Sommaire pour June 2018 de Discover

This memory — and it’s quite a vivid one — is of such a fleeting, mundane moment. I’m 7 years old and it’s summer. I’m riding in the hot car, staring out the window, as we’re stopped at the intersection of Lyndale Avenue and Main Street in Helena, Montana. I’m on a rant, badgering my dad about how I really, really, really want to see this awesome new movie called Star Wars. I want to be part of what everyone’s talking about. I eventually did see it, of course, and was swept away into its bigger-than-life world of good and evil. The interplanetary journeys of the raggedy Millennium Falcon, the fighters battling it out inside the Death Star, and those droids — they had feelings! And what about the holographic…

IN JUNE 2000, Discover published an article about how we could someday be speedier learners. Want to memorize a Shakespearean play? Just read it through once. Want to learn another language? Give yourself about a month. All this with the help of a memoryenhancing pill. At the center of the article (“Smart Pills: How About a Little Viagra for Your Memory?”) was a protein called CREB, or cyclic AMP response element binding protein. It works as an on-switch in the brains of humans and many animals, promoting new connections between neurons to help build long-term memory. Scientists at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, featured in the 2000 article, were inspired by fruit flies. They had genetically engineered one group of the insects to produce high CREB levels and another to…

The Chemtrail Conspiracy Lives On Look, up in the sky! It’s a plane! And that puffy streak in its wake? It’s called a contrail: a watervapor byproduct that jet-engine planes spit out at high altitudes. Some people, however, think these contrails are actually a covert government scheme to douse the planet with chemicals that could do any number of things, from making us all victims of mind control to artificially manipulating the climate. All this, despite the fact that the EPA, scientists and independent journalistic investigations have repeatedly debunked the idea, often called the chemtrail theory. But a recent study based on a 1,000-person poll from 2016 found that the conspiracy is still alive and well. Source: “Solar geoengineering and the chemtrails conspiracy on social media,” Palgrave Communications, 2017. “When…

The future’s not what it used to be. By all accounts, it should be here by now. It’s 2018. The new millennium is old enough to vote. NASA has been in space for half a century. Virtually every house has a computer, and every pocket a smaller, cuter one. And yet the promised future is incomplete. Where, as the refrain goes, is my flying car? Our jetpacks? Why does it even still rain on us? Is it not the future? Well, yes and no. Some of our promised future gizmos have already arrived — even if they’re prohibitively expensive — and some are literally impossible. As novelist and future fabulist William Gibson has said, “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Ultimately, the future is…

What is it? A contraption that lets you explore different time periods. Where you’ve seen it The Time Machine, Back to the Future, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Doctor Who Why it’d be so cool We’re a species that likes to roam, to explore the wild blue yonder. What greater unexplored realms are there than the past and the future? Historians could answer all their unsolved questions, and scientists could get a leg up on upcoming technology. You could spend time with departed loved ones, and see what awaits your family — and species — in the years to come. The possibilities are as endless as time! When were we supposed to have it The Time Machine came out in 1895, so at least since then. They’re usually depicted as…

Personal computers From the storytelling engine in Gulliver’s Travels to Isaac Asimov’s Multivac supercomputer, computational devices are common throughout literature. And thanks to technological advances of the past decades, they’re now as ubiquitous as McDonald’s, with over a billion PCs currently in use. Television What could be more futuristic than the idea of capturing a moment’s sights and sounds, seeing and hearing a story or news report a world away? And yet, since the first models appeared almost a century ago, we’ve become bored with the devices. High-fidelity sound, perfect — even 3-D — pictures and still, nothing worth watching. Cellphones Star Trek may have had some questionable technology, but the communicators of the original series are nothing but classic Motorola RAZRs. We’ve actually improved: More than three-quarters of Americans own…

Quantum Craziness in the Brain (“Down the Quantum Rabbit Hole,” March 2018) Again with the March issue, I affirm why I love this magazine and read it cover to cover twice. Your article about Stuart Hameroff’s theory of consciousness and quantum physics amazed me. I’ve read it three times. To think — how is that done? To say, “I am” — how is that done? I hope Hameroff continues to explore the unknown and inspire others to do so. Douglas Gibson Springfield, Mo. Feedback is edited for space and clarity. ADDRESS LETTERS TO: DISCOVER 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612 Waukesha, WI 53187-1612 EMAIL: editorial@DiscoverMagazine.com…

MOUNT PINATUBO ERUPTED in the Philippines in 1991, spewing millions of tons of ash and chemicals into the atmosphere. Over the next year, large parts of Earth cooled by almost a full degree Fahrenheit. Volcanoes historically have caused some of the planet’s sharpest temperature drops. In addition to ash and fire, they belch sulfur dioxide that lingers as a fine particle spray called an aerosol. These aerosols help Earth’s atmosphere reflect incoming light, creating a cooling effect. Some scientists speculate that seeding such sulfur aerosols — absent fiery eruptions — could someday be a Hail Mary to counteract climate change. The idea is called geoengineering. Picture fleets of aircraft ferrying sulfur across the stratosphere year-round. University of Exeter climatologist Anthony Jones says developing aerosolreleasing technology might take a few years…

TEETH: THE BASICS A tooth is divided into two parts: the roots embedded in the jaw, and a crown that erupts above the gum line. The crown is covered in a protective layer of enamel. Beneath the enamel, a layer of hard tissue called dentin makes up the bulk of the tooth, surrounding and protecting nerves and blood vessels in the dental pulp. Teeth begin forming in the womb and create daily growth lines in the dental tissues. The day of birth is recorded in a prominent neonatal line. Researchers use these lines to estimate a child’s age. HOW TO READ A TOOTH A record of chemical exposure over time is also etched into our teeth. To reveal this history, Manish Arora and his team use a wordy technique called…

What is it? A machine worn as a backpack that lets you fly, usually via jet engine. Where you’ve seen it The Rocketeer, The Jetsons, Iron Man (though not a back-based variation) Why it’d be so cool One of our most primal urges is to soar around as easily as birds. The jetpack lets us do it in the most “natural” way: no cockpits shielding us from the wind, no hot air balloons leaving us at the mercy of air currents, just pure high-flying action. You could take the fastest route to work every day, literally as the crow flies. Or shoot over to the neighboring country to see the sites. And let’s not forget about the military advantages if a jetpack came standard with every soldier’s uniform. Ultimately, the…

What is it? The ability to travel faster than the speed of light — often at multiples of it. Where you’ve seen it Star Trek, Star Wars, The Last Starfighter — pretty much anything with “star” in the name Why it’d be so cool “Space,” Douglas Adams informs us, “is big. Really big.” In order to get anywhere, either you need to plan for years’ worth of travel, or you need to travel faster than the speed of light — the current speed limit for matter, if Albert Einstein is to be believed. But if we could somehow achieve superluminal speeds, we’d be free to travel almost anywhere, “boldly going” wherever we like, the solar wind in our hair. The galaxy, and possibly the universe itself, opens up to us.…

1 Got sand? You probably do, in your kitchen pantry. Sand is defined as any material made up of grains within a specific size range. Sugar and salt typically qualify. 2 Much less common, however, is gypsum sand, which gives White Sands National Monument in New Mexico its name. The site’s unusually high concentration of the rare variety started out as a shallow seabed about 280 million years ago. 3 The material most commonly thought of as sand is silica, made of quartz crystals that have broken down about as far as they will naturally, to about a millimeter in diameter. 4 At the beach, silica sand mixes with fragments of coral, shell and other material of biological origin. 5 While sand of all sorts is usually made by material…

The Realities of Space Wars I was reading your online article “Space Wars Will Look Nothing Like Star Wars,” and I had a question. If space debris is moving at such a high velocity, wouldn’t that just cause a chain reaction and blow up anything in its path? I’m interested in the future of space travel and what we as a human race could do in the future, and I would like to learn more. Dylan Hackner Baldwin, Wis. Editor Nathaniel Scharping responds: Space debris is a definite worry for anyone operating craft in orbit; it has damaged space stations, satellites and space shuttles. A chain reaction — where one craft gets destroyed and creates more debris that goes on to damage other objects in orbit — could happen, but it’s…

Colorado potato beetles have pestered farmers around the world since the late 19th century. The bugs are extra tough to kill because of their annoying habit of quickly developing resistance to pesticides. To better fight the beetles, University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Sean Schoville helped sequence their genome — only to find it resembled the genomes of less-resistant beetles. “It wasn’t diversifying their genome, adding new genes, that would explain rapid pesticide evolution,” he says. “So it leaves us with a whole bunch of new questions.” But Schoville’s team did find a kind of genetic insecticide, giving farmers a way to target the beetles’ cellular machinery.…

Permafrost thaw isn’t the only threat: Melting ice sheets bring additional risks. Last summer, climatologist William Colgan, a researcher for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, led an expedition of scientists to Camp Century, an abandoned U.S. military base buried in the Greenland Ice Sheet. “When you get to Camp Century today, it’s totally flat white. There’s nothing showing above the surface. It’s just a pancake, white, ice sheet,” says Colgan. But 10 stories beneath the surface are the remains of the facility, which in the 1960s spanned more than 100 football fields and housed as many as 200 soldiers from the U.S. Army. One mission was top secret and code-named Project Iceworm: install ballistic missiles under the ice sheet, within range of Russia. By 1967, the Army had…

To see what other surprises permafrost thaw will bring, Schuur is speeding up global warming — experimentally — in a dozen plots of permafrost land in the tundra of central Alaska. Since 2008, the plots, each about half a tennis court in size, have been passively heated a few extra degrees: In winter, surrounding fences accumulate an insulating blanket of snow and in summer, the team installs open-topped, greenhouse-like structures made of clear plastic to maximize warming. “We cause the permafrost to degrade and look at the impact of that, to try to push the tundra into a future state,” Schuur says. The project is one of many trying to understand the permafrost carbon feedback: The idea that thawing permafrost will allow long-frozen organic matter to be decomposed by soil…

What is it? It’s a car … that can fly. (Usually a sportier model.) Where you’ve seen it Back to the Future, Blade Runner, Futurama, The Fifth Element Why it’d be so cool Controlled flying is a relatively recent development for our species — the first airplane flew only about 115 years ago. It still feels cool and futuristic to picture ourselves, as a species, casually puttering around in the air. Just as a prosperous family could enjoy a personal boat trip or car ride, the personal flying car symbolizes one more realm we’ve mastered, another technological hurdle we’ve cleared. Plus, the views are nicer, the traffic less congested, and it looks like so much fun. When were we supposed to have it The Back to the Future trilogy optimistically…

What is it? A way to appear exactly as you’d like to be seen; often limited to digital spaces. Where you’ve seen it The Matrix, Ready Player One, Snow Crash, Blade Runner 2049 Why it’d be so cool You could easily become everything you’ve ever wanted to be. What’s not to love? Shave a few pounds, or show off the curls you’ve always dreamed about. Or go further and let people see you as the mythical beast you see yourself as. The race and sex you were born with need no longer affect you. Suffer from a physical disability, or confined to bed rest due to an illness? Now it wouldn’t even matter. Traveling the world, or digital worlds, from the safety of your computer, looking exactly how you envision…