http://discovermagazine.com Science, Technology, and The Future http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-continent-where-climate-went-haywire http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-continent-where-climate-went-haywire <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-continent-where-climate-went-haywire/brisbane.jpg" align="right" alt="flooded street sign"> <p>“The river came up to right where we’re sitting, and the waters were more than two feet deep,” Peter Goodwin tells me in the driveway of his ranch-style house perched on the banks of the Balonne River in St. George, a village of 3,500 in eastern Australia. It is a drizzly Sunday afternoon in April, three months after a devastating flood that drenched a landmass the size of France and Germany combined and isolated the town after the rain-swollen river rose to a record 45 feet.</p> <p>Agricultural areas like St. George were hardest hit by the relentless rains and overflowing rivers that swamped roads, cut off power lines, washed away vineyards and fruit orchards, drowned thousands of head of cattle and other livestock, and covered homes and everything inside them in thick layers of sediment and mud. Shell-shocked residents are still digging out from under the debris.</p> <p>“That’s the hard part of the flood—the aftermath,” says Goodwin, 60, a crusty, compactly built man with piercing blue eyes and calloused hands who works as an operations manager for the local municipality and has been staying with his grown daughter while he makes his home habitable again. “You get a lot of help during the flood, but then everyone settles back into their routine. There are a lot of houses down there that are still empty,” he adds, gesturing toward the riverbank. “And they will be for a long time to come”...</p> <p><b><i>The full text of this article is available only to DISCOVER subscribers. Click through to the article to subscribe, log in, or buy a digital version of this issue.</i></b></p> Linda Marsa http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-continent-where-climate-went-haywire/key_image Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:00:00 -0500 Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:00:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/25-arctic-ice-locks-submarine-bust-out-chainsaw http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/25-arctic-ice-locks-submarine-bust-out-chainsaw <p><img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/25-icebreakers/icebreak.jpg" alt="Navy icebreaker"></p> <p>Mechanical engineer Nicholas Michel-Hart chainsaws through ice blocking the hatch to the nuclear submarine USS Connecticut last March. The boat surfaced through three feet of Arctic ice 200 miles north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, where the <a href="http://www.apl.washington.edu/" class="external-link">University of Washington’s Applied Physics Lab</a> conducts underwater communications and sonar experiments for the Navy...</p> <p><i>Image: Lucas Jackson/Reuters</i></p> http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/25-arctic-ice-locks-submarine-bust-out-chainsaw/key_image Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:55:00 -0500 Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:55:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/06-westward-h2o http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/06-westward-h2o Julian Smith http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/06-westward-h2o/key_image Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:14:20 -0500 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:14:20 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/06-north-americas-2080-water-forecast http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/06-north-americas-2080-water-forecast Gillian Conahan http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/06-north-americas-2080-water-forecast/key_image Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:14:10 -0500 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:14:10 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-clouds http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-clouds <p class="imgcapright"><img class="inline" src="clouds.jpg" alt="" kupu-src="http://72.32.204.61/2012/jan-feb/14-things-you-didn2019t-know-about-clouds/clouds.jpg"></p> <p><b>4 &nbsp;</b>So much for People Power. After reviewing 40 years of cloud-seeding efforts in an area north of Israel, researchers at Tel Aviv University have concluded that <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tau.ac.il/~pinhas/papers/2010/Levin_et_al_AR_2010.pdf">seeding doesn’t actually produce additional precipitation</a>&nbsp;(pdf).</p> <p><b>12&nbsp;</b>&nbsp;Highest of them all: 50 miles up, <a class="external-link" href="http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/19feb_nlc/">noctilucent, or “night shining,” clouds</a> glow an eerie bluish white. They are invisible by day, but after sunset they catch solar rays shining from far below the horizon.</p> <p><b>13 &nbsp;</b>Noctilucent clouds seemed to first appear after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa and are now a common sight.</p> <p><b>18&nbsp;</b>&nbsp;In 1959 Lt. Col. William Rankin was flying his F-8 fighter jet over a cumulonimbus when the engine failed. He parachuted out and spent the next 30 minutes bounced around inside the storm. Amazingly, he survived.</p> <p><b>19&nbsp;</b>&nbsp;In 2007 German paragliding champion Ewa Wisnierska experienced “<a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_suck">cloud suck</a>.” While gliding under a cumulonimbus, she was pulled upward to 32,000 feet. She blacked out due to lack of oxygen but regained consciousness at roughly 23,000 feet.</p> <p><i>Image: A lenticular cloud over the Tararua Mountains in the North Island of New Zealand. Courtesy: NASA</p></i> Rebecca Coffey http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-clouds/key_image Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:35:00 -0500 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:35:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-water-wranglers http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-water-wranglers <p class="imgcapright"><img class="inline" src="http://72.32.204.61/2011/dec/17-water/water.jpg" alt="Water panel" kupu-src="http://72.32.204.61/2011/dec/17-water/water.jpg"></p> <p>Climate change and population growth are both stressing the planet’s freshwater supply. 
Our experts debate the tough choices scientists, politicians, and the general public will have to 
make to adapt to a world where water could outstrip fuel as the most prized commodity.</p> <p>This year, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2011-09-13-Texas-drought_CV_U.htm">Texas suffered through</a> the worst one-year drought in its history, while states along the Mississippi River endured record flooding. Shifting climate patterns mean these radical disruptions could be a harbinger of things to come.&nbsp;</p> <p>DISCOVER recently partnered with NBC Learn, the National Science Foundation, and Arizona State University to convene a town hall discussion that explored the impact of climate change on our freshwater resources.&nbsp;Anne Thompson, NBC’s chief environmental affairs correspondent, moderated the expert panel, which included (from left):&nbsp;<a class="external-link" href="http://www.climatecentral.org/about/people-bio/heidi_cullen">Heidi Cullen</a>,&nbsp;a correspondent for Climate Central, a nonprofit that reports on climate science; <a class="external-link" href="http://www.billrichardson.com/">Bill Richardson</a>, former governor of New Mexico and&nbsp;a board member of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank;&nbsp;<a class="external-link" href="http://www.gblaw.com/attorney.asp?AttorneyID=17">Grady Gammage Jr.</a>,&nbsp;a practicing attorney and a senior scholar at the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability; and&nbsp;<a class="external-link" href="http://www.snwa.com/about/board_eteam_mulroy.html">Pat Mulroy</a>,&nbsp;general manager 
of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.</p> <p><i><b>Anne Thompson: </b>Water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth, but only 2.5 percent of it is freshwater. And two-thirds of that is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. Freshwater accessible in lakes, rivers, and streams is just six-thousandths of one percent of the world’s total water. With that in mind, what is the status of freshwater around the world today?</i></p> <p><b>Heidi Cullen: </b>Freshwater around the world is definitely stressed, and climate change is the great exacerbation. With water, the rich get richer globally, and the poor get poorer. 
Places that tend toward drought are going to see it more. The subtropical drought regions will expand. And in places like Asia, the monsoon system is expected to intensify. It’s a problem of greater uncertainty, greater variability, and more stress overall.</p> <p><i><b>Thompson:</b> Governor Richardson, do you see water scarcity as a source of global crisis?...</i></p> <p><b><i>The full text of this article is available only to DISCOVER subscribers. Click through to the article to subscribe, log in, or buy a digital version of this issue.</i></b></p> Photography by Jared McMillen http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-water-wranglers/key_image Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:55:00 -0500 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:55:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/08-fortress-solitude-like-cave-slow-growing-crystals http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/08-fortress-solitude-like-cave-slow-growing-crystals <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/08-fortress-solitude-like-cave-slow-growing-crystals/gypsumcave.jpg" align="right" alt=""> <p>The 36-foot-long beams of gypsum in Mexico’s Cave of Crystals are the largest exposed crystals on earth. Now Spanish crystallographer Juan Manuel García-Ruiz has awarded them another record: They exhibit the slowest crystal growth ever measured. García-Ruiz collected gypsum and water from the site and used a custom-built, ultrasensitive microscope to 
determine that the sample grew 0.000000000014 millimeter per second—the equivalent of a pencil width every 16,000 years...</p> Jennifer Barone http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/08-fortress-solitude-like-cave-slow-growing-crystals/key_image Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:45:00 -0500 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:45:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/15-how-i-put-a-murderer-away-with-doppler-radar http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/15-how-i-put-a-murderer-away-with-doppler-radar <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/15-how-i-put-a-murderer-away-with-doppler-radar/haill.jpg" align="right" alt="Howard Altschule Illustration"></p> <p><i>For years, Howard Altschule worked as a meteorologist for television station WNYT in Albany, New York, where each night he told viewers whether the next day would bring precipitation and misery. It was a fun gig for a while, but then Altschule grew bored. So in 2007 he started Forensic Weather Consultants, which offers meteorological snooping to local lawyers, providing expert analysis of weather data and satellite imagery. Now he investigates 175 cases a year: roof damage, slips and falls—even a gruesome double murder. In his own words, here’s how he solved that case in May, helping send Michael Mosley to prison for life.</i></p> <p>The police had arrested someone, but then they found Mosley’s blood in the Troy, New York, apartment where the murder occurred. Years and years went by, until one day they came up with a DNA match...</p> as told to Michael Rosenwald;
 illustration by Zina Saunders http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/15-how-i-put-a-murderer-away-with-doppler-radar/key_image Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:20:00 -0500 Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:20:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-the-citizen-scientist http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-the-citizen-scientist <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-the-citizen-scientist/darlene.jpg" align="right" alt="Darlene Cavalier"> <p>In a former life, Darlene Cavalier was a cheerleader for the Philadelphia 76ers. Today she channels her enthusiasm into spreading the word that science is something anyone can do. She is the brains behind scienceforcitizens.net, which lets untrained people collaborate on serious research projects, such as gathering pollution data and monitoring insect swarms. She is the founder of science­cheerleader.com, a community of cheerleaders with science backgrounds who promote science literacy. And as a consultant to 
DISCOVER, Cavalier helped organize our recent Changing Planet town hall discussion on the future of water. She recently talked with us about how her varied passions fit together.</p> <p><b>How did you get interested in communicating science 
to the public?
</b><br>I got my start stuffing envelopes for DISCOVER. I was mailing out applications for the magazine’s Award for Technological Innovation, and researchers would respond by writing two or three digestible sentences about their innovations. If they left out some information, I would call them to clarify, and that was my “aha” moment. I realized how down-to-earth scientists were. They also sent in samples of their work. I remember holding a fire-resistant tile made for NASA after the <i>Columbia</i> disaster, and I just thought that was really special...</p> Katie Palmer http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/17-the-citizen-scientist/key_image Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:25:00 -0500 Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:25:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/73 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/73 Last September six italian scientists and a government official were served with manslaughter charges for failing to issue sufficient warnings in advance of a magnitude 6.3 earthquake that killed more than 300 people around the town of L’Aquila in 2009. Few scientists have ever been brought to court for making inaccurate risk assessments, and the case has seismologists worldwide wondering how to communicate potential dangers to the public without facing liability or raising undue alarm... Elizabeth Svoboda http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/73/key_image Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:20:00 -0500 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:20:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/41 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/41 <p>The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, was obliterated on September 23 after a productive and unexpectedly long scientific life. It was 20 years old. The cause of death was atmospheric drag...</p> Gregory Mone http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/41/key_image Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:30:00 -0500 Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:30:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/45 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/45 Geology textbooks will tell you that we are now 12,000 years into the Holocene Epoch, a time marked by violent geologic upheavals due to retreating glaciers and surging sea levels. But an increasingly vocal group of scientists argue that the textbooks are wrong. The Holocene Epoch, they believe, ended with the Industrial Revolution, when humans began dramatically reshaping the planet—enough to nudge it into its 42nd geologic epoch, unofficially dubbed the Anthropocene, or the Age of Men... Katie Palmer http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/45/key_image Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:10:00 -0500 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/36 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/36 <p>After decades of decline, global forests are rebounding, according to a comprehensive study released in May.</p> <p>Forests, like cities, can grow both by spreading out and by packing more things into the same space. Just as demographers do not tally the population of a city in square miles, so conservationists cannot get a complete picture knowing only the area of a forest—the usual measure of deforestation. Using data from the U.S. Forest Service and the United Nations, a team of American and Finnish researchers looked at changes in forest density, in addition to total area. The records covered 68 nations around the globe since 1990, and the United States, where detailed records go back further, since 1953...</p> Valerie Ross http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/36/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/89 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/89 <p>The movements of earth’s crust push up mountains and reshape oceans, influencing climate. Unexpectedly, the connection runs the other way as well: In April scientists reported that rains may be accelerating India’s collision with China.</p> <p>Over the past 10 million years or so, movement of the Indian Plate—which is plowing north into Eurasia, forming the Himalayas—has sped up by 20 percent...</p> Patrick Morgan http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/89/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/46 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/46 <p>The solar industry was 
off to a hot start last January as manufacturers worldwide were churning out photovoltaic panels in record numbers. But by summer the boom in supply had given way to a spectacular bust in demand. Start-up Solyndra very publicly defaulted on a $535 million Department of Energy (doe) loan in August, joining two other American solar-energy ventures in bankruptcy. Solyndra officials and a handful of politicians blamed cutthroat prices in China, coupled with declining demand in cash-strapped Europe, which represents 80 percent of the world’s solar market.</p> Nicole Dyer http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/46/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/21 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/21 <p>The drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, came under renewed fire this past year. Fracking makes it possible to tap into vast domestic reserves of low-carbon natural gas, but the process—which uses sand, chemicals, and millions of gallons of water to free gas trapped inside dense rock—has sparked environmental questions. New evidence bolsters those concerns.</p> <p>Drinking water samples from 68 wells in Pennsylvania and New York (in the Marcellus and Utica shale areas) were contaminated with excess methane, according to a report published last May in the <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</i>. The study, led by environmental chemist Robert Jackson of Duke University, was the first to find a conclusive link between fracking and groundwater pollution. The closer the wells were to the drill sites, the higher the methane concentrations, some of which were above the level that raises alarm at the Department of 
the Interior. Subsequent tests of more than 100 additional wells confirmed the findings, says Jackson, who thinks the most probable culprit is faulty construction of the gas wells...</p> Linda Marsa http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/21/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/09 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/09 <p><b>AUSTRALIA///FLOODING</b> Following a long drought, heavy rains in December 2010 and January 2011 caused devastating floods in the state of Queensland, destroying crops and killing 35.</p> <p><b> BRAZIL///LANDSLIDES</b> In areas surrounding Rio de Janeiro, landslides triggered by rainfall killed 850 in January. Deforestation may have made soils in the region more prone to erosion.</p> <p><b>NEW ZEALAND///EARTHQUAKE</b> With an epicenter 6 miles from downtown, the Christchurch quake in February took 181 lives and caused $12 billion in damages despite having a magnitude of just 6.3...</p> Katie Palmer http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/09/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/15 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/15 <p>The magnitude 9 earthquake that shook Japan on March 11 dragged parts of the country 15 feet eastward and moved some seafloor transponders up to 230 feet, the largest earthquake-induced surface displacement ever recorded. More than 20,000 people died, most as a result of the tsunami that hit the coastline a half-hour after the quake. Although Japan has the world’s most advanced earthquake-monitoring system, few researchers had expected a quake of such magnitude. Discover asked Earth scientists and disaster-preparedness experts about the top lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake. Here is what they said:</p> <p><b>- Take the very long view. </b>Models of earthquake risk in Japan were based on a 400-year historical record, but paleoseismic records suggest quakes of this size occur in the country’s Tohoku region every thousand years or so. “If your thinking is based on the last few hundred years, and you haven’t captured a representative time frame for that system, you’re going to be surprised,” says Mark Simons, a geophysicist at Caltech who studied the dynamics of the quake...</p> Jennifer Barone http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/15/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/39 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/39 <p>Several species of oceanic bacteria consume methane gas that naturally seeps from the ocean floor. So after the BP blowout in spring and summer of 2010, when 172 million gallons of 
methane-rich oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, scientists wondered how much of the dissolved gas might be consumed by native microbes. To find out, oceanographers John Kessler of Texas A &amp; M University and David Valentine of the University of California, Santa Barbara, collected more than 700 water samples around the spill that summer and fall. They found bacteria had eliminated more than 120,000 metric tons of methane, essentially returning the concentrations in the area to normal...</p> Jennifer Barone http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/39/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/07 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/07 <p>Last March, after the 
Sendai earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the aftershocks of the disaster seemed to put the worldwide nuclear power industry on shaky ground. News of multiple core meltdowns and radiation releases spurred governments to drop nuke projects like radioactive hot potatoes. In Japan Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced his support for a phaseout of the country’s dependence on nuclear power and proposed scrapping plans to have nuclear plants supply 50 percent of Japan’s electricity by 2030 (up from 30 percent in 2010).</p> <p>In the United States financing for two new reactors in Texas evaporated a month after the quake. Germany and Switzerland took the disaster as a cue to announce phaseouts of their entire nuclear sectors, and a referendum in Italy put the brakes on Silvio Berlusconi’s plans to revive nuclear power in that country. It felt as if the end of the atomic age were upon us...</p> Jason Daley http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/07/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/100 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/100 <p>Satellites first began measuring the extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean during the 1970s. One summer reading revealed nearly 3 million square miles of it. Last summer that coverage shrank to 1.67 million square miles, the second-lowest number on record, according to climatologist Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. “The year 2011 is another exclamation point on the overall downward trend that we see in sea-ice extent,” he says. Georg Heygster, a physicist at the University of Bremen in Germany, goes further. His 2011 data show the lowest coverage of sea ice since records began.</p> Gregory Mone
 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/100/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/29 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/29 <p>On July 1 an ExxonMobil pipeline burst beneath the Yellowstone River in Montana, spilling more than 40,000 gallons of oil into the waterway before responders could seal the leak. Black oil coated river plants, murky brown residue collected in eddies, and 140 local residents had to evacu-
ate the area because of fumes. In the absence of dams to contain the spill, the oil traveled as far as 240 miles downriver. “We’re not limiting the scope of our cleanup to the immediate site,” Gary Pruessing, president of ExxonMobil Pipeline Co., an ExxonMobil subsidiary, told the press last July. “We are not trying to suggest in any way that’s the limit of exposure...”</p> Elizabeth Svoboda http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/29/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/84 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/84 <p>When the Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report last November predicting more extreme weather, the organizers of collegiate and professional sports were already one step ahead of the news. A spate of record-setting weather catastrophes in 2011 (see #9) had forced an unusual number of game delays and cancellations, presenting the sporting world with an ultimatum long familiar to the insurance industry: Adapt or hemorrhage profits.</p> Brett Zarda
 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/84/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/discover-interview-newt-gingrich http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/discover-interview-newt-gingrich <p align="left"><i>This interview with Newt Gingrich originally ran in the October, 2006 issue of DISCOVER. We're re-publishing it now because of its renewed relevance: Gingrich is pegged by many observers as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, after his recent and dramatic surge in national polls.&nbsp;</i></p> <p><img align="left" src="http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/discover-interview-newt-gingrich/newt.jpg" alt="Newt Gingrich"></p> <p align="left">Newt Gingrich hasn't been Speaker of the House for a while. He was chased out of office in November 1998, trailed by a vague but persistent ethical cloud. Depending upon your political views, you most likely recall Gingrich in one of two ways: either as the brilliant revolutionary who overturned a complacent, morally bankrupt Democratic order in the House of Representatives or as the power-hungry backbencher who unleashed the attack dogs of partisanship on the Capitol. Of course, Gingrich is a large enough personality to warrant a bit of both descriptions and then some.</p> <p align="left">The former Speaker is still entrenched in Washington, D.C., and what he does and says still matters. He is active on the lecture circuit, writes regularly, and has instant access to a wide array of top-tier policymakers. Most are Republican, but lately Gingrich has found common cause on an issue or two with, to use one notable example, Democratic senator Hillary Clinton. It's a pairing that serves them both. Gingrich, too, is rumored to be considering a run for president in 2008. He is well aware of the benefits of a bipartisan stroll down the middle of the road.</p> <p align="left">Love him or hate him, Gingrich is never dull. In Congress, he was passionate about science and technology in a way that politicians rarely are. And in books like <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Future-Century-Contract-America/dp/0895260425" class="external-link">Winning the Future</a></i> (Regnery Publishing, 2005), he has used his great talent for communication to convey not only passion but also new and interesting directions in policy. His influence was once enormous. It may be yet again.</p> <p align="left"><b>Where did you get your passion for science?<br></b>It started as a passion for animals and grew into an interest in paleontology and how life evolved. I began to realize how much science and technology change everything around us. The pure beauty of the natural world and the intellectual elegance of understanding how things work, combined with the power of science and technology to dramatically expand our opportunities, has kept me enthralled...</p> <p><i>Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/4392543159/sizes/l/in/photostream/">Gage Skidmore</a> via Flickr</p></i> Francis Wilkinson, photography by Grant Delin http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/discover-interview-newt-gingrich/key_image Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:00:00 -0500 Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:00:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-big-debate-over-oldest-life-on-earth http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-big-debate-over-oldest-life-on-earth <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-big-debate-over-oldest-life-on-earth/australia.jpg" align="right" alt="outcrops in Australia"></p> <p>­The first shot across the bow came in 2002, when Oxford paleontologist Martin Brasier challenged the authenticity of what were then widely regarded as the fossil remains of some of Earth’s first life-forms. In the bargain he took on one of paleobiology’s great lions, J. W. “Bill” Schopf of UCLA, who made that find and still defends it. “It was like tackling Jesus or Moses,” Brasier says.</p> <p>Now Brasier has emptied his second barrel. In August he and David Wacey of the University of Western Australia staked their own claim to a candidate for the oldest known fossil: a set of Slinky-shaped cells found on an ancient beach in western Australia, just 20 miles from the site of Schopf’s discovery. Brasier asserts that his fossilized cells are the remains of primitive anaerobic bacteria that lived 3.4 billion years ago. Schopf’s samples, he believes, are nothing more than mangled, pressure-cooked rock.</p> <p>Settling the debate matters a great deal. At its heart is one of the biggest questions in science: When and where did life begin? Brasier’s find suggests that life on Earth started not near some oceanic thermal vent but rather in a warm, oxygen-depleted bath near the surface. It also bolsters the case that there once was life on Mars...</p> <p><i>Image: Outcrops in western Australia contain the remains of Earth's earliest life-forms. Courtesy of Abigail Allwood.</p></i> Bruce Grierson http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-big-debate-over-oldest-life-on-earth/key_image Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:50:00 -0500 Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:50:00 -0500 Print Article