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September

Table of Contents September 2009

Discover Magazine's mission is to enable readers to lead richer lives by explaining and expanding their universe. Each month we bring you in depth information and analysis from various topics ranging from technology and space to the living world we live in.

FEATURES

A Wing and a Prayer: The U.S.'s Crumbling Air-Travel Infrastructure

by Linda Marsa

Rookie controllers, antiquated equipment, and federal mismanagement combine to produce inefficiency and danger.

Is Jupiter's Bizarre Moon Our Best Hope for Finding Extraterrestrial Life?

by Andrew Lawler

NASA is gambling $4 billion that there's life beneath the thin atmosphere, lethal radiation, and miles-thick ice on Europa.

I Didn't Sin—It Was My Brain

by Kathleen McGowan, Christopher Buzelli

Brain researchers have found the sources of many of our darkest thoughts, from envy to wrath.

The Second Coming of Gene Therapy

by Jill Neimark

For years, gene therapy produced tons of hype but no results. Recently, though, new approaches have yielded its first successes: breakthrough treatments for blindness, cancer, and the deadly bubble boy disease.

Jane Goodall on the Lazarus Effect

by Jane Goodall

Rediscovery of a long-lost species sends a message of hope about second chances for all of us. Goodall relates two beautiful examples: the tiny Caspian horse and the Lord Howe Island phasmid (it's a bug).

DEPARTMENTS

Big Idea

The Easiest Way to Fight Global Warming?

by Peter Fairley

Simply cleaning up soot could work wonders for the climate.

Numbers

Numbers: Microbes, From the Tiny Genome to the 70 Trillion in Your Body

by Jeremy Jacquot

What Is This?

What is This? Spirograph 2.0?

by Andrew Grant

Hint: It represents a best-selling piece of literature.

Future Tech

The Device That Will Keep Your Mini-Laptop From Melting

by Rebecca Day

As computers get smaller, keeping them cool has become a major problem—until now.

The Brain

The Brain: The Dark Matter of the Human Brain

by Carl Zimmer

Meet the forgotten 90 percent of your brain: glial cells, which outnumber your neurons ten to one. And no one really knows what they do.

Discover Q&A

Discover Interview: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics

by Susan Kruglinski, Oliver Chanarin

One of the greatest thinkers in physics says the human brain—and the universe itself—must function according to some theory we haven't yet discovered.

5 Questions

Five Questions: Turning Microbes Into Micro Refineries

by Amy Barth

Synthetic biologist Reshma Shetty predicts that we will eventually engineer organisms to grow everything that we manufacture today.

Field Notes

Field Notes: Stalking Fish in the Name of Science

by Dava Sobel

An exhaustive new marine census is tracking everything that swims in the sea, one fish at a time.

20 Things You Didn't Know About...

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Hurricanes

by Jocelyn Rice

A typical hurricane releases some 600 trillion watts of heat energy, equivalent to 200 times the world’s total electrical generating capacity.