
25985 Near Eastern Adjustable lapis lazuli inlays redesigned in
a modern clad silver cuf bracelet. 3000 BC-1900’s AD.........$100
27671 Greek Silver Lysimachus tetradrachm coin on a modern
vermeil pendant setting. 1 ½” 297-281 BC..............................$700
29305 Byzantine Bronze cross pendant with the face of Jesus
embossed. 3” 600-900 AD........................................................$400
30608 Egyptian Bronze ankh pendant. 1 ½” 600 BC.............$120
30609 Byzantine Silver cross pendant with Madonna and Child,
back with etched cross. 2 ¼” x 1 ½” 600 AD.............................$800
30709 Egyptian Green mold-blown glass lask with the head of
the Goddess, Hathor. 4” x 1 ½” 100 BC.....................................$350
31418 American Silver Atocha shipwreck coin. 1 ¼” 1622 AD $400
31442 Near Eastern Lapis lazuli inlays on a modern clad silver neck-
lace setting with small red accent beads. 22” 3000 BC-1900 AD $120
32611 Greco-Roman Terracotta oil lamp with the God, Serapis.
4 ½” 100 BC..............................................................................$400
32659 Holy Land Lapis lazuli inlays and small multi colored glass
stones set into a silver cross pendant setting. 3” 1800’s AD.....$100
All major credit cards accepted. All items come with a LIFETIME CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY! 10 day return priviledge, less shipping.
AUTHENTIC ANCIENT
ARTIFACTS & COINS AT
WHOLESALE PRICES
30709
41504
36416
34187
45421
34892
43883
32611
40982 41843
43273 32757
47354
32810
40249 27671
40318
32664
32664 Holy Land Hebrew Lapis lazuli inlays set into a silver pendant
setting with a Star of David motif. 2 ½” 1800’s AD.........$120
32757 Prehistoric Teardrop-shaped amber pendant with a Pre-
historic light colored butterly. 2” 12 Million Years Old...........$350
32810 Egyptian Bronze Eye of Horus inlay. 1 ¾” 663-525 BC $400
32813 Egyptian Bronze portrait inlay of the Goddess Hathor. ¾”
x 3 ¼” 663-525 BC....................................................................$400
32833 Roman Bronze owl pendant. 2” 100-300 AD.............$300
33562 Egyptian Green limestone plaque with hieroglyphs, from
the Book of the Dead. 3 ½” x 2 ¾” 1070-712 BC...................$1,200
34187 Celtic Bronze sword, the hilt in the form of swans facing
each other. 25” 700-200 BC..................................................$3,000
34496 Greek Silver Alexander the Great drachm. ¾” 315 BC $150
34892 Holy Land Terracotta oil lamp. 4 ½” 100 AD.................$70
36416 Egyptian Blue glazed faience Ushabti with hieroglyphs. 5
¾” 663-525 BC..........................................................................$600
40249 Holy Land Bronze First Crusaders’ cross pendant with the
ive wounds of Christ. 2” 1096-1099 AD...................................$100
40318 Byzantine Gold coin of Michael VII. 1” 1071 AD......$1,200
40325 Holy Land Hebrew Terracotta oil lamp with Menorah. 4” x
3” 100 BC-100 AD.....................................................................$300
40328 Near Eastern Clad silver pill box with a lapis lazuli inlay
cross on the lid. 2” x 1 ¼” 1900’s AD.........................................$120
40982 Roman Bronze Kheiron statue with a bow and arrow, half-
brother of Zeus. 1 ½” x 1 ¾” 200 BC.........................................$400
41504 Pre-Columbian Large Mayan terracotta drinking vessel
with seated warriors. 8” x 5” 600-900 AD.............................$1,800
TO PLACE AN ORDER
OR TO RECEIVE A FREE
COLOR CATALOG,
CALL US TOLL FREE
1-800-426-2007
46322
33562
46438
46999
46762
47585 32833
40325
31418 44008
Christmas Delivery
Guaranteed
On All Orders!
32659
41843 Greek Wooden icon of Christ Pantocrator on a golden
background. 8 ½” x 7” 1900 AD................................................$400
43273 Greek Miniature ceremonial bronze helmet from the time
of Alexander the Great. 7” x 3 ¼” 330 BC..............................$1,500
43847 Egyptian Alabaster vessel. 8 ½” x 5” 1085 - 715 BC..$800
43883 Egyptian Soapstone cat amulet. 1 ½” 305-30 BC.......$180
44008 Egyptian Green limestone heart scarab. On the bottom,
ive lines of hieroglyphs. 4 ¾” x 3 ½” 1570-1342 BC...........$1,200
45421 Asian Green jade statue of Kuan Yin, Chinese Goddess of
Mercy, standing on a lotus base. 13 ½” x 3 ¾” 1300 AD.......$2,000
46322 Persian Rare Achaemenid solid gold bracelet, with two
ram heads on each terminal. Weight: 3.5 oz. 3 ½” 500 BC $10,000
46379 Holy Land Biblical Silver Shekel of Tyre tetradrachm coin.
1” 126-70 BC.............................................................................$600
46438 Sumerian Terracotta tablet with cuneiform inscriptions. 3
½” x 1 ¼” 2200 BC....................................................................$600
46762 Egyptian Brown limestone bust of King Tutankhamen.
Ptolemaic. 6 ½” x 5” 305-30 BC............................................$1,200
46883 Greek Silver tetradrachm coin of Athena. 1” 400 BC $1,200
46999 Egyptian Brown limestone winged Isis, the protective
Goddess. 7” x 2 ¾” 305-30 BC...............................................$1,500
47354 Egyptian Wooden sarcophagus panel with Sekhmet, the
lioness Goddess of war. 9 ¾” x 4” 663-525 BC......................$2,000
47585 Egyptian Brown limestone canopic jar with Duamutef,
protector of the stomach, on the removable stopper. Hieroglyphs
on the front. 7 ½” x 3 ½” 1570-1342 BC...............................$2,200
© Sadigh Gallery Ancient Art, Inc.
 History
Lessons

success. One of those researchers,
Renee Weber, a lunar and planetary
scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space
Flight Center, detected hundreds of
new moonquakes in the old data. She
and her colleagues then studied how
these quakes reverberated through the
moon’s interior to probe its structure.
In 2011, they published a paper in
Science presenting a new look at the
moon’s core.
Weber thinks more discoveries will
follow as scientists bring increasingly
sophisticated analytical techniques
to bear on the ALSEP data. “It’s
invaluable,” she says.
TIME’S CHANGES
Because no one has returned to the
moon since the Apollo program,
many young researchers like Weber
began to seek out data for the other
ALSEP experiments, only to realize
how much was missing. But nobody
made a serious effort to igure out
what happened, or ind the tapes, until
Nagihara stumbled onto the mystery
while searching for Langseth’s raw
heat-flow data.
Because no one has
returned to the moon
since the Apollo
program, many young
researchers began to
seek out ALSEP data,
only to realize how
much was missing.
Fueled by curiosity and concern,
he and two dozen other scientists
oficially formed the ALSEP Data
Recovery Focus Group in 2010.
NASA gave the group, chaired by
Nagihara, its blessing and provided
funds to help the team hunt down
and archive the lost tapes, as well as
make the existing ALSEP data more
accessible to today’s researchers.
The recovery effort got off to a
promising start. Just months after
the group formed, Pamela Baker at
the Johnson Space Center Records
Ofice found paperwork that led to the
discovery of 450 tapes at a national
records center in Maryland. When
Nagihara went to collect them, he
was delighted to ind that they were
archival tapes containing a full record
of ALSEP data for a three-month
period in the spring of 1975.
But then the trail went cold. With
no leads on the remaining 4,550
archival tapes, Nagihara tried to ind
some of the tapes NASA had sent to
the project scientists for analysis —
like the ones containing Langseth’s
heat data — in hopes that they hadn’t
been thrown out.
In addition to that dusty Columbia
basement, he also visited the
University of Maryland to scour
the records of the late physicist
Joseph Weber, who oversaw ALSEP’s
gravimetry experiments.
Although he found some useful
documentation, neither of those visits
yielded any tapes. A recent tip from
NASA’s Astromaterials Acquisition
and Curation Ofice also proved to be
a false alarm.
Now, Nagihara fears that time is
running out. The tapes themselves are
quickly degrading, as is the archaic
equipment needed to extract the data.
“If we ind more tapes 10 years
from now,” he says,
“we may not be able to
read them. The clock is
ticking.” D

FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF YOSIO NAKAMURA; PROJECT APOLLO ARCHIVE/NASA (2); JEFFREY LATKA
Julia Rosen is a freelance
journalist in Portland, Ore.

akamura
Yosio N

Apollo 12 astronaut
Alan Bean carries
two ALSEP packages
on the lunar surface
(left). A different ALSEP
experiment, this time Seiich
from Apollo 16 (above), Nagiha i
measures seismic waves ra
on the lunar surface:
moonquakes.

72 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
CLASSIFIEDS
T R AV E L

AMAZON RAINFOREST
Award-winning lodge in Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo
Reserve, shown to have the world’s greatest
diversity of primates. Customized itineraries,
daily departures. 1-800-262-9669.
Visit: www.perujungle.com

DO YOU HAVE A PRODUCT,

OR SERVICE YOU WANT
TO PROMOTE TO OVER
6 MILLION READERS? ZOBRIST
CUBE
TM

ADVERTISE 20,000 Puzzles in a Box!

HERE Huge selection! 33 POLYCUBE PIECES
Books • Magazines
CONTACT STEVE MENI &
FOR INFORMATION, RATES, AND
Globes & Maps • Posters
52 PAGE CODE BOOK
THE NEXT AVAILABLE ISSUE Downloads • And more!

888-558-1544 .com
MyScienceShop
www.ZobristCube.com
ext. 628 1 (855) 962-7478

SMENI@DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM P27902
Ages 6 - Adult
 20 Things You Didn’t Know About …

Bridges BY GEMMA TARLACH

1 The most important bridges on Earth have crossing the stream. The plank bows downward from
nothing to do with engineers and masons: Through your weight; the top of the plank shortens (compres-
the ages, land bridges have allowed species to reach sion) while the underside stretches (tension). Too much
new territories. Some are better known than others. of either creates a weak area that could leave you all
Ever heard of the Thulean Route? 2 Also known wet. 11 Want to stabilize your beam bridge? Try add-
as the North American Land Bridge ing trusses. The triangular supports, a common feature
(NALB), the volcanic Thulean plateau of shorter-span railway bridges, give the deck greater
arose around 56 million years ago. It rigidity, which dissipates, or distributes, both compres-
stretched from Greenland to the British sion and tension forces. 12 For longer spans, engineers
Isles, connecting North America with may turn to suspension bridges. The deck is suspended
Eurasia. 3 While we often think of land by cables (stretched with tension), which hang from
bridges as animal migration highways, towers (compressed into the ground). 13 Arch bridges,
they also help plants disperse. A 2013 popular since antiquity, are more stable than the beam
study found the NALB allowed hickory, variety. The entire bridge is under compression, which
native to northeastern North America, is dissipated out and down from the center — right into
to spread to Europe and Asia. 4 Recent the supports. 14 Bridges need to be stable, but bridges
genetic studies have conirmed the irst themselves can also provide stability. Disulide bridges,
humans to arrive in the Americas traveled for example, hold together the different protein chains
via Beringia. The land bridge connected that make up an antibody. You can think of them as
Siberia and North America beginning the glue in immunoglobulin molecules, the warriors of
38,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial the immune system. 15 A different bridge keeps people
Maximum. 5 Beringia was probably at glued to their seats: the card game. Today’s Bridge
its greatest size 20,000 years ago, when evolved from earlier games such as Whist. Some of its
sea levels were as much as 400 feet lower predecessors date to the 16th century. 16 The game’s
The Thulean Route than they are today. Within 9,000 years of its peak, name is an Anglicization of the word biritch, which

FROM TOP: YIPPE/SHUTTERSTOCK; GERMAN AEROSPACE CENTER/DLR/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; PETER EASTLAND/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
land bridge once however, the last dry bits of Beringia slipped beneath some historians believe has Russian origins. Its roots
connected North
America with the waves. 6 Beringia will rise again! Well, maybe. The may be in Turkey, however, where it was a popular
Eurasia; remnants land bridge has appeared periodically for the past diversion among expats, including Russians, nearly
are still visible on
the seafloor today 70 million years during times of extensive glaciation. two centuries ago. 17 Some bridges still in use today
(top). The Kazarma 7 Before it was sliced open by a shipping canal in 1914, have even older roots. The sturdily built Pons Fabricius
bridge in Greece
(above) may be the Isthmus of Panama united a land mass stretch- arch bridge has connected Tiber Island to the heart of
the world’s oldest ing from the Arctic Circle to subantarctic southern Rome since 62 B.C. 18 You can thank those industri-
man-made bridge
still in use.
Patagonia. Not united: researchers debating how long ous Romans for building the world’s oldest reliably
the land bridge was around. A 2015 study in Science dated bridge, too: They erected a stone arch span over
claims at least 13 million years, but a paper published the Meles River in Izmir, Turkey, in the ninth century
in August says no more than 3 million. 8 When it B.C. 19 The Meles bridge is used even now, as is the
comes to bridges we’ve built, even the most elaborate Kazarma, or Arkadiko, bridge in southern Greece.
can be reduced to two components: supports and Built from unworked limestone boulders and rocks, the
a deck. Among the basic bridge types (beam, arch, basic arch, though never conclusively dated, may be
truss and suspension), the simplest is the beam. It’s a from the 14th century B.C. 20 Can’t credit the Romans
single deck across two supports, like a plank across with this one, though. The 22-meter-long Kazarma is
a stream. 9 In addition to load — the weight of the an example of Mycenaean Bronze Age masonry. In
deck and whatever is crossing the bridge — engineers your face, Romans! D
worry about the forces of compression and tension.
10 Think about standing at the center of that plank Gemma Tarlach is a senior editor at Discover.

DISCOVER (ISSN 0274-7529, USPS# 555-190) is published monthly, except for combined issues in January/February and July/August. Vol. 37, no. 9. Published by Kalmbach Publishing Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box
1612, Waukesha, WI 53187-1612. Periodical postage paid at Waukesha, WI, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to DISCOVER, P.O. Box 62320, Tampa, FL 33662-2320. Canada Publication
Agreement # 40010760. Back issues available. All rights reserved. Nothing herein contained may be reproduced without written permission of Kalmbach Publishing Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI
53187-1612. Printed in the U.S.A.

74 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Affordable Hearing
Aid Technology
Only $299!*
(*Each when you buy a pair)
Learn about our great digital
technology at an affordable price.
The Revolutionary HCX!
Digital sound processing chip
provides crystal clear sound and
makes speech easier to understand
with less feedback than old analog
technology
DƵůƟƉůĞŵĞŵŽƌLJƉƌŽŐƌĂŵƐadapt
ƚŽŵŽƐƚůŝƐƚĞŶŝŶŐƐŝƚƵĂƟŽŶƐ
Nearly invisible thin tube design
>ŽŶŐůĂƐƟŶŐƐŝnjĞϭϯďĂƩĞƌŝĞƐĂŶĚĂ
ůŽǁďĂƩĞƌLJǁĂƌŶŝŶŐ
ϭϬďĂŶĚƐŽĨůĂLJĞƌĞĚŶŽŝƐĞƌĞĚƵĐƟŽŶ
helps to emphasize voices while
balancing out background noise
100% Money Back Guarantee
5 Star Reviews!
dŚĞLJƌĞ&ĂŶƚĂƐƟĐ͊ “I just received my
,yŚĞĂƌŝŶŐĂŝĚƐĂŶĚƚŚĞLJĂƌĞĨĂŶƚĂƐƟĐ͘
ĚǀĂŶĐĞĚīŽƌĚĂďůĞŝƐĨĂƌƐƵƉĞƌŝŽƌĂŶĚ
ĨĂƌŵŽƌĞĂīŽƌĚĂďůĞ͊͟ - Chuck D.
tŽŶĚĞƌĨƵůŽŵƉĂŶLJ͊ ͞/ǁŝůůĚĞĮŶŝƚĞůLJ
recommend your company to my
ƉĂƟĞŶƚƐ͘͟- Dr. Arun P.
,ĞĂƌĞƩĞƌtŝƚŚϮ,ĞĂƌŝŶŐŝĚƐ͊
zŽƵƌďƌĂŝŶŝƐĚĞƐŝŐŶĞĚƚŽƵƐĞďŽƚŚĞĂƌƐ
working together to fully understand
what you hear. In fact, studies show
ƚŚĂƚLJŽƵŵĂLJďĞĂďůĞƚŽŚĞĂƌƵƉƚŽϯ
ƟŵĞƐďĞƩĞƌŝŶŶŽŝƐLJƐŝƚƵĂƟŽŶƐǁŚĞŶ
using two hearing aids.
Afordable Quality Since 1996!
Visit and Save: www.AdvancedHearing.com/D6A
F1 RYEAERE
A
Su p p ly O f
B at te ri es *
B
F G
A) Microphone
E B) Volume Control Wheel
C) Program Button
C D) Long Lasting Battery
E) Digital Signal Processor
F) Receiver (Speaker)
G) Sound Tube
D More Technical Information At:
www.AdvancedHearing.com/D6A
Digital Hearing Aid Technology... For Only $299!*
All digital hearing aids work the same way. The microphone picks
up the sound and sends an electrical signal to the digital signal
processor. The digital signal processor is the “brains” of the hearing
aid. It takes the sound it receives and adjusts the sound to amplify
ŝŵƉŽƌƚĂŶƚƐƉĞĞĐŚƐŽƵŶĚƐĂƐǁĞůůĂƐĮůƚĞƌŝŶŐŽƵƚƵŶǁĂŶƚĞĚŶŽŝƐĞ͘
(To ensure the best in quality, our digital processor is designed and
manufactured right here in the United States.) Once the processor
ŚĂƐĂŵƉůŝĮĞĚƚŚĞƐŽƵŶĚ͕ŝƚŝƐƉĂƐƐĞĚƚŽƚŚĞreceiver (also known as
ƚŚĞƐƉĞĂŬĞƌͿǁŚŝĐŚĞŵŝƚƐĂĐŽƌƌĞĐƚĞĚĂŶĚĂŵƉůŝĮĞĚƐŽƵŶĚƚŚƌŽƵŐŚ
the sound tube into your ear.
Most importantly, your new HCX hearing aids work at
a ĨƌĂĐƟŽŶŽĨƚŚĞĐŽƐƚ of name-brand hearing aids. In The
ĂĚĚŝƟŽŶƚŽƚŚĞƚĞĐŚŶŝĐĂůĐŽŵƉŽŶĞŶƚƐŽĨƚŚĞŚĞĂƌŝŶŐ HCX TM
aid, you also have a volume control that can be
ŵŽĚŝĮĞĚǁŝƚŚĂůŝŐŚƚƚŽƵĐŚŽĨƚŚĞĮŶŐĞƌ͘zŽƵƌŶĞǁ
hearing aids come with ϯĚŝīĞƌĞŶƚĂƵĚŝŽƉƌŽŐƌĂŵƐ
ƚŚĂƚŚĞůƉLJŽƵůŝƐƚĞŶŝŶĚŝīĞƌĞŶƚƐŽƵŶĚĞŶǀŝƌŽŶŵĞŶƚƐ͘zŽƵǁŝůůůŽǀĞ
ƚŚĞKƉĞŶͲĮƚĚĞƐŝŐŶ͕ƚŚĂƚŝƐƐŽůŝŐŚƚLJŽƵƉƌŽďĂďůLJǁŽŶ͛ƚĞǀĞŶĨĞĞůƚŚĂƚ
LJŽƵĂƌĞǁĞĂƌŝŶŐLJŽƵƌŚĞĂƌŝŶŐĂŝĚƐʹLJŽƵ͛ůůũƵƐƚďĞŚĞĂƌŝŶŐĐůĞĂƌůLJ͊
zŽƵĐĂŶƐƉĞŶĚƚŚŽƵƐĂŶĚƐĨŽƌĂŚŝŐŚͲĞŶĚŚĞĂƌŝŶŐĂŝĚŽƌLJŽƵĐĂŶ
spend just $329 for a hearing aid that just plain works (only $299
each when you buy a pair). We are so sure you will love our
ƉƌŽĚƵĐƚ͕ƚŚĂƚǁĞŽīĞƌĂ100% Money Back Guarantee - Risk Free
ŝĨLJŽƵĂƌĞŶŽƚƐĂƟƐĮĞĚĨŽƌĂŶLJƌĞĂƐŽŶ͘
BUY A PAIR AND SAVE $60 !
1-877-767-4480
*Free 1 Year Supply Of Batteries With
Hearing Aid Order. Use Coupon Code: D6A
(Coupon Code & Price Valid For A Limited Time Only) The HCX
TM
US Company
Owned And
FDA
REGISTERED
Operated
 The Science of
Extreme Weather
E D TIME OF Taught by Professor Eric R. Snodgrass
IT UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

FE
LIM
LECTURE TITLES

R
70% 1. Extreme Weather Is Everywhere

10
off 2. Temperature Extremes and Cold-Air Outbreaks

OR

ER
ER 3. Low Pressure and Earth’s High Winds

B
BY N OV EM 4. Extreme Humidity, Rain, and Fog
5. How Radar Reveals Storms
6. How Satellites Track Severe Weather
7. Anatomy of a Lightning Strike
8. Lightning Extremes and Survival
9. Thunderstorm Formation and Weather Balloons
10. Wind Shear and Severe Thunderstorms
11. Squall Line Thunderstorms and Microbursts
12. Supercell Thunderstorms and Hail
13. Tornadoes and Their Amazing Winds
14. Tornadogenesis and Storm Chasing
15. Mountain Windstorms and Avalanches
16. Ice Storms: Freezing Rain Takes Over
17. Epic Snowfall and the Lake Efect
18. Blizzards and Winter Cyclones
19. Flash Floods and Deadly Moving Water
20. Drought, Heat Waves, and Dust Storms
21. Where Hurricanes Hit
22. The Enormous Structure of a Hurricane

Experience the World’s 23. Storm Surge and Hurricane Intensification

24. El Niño and Cycles of Extreme Weather

Wildest Weather
Thanks to an ongoing revolution in the science of meteorology, we
can now understand how extreme weather conditions arise, produce The Science of Extreme Weather
Course no. 1771 | 24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)
far more accurate forecasts, and know how to protect ourselves when
dangerous conditions develop. The Science of Extreme Weather is
your field guide to the worst that Earth’s atmosphere can inflict. In
24 exciting, informative, and potentially life-saving half-hour lectures
aimed at weather novices and amateur forecasters alike, you gain a
SAVE $190
surprisingly powerful tool in the face of such overwhelming forces:
knowledge.
Guided by meteorologist, storm chaser, and award-winning teacher +$10 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee
Eric R. Snodgrass, you learn the fundamental science that underlies Priority Code: 133503
blizzards, flash floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and more.
You’ll come away with newfound appreciation and respect for weather’s For over 25 years, The Great Courses has brought
most awe-inspiring phenomena. the world’s foremost educators to millions who
want to go deeper into the subjects that matter
Ofer expires 11/10/16 most. No exams. No homework. Just a world of
knowledge available anytime, anywhere. Download
THEGREATCOURSES.COM/4 DISC or stream to your laptop or PC, or use our free
mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, or Android. Over 550
1-800-832-2412 courses available at www.TheGreatCourses.com.