Professional Documents
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2020 09 01 Popular Science
2020 09 01 Popular Science
2020 09 01 Popular Science
2020
the quest
to trap dark
matter
tracing the
origins of
outbreaks
where in
the world is
atlantis?
M Y S T E R I E S
on duty
with the bee
detective
seven good
reasons we
see ghosts
earth’s
secret lairs,
revealed
CONTENTS
FEATURES
60
16 Why basic soap is so 97 Death Valley’s boulders
shockingly effective move all on their own
3
FA L L 2 0 2 0
EDITOR’S LETTER
Editor-in-Chief Corinne Iozzio
Group Digital Director Amy Schellenbaum
Design Director Russ Smith
EDITORIAL
Features Editor Susan Murcko
Articles Editor Rachel Feltman
Senior Editor Purbita Saha
Technology Editor Stan Horaczek
DIY Editor John Kennedy
Senior Producer Tom McNamara
Engagement Editor Ryan Perry
methods,
Group Commerce Editor Billy Cadden
There are a lot of scientific no- Associate Editors Sara Chodosh, Claire Maldarelli,
Rob Verger
tions, mostly psychological, that Assistant Editors Jessica Boddy, Sandra Gutierrez G.
Netflix reboot eschews one alto- FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS, such as renewals,
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4
CONTRIBUTORS BY S A N D R A G U T I E R R EZ G .
on page 46, writer and amateur Her drawings took over Grand thing happened: He ran out of never wanted to venture into one
paleontologist Riley Black poses Central Station and subway cars material. His essays had centered in the first place. In 1999, while
the question: What if this toothy in New York City as part of a mat- on travel experiences in places working on his painting skills
beast is still around? It’s the kind tress ad campaign. “My mom like Nepal and Micronesia, but at the University of Sheffield,
of topic she’s been considering finally understood what I did for the well ran dry. “I realized that England, Shone agreed to accom-
since middle school, when she be- a living!” she laughs. Sketching if I became a reporter, I’d have pany a friend underground. He
came obsessed with dinosaurs. has always been her preferred unlimited things to learn and knew bringing a canvas wouldn’t
In college Black poured that pas- practice; she went pro after grad- write about,” he says. Since div- be practical, so decided to take a
sion into a blog and eventually a uating from Parsons School of ing into journalism, he’s explored camera instead. The trip sparked
career reporting magazine arti- Design. Deeply influenced by complex fields, from artificial in- a lifelong pursuit. “There was
cles and books, the latest of which traditional Korean art and silk- telligence to military aviation. such a rush of adrenaline,” he re-
is Skeleton Keys. She now spends screen printing, her illustrations On page 20, he investigates the calls. His work on these hidden
her summers wandering the des- (on pages 102 to 104 of this issue) tricky but essential question of chambers has since been featured
ert, digging up fossils: “It’s a way to generally feature crowded scenes, how the United States should in many outlets, and now in this
time travel,” she reflects. simple lines, and bright colors. prepare for the next pandemic. issue, beginning on page 66.
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 5
C H A R T E D
FA L L 2020
BLACK SEA
TARTESSOS
THE AZORES &
CANARY ISLANDS LITTLE SOLE
BANK
3 5
1 THONIS-
2 MOUNT HERACLEION
SIPYLUS
SANTORINI
& CRETE
CARIBBEAN
SEA
1/Bimini Road In the mid-’60s, 2/Souss-Massa plain A 2008 3/Spartel Bank Plato said the
divers encountered a remark- analysis of 51 Platonic descrip- lost city lay beyond the Pillars
ably straight half mile of evenly tors of Atlantis identified several of Hercules—two rocks in the
spaced, uniform stones. Carbon possible coordinates, including Strait of Gibraltar. The island of
dating and a lack of tool marks these coastal dunes, which fea- Spartel once sat there. Passing
suggest natural erosion is re- ture intriguing concentric dry sailors may have seen it vanish at
sponsible, but some believe it’s riverbeds. Unfortunately, there’s the end of the last ice age, but if
from a sunken civilization. scant evidence of any empire. so, they left no records.
MAPQUEST P L ATO F I R ST D E S C R I B E D T H E up. Still, that hasn’t stopped Atlan-
lost kingdom of Atlantis in 360 BCE. tologists from gathering “evidence”
where we’ve He wrote of a mountainous island
crafted by Poseidon, filled with ele-
of its existence. Inspiration abounds:
Coastal towns collapse and islands
‘found’ atlantis phants and gold. But around 9,000
years prior, he claimed, earthquakes
submerge, whether from rising oceans
or sinking shorelines. These lost lands
BY E L E A N O R C U M M I N S / and floods sank the city into the sea. offer a setting for theories on where
ILLUSTRATION BY C R A I G TAY L O R He probably made the whole thing the city may once have stood.
JAVA SEA
4/Doggerland The British 5/Helike A tsunami walloped 6/A n t a rc t i c a Historian 7/Marshall Islands We may
Isles were once connected to this Greek town in Plato’s day, Charles Hapgood argued the have another “Atlantis” someday.
Europe by a low-lying landmass. and many assumed its remains southern continent was once a Sea level rise threatens coastal
But when a megatsunami struck lay in the Corinthian Gulf. But in northern landmass with Atlantis communities, including this net-
around 6000 BCE, the region the 1990s, archaeologists found on its shore. Then, 12,000 years work of atolls with an average
disappeared, leaving bones and it half a mile inland, buried under ago, a shift in the crust sent it elevation of just six feet. With-
tools from local hunter-gatherers a few dozen feet of sediment by a south. Antarctica did make that out intervention, they’ll likely be
embedded in the seafloor. process called soil liquefaction. trip—some 30 million years ago. underwater by midcentury.
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 7
ANATOMY
visions in
the night
YOU DREAM FOR TWO HOURS
every night, but for something so com-
mon, it’s a remarkably enigmatic process.
Only in the past few decades, with the ad-
D
vance of technology like fMRIs that lets
us record and visualize activity in the
brain, have neuroscientists begun to fig-
ure out how and why we experience these
reveries. While sleepy interludes seem
to rely on many of the same mental pro- C
cesses we use while awake, researchers
are still trying to understand the way
A
they work together during slumber.
Here’s how we think our brains drive our
nocturnal hallucinations.
BY L I N DZ I W E S S E L /
ILLUSTRATION BY ST E P H A N I E UNGER
A/Remember
Dreams tap memories stored
in connections between brain
cells, which the hippocampus
tracks as they form. At night
it directs neurons to replay
recollections, facilitating long-
term storage. That could be
why reality seeps into our
visions—but not why they
tend to warp reality.
8 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
OG ETHER TEM TAKE
E T SYS
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S
M
M AR SH
OR
CO O
L
H F
A
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WHERE DID IT
COME FROM?
HOW DID IT
TAKE SHAPE? FROM A
AND WHEN? AN E THAT’ ROTATING
BR S C
EM A P
CLOUD OF DUST
M AND GAS SALT WATER
A
A
ALSO INTERRUPTS
BL
THE PROCESS
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OF
STORING
RNA NEEDS IRON
AND MAGNESIUM
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EN
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BURST MEMBRANE
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PEARS
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VENT? WE
TS IN
DON’T REALLY
KNOW!
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M
TH
SO
THING WE’D
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ALSO CALLED
BUT
EUKARYOTES, THEY
ST
HOW?
WILL EVENTUALLY BUT..
R
S
EVOLVE INTO
FI
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ALL COMPLEX
BANG HAPPE
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ORGANISMS
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AMINO ACIDS SS AT LAND TOOK SHAPE
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IF YOU FLY OVER THE DESERT 1/Planning
on the southern coast of Peru, One theory holds that artists first
you’ll spot dozens of line drawings, painted these designs on canvas.
stretching hundreds of feet across They could sketch an image, then
the arid landscape. The Nazca scale it up proportionally with
people created these images— some type of grid system, as to-
depicting such characters as a day’s architects do with blueprints.
whale, a hummingbird, and an They’d use poles and rope to map
astronaut- esque man—nearly the lines across the desert.
2,000 years ago. The etchings may
have served as a massive astronom-
ical calendar or offered tribute to
the gods, though their actual pur-
pose still eludes historians. While
some suspect alien interference, the
methods the Nazca used probably
aren’t quite so far-fetched.
2/Creation
To create straight lines, the
Nazca people would pull a cord
taut between two stakes, then
etch the paths by scraping away
dark rock to reveal a lighter layer
beneath. They created spirals by
tying a cable to a central post and
walking around in circles.
3/Preservation
Winds and rain could easily turn
the desert back into a blank rus-
set canvas. That’s why the Nazca
piled up oxidized stones on the
sides of their markings; the rocks
are heavy enough to withstand
gusts and the region’s scant rain,
protecting the lines within.
4/Viewing
These sketches caught public at-
tention in the early 20th century,
as planes gave us a bird’s-eye
view—the best way to take them in.
But the Nazca didn’t need anachro-
nistic (or alien) flying machines to
see their creations: They’re visible
from nearby mountain peaks.
12
health crisis, including vaping, HIV, and opioid addiction. Pevzner,
POV who took over the program in 2017, still heads into the field—though
day to day he focuses more on developing coursework and swap-
ping insights with similar programs around the world. In 2006, for
example, he investigated an unusual tuberculosis outbreak among
methamphetamine users in Washington state. By poking through
health records, his team determined the cases were all linked to an
WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT? earlier outbreak in the 1990s through an infected woman who didn’t
complete her antibiotic regimen. The investigation also revealed a
larger pattern: A lack of transportation and housing kept many peo-
ple from finishing treatment. Pevzner suggested providing patients
BY ELEANOR CUMMINS / PHOTOGRAPH BY AMANDA RINGSTAD
with temporary shelter and financial support, measures that helped
public health officials stem the bacteria’s spread.
IN 1995, ERIC PEVZNER TOOK A TEMPORARY GIG AT HIS In 2020, COVID-19 has presented EIS with one of its trickiest fact-
alma mater, Michigan State University, while he applied to med finding missions, and a new priority for Pevzner and his colleagues.
school. But this project—investigating how a sense of community in- With little warning and no prior knowledge of the disease, which
fluences wellness—intrigued him in a way a clinic never could. emerged in China’s central Hubei province in late 2019, the EIS has
Within the heaps of paperwork, he uncovered a compelling com- had to develop expertise on the pandemic in real time.
bination of science and service. “I didn’t really understand anything Pevzner, along with seven past and present officers, began tracing
about the field,” Pevzner says of his first foray into public health. By COVID-19 on the ground this past March, after an EIS alum work-
uniting disparate fields like psychology and economics, he and his ing in Salt Lake County, Utah, invited them to visit. They went from
colleagues were finding ways to improve people’s lives. household to household, gathering data via surveys, swabs, and
Pevzner never did end up in med school. Instead the research led blood samples to calculate the virus’s “attack rate”—the percentage
to a fellowship at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preven- of an exposed population that contracts the disease in a given period.
tion (CDC), which in 2005 ushered him into a more mysterious side Tallying this within families can help estimate community spread
of medicine: compositing scattered patient stories into detailed por- and guide healthcare systems as they stock supplies and ramp up
traits of disease. He’s spent his career as a scientific sleuth, and now service. To evade nosy neighbors, the team donned their personal
serves as chief of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), an protective equipment stealthily in backyards and garages. “Many
elite postgrad program producing the world’s best health detectives. people have never seen someone in full PPE, except in movies like
Founded in 1951 to address the threat of biological tactics in the Contagion or Outbreak,” Pevzner says of the anxiety-provoking com-
Korean War, the EIS has trained more than 3,800 officers, Pevzner bination of gowns, face shields, gloves, and masks.
included. Epidemiologists, doctors, nurses, and even veterinarians As new clues surface, the team’s practices change too. For in-
learn to chart the chain of transmission through people who have stance, when reports emerged citing loss of smell and taste as
been exposed to a pathogen and those they may have in turn in- symptoms of COVID-19, Pevzner’s crew modified its surveys and
fected. Officers tap patients’ memories, documents like payroll logs circled back to previous interviewees. Without this tidbit, the inves-
and flight manifests, and technologies like cellular location data and tigators might have overlooked some patients, allowing the infected
computer modeling. With each new link, EIS experts refine their to unknowingly continue transmitting the disease.
answers to the big questions: how contagious a disease is, who’s at The constant doubling back can be frustrating, Pevzner admits,
risk, and what policies might help to curb its spread—from social but the detectives train to keep up. Whether it’s the present pan-
distancing to funding vaccine development. demic or the next novel disease, the best way to track and stop a
EIS officers and alumni have tackled every major modern public pathogen is to adapt alongside it. “We have to be nimble,” he says.
14 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
MICHELE ANDREWS (PROP STYLING)
WHERE WE WENT WRONG
BIG Q S
LITTLE Q
WILL DISEASES ALWAYS OUTSMART
IS HAND- US? When you’ve been publishing for a century and a half, some off-
base ideas are going to creep into your pages. We’re diving into the
archives to give you a fresher take on “popular science.”
W A S H I N G
BY P U R B I TA S A H A
R EA LLY A
phase of trials for a new HIV treat- ing off any specialized response
ment described as a “mutation human cells create to fight it.
booster.” PopSci soon wrote about Regardless, Pulendran thinks our
the intriguing procedure, which bodies may hold the key. In 2020 he
PA N AC E A?
would supposedly introduce mis- and his colleagues used careful doses
takes into the virus’s DNA and cause of HIV to trigger a flood of antibod-
it to self-destruct: “In the movies, ies in a monkey’s reproductive tract.
this technique, known as lethal mu- Most subjects were protected for six
tagenesis, would create a supergerm, months. And back in 2019, another
BY K AT E S C H N E R
but in real life it’s spawning a power- group effectively cured a patient by
ful new class of antiviral drugs.” giving him stem cells endowed with a
The therapy failed to trigger vi- rare, beneficial gene mutation.
ral suicide, and experiments ceased. All these tiny breaks in the case
SOAP, WATER, AND TIME: this for 20 to 30 seconds for HIV deaths have since fallen sharply could add up in time. “I wouldn’t
That’s the recipe for healthy maximum effectiveness. thanks to prophylactic medication, be surprised if in a decade we have
paws. For thousands of Such rigor can clean off safe sex, and drugs that keep the a vaccine with 50 percent protec-
years, entire religions and anything from E. coli to the pathogen from replicating, but the tion,” Pulendran says. (That’s on par
cultures have leaned on novel coronavirus. A study virus continues to elude one-shot with the flu shot.) Paired with exist-
the practice for cleanliness, in the American Journal methods. “It plays a cat-and-mouse ing stopgaps, that could be what it
but it’s become more popu- of Public Health suggests game with the immune system,” takes to outmaneuver the powerful
lar in the past two centuries that regular hand-washing says Bali Pulendran, a professor germ—no sci-fi cure-alls required.
as the sanitizing power of cuts cases of gastrointesti-
sudsing agents and running nal illnesses by 30 percent EXPLAIN THE IMMUNE
H 2 O have become more and of respiratory infec-
clear. Still, is the simple act tions by 20 percent. SYSTEM LIKE I’M 5
as effective at thwarting mi- Still, the safeguard isn’t
BY S A R A K I L EY WAT S O N
crobes as we think? a universal solution. Nearly
“Hand-washing is a catch- half the world’s population THE IMMUNE SYSTEM, WHICH IS MADE UP OF
all preventive measure,” doesn’t have access to a sink white blood cells, the spleen, and bone marrow, acts
explains Emory University and a bottle of Dial. There’s like an invisible cavalry in our bodies. When it spots an
epidemiologist Matthew also the question of whether intruder like a virus, it dispatches Y-shaped antibody
Freeman; it rids our skin of what we do after we wash proteins that lock on to a particular baddie to mark it
foodborne germs, chemi- our hands helps or harms for attack. But the strategy isn’t exactly perfect.
cals, and other undesirable the pathogen- stripping Sometimes the microscopic defense revolts, and
substances. The suds, for process. So far medical re- doctors are still baffled as to why. What they do know,
the most part, don’t kill searchers know that wet though, is that when things go haywire, our internal
pathogens. Soap is a surfac- skin can pick up loads more fighters can destroy healthy cells and organs, causing
tant, which means it makes bacteria, possibly render- lupus and other illnesses in at least 20 million Ameri-
it easier to clear away oils ing the whole sani tizing cans. Daniel Davis, a professor of immunology at
and dirt. Water then rinses process useless. Wiping fin- the University of Manchester, says it’s possible that
off the contaminants, car- gers and palms with a paper antibodies end up targeting the wrong bits because
rying along microbes for towel might prove better certain dastardly germs can resemble human proteins.
the ride. “By rubbing your than running them under In other cases invaders might overwhelm the first
hands together, you cre- a jet air dryer, but that step line of attacking white blood cells, triggering a harm-
ate the friction to get them of this seemingly simple for- ful overreaction. As long as our immune systems are
off,” Freeman says. Health mula needs to be tested and constantly doing battle, they’re liable to mistake
experts recommend doing probed by many more folks. some friends for foes in the trenches.
16 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
PUZZLE?
FIT
ANIMALS
AS TOLD TO S A N D R A G U T I E R R EZ G .
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 17
BIG Q S
POSTCARD
F O R E C A S T
WHY DOES
CAN WE
PATIENT
ZERO MATTER? COOK UP
BY JAC K H E R R E R A
VACCINES
IN EARLY DECEMBER OF Tracking down a virus’s
2013, Emile Ouamouno, a first human host serves a
2-year-old boy in southern critical function. In smaller ANY QUICKER?
Guinea, began vomiting outbreaks it helps pub-
from an unknown illness. lic health officials isolate BY U L A C H R O BA K
A few days later, he died. sick people and stop the
Then, just around New spread of a disease. In
Year’s, his mother and large ones it lets scien- BEFORE VACC I N E S , virus’s genetic code straight
sister succumbed to simi- tists mark the start of the physicians would blow small- into the body’s defense sys-
lar symptoms. epidemic curve and chart pox scabs up people’s noses tems, we might teach white
This is the story that their how a contagion moves or stab them with pus-laced blood cells to recognize and
father, Etienne Ouamouno, through a population. needles to build up their resis- ambush diseases like influ-
told disease specialists Most of the work re- tance to the virus. It usually enza, explains Shane Crotty,
when they arrived in his quires “shoe-leather worked: Patients would feel a professor at La Jolla Insti-
village in hazmat suits the epidemiology,” says Ron mildly ill, then grow immune. tute for Immunology. The
following year. Using viral Waldman, a global-health But because the pathogen workaround could allow new
samples collected from professor at George was still living inside them, vaccines for Zika, rabies, and
dozens of Guineans, a Eu- Washington University. they could spread it to others. more unfamiliar illnesses to
ropean lab confirmed the “You couldn’t do it all in a By the 1930s, medical re- reach large-scale clinical tri-
cause: Ebola, a highly in- lab,” he explains. searchers had figured out how als in less than a year.
fectious pathogen picked While there’s no replace- to breed harmless forms of The real game changer,
up from bats that kills close ment for door-to-door bugs to stuff into sterilized in- though, will come when vi-
to half of its victims, often detective work, genetic jections. Since then, vaccines rologists no longer need to
via hemorrhaging. But the analysis tools now offer have saved tens of millions design vaccines that combat
tests didn’t identify the or- a shortcut to the roots of lives, but the pace of devel- specific strains. For infec-
igins of the outbreak—so of a disease. During the opment can be glacial. Over tious pathogens that mutate
doctors headed back into COVID-19 pandemic, for the past century, it’s taken an quickly, immunologists like
the field to interview those instance, it took research- average of 25 years to create Crotty might scout out the
affected about their com- ers just over a month to a “dead” virus that can protect proteins in a germ’s genetic
ings and goings. follow multiple strains of humans. But when faced with makeup that don’t change
After three months of viral DNA to entry points new and rapidly spreading and craft synthetic ver-
fact-finding, the chain of around the United States. contagions, could a different sions, allowing the body to
cases led back to Etienne, Documenting COVID approach cut that timeline track intruders even after
whose son epidemi- won’t reverse any harm, down to just a few months? they’ve morphed. Such treat-
ologists now consider but “it allows us to learn One experimental method ments may become available
patient zero for the 2014 how the virus got into the involves dosing patients with in the next decade. With a
Ebola epidemic. The two- population,” Waldman small bits of viral DNA and portion of the code already
year rampage spurred says. “That would have RNA instead of a genetically deciphered, drug companies
the creation of a vaccine tremendous implications watered-down version of the would have what they need to
that was approved by the for controlling these kinds pathogen itself. By shoot- vaccinate people safely and
United States in 2019. of events in the future.” ing synthesized pieces of a at record speed.
18 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
BIG Q
THE
BY RO B V ER G ER
Y BY
Y P O GRAPH
T N OV
U S K H ASA
R
20 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
help ensure we would have enough nimble and well-funded
minds dedicated to tracking contagions at any given time—
something that’s not currently a given. Caitlin Rivers, an
epidemiologist at the Center for Health Security at Johns
Hopkins University, estimates that the government typi-
cally employs just a handful of infectious disease modelers,
who quickly become swamped in a crisis. “What usually hap-
pens is academics drop what they’re doing and volunteer to
COVID-19 IS POISED TO enter the history books as a do this work,” she says, which isn’t how other crucial public
catastrophic pandemic. While combating a new disease is dif- systems operate. “When there is a hurricane off the coast of
ficult, we can’t blame this outbreak’s losses on the pathogen’s Florida, we’re not like, ‘Who wants to model?’”
novelty alone. We also suffered from a lack of preparedness. Transmission modeling can guide policymakers in safe-
As early as February 2020, there were signs that the guarding the populace. The process involves gathering data
virus, which had emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, and devising formulas to study how a bug will affect us un-
would spread globally, notes Jeremy Konyndyk, an expert in der varied conditions. For example, if SARS-CoV-2 spreads
outbreak readiness and a senior policy fellow at the Center more in crowded indoor spaces, we can plug that info into a
for Global Development think tank. Most nations didn’t im- simulation and see how many would likely get sick if, say, we
plement preventive measures until March or April. “A big were allowed to go drinking in bars without wearing masks.
distinguishing feature of countries that have done well—or As is the case with weather, it would be impossible to fore-
even, in the US, areas that have done well—is timing,” he cast every pathogenic storm that might lurk on the horizon.
says. The other half of the equation, Konyndyk points out, is But, a centralized operation could show how an existing dis-
how well governments reacted once the pandemic hit. ease might spike in the next week or month, and assign it a
We know COVID-19 won’t be our last global outbreak. threat level based on how dangerous it looks. If case counts
Experts point toward a spate of recent public health crises— climbed to the next rung on the ladder, it would trigger the
SARS in 2003, the H1N1 scare of 2009, and Ebola in 2014—as implementation of preplanned mandates, like sending bar
indications that the interconnected, fast-moving nature of patrons out to the patio or entirely shutting down busi-
the modern world makes the spread of new illnesses unavoid- nesses, to keep the outbreak from surging out of control.
able. But how can we get ready for an unknown pathogen? That kind of clear, uniform messaging “would help sup-
The first step is to identify potential threats so we know port the kinds of trillion-dollar decisions we are making right
where to focus preventive measures. The good news is that now,” Rivers says. Such information can save lives. Computer
virologists already do this by taking samples from wild simulations released in May 2020 by Columbia University
animals—birds, swine, bats—that harbor microbes capable suggest that if stay-at-home actions had been imposed one
of jumping to humans the way SARS-CoV-2, the baddie that week earlier—on March 8 instead of March 15—the US could
causes COVID-19, did. But public health scholars say we have avoided some 35,000 COVID-19 deaths.
should also do a lot more to keep up after a new bug makes the Such a setup could also keep tabs on our readiness for
leap. Specifically, they recommend a national modeling center a spike. Beth Cameron, the former senior director for the
that shows how a pathogen might spread and ensures we have National Security Council’s Directorate for Global Health
the information we need to make tough decisions about it. This Security and Biodefense, imagines that the monitoring center
federal-level hub could monitor viral trends and track the read- could investigate crucial metrics such as available ICU beds.
iness of supply chains for therapies and protective equipment. “We’re not just mapping the hurricane,” she says, “we’re also
Experts like Konyndyk take inspiration for this would-be mapping the capabilities to manage the hurricane.”
institution from our handling of another disastrous phenom- Cameron, who is now a VP for global biological policy at
enon: cyclones. They point to the National Hurricane Center, the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative (the Trump adminis-
a part of the National Weather Service that projects when tration dissolved the directorate about a year after she left),
and where a storm might hit, complete with a cone of un- says that ensuring ready access to items like N95 masks and
certainty—the known unknowns of a forecast. An office like specimen-collecting swabs will help us respond quickly to fu-
that for infectious disease modeling, Konyndyk says, could ture pandemics. Moreover, she points out, “A robust supply
distribute information to public officials and the masses. The chain is not just about stockpiling, it’s about being able to
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other pivot.” The government could identify companies capable of
government agencies do some of this already, but it’s “piece- switching their production lines over to make needed equip-
meal,” he says: “Are they definitive, systematic, intentionally ment and agree on plans for doing so before they’re needed.
communicated, intentionally public facing, in the way that While advocates for a national modeling center know that
the National Hurricane Center is? Not at all.” funding levels rise and fall as presidents and legislators come
Such a hub could bring virologists, epidemiologists, and and go, they say creating a centralized agency is the best way
biostatisticians together under one roof in an organization to guarantee readiness for outbreaks. Countless unknown
that might sit toward the upper levels of the Department threats loom on the horizon. When the next one hits, we’d
of Health and Human Services. If nothing else, this would best know how to get ahead of its path of destruction.
GOODS
F A L L
2 0 2 0
PG
22
PHOTOGRAPHS BY T R AV I S R AT H B O N E
CRAVE
tongue
twister
BY STA N H O R AC Z E K
MYSTERY F L AVO R S H AV E
multiplied on store shelves of late. Com-
panies tempt consumers into guessing
obscure tastes in special editions of every-
thing from chips to cookies. But at least
one cryptic bite’s profile remains under
wraps: Laffy Taffy debuted its White Mys-
tery Airhead in 1993, and the monochrome
concoction continues to baffle.
The candymaker receives heaps of fan
theories every day—from tart lemon to
smooth vanilla—but no one has gotten it
right. Today, only a few dozen people know
the secret identity; the rest of us have to
settle for simpler certitudes. The tang of
citric acid makes White Mystery undeni-
ably fruity, and a mixture of sugar and corn
syrup adds ample sweetness. The absence
of color, however, is the curveball: It de-
prives the brain of the visual cues that can
help taste buds determine the source and
the intensity of a given zing.
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 23
RANKED
THE RUBIK’S CUBE GETS ALL THE ATTENTION, BUT THE
enigma COLORFUL TOY ISN’T THE ONLY BAFFLING MECHANICAL
BY JO H N K E N N E DY
PUZZLE OUT THERE. HERE, YOU CAN FIND THE RIGHT
machines LEVEL OF CHALLENGE TO MATCH YOUR SOLVING SKILLS.
Hard
To untangle the extremely diffi-
cult Cast Rotor problem from
Japanese toymaker Hanayama,
align each identical zinc piece
exactly right and then separate
them. The fun isn’t finished
even if you figure out the path
to success—putting it back
Easier together can be just as tricky.
An extension of the human fas-
cination with furniture featuring
secret compartments, puzzle
boxes present a simple goal: Get
inside by sliding the wooden
panels in the correct order. This
agathis wood Oka Craft Yosegi
Kuzushi container will reveal
itself in precisely 12 moves.
Easiest
Claim victory over the roughly
6-inch-tall Oliver String by
removing the center ring. The
balls on either side of the spire
won’t fit through the gap, and
the flat wooden circles can’t
squeeze through the doughnut,
which will come off only when
you find the magic setup.
24 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
STARTER KIT
they’re
called
illusions
YOU DON’T NEED TO MAKE LADY
LIBERTY DISAPPEAR TO PULL OFF 4
BY STA N H O R AC Z E K
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 27
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MYSTERIES
FA L L 2 0 2 0
PHOTOGRAPH BY
T HE VOO RHES
SHINING LIGHT
38
ON THE DARKEST
COSMIC SECRETS
DO MEGA-
46
SHARKS SWIM
OUR OCEANS?
HOW TO STOP
60
SWARMS OF
BEE THIEVES
HIDDEN WORLDS,
66
RIGHT HERE ON
PLANET EARTH
REVEALED:
78
WHY HUMANS
SEE GHOSTS
A NEW WAY TO
88
SPY METHANE
CULPRITS
37
CHAMBER
OF
SECRETS
Our latest shot at spying
dark matter—and thus
revealing the makeup of
the universe—sits nearly
a mile underground
By Ryan Bradley
“
THIS IS THE MOST
planetary (in this case, galactic) rotation, which holds that the ob-
jects revolving around a core should move more slowly as the
PHYSICS, BECAUSE
distance from the middle increases. That they don’t suggests that
some farther-away mass influences these bodies. There are other WE STILL HAVE THE
clues out there, like the way light from remote stars bends on its
journey to us, and the consistency of the cosmic microwave back-
ground, and the elliptical and spiraling shapes of galaxies. All this BIG MYSTERIES IN
points to the existence of a great, nonluminous, unseen mass.
Peering out into space gives us a sense of the effect dark mat- FRONT OF US.
“
ter has on the form and appearance of our universe, but all that
evidence is indirect, a shadow of a shadow. This invisible stuff
will remain a mystery until physicists can observe the particle or —KEVIN LESKO
is not luminous, the yin to its yang. If lift had delivered us, I exchanged my boots for a pair of
that idea’s correct, what we’ve added up from everything cov- very clean trail runners that never left this space. I wiped
ered by the Standard Model would be mirrored by the WIMP down my phone, pen, notebook, and hands and stepped
presence. The universe, unknowable and chaotic as it may seem, across a sticky floor to remove any dust from the shoes,
tends toward elegant solutions like this one. Or elegant solutions then down a long hallway that led to the room where the
like this one tend to explain the universe. LZ was coming together. Through the doors came a long,
Still, even within the world of WIMPs, questions remain. The high whistle that sounded like a terrible scream.
particles might exist in a range of masses, from about one pro- “That’s the liquid nitrogen we’re running through the
ton to 100,000 protons. One experiment, called SuperCDMS, pipes—it’s loud!” yelled Aaron Manalaysay, a physicist
is searching for wee-er WIMPs than the LZ. Based in a nickel at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, over the
mine in Ontario, Canada, it relies on six detectors made of sili- gassy wails. Manalaysay was down here with a crew
con or germanium crystals; if a WIMP hits one and disturbs of graduate students, working over several months to
a crystal’s electrons, the interaction will create vibrations, a finish assembling all of LZ’s thousands of component
signal that can be amplified. The rig runs at –450°F to cut out parts, which took up nearly all the room.
the noise generated by thermal energy. And it also sits deep When the screaming died down, we walked through
underground—6,800 feet—shielded from the radioactivity of a set of double doors and into the space. I expected first
day-to-day life, the cosmic buzz coming off everything from to see the tank at the center of the LZ experiment, huge
stars to the soles of your Chuck Taylors. and gleaming. Instead there were rows of pipes and wires
There’s another xenon-based WIMP detection attempt, running from sensors to stacks of computers outside
an international effort located under Italy’s Gran Sasso the container; a cryogenics panel for cooling the xenon
“
the LZ included, even sparks of energy: a
if we don’t notice them. burst of photons.
MEGALODON
IT’S GOT TO BE OUT THERE. It doesn’t mat- and curious amateurs still highlight the research
ter that Otodus megalodon has by all scientific as a hint that Meg might persist.
accounts been extinct for more than 3 million Save for the outliers found by the Challenger,
years. The ongoing earthly presence of the enor- the megalodon’s fossil record indicates it was
mous shark persists in our collective imagination a shore-hugging creature, similar to its dis-
thanks to rumors, legends, and summer B flicks. tant cousin the great white. “Remains generally
Meg mythology often posits that the 50-foot come from coastal marine rock deposits formed
predator has been hiding for epochs somewhere in tropical-temperate areas,” says DePaul Uni-
at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a notion that’s versity shark researcher Kenshu Shimada. The
launched more than a few books and pseudo- species’s dietary habits further confirm a shal-
docs, all hinging on the fact that most of the low lifestyle, with gnawed ancient whale bones
planet’s nether waters are unexplored—and showing Meg’s preference for marine mammals.
therefore rife with primo dens for enigmatic These air breathers had to break through the
beasts. But based on what we know of the biolog- surface for oxygen, so paleontologists expect
ical adaptations required for life down below, not megalodon, like them, hung out near the shore.
many animals could pull off a deep-sea disap- The exact combination of factors that pushed
pearing act. If megalodon is still out there (and the ancient shark into extinction is still murky.
that’s a pretty big if), it’s not what it used to be. We do know that shallower oceanic zones were
Fossil shark teeth got people hooked on the undergoing dramatic changes around 3.5 million
Meg long before paleontology took off in the years ago, when the giant disappears from the
early 19th century, when scientists started fossil record. Water was growing cooler, making
cataloging fossils with gusto. In 1835, Swiss nat- marine mammals less abundant, and the newly
uralist Louis Agassiz described triangular, finely evolved great white may have served as a nimble
serrated teeth, which had been found worldwide competitor for resources. But there’s no way to
since antiquity, as belonging to a “megatooth” prove definitively what did in the Meg.
relative of the great white. The lack of certainty helps some maintain
Discoveries around the world—in locations hope of finding one in the deep. Believers have at
as diverse as Panama, Japan, Australia, and the least one thing right: The bottom of the sea is an
southeastern United States—piled up over time, enigma. Even though satellites have mapped 100
but one particular find raised the specter of a percent of its floor, a low-resolution chart alone
Meg still swimming in the deep. In 1875, during doesn’t give us great insight into what actually
an expedition for the Royal Society of London, lives there, says Louisiana Universities Marine
the HMS Challenger dredged up 4-inch-long teeth Consortium Executive Director Craig McClain,
from a depth of 14,000 feet near Tahiti. In 1959, who specializes in cataloging oceanic systems.
zoologist Wladimir Tschernezky, who made a While the idea of a deep-dwelling ancient crea-
hobby of researching “hidden animals” like Big- ture is highly improbable, he says, the sliver of
foot, estimated the specimens were just 11,300 possibility is still tempting. Less imposing crit-
years old. Other scientists have since dismissed ters have indeed shown up unexpectedly; in
this dating, but unscrupulous documentarians 1938 biologists identified (CONTINUED ON PAGE 51)
Pliny the Elder Danish scien- Swiss natural- The HMS Chal-
notes that large tist Nicolas Steno ist Louis Agassiz lenger dredges up
“tongue stones” dissects the head coins the name megalodon teeth
70 CE
found in the rock of a shark found Carcharodon from the deep sea
1666
1835
1875
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 49
Megalodon was a massive fish, but it wasn’t the biggest predator ever seen
OTHER OCEAN in the seas. We’ve adjusted our estimates of the shark’s size over the years,
BEHEMOTHS but most experts now suspect it stretched about 50 feet long. Here’s how it
stacks up against some modern ocean meat eaters.
O. megalodon, 50 feet
The largest predatory
fish of all time, Meg
was a relative of to-
day’s mako and great
white sharks.
1919
1974
2016
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 51
POPULAR SCIENCE
BY SARAH SCOLES
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
TYLER SPANGLER
FALL 2020
P SYC H E D E L I C D R U G S C A N H E L P E AS E
D E P R E S S I O N , A N X I E T Y, A N D A D D I C T I O N .
PAGE 52 B U T W H Y A R E T H O S E R E S U LT S E V E N
B E T T E R W H E N T R I P TA K E R S H AV E A
SPIRITUAL ENCOUNTER?
“I’M STILL HERE,” HE SAYS NOW. far, research from all over the world suggests the
If the statement doesn’t carry the triumphant drugs can break old mental patterns and help
tone one might expect of a person who has sur- fight addiction, alleviate depression, shrink exis-
vived decades longer than medical science tential fears, and improve relationships.
predicted, that’s because the years of treatments, Additionally, investigators have been sur-
and the constant threat of death, dulled and de- prised by another consistent finding: When
pressed him for a long time. “It was exhausting,” people have spiritual experiences while tripping,
he says, “and it was no way to live.” they’re even more likely to kick bad habits and
In 2010, almost 20 years into his battle with be happier or more satisfied with their lives in
cancer, Martin read about a strange research the long term. The mysterious encounters take
program. Participants wouldn’t take a magic pill many forms. Sometimes people feel they’re in
that might shrink their tumors in a novel way. No. the presence of God, or of a more nebulous entity
They’d be getting drug-drugs: Brain scientists like Ultimate Reality— a higher power that re-
wanted to see how hallucinogens that alter think- veals the truth of the universe— or they just feel
ing patterns and sensory perceptions might affect a novel connectedness to everything from now
afflicted people’s mental health. “I had always been back to the big bang and beyond. Because of the
interested in psychedelics but never had taken link between the mystical and the medical, scien-
any,” says Martin, a retired clinical psychologist. “I tists like those at Johns Hopkins are probing why
was terrified that I would mess up.” people have transcendent tendencies at all, how
With someone else guiding him, though, the that might help our brains, and what it means for
experience seemed less risky. Those someones— how we perceive the world.
scientists in the psychiatry department of Johns Martin signed up for the trial and prepared for
Hopkins University—are part of the burgeoning it in a series of counseling sessions with William
field of psychedelic studies. Recently invigorated Richards, a clinical psychologist at Johns Hop-
by a more permissive regulatory environment, kins School of Medicine. On game day, Martin sat
the sector investigates if, how, and why reality- on a couch in a campus medical office that had
bending substances might help human brains. So been transformed into a calming living room,
54 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
THE GOD MOD
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 55
their descriptions according to how well they fit the mystical experience” that satisfied all of the
classical characteristics of a mystical experience. De- criteria. One participant later told of a conver-
veloped by Princeton philosopher Walter Stace in sation with God—who had appeared as golden
1960, that list of effects includes feeling unity with the streams of light—assuring them that every-
universe, in touch with something holy, and as though thing that exists is perfect, even if their limited
the episode is hyperauthentic—more real than reality. corporeal self couldn’t fully understand that.
About 40 percent of the Good Friday participants fit More than a year later, two-thirds of participants
all the criteria “very well.” A few years later, Richards, ranked their trip in the top five most spiritually
then working at the Maryland Psychiatric Research significant moments in their lives.
Center, co- authored a paper with Pahnke titled Following this toe-dip back into mysticism, the
“Implications of LSD and Experimental Mysticism.” Johns Hopkins group continued to investigate the
In the mid-1960s, though, new US regulations links among psychedelics, spiritual episodes, and
made producing and selling psychedelics illegal— quality of life. In a follow-on from 2011, the majority
whether for recreational or clinical use. Once these of participants had complete mystical experiences,
drugs became a synecdoche for the hippie counter- which produced “positive changes in attitudes,
culture, and some researchers (including ones at the mood, and behavior” that stuck around long af-
CIA) did less-than-ethical work, the stigma stuck. ter the compounds were metabolized. In a study
Studying these substances depended on getting the the same year that looked into personality traits,
go-ahead from the FDA and the Drug Enforcement people who had had a mystical experience scored
Administration. The change essentially shut down much higher for openness after the trip than they
most work like Pahnke’s; the powers that be were had before. The transformation was larger than
tightfisted with both permission and research money adults—cemented in their ways—normally make
for topics that might be seen as sketchy. Griffiths, over decades of natural maturation.
who had been building up his street cred in psycho- Next the scientists investigated whether
pharmacology, instead rose to prominence studying psychedelics—which seemed to so alter psychol-
people’s relationships to alcohol, cigarettes, and sed- ogy and perspective—might help curb addiction,
atives. Only after he’d established himself as a legit as some decades-old and not-so-meticulous stud-
substance-use investigator did he submit a safe re- ies had suggested. In 2014 the team did a small
search plan to the authorities. trial with smokers. After two or three doses of
After a decades-long dry spell, in 2000, Griffiths and psilocybin, along with cognitive behavioral ther-
Richards—who had since moved to Johns Hopkins— apy, 80 percent of the subjects quit for at least
were the first of many to get a green light and funds six months, the investigators found. Varenicline,
to resume rigorous psilocybin studies. They began the best smoking- cessation drug on the market
their project, funded by the National Institute of Drug at the time, had just around a 35 percent suc-
Abuse, where Pahnke had left off: with mystical expe- cess rate, while cognitive behavioral therapy on
riences and their effects on the mindsets of healthy its own typically led fewer than 30 percent of
volunteers. They wanted to know what would happen smokers to stop. Something else also stood out:
to the moods and psychologies of stable-brained people If someone had a mystical experience while trip-
who ingested psilocybin, and what those changes had ping, they were even more likely to succeed.
to do with any spiritual strangeness that might occur Regulation and stigma had also hampered early
while they were under the influence. The men noted research into psychedelics’ effects on anxiety and
in their work that many cultures have centuries- old depression in cancer patients, so the Johns Hop-
histories of using hallucinogens, a legacy and tradition kins team picked that back up too. Here their
researchers are now beginning to respect rather than work, including the study in which Clark Martin
dismiss for its nonmodern non-Westernness. participated, found the same spiritual uptick. The
Their first endeavor was essentially a more rigor- substances appeared to perhaps kick-start new
ous, updated version of the Good Friday Experiment. patterns in the brain: less sad and scared ones,
In a double-blind study, the scientists gave 36 volun- with shifted perspective and priorities.
teers psilocybin in one session and a placebo during As his own trip progressed, Martin—at last
the next—or vice versa. When stimulated by the flying comfortably high—was ready to find
chemical, 61 percent of the subjects had a “complete out what the drugs might be able to do for him.
56 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
THE GOD MOD
With the psilocybin coursing through his system, he try to make sense of them,” he says of his Earth
stayed in his mental cathedral and waited for an an- balloon, his gymnasium sanctuary, his absent
swer from the God he’d reached out to. God. He just experienced them.
And waited. That was new for Martin, who had navigated
None came. his life only with logic and rationality. This trip,
The silence did not disturb Martin, though. And though, was just about being alive and alert to
soon another vision appeared. There he was: living on every interaction, feeling whatever feelings he
a bubble. Its surface was thick, yet fragile like a bal- had, sensing whatever sensations arose. To use
loon, but it was the size of a planet. Other people were the hip lingo of mindfulness, he was Present.
here too, living within different parts of its membrane. After the session ended, so did his depression.
It’s tempting to view this as a metaphor, the way
a dream interpreter might read into your night- MARTIN DIDN’T HEAR from any deities, but
time interludes. But to Martin the images weren’t plenty of other trippers have. Scientists want to
abstractions. They weren’t to be parsed. Meaning understand how their perceptions compare to
wasn’t the point. “I didn’t get hung up with them or godly encounters sober people have, in terms
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 57
rendezvous with a supreme figure, either
when sober or when they had taken a psy-
chedelic. More than 4,000 responded.
They published the results in 2019.
The sober group was more likely than
the other one to label the being God. The
psychedelic users instead tended to call it
Ultimate Reality. But both sets generally
agreed that whatever they’d encountered
was “conscious, benevolent, intelligent,
sacred, eternal, and all-knowing.” And
the majority said the experience left them
with more purpose and meaning, greater
satisfaction with their lives, and a de-
creased fear of death.
Perhaps the most striking result,
though, involved people from both groups
who hadn’t subscribed to the idea of a
higher power to start with. After their
hangout with an omniscient entity, more
than two-thirds became believers. (If
you’ve ever tried to change an atheist’s
mind, you know how big a feat that is.)
The shift means, essentially, that
they thought the experience revealed
something true about the world. As
the paper put it, “The majority of both
groups endorsed that that which was
encountered existed, at least in part, in
some other reality and that it continued
to exist after the encounter.”
One participant, a data architect in
his 40s who wished to remain anon-
ymous because his substance use
occurred outside a clinical setting, has
had plenty of mystical encounters, but
he views these chemical creations as
of quality, authenticity, and lasting effect. Alan internal. “Psychedelics allow you to explore your
Davis, an Ohio State professor of social work who own mind,” he says. For instance, when he met Jesus
collaborated on mental health and substance Christ while under the influence of ayahuasca, he
abuse studies as a postdoc in Griffiths’ lab and is believed he was simply meeting “the construct of
still affiliated with it, believes the mystical aspect Christ that exists in my own mind.”
of trips is a factor in their success. “It seems to be Whether or not such occurrences reveal some-
a big piece of the puzzle,” he says. thing about the actual nature of the universe doesn’t
To gather a wide variety of accounts—from a necessarily change the clinical outcomes. “If some-
larger number of mind-altered and sober subjects one did have a God-encounter experience,” Davis
than they could accommodate in the lab—Davis says, “and because of this they say, ‘I now know that
and his Johns Hopkins colleagues created an God exists,’ people get rubbed the wrong way: ‘You
internet- based survey to find out about peo- can’t possibly know that. You can’t prove that to be
ple’s “God encounter experiences.” The survey true.’ As a scientist, I agree with that.”
asked individuals about their most memorable However, if it’s not real, he adds, “That doesn’t make
THE GOD MOD
the experience any less valuable. The clinician or exactly why any of it changes people’s personali-
part of me is like, ‘Does it matter if it’s true?’” ties for the better, boosts them out of mood disorders,
or rids them of addictions. Those questions merit an-
WHETHER THE MYSTICAL experiences are swers. The science’s consistent results have helped
real or imagined, or both, the positive changes erode the stigma surrounding hallucinogens and taken
they produce in people stick around, and scien- them beyond the province of hippies, military exper-
tists are closing in on some potential chemical iments, and fringe academics. After approvals and
reasons why psychedelics so often leave folks research funding resumed in the late 1990s, that work
feeling misty-eyed and spiritual. largely happened through drug-focused nonprofit or-
Johns Hopkins’ Roland Griffiths and colleague ganizations like the Multidisciplinary Association for
Frederick Barrett, a cognitive neuroscientist, Psychedelic Studies and the Heffter Research Insti-
laid out the basics in a 2017 paper called “Classic tute. Now universities have membership cards too. In
Hallucinogens and Mystical Experiences: Phe- April 2019, Imperial College London spun up the Cen-
nomenology and Neural Correlates.” To start, tre for Psychedelic Research. Johns Hopkins opened
certain psychedelics stick to serotonin receptors its center the same year. Clinical trials are ongoing or
called 5-HT2A in the central nervous system, have been approved at the University of Chicago, Yale,
producing classic trippy effects in ways neuro- New York University, the University of Arizona, and the
scientists don’t totally understand yet. But the University of California, San Francisco, among others.
substances seem to most affect a framework Whatever you make of them, psychedelic treat-
in the brain called the default mode network, ments hold promise that keeps pushing the research
which typically lights up when you’re pointing forward. Davis thinks often of a young woman in
your attention inside yourself and not toward the a Johns Hopkins study who had struggled for a de-
outside world—like when you’re daydreaming. cade with severe depression and social anxiety. She
When you pop or sip or chomp on a hallucinogen, thought about suicide often. But after her treatment
this grid calms down, and its connections and os- with psilocybin, things changed. For example, Davis
cillations change. Since in its sober state, it’s all says, “The look in her eye that she had gone a whole
about self-contemplation, Griffiths and Barrett week without thinking of ending her life. It doesn’t get
suspect that disrupting it results in the opposite: better than seeing hope in somebody.”
the “dissolution of the self,” or the loss of your Davis believes psychedelics do something deeper
sense of being a lone individual. That could also than traditional pharmaceuticals or therapies.
explain the feeling of connectedness to every- “Whether that’s because of the mystical experiences
thing outside who you are. or the insight, something is happening at a level that is
Changes in this network also remove your sense not just about reducing symptoms,” he says.
of space and time. Voila: mystical experience. That’s what ensued for Clark Martin. Instead of
Is that really…it? focusing on cosmic connectedness, he thought about
Not quite, according to Bar-Ilan University’s Ido how to forge better interpersonal links with people
Hartogsohn, a scholar of science, technology, and here on the ground—especially his daughter and his
society. He postulates that psychedelic encounters father, who was struggling with Alzheimer’s. Martin
with the seemingly divine feel so significant—so recalls his intuitive experience of his surroundings,
real—because the drugs also enhance the mean- both illusory and physical, and how much the mere
ing people impose on experiences. Consider that presence of psychologist Richards meant to him. He
if you had a simple nighttime dream in which you wanted to find a way to be there for others.
met God, you’d be more likely to wake up, shake “It wasn’t about being smarter or reading more
your head, and tell the story as a funny anecdote stuff,” he says. “It was having a visceral experience
than you’d be to ditch your atheism. Hartogsohn’s of the alternative”—living a moment emotionally, lis-
work is more philosophical than neurological, but tening, and just being there—“and understanding it
the people wielding the fMRI machines could de- was possible. I don’t think any amount of smarts and
vise ways to investigate his ideas. education would do the same.”
And perhaps they will. Because no one really No, it took someone placing a magic-mushroom
knows for sure yet why these drugs make peo- compound in a chalice—for science—and passing it to
ple mystical, what that mysticality really means, a man who’d been almost-dying for far too long.
60
inside
the
bee
sting
ANDREW ZALESKI
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
THE VOORHES
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 61
T
he bee thieves come at
night, swooping in and
bugging out quicker than
the wings of the insects they steal.
And they always leave tracks.
Ray Olivarez knew this much, but he still expected a routine visit
when he drove to his apiary in California’s Central Valley one brisk
midwinter afternoon in 2016. As he parked, though, an uneasiness
fell over him. His hives hadn’t been visible when he’d crested the hill.
As he slowly marched toward the entrance, his face fell. The lock on
the gate? Cut. His instincts kicked in, and he looked down, seeing
squelched mud imprinted with ribbed tread marks.
A few days earlier, this yard had been home to 64 white wooden
boxes of bees almost ready to make the trip to a local almond farm,
where they would pollinate the trees. Now all he saw were the rectan-
gular impressions they’d left in the grass. Like hundreds of other
honey farmers every year, Olivarez was the victim of one of the most
fiendish agricultural crimes in America: hive theft.
Central California’s temperate climate provides ideal conditions
for the interdependent activities of raising bees and growing al-
monds. Mild winter rains spur the nuts to grow, while dry summers
ensure they don’t fall victim to fungal infections before harvest. The
state produces 80 percent of the world’s crop, with the bulk of its
1.3 million acres of trees clustered throughout a few particularly fer-
tile counties. From February through mid-March, their buds burst
into petals of pink and white—an irresistible treat to honeybees.
Farmers rent Apis mellifera by the boxful to pollinate their orchards
(it’s easier, and less time-consuming, than tending bees themselves);
hitting all 250,000 farms requires the labor of some 500,000 hives na-
tive to California, as well as another 1.5 million trucked in from as far he checked in days later and found tire
east as Florida. That’s 31 billion buzzing critters in total. tracks, he figured foul play was afoot.
The big migration usually begins in January, with apiarists hauling “Bees are an easy target to grab and load
hive-laden pallets to orchards on flatbed trucks and hoisting them off in the back of a pickup,” Olivarez says. “But
with forklifts. The rule, generally, is two boxes per acre of almonds. A the lucky thing is that they were stolen in
crate of pollinators that would have cost just $11 to rent in the 1970s is Butte County, which is Rowdy’s jurisdic-
now more than 10 times as valuable. A seasoned, second-generation tion.” That’s Rowdy Jay Freeman, bee-thief
bee wrangler like Olivarez, with 18,000 hives of strong insects, can gumshoe extraordinaire.
command anywhere from $180 to $220 for each. A 15-year veteran officer as well as vice
But within weeks of arrival, the first signs of trouble emerge: a president of the state’s rural crime preven-
box lifted from some rural orchard, a pallet gone missing overnight. tion task force, Freeman polices the county
As the value of the crates has risen, so too has a new class of crimi- as a deputy sheriff. But over the past decade,
nals hell-bent on stealing honeybees. he’s come to be the main liaison between
That’s the situation Olivarez found himself in. He’d parked his col- law enforcement and the victims of hive
onies on a farm three hours north of San Francisco in January. When heists. It’s a role he grew into, first thanks to
62 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
I N S I D E T H E U LT I M AT E B E E S T I N G
insight he gained keeping his own hives, and watchful eye and fielding tips. Bee theft first hit his desk in 2012, while
more recently by embracing the latest in se- he worked the felony investigations unit inside the county sheriff’s
curity technology to thwart thieves. department. When the hive owner called Freeman to the scene, he
“I receive more attention from bee thefts blamed the crime on the hefty sums keepers secure from farmers to
than any homicide case I’ve ever worked,” pollinate their almond crops. “At the time it didn’t make a whole lot
says Freeman, who tends to be laconic, but of sense to me,” Freeman recalls. “I didn’t understand the business.”
is nevertheless easy to distinguish: Look for Back at the office, he gave himself a crash course on how the polli-
the shiny shaved head sitting atop a thin nators contribute to almond farming. Every hive contains one queen
frame in a brown sheriff’s uniform. and tens of thousands of drones and workers. The drones are male;
they mate with the queen, then immediately die. The workers are fe-
male and live for as little as four weeks, feeding the queen, caring for
the drones, collecting nectar, pollinating, and producing honey.
F R O M J A N U A RY T O M A R C H , These days, just as the market for their services is surging, the
Freeman drives the roads along Cen- creatures require more care than ever before. “You can’t just put
tral Valley’s almond orchards, keeping a bees out there like in the 1970s and go take the honey out in two
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 63
months,” says Eric Mussen, appeared suddenly four counties south of his
an emeritus apiculturist at the usual stomping grounds. Two weeks later,
University of California, Davis. Freeman cuffed 32-year-old Jacob Spath.
“If you’re away for two months Spath was a small-time beekeeper, who—
these days, you’ll probably have in a twist seemingly tailor-made to showcase
half your bees gone.” the insular nature of the industry— had
That’s because in 1987 the learned the ins and outs from Olivarez’s
pernicious varroa mite started parents. He’d even managed to prepare 76
laying siege to American honey- hives for pollination the year before. But in
bees. The parasite lays its eggs 2016, the farmer with whom he contracted
on pupae as they’re growing in- required 170. That’s when Spath started
side hives, sapping nutrients snooping. He could see Olivarez wasn’t
and carrying a disease that careless. In addition to printing his sur-
causes adult bees to emerge name on all his hives, he distributed the
with deformed, unusable wings. boxes throughout the holding yard instead
Varroa mites also spread vi- of leaving them by the road. He’d even gone
Sheriff Rowdy Jay ruses that help trigger colony collapse, a puzzling phenomenon that as far as installing protective gates on his
Freeman now has causes the inhabitants to buzz away, never to return. own dime. But Spath had an advantage
a personal passion As mites proliferated, apiarists who had once lost around 5 per- just by virtue of the bee yard’s location: a
for bees. cent of their colonies each year saw the number soar to as much secluded area near a municipal airport. Un-
as 50 percent. Moreover, the great irony of California’s robust al- der cover of darkness, Spath cut the lock on
mond industry is that it has, along with other agricultural pursuits, the gate and used a forklift borrowed from
gradually crowded out natural foraging land for bees. Despite their Olivarez’s parents to load their son’s 64 hive
diminutive size, the insects are capable of flying as far as five miles to boxes, four to a pallet, onto a flatbed truck.
collect nectar. But with a dearth of wildflowers, local breeders must Spath then drove four hours south.
now supplement nature’s food with pricey sugar solutions. It may have been a lucky tip that led Free-
While Freeman had grown up in a small agricultural community, man to the arrest, but it was his ability to
the nuances of the honeybee industry were new to him—and he was connect with the tight-knit community—and
fascinated. “I couldn’t believe how much there was to it and how in- his passion for investigating the heists—
telligent these insects are,” Freeman says. “It sucked me in.” After that put him in a position to receive it.
his first theft investigation, he became so absorbed in the intricacies “He’s taken it to another level for us,”
of beekeeping that he ended up buying six hives of his own the fol- Olivarez says. “He’s somebody that we can
lowing year. Caring for a humming brood has made him appreciate count on to help us with connections in
just how precious a healthy colony is. other counties, with sheriff’s departments
He also realized no one kept track of these thefts, so he began do- and police enforcement. And he’s been a
ing so himself. In 2013, according to his tally, just 128 boxes vanished. spokesperson for us.”
Soon he started noticing a pattern. Many thieves use the same flat- Butte County officials charged Spath
bed trucks and forklifts to steal hives that apiaries use to transport with grand theft of an animal, a first for bee
COURTESY OF THE CALIFORNIA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION
them—leading to the inescapable conclusion that the criminals look- thieves in California. He pleaded guilty four
ing to make a quick buck are often insiders. months after he stole Olivarez’s boxes, and
“Hive theft is almost like the perfect crime, because it’s beekeep- the court sentenced him to 90 days in jail.
ers stealing from other beekeepers in a lot of instances,” Freeman Whether his time behind bars had a wider
says. “To a lot of people, it just looks like maybe the thief is taking effect is doubtful. After peaking above 1,000
care of their own hives.” That makes it almost impossible to spot a in 2016 and 2017, thefts dipped to just 300
crook in the act. Many capers are grab-and-go schemes that unfold in 2018, but rose again to 542 in 2019. Buzz
quickly, aided by pollinating logistics. The boxes often sit scattered Landon, vice president of the California
on the periphery of a farm, near the sides of roads and along drive- State Beekeepers Association, worries that
ways. That simplifies the drop-off and pickup process for both robberies will put folks out of business.
apiarist and farmer—and for highway hive robbery too. “Thieves go “This is wrecking people’s livelihoods,”
in early or late at night and can load several hundreds in 20 minutes, says Landon, who mentored Freeman
hit the road, and be gone,” says Freeman. when the lawman got into bees. Most
In his first four years policing insect crimes, Freeman didn’t catch keepers spend about $300 per hive to
one thief—but he did build a network of trust. In 2016, a year when keep them healthy throughout the year.
bandits made off with more than 1,500 hives, a fellow apiculturist Money they make in rental fees generally
called the cops after spotting Olivarez’s branding on boxes that had covers those costs; in the summer, honey
64 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
I N S I D E T H E U LT I M AT E B E E S T I N G
production helps turn a profit. “The neat thing about these is they’re hooked up to the cloud,”
Thefts disrupt the entire process. Fewer says Freeman. “If the thieves decide to break the camera or steal it,
hives available for rent means less money, well, those pictures are stored, so you have them no matter what.”
which means less to invest back into care— All of this pales in comparison to Freeman’s latest plan. In 2019 he
which, ultimately, means fewer bees. started working with SmartWater CSI, a Florida-based company that
Freeman’s industry contacts made it clear produces a proprietary traceable liquid. Even after washing, the sub-
that 90 days in jail wouldn’t be much of a stances can remain on clothing and skin for weeks, visible only under
deterrent. The chances of capture were UV light. They can also shine through layers of paint—so bee thieves
too slim, the potential payoffs too high. He can’t easily cover up an identifying dab on the outside of a hive box.
decided it was time to focus his expertise Whether this level of trickery will help Freeman identify bee
on catching crooks in the act. snatchers will be revealed during the next few pollinating sea-
sons, but an early trial convinced him that the stuff works. In 2020,
thanks to SmartWater, his department finally booked two culprits
who had repeatedly stolen GPS-equipped farming hardware. “The
ON AN OVERCAST SATURDAY IN thieves had the solution all over their hands and all over the stolen
late April 2020, Freeman dons a different equipment,” he says. “It was pretty cool to see it all come together
type of uniform: a large white suit, almost and work as it’s intended.”
like a painter’s outfit, and long blue gloves. Freeman has set up a pilot program
An oversize netted hood shrouds his large- with the sheriff’s department to distrib- “Hive theft is
bridged nose and strong, cleft chin. In front ute the technology ahead of the 2021
of him are 96 white wooden boxes. Tiny
honeybees swarm all around him. dies is already using it: Buzz Landon, who
almost like
pollination season. At least one of his bud-
to make honey come summer. He’s no ca- of hives quickly turns impractical. Out-
sual keeper these days, and his personal fitting Olivarez’s fleet of colonies wouldstealing
investment in the insects helps drive his run more than $50,000. Freeman says
mission to track down thieves.
“I can help with both sides of the case: the
marking boxes with SmartWater adds up
to a few hundred bucks.
from other
law enforcement standpoint and the bee-
keeper’s standpoint,” says Freeman.
beekeepers.”
“I’ve been trying to express to beekeep-
ers that you really do need to do this stuff.
Freeman routinely advises peers on how It’s an expense, but it costs a lot more to — ROWDY JAY FREEMAN
to protect their colonies. Most in the industry lose a bunch of hives,” he says.
know enough to brand equipment with their Walking among his bees in the early
name, phone number, or personalized codes. afternoon, he remarks that in seven years,
Some stick GPS trackers on pallets, betting none of his own boxes have ever been stolen. He’s one of the lucky
that robbers will forklift the whole lot instead ones. Thieves hauled away 639 hives over the 2020 pollination sea-
of picking up individual boxes. Some even son, an increase over the previous year.
pool their money and hire private security “It really does piss you off,” he says. “A lot of these beekeepers are
guards to conduct nightly orchard patrols. my friends.” His word means a lot to them, since, after all, he’s one
Increasingly, Freeman promotes tech- of them now. That should help as he tries to get others to adopt anti-
nological approaches. He’s supported theft tech—the final piece, he hopes, in truly stemming hive heists.
outfitting pallets with microchips similar Come January, Freeman will be out patrolling in the orchards once
to the type owners use to claim runaway again. For now, there are bees to tend to. Soon they will start pro-
pets. And several years ago, Wildlife Pro- ducing honey, collecting nectar from nearby plants and holding it in
tection Solutions, a nonprofit that works a secondary stomach in order to get it back to the hive. But this day
to prevent big-game poaching, contacted marks a different occasion: It’s feeding day on this grassy field in the
him about installing cameras in orchards Central Valley. A flatbed truck is parked nearby, with a giant tank
during pollination season. The group pro- full of sugar syrup sitting on top. As he opens his hive boxes, gangs of
vided him with one to test out, and now he’s eager honeybees swarm the tiny yellow feeding troughs oozing with
looking to make them widely available. sweet liquid. Standing over them, Freeman cracks a proud smile.
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 65
66 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
WHERE
THE SUN
DON’T
SHINE
DANK.
TOMB-LIKE.
UNCIVILIZED.
CAVES GET A
BAD RAP, BUT
SCIENTISTS
AND EXPLORERS
ARE PLUNGING
DEEPER TO
LEARN THE
TRUE NATURE
OF THESE
INKY, ROCKY
CAVERNS.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
ROBBIE SHONE
BY PURBITA SAHA
67
CAVES HIDE SOME
OF THE EARTH’S
BEST-GUARDED
SECRETS.
Formed by millennia of rain trick-
ling through bedrock and ice, these
recesses act as time capsules for
anthropologists, biologists, and clima-
tologists, who search them for precious
remnants of life predating even the di-
nosaurs. Today, caving also attracts
nyctophiles seeking calm darkness
and self-trained cartographers look-
ing to draw a more complete picture
of the planet’s past and present.
Austria-based photographer Robbie
Shone dropped into his first “cold,
dirty hole in the ground” with an
experienced friend while studying
landscape art 20 years ago. Since
then, he’s descended hundreds of
times with cameras and flashbulbs
strapped to his back, all to document
the surprising diversity of subterra-
nean structures. With each image,
he aims to depict caves as places of
“safety and beauty,” instead of the
stuff of nightmares.
68
WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE
Lush forests and heavy rainfall in Papua New Guinea make the
country’s underground expanses look like Swarovski showrooms.
ACID During monsoons, acidic water drips down through the limestone,
DRIP forming calcite-crystal stalactites on the ceiling. Gina Moseley, a paleo-
climatologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria (and Shone’s
(ABOVE)
fiancée), explains that stalagmites on the ground store clues about the
PAPUA NEW GUINEA region’s climate and vegetation that could date back half a million years.
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 69
This 2016 self-portrait depicts Shone posing in the back of a long
quartzite cave under Venezuela’s tabletop mountains, known by lo-
cals as tepuis, or “houses of gods.” He’d tagged along with an Italian
MICROBE team of microbiologists who were sampling bacteria from the under-
PROBE water rocks and lakes to, among other things, study topics such as
antibiotic resistance. The damp recesses under the tepuis house a
VENEZUELA rare network of organisms, known as stromatolites.
70
WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 71
The Gouffre Berger system in France descends to a nadir that sits 3,500
feet below sea level, about the height of three and a half Eiffel Towers. To
get there, cavers spend at least 15 minutes paddling through a freezing,
CARVING 10-foot-deep river. As Shone’s fellow explorer illustrates here, a water-
STONE proof camera bag can serve as a flotation device. In heavier rains, the
porous limestone in the well-documented system allows the eroding wa-
FRANCE ter to surge to the roof, continuing to slowly carve the rock in the process.
72
WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE
P OPPO
SCP IS. C O
I . CMO /MS/P RF IANLG
L 2020 73
Shone’s companions take in the view in this “fire room,” one of the
world’s largest chambers, during a trek in Borneo. The dramatic rift
marks where three bodies of water once converged over thousands
MEETING of years. Gray limestone walls smeared by red, iron-oxidized patches
ROOM make for a multicolored backdrop. The journey here has its harrowing
moments: Snakes, scorpions, and ginormous spiders chased the entou-
BORNEO rage as they embarked on their day-long hike from the system entrance.
74
WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 75
Glacial caves fill with water during the day and then freeze solid over-
night, giving climatologists a limited window of time to drop in and
study their eccentric, constantly shifting features. In 2018, Shone and
SLIPPERY a pack of Welsh researchers had to wriggle down the silky, narrow
SLOPE walls of this chute in Switzerland to measure how quickly the ice was
shifting due to the region’s rapidly changing climate. “I guarantee this
SWITZERLAND geology is no longer there,” Shone says.
76
WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 77
78
A
ARE GHOULS REAL?
That depends. Current science
can’t prove that there are spir-
its walking through walls or
screaming below floorboards.
Our spooky sightings, how-
ever, have certainly felt real.
Humans have been spotting
specters for as long as we’ve
been around, and to some de-
gree we can explain why. These
seven mental and physical fac-
tors can account for almost any
creepy occurrence—including
some famous ones ripe for
debunking— and help to make
sense of our perpetual urge to
sleep with the night light on.
YOU WANT TO BELIEVE
80 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
RATHER
historic haunts
YOU’D OCCULT CLUBS
NOT RISK IT
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 81
Tools of the Trade
NEED A
YOU
ble light but also infrared and
ultraviolet frequencies. The
LITTLE COMPANY
broad range affords specter
hunters crucial advanced night
vision for midnight scouring.
T
HE APPARITIONS IN MOVIES LIKE THE GRUDGE
seekers think that haunts emit
and The Amityville Horror will stop at nothing to chase down
trace levels of radioactive
their human victims, but ghosts aren’t innately terrifying.
material. Detectives tote this
Research suggests that the brain may summon spirits as a means of
machine to identify and track
coping with trauma, especially the pain of losing a loved one. Just as
the amount of these particles
most amputees report what’s known as “phantom limb,” the feeling
in the surrounding air.
that their detached appendage is still there, surviving spouses fre-
quently report seeing or sensing their departed partner. One 1971
survey in the British Medical Journal found that close to half the wid- “Ghost Box”: This phantom-
ows in Wales and England had seen their mates postmortem. These finding radio scans AM and
vivid encounters, which psychologists call “after-death communica- FM channels for abnormal
tion,” have long been among the most common kinds of paranormal signals. Since we’re surrounded
experience, affecting skeptics and believers alike. by soundwaves, it’s easy for it
Experts think that such specters help us deal with painful or con- to pick up noise that appears
fusing events. A 2011 analysis published in the journal Death Studies strange or otherworldly.
looked at hundreds of incidents of supposed interaction with the
deceased. The paper concluded that some occurrences provided Ouija Board: In this sleepover
“instantaneous relief from painful grief symptoms,” while others staple, users put their hands on
strengthened preexisting religious views. a pointer, ask a question, and
Death isn’t the only trigger for a friendly ghost encounter ei- wait for the planchette to move
ther. Studies suggest kids who are bullied or exposed to dangerous across the board and spell out
situations are more likely to have paranormal fantasies, a trend psy- a reply. Power of suggestion
chologists also found in adults with a history of childhood trauma. plays a big role in this game.
There’s also evidence that sightings have other mental benefits.
In a 1995 survey in The Journal of the American Society for Psychical
Research, 91 percent of participants said their encounter had at least
one upside, such as a sense of connection to others. So if you do see a
shroud down the hallway, you might not want to run.
82 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
YOUR BRAIN IS UNWELL
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 83
historic haunts
ECTOPLASM
GETTING SOME
YOU’RE
In 1894, a notorious
BAD VIBRATIONS
Italian mystic pre-
tended to sprout a
third arm. French
physiologist Charles
Richet sought to
identify the ethe-
real matter that
formed it. He dubbed
the idiosyncratic
material—which he
said didn’t resem-
ble a solid, liquid, or
gas—ectoplasm, and
posited it might be
what ghosts were
made of. Paranormal
investigators seized
on the concept:
Some described a
shiny, billowing ether
while others theo-
rized a viscous goo.
Skeptics have caught
phony mediums us-
ing gauze to simulate
the substance.
S
OMETIMES PEOPLE The sound threw Tandy’s vision for
experience an otherworldly a loop and caused him to see a vague
encounter simply because spook. The rogue fan may also have
something in their environment is triggered his momentary panic, as
making a strange noise that sends studies suggest that certain noises
their bodies into disarray. can cause a person’s organs to shake,
In the early 1980s, British en- which makes them hyperventilate.
gineer Vic Tandy was working in Waveforms that dwell around
the research lab of a medical sup- this acoustic sweet spot and below
ply company when a strange feeling are known as infrasound. Though
came over him. All at once he felt they’re inaudible to human ears,
frigid and overwhelmed with a sense whose range bottoms out at 20 Hz,
of impending doom. As he paced the interval creates some fairly in-
around the room to calm down, he sidious side effects. In fact, after
suddenly sensed an ethereal pres- Tandy published his findings in
ence. Moments later, he was sure he 1998 in the Journal of the Society for
saw a gray apparition in his periph- Psychical Research, 18.9 Hz got a rep-
eral view. When he whirled around, utation as the “fear frequency.”
the specter was gone. Most of us don’t regularly carry
Tandy’s colleagues had warned around audio gauges, so it’s hard to
him the facility might be haunted, know how many hauntings might
but the engineer was a skeptic by be explained by a buzzing fan or
nature, so he scoured the place for a rumbling fridge. For Tandy, the
an explanation. The culprit turned fright left him more curious than
out to be a fan that hummed at a ever about ghosts. “When it comes
rate of 18.9 Hz. Though we can’t to supernatural phenomena,” he
sense their quivering, our eyeballs told a reporter some years later,
vibrate at a very similar frequency. “I’m sitting on a fence.”
84 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
historic haunts
THE ENFIELD
POLTERGEIST
S
own willingness to believe, ITUATIONAL QUIRKS CAN mildew gather on) as a solid indicator of a
ate the whole thing right up. easily manipulate our senses into phantom visit, and there’s some evidence
seeing what’s not there. Consider that microscopic growths can trigger anx-
the rural town of Anson, Texas, where lo- iety, depression, or even psychosis. Some
cals long believed that if you drove out to historians believe that rye bread contami-
the crossroads nearest the local cemetery nated with ergot fungus (the same microbe
and flashed your headlights, a mysterious from which LSD is derived) may have trig-
flicker would bounce back at you. Legend gered the presumed possessions that led
held that the blink came from the lantern to the Salem witch trials of the late 1800s.
of an ill-fated mother searching for her Further, a dermatologist and known fun-
son. In 2011, a group of skeptics armed gal expert at Guy’s Hospital in London has
with iPhones and Google Maps confirmed theorized that moldering books could in-
a less evocative explanation: Cars coming duce enough mental weirdness to have
around a bend on a nearby highway cast inspired some of literature’s best works.
the eerie beams of light. The same way scientists can poten-
A far more troubling circumstantial pe- tially identify natural agents to explain
culiarity is the notion that mold and other “the devil’s magic,” known geologic phe-
pollutants—often found in old buildings— nomena may influence seemingly ghostly
can mess with people’s minds. Over the happenings. For example, some out-there
past few years, environmental engineer- theorists say that more sightings hap-
ing students at Clarkson University in pen on days when Earth’s geomagnetic
Potsdam, New York, have been search- activity takes a sudden plunge. Distur-
ing supposedly haunted structures across bances in the planet’s magnetosphere,
the Empire State for evidence of funky which are usually caused by anomalous
microbes; while it’s too early to draw con- outer-space events like solar flares, might
clusions, the places they’ve visited seem to mess with the inner workings of the brain,
have higher spore counts than your aver- scrambling our perceptions in strange
age inhabited building. Believers often cite ways. So far, the evidence supporting this
the smell of rotting food (which fungi and hypothesis is pretty thin.
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 85
historic haunts
A Ghost Lover’s Reading List
AMITYVILLE
Many cultures leave behind some kind of
hair-raising yarn, whether it’s a screamer In 1979, before TV shows
intended to scare children or a complex like Ghost Hunters, para-
metaphor about life. In addition to explain- normal investigators Ed and
ing things that go bump in the night, these Lorraine Warren captured
standout sagas often help all of us cope with America’s imagination when
our fear of impending death and impart they took a deep dive into
morals to future generations. the Amityville haunting. It
was a gruesome incident
wherein an allegedly pos-
sessed Long Island man
A Ghost Story: Perhaps the earliest
murdered his parents and
known spooky tale is an Egyptian par-
siblings. The couple’s well-
able found on tablets dating as far
documented coverage of
back as 1500 BCE. The narrative con-
the case, which led to a
cerns a high priest who converses with
storm of credulous media
a spirit called Nebusemekh. The wraith
attention, went on to in-
turns out to be a former tax collector
spire nearly two dozen films,
who can’t find his grave.
including the wildly popu-
lar Conjuring series. But the
Mostellaria: This 200 BCE play by Warrens were never able
Roman playwright Titus Maccius to produce evidence of the
Plautus contains one of the first doc- encounters. In the 1990s,
umented haunted houses. The drama Steven Novella and Perry
follows a slave who hosts a party while DeAngelis, a neurologist
the master is away. When the latter un- and a podcaster, respec-
expectedly returns, the slave distracts tively, scrutinized artifacts,
him by insisting spirits are afoot. such as cursed dolls and
demon masks, in the War-
rens’ Connecticut-based
Strange Stories from a Chinese Occult Museum and dis-
Studio: These vignettes enjoyed by missed them as blarney. The
18th-century China’s upper class show Warrens may have believed
that paranormal stories can entail they were talking to spirits,
more than monsters under the bed. Pu but no one else should.
historic haunts
Songling’s satirical creatures torment
stuck-up bureaucrats, often sending SINISTER SNAPSHOTS
scorpions to sting their nethers.
86 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
YOUR MIND IS PLAYING
TRICKS ON ITSELF
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 87
A new generation of satellites can sniff out unidentified methane
emitters, adding a sharper tool against climate change.
popsci.com
By Paul Tullis
PG 89
Fall 2020
ago, it looked as if we still had is part of a generation of smaller,
time to compel sectors responsi- cheaper spacecraft that are now
ble for the bulk of CO2 emissions, in flight, ready to launch, or on
including transportation and en- the drawing board. The newer
ergy, into action. The hope was models boast higher-resolution
that regulations, such as stiffer equipment, able to pinpoint the
gas mileage requirements on origin of a discharge.
vehicles and penalties for compa- To be sure, there are other meth-
nies that use the atmosphere as a ods for cataloguing methane. Just
ON JANUARY 13, 2019, while dumping ground, would incentiv- three years ago, driving around in
trying to measure the greenhouse ize reductions. But cap-and-trade a car with a gas detector affixed
gas output of a mud volcano in markets in Quebec, California, to the roof was considered state of
Turkmenistan, a microwave-size and Europe plus the voluntary the art. But given the limited speed
satellite known as Claire stum- Paris Agreement of 2015 have of an automobile, that’s practical
bled upon something unexpected: not been enough to limit global only if you have a target in mind—
an enormous cloud of meth- warming’s effects, now evident and to get close enough, in many
ane spilling into frame from in Australia’s burning forests and cases you’d need permission from
an area just south of the peak. Houston’s flooded streets. “If you suspected polluters. Planes and
“We couldn’t believe something want to do something in time to hot-air balloons cover a bit more
that large was actually there,” meet the Paris targets, you need ground, but they’re still pretty lo-
says Stephane Germain, the a faster response,” says Bill Hirst, calized, and to track changes you’d
CEO and co-founder of GHGSat, a physicist who until June 2020 need to fly again and again, which
the Montreal-based company was the principal scientist for gets expensive. Satellites like
that operates Claire. Curious atmospheric monitoring at the Claire circle Earth every day.
as to where it could be coming gas-and-oil giant Shell.
from, Germain and colleagues That urgency makes methane,
looked at images of the area and or CH4, arguably a more import-
zeroed in on a gas facility called ant target in the short term.
Korpezhe. The source of the pol- Carbon dioxide lingers in the at-
lution seemed to be a pipeline. mosphere for 100 years or more,
Through diplomatic channels, so curbing its emissions won’t CLAIRE WAS AN international
the company passed the informa- affect the climate at least until effort. The University of Toronto’s
tion to Turkmen officials. Flying the 2100s. Methane, on the other Space Flight Laboratory designed
over Korpezhe a few months later, hand, starts breaking up after and built it, and the Indian Space
Claire found the plumes had dis- a decade, but over 20 years, it’s Research Organisation launched
appeared. The assumption is that 84 times as potent as CO2. Dial it from a site near the south-
they’d come from leaky equip- it down, and you’ll see results eastern coastal city of Chennai
ment that site managers had by the time Greta Thunberg can in June 2016. A 353-ton, 145-foot-
been able to patch. get a Ph.D. “Dramatically re- tall rocket carried 20 satellites
Claire’s discovery points to a ducing or even zeroing industry to photograph, map, and take
novel means of solving a mystery CH4 emissions should be a no- the temperature of Earth and
that has far-reaching implications brainer,” says Gabrielle Pétron, certain points on its surface—a far-
for the climate: What are the an affiliate research scientist reaching remote sensing mission.
specific sources that are contribu- at the Carbon Cycle Group of Almost a third of the way
ting to a dangerous increase in the National Oceanic and Atmo- around the globe, 8,265 miles away
the powerful greenhouse gas spheric Administration. in Toronto, Daniel Kekez, an elec-
methane, whose atmospheric con- Since 2009, satellites, includ- tronics and software developer at
centration has nearly doubled in ing ones serviced by NASA, have the flight lab, anxiously watched
less than 70 years? been circling the globe quantify- the launch broadcast. He was in
Environmentalists and policy ing greenhouse gases for climate charge of Claire’s commissioning
makers concerned about climate modeling. But those orbiters were process—powering it up and be-
change have focused for decades designed to measure concen- ginning to put it through its paces.
on carbon dioxide, the most trations of emissions across the Though the Indians had provided
abundant greenhouse gas. When entire planet, not to identify spe- him with an estimate of where they
scientists started ringing alarms cific sources, like a leaking valve would inject Claire into space, he
about its rising levels 40 years in a pipe in Turkmenistan. Claire needed to wait until the satellite,
90 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
CLEARING THE AIR
mit to it. Once Claire was within much signal in those bands makes the CH4 emissions from oil and
range, he could attempt to make it to the spectrometer. Shortwave gas operations in the United
contact. “We communicate in infrared reveals CH4 information. States, the world’s largest oil pro-
the blind, hoping it will respond,” Of course, there are all sorts of ducer, are far higher than what
Kekez says. It did, on the first try. confounding factors. Earth’s re- the industry or the Environmen-
Then it was time to see if Claire flectivity is greater in the Sahara tal Protection Agency—including
could do what it was designed Desert, for instance, than else- under President Obama—has
to. Over the next several weeks, where; to the untrained eye, this estimated. Sixty percent higher,
Kekez and his colleagues grabbed makes it look as if a giant methane according to research published
measurements as it sailed over cloud hovers over North Africa, in Science in 2018. (Only Norway
methane sources—coal mines, larger than is plausible, given the maintains stringent regulatory
gas facilities—whose quantity production capacity of Algeria and standards and a stiff tax on meth-
of emissions they already knew, Libya. Aerosols—tiny particles of ane released in production,
just to check that the instru- solids or liquid suspended in air so there’s no reason to believe
ments worked properly. and clouds—are another pain. Op- other international operators
Claire measures methane us- erators study the near-infrared are any better than those in the
ing a device called an imaging band to figure out what’s aerosol US.) An April 2020 report in Sci-
spectrometer, which is essentially and what’s methane. ence Advances found the biggest
a camera that is sensitive to The case for targeting CH4 methane source ever—2.8 mil-
wavelengths of light invisible has been growing. In a paper lion tons per year—above the
to humans. Those on satellites published in February 2020 in more than 7,000 fields of oil and
can measure ultraviolet, near- Nature, University of Roches- gas in the Permian Basin, which
infrared, or shortwave infrared ter geoscientist Benjamin Hmiel straddles Texas and New Mexico.
beams from the sun bouncing found that environmental scien- Co-author Sudhanshu Pandey, an
back off Earth. Different gases ab- tists and atmospheric chemists atmospheric scientist with the
sorb specific wavelengths of light, may have been underestimating SRON Netherlands Institute for
91
Claire’s images of meth-
Space Research, which analyzes
ane leaks (enlarged at
CH4 data from European Space right) over the Permian
Agency satellites, says, “What we Basin in the southwest US.
see is that the emissions here are
more than two times higher than
what the estimation methods
were predicting.”
92 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
CLEARING THE AIR
Claire can spot. The Environmen- on to the Paris accord. Others will what do we do with all that data?
tal Defense Fund is planning its sell their data to oil and gas com- One idea is a dedicated cap-and-
own orbiter, MethaneSAT, which panies that want to reduce their trade scheme for the gas. The one
will combine a field of view about emissions in order to shrink what the European Union uses regu-
a tenth of Tropomi’s with a pre- they owe to cap-and-trade mar- lates various greenhouse gases but
cision its backers describe as kets, in which energy producers not CH4 yet. California and Quebec
unprecedented. Taking off in 2022, and others pay for the greenhouse lump it with CO2 as a “carbon-
it will make weekly sweeps of the gases their operations generate. dioxide equivalent,” as the EU
areas of the globe that account for Companies may also want to im- does with nitrous oxide and per-
80 percent of all oil and gas pro- prove their reputations among fluorocarbons. But Adam Hawkes,
duction. Germany and France are consumers, or figure out if it’s director of the Sustainable Gas
collaborating on Merlin, which, worth the investment to capture Institute at Imperial College Lon-
when it goes up in 2024, will use and sell methane as energy. Nat- don, argues in a 2018 paper that
lidar—a technology popularized ural gas, which provides about 38 conflating the two doesn’t account
by self-driving car navigation that percent of the electricity in the for methane’s greater short-term
works like radar, but with light in- US, is virtually all CH4 . global warming potential.
stead of sound—to scan through The value of the gas that drillers Hans Stegehuis, a former hedge
clouds and distinguish methane leak hits $2 billion annually, ac- fund trader who works on finan-
from water vapor and surface cording to estimates published in cial markets and operational risk
reflectivity. Bluefield, a com- Science. A June 2020 report from at Dutch bank ABN Amro, has
pany based in New York City, is the independent research group an idea (his own, not his bank’s)
planning a constellation of 10 sat- Institute for Energy Economics for a methane-trading system
ellites even smaller than Claire by and Financial Analysis found that modeled on the EU’s current
2023. These will measure the gas Texas oil companies wasted $749 scheme, but that learns from
with a spectrometry technique million venting methane in 2018; what he views as its major mis-
it contends will be more sensi- the Texas Railroad Commission, takes. These, he says, include an
tive than the one other orbiters the state regulator with oversight, oversupply of emissions cred-
use. (The US has been a laggard declined to take action. In fact, the its that pushed down the price
in climate-focused remote sens- International Energy Agency says and therefore disincentivized
ing from orbit since a Republican the global industry could reduce reductions, and variations in
administration mothballed the methane leaks by 75 percent— how countries estimate such re-
Deep Space Climate Observatory about a third of it at no net cost, leases. For example, a landfill
in 2001, delaying its launch by since it could finance the fixes by in the United Kingdom miracu-
more than a decade.) selling much of what it recovers. lously emits— on paper—a tenth
Some of these satellites will Once we figure out the whos of the methane produced by an
service governments that signed and wheres of methane emissions, identical facility in Germany.
Stegehuis’ system would reduce
the supply of credits, solving the
first problem. Satellites would
address the second, he says,
because “now you can quan-
tify who’s emitting what.” He
93
ADVERTISEMENT
dial, hoping to hear artificial patterns in reaching out. It took almost five months for
E.T., please the static that would prove we’re not every star to rotate into view and another
alone. But they could only listen to one two years to sort through the hundreds of
phone our home slice of the spectrum at a time. Now, gigabytes of radio crackling we gathered.
as told to Charlie Wood
thanks to massive radio telescopes, as- During my analysis, one tone seemed
tronomers can pick up wide swaths of it powerful and clear, as you would expect
P H D C A N D I D AT E I N
at once. Breakthrough Listen, a global re- an artificial transmission to be. But when I
A S T R O N O M Y A N D A S T R O B I O L O G Y AT
P E N N S Y LV A N I A S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y
search group I am part of, is investigating looked more closely, I noticed that the sig-
more than a million stars for single-tone nal’s frequency barely shifted. This implies
signals akin to our AM/FM stations. its source is stationary relative to the tele-
The search for extraterrestrial intel- In 2017, I led a study of 20 intriguing scope rather than zooming around as a
ligence has progressed rapidly in stars—ones from which Earth’s transit in planet, moon, or spacecraft would. My
the past few decades. Back in the 1960s, front of our sun is visible. If a civilization in money’s on something like a cell tower.
researchers would literally tune the radio this zone can see us, perhaps they’re That’s 20 stars down, millions to go.
TALES FROM THE FIELD
Pablo Picasso’s noted portrait of lit- called macro X-ray fluorescence, which
erary icon Gertrude Stein has long finds elements too light for other imaging
mystified art historians. Between the fall of modes to pick up, such as calcium and
1905 and the spring of 1906, the author phosphorus. It exposes the work to spe-
sat for the artist more than 80 times—an cific radiation that excites the atoms in
atypically lengthy process for the accom- pigments. The resulting energy creates a
plished painter. Contemporary reports map of every light and heavy metal.
suggest Picasso kept restarting his work. We discovered extensive reworking on
SEASONS CHANGE.
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BOULDER
THEORIES
A HISTORY OF
ROCK MOVEMENT
P O S T U L AT I O N S
ALGAE FLOAT
One researcher sug-
gested that algal film
might form on the
playa, making the flat
surface slick enough
that a prevailing
breeze could scoot
the rocks along.
WHIPPING WIND
Some theorists
thought air currents
worked on their own.
If ever a hurricane-
force wind swept
over Southern Cali-
if these stones fornia, it could
certainly push the
could walk boulders around.
reasonable to the absurd, but no one had sound of ice crystallizing. But by the next ICY PUSH
ever seen the rocks in action. Death Valley, as morning, the sun was shining, and everything One group got close:
its name implies, is inhospitable. Put aside was melting. As the thin sheets of ice started It proposed that
that it’s one of the hottest places on Earth, to slide across the meltwater, to our astonish- during a storm, ice
but it’s also hit by severe winter storms. No ment, they pushed the rocks with them. would freeze around
one wanted to sit around and watch. It was a head-slapping moment. Prior the- the stones and they’d
But in 2011, my cousin Jim, an engineer, ories had gotten close, but we were the first glide across the playa.
But ice can’t hold
came to me with an idea. He suggested set- people to directly observe it. And no wonder:
that fast to individual
ting up cameras near the stones and letting It all happened so fast. If you got too involved
rocks the way it can
the equipment gather data. The National in your lunch, it’d be over. Fortunately, we in one big sheet.
Park Service said we couldn’t leave a trace, so stayed alert, and our GPS trackers generated
we drilled into our own stones, embedded a ton of high-quality supporting evidence.
97
TALES FROM THE FIELD
my illustrations
really go viral
A L I S S A E C K E R T, S C I E N T I F I C A N D
M E D I C A L I L L U S T R AT O R AT T H E C E N T E R S
FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION
people are scrolling through have struck a chord. I was identified the 17 most abundant kinds of bacteria
the news or social media. surprised that it has not only and attached a dye that gave each one a different
as told to Kate Baggaley
We worked with virolo- appeared in public health color when we shined a laser on them.
gists to help decide what and media reports but has The resulting image resembled a city skyline, with
characteristics of the patho- also inspired piñatas, cook- microbial stacks jutting outward from each tongue
gen were important to ies, and little dolls. I’ve even cell. Actinomyces and Rothia—which play a key role in
highlight and could easily seen folks creating hairdos turning food’s nitrate into nitric oxide that helps regu-
lend themselves to artistic meant to resemble the late blood pressure—showed up in just about every
rendering. We zeroed in on a cherry-colored spikes. We sample. The former stayed close to a cell’s center
specific component known did our job: The image is ce- while the latter resided near the edge. Now we want
as the S or spike protein. mented in people’s minds. to figure out why they are distributed this way.
98
FA L L 2020 / P O P S C I.C O M
weather is hard
BRETT ROSSIO, METEOROLOGIST
AT A C C U W E AT H E R
Choose Life
Grow Young with HGH
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yes, people FOR A SMALL GROUP OF PEOPLE,
sensations entangle themselves in
such swapping. “It’s a mixing of the
senses,” he says, making the disorder
baffling ways. The written numeral “very difficult to reverse engineer.”
can taste 2 might evoke a flash of purple; an The current theory posits that
audible C sharp note could conjure synesthetes’ brains have extra con-
names and a finger prick. Some with this condi-
tion, called synesthesia, even taste
nections. When you see a word, your
retina and optic nerve send that in-
hear colors spoken words: The name Sam, for ex-
ample, might elicit a sweet flavor.
formation to the visual cortex, which
creates the image you see. Then your
How exactly some people “feel” noggin’s face- and color-recognition
BY M A R I O N R E NAU LT smells or “taste” names is still gener- unit, the fusiform gyrus, puts it into
ally unclear. There’s no gold standard context. Extra connections there
test to diagnose the condition, which might simultaneously send signals to,
only adds to the mystery. University say, both the color- and word-focused
of Michigan cognitive psychologist regions. Those extra pathways can
David Brang says he gets emails all pigment terms, weaponize musical
the time from folks asking if their notes, or even ruin a first date with a
peculiar sensations are the result of rather putrid-tasting name.
102 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
does free HERE’S A MIND-BENDING
question: Are you reading this be-
scrutiny, as the actual reason for
those EEG spikes is still unclear.
cause you definitively chose to or Modern investigators like Uri
will exist? because you were destined to? Maoz, a computational neurosci-
Philosophers have pondered free entist at Chapman University, are
will’s existence for millennia, and instead tackling the quandary with
neuroscientists began to consider data. If a supercomputer knows
BY S A R A K I L EY WAT S O N
whether humans go about their lives everything about us (from life goals
of their own accord in the 1960s. But to favorite ice cream) and every
it wasn’t until a pivotal 1983 study decision we make (including in-
that anyone had any hard evidence stinctual ones happening since
in either direction; researchers birth) influences the next, then a
asked participants to consciously machine could spit out the most
decide to move a finger prior to likely choice we’d make in any sit-
raising it and recorded their brain uation. Maoz and others currently
activity with an EEG. Surprisingly, study whether there is any chance
before subjects chose to move, you’d pick something totally dif-
their grey matter lit up, suggesting ferent from what a supercomputer
noggins make determinations be- might predict. But in the case of this
fore we’re aware of them. Over the article, since you’ve nearly finished,
years, the finding has been met with it’s more or less a moot point.
P O P S C I .CO M / FA L L 2 0 2 0 103
try to spot all YOU PROBABLY OVERLOOK THINGS RIGHT IN
FRONT OF YOU EVERY SINGLE DAY
the masks
BY JILLIAN MOCK
in this picture
HAVING TROUBLE FINDING EVERY FACE So the brain directs our vision, filtering out irrelevant ob-
covering? There’s a reason tasks like this are chal- jects. If we’re crossing the street, it sends signals to tune
lenging for even experienced puzzle sleuths: We don’t see into a car speeding toward us as opposed to, say, a bluebird
everything in our field of view. In fact, our brains forbid it. or a friendly neighbor out for a stroll. We might miss some
Our minds can only focus on so much at once, says Susana things, but at least we’ll live to tell the tale.
Martinez- Conde, a neuroscientist at SUNY Downstate To crack the puzzle above, focus your attention on one
Medical Center in New York. Neurons in our visual cortices small section at a time—otherwise your noggin will lock in
have limited bandwidth. If they attempted to take in every- on the biggest parts of the picture and blur out everything
thing, we would struggle to pick out life-or-death details. else. (The answers are on page 106.)
104 FA L L 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M
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CHAMBER OF SECRETS CLEARING THE AIR
effort in midspring. In March 2020, the credibility, educate the users, the environmental metrics. Saudi Aramco,
the COVID-19 pandemic forced the fa- businesspeople—the nature of it de- the national oil company that went
cility to shut down on-site work aside pends on consensus,” he says. public in 2019, may also begin to feel
from critical maintenance. Some of the When Stephane Germain con- pressure from shareholders.
scientists stayed in town, since travel— ceived of GHGSat, it took more than Hirst, the atmospheric monitor-
particularly internationally—seemed 100 cold calls to energy companies ing expert, believes that these moves
dicey, and Lead (population 3,021) was to satisfy himself that his venture have at least partly been motivated
a pleasant enough place to be stranded could find customers. Now, under by the coming swarm of orbiters
for however long they would hang in pressure from investors, Shell has sniffing out leaks. “Within a few
this virus-induced limbo. tied its executive compensation to years, they will show how bad these
There’s still plenty to do above- its emissions reductions, aiming for sources are,” he says. “As more sen-
ground, plenty of calibrations to 20 percent in 15 years, and has hired sitive satellites are launched, it’ll
perfect. No matter when they start, GHGSat. BP has promised to add become more common to see sources
it’ll take five years of WIMP sniffing methane-measuring devices at its that need remediation.”
to gather enough data to know if the major processing sites in three years When everyone can look at a map
particle is in the LZ’s detection range. and halve its emissions per volume of of the world and zoom in to see where
And besides, as project coordinator product. Activists who own stock in methane is coming from, and when
Lesko points out, all those months ExxonMobil, Chevron, and others have regulators can quantify the amounts
of double shifts had paid off: They’d become increasingly ornery about and start charging for them, polluters
nearly completed assembly down on greenhouse gases, so they may win might decide business as usual is no
4850, and the project was in a stable more concessions from executives on longer a viable option.
and safe spot. Few places are more se-
cure during a pandemic than one close
to a mile underground.
Still, like the rest of us, they wonder
when this all might be over: when they
can get fully back to the experiment,
and if, once they do—with the LZ tank
sealed and detector arrays watchfully
waiting—they’ll find anything at all.
None of the nearly one dozen prior at-
tempts to nab a glimmer of a WIMP
over the past three decades have “IIt’stoldabout range superiority.
my engineers, ‘We want
worked. Yet team members like Fruth,
the photon detector specialist, are the best radar-finding engine
sanguine about the possibility of their this side of the military.’
life’s work netting nothing. “Knowing
that it’s not something is still worth For civilian users, V1 Gen2 is
something,” she says. When you aren’t a break-through on range.”
sure exactly what a WIMP is, there’s
value in finding out what it isn’t. — Mike Valentine
Living with uncertainty and pon-
dering the unknown is a comfortable
space for them to be in, because
that’s what scientists do—especially
physicists on this particular ongoing
All-new
hunt. Fruth likens dark matter to the circuitry with
unfilled portion of a map, the “here
be monsters” bits. “We draw this
line,” she says, “and we say, ‘Look, we
don’t know anything beyond this line.’
And then we push a little farther,
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• The forest on the cover is a real place, but it’s not partner and producer Robin Finlay, overlaid
as eerie as it looks. Adam Voorhes, of photogra- the image with some digital smoke and a shot
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Before pressing the shutter, he waited for No matter how much you look, you won’t
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into an otherworldly scene. Adam, together with another one, well, that’s a whole other mystery.
POPULAR SCIENCE magazine, Vol. 292, No. 3 (ISSN 161-7370, USPS 577-250), is published quarterly by Bonnier Corp., 480 North Orlando Ave., Suite 236, Winter Park, FL 32789. Copyright ©2020 by Bonnier Corp. All
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