scientificamerican--2020-09-01--How Astronomers Revolutionized Our View of the Cosmos

In 1835 French philosopher Auguste Comte asserted that nobody would ever know what the stars were made of .
“ We understand the possibility of determining their shapes , their distances , their sizes and their movements , ” he wrote , “ whereas we would never know how to study by any means their chemical composition , or their mineralogical structure , and , even more so , the nature of any organized beings that might live on their surface.
” Comte would be stunned by the discoveries made since then .
Today we know that the universe is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Not only does it extend beyond the Milky Way to untold numbers of other galaxies—this would come as a surprise to astronomers of the 19th and early 20th century to whom our galaxy was “ the universe ” —but it is expanding faster every day .
Now we can confidently trace cosmic history back 13.8 billion years to a moment only a billionth of a second after the big bang .
Astronomers have pinned down our universe 's expansion rate , the mean density of its main constituents , and other key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2 percent .
They have also worked out new laws of physics governing space—general relativity and quantum mechanics—that turn out to be much more outlandish than the classical laws people understood before .
These laws in turn predicted cosmic oddities such as black holes , neutron stars and gravitational waves .
The story of how we gained this knowledge is full of accidental discoveries , stunning surprises and dogged scientists pursuing goals others thought unreachable .
Our first hint of the true nature of stars came in 1860 , when Gustav Kirchhoff recognized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of light coming from the sun were caused by different elements absorbing specific wavelengths .
Astronomers analyzed similar features in the light of other bright stars and discovered that they were made of the same materials found on Earth—not of some mysterious “ fifth essence ” as the ancients had believed .
But it took longer to understand what fuel made the stars shine .
Lord Kelvin ( William Thomson ) calculated that if stars derived their power just from gravity , slowly deflating as their radiation leaked out , then the sun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ million years—far less time than Charles Darwin or the geologists of the time inferred had elapsed on Earth .
In his last paper on the subject , in 1908 , Kelvin inserted an escape clause stating that he would stick by his estimate “ unless there were some other energy source laid up in the storehouse of creation.
” That source , it turned out , is nuclear fusion—the process by which atomic nuclei join to create a larger nucleus and release energy .
In 1925 astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin used the light spectra @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and found that , unlike Earth , they were made mainly of hydrogen and helium .
She revealed her conclusions in what astronomer Otto Struve described as “ the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.
” A decade later physicist Hans Bethe showed that the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium was the main power source in ordinary stars .
At the same time stars were becoming less mysterious , so , too , was the nature of fuzzy “ nebulae ” becoming clearer .
In a “ great debate ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Washington , D.C. , on April 26 , 1920 , Harlow Shapley maintained that our Milky Way was preeminent and that all the nebulae were part of it .
In contrast , Heber Curtis argued that some of the fuzzy objects in the sky were separate galaxies— “ island universes ” —fully the equal of our Milky Way .
The conflict was settled not that night but just a few years later , in 1924 , when Edwin Hubble measured the distances to many nebulae and proved they were beyond the reaches @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came from Cepheids , variable stars in the nebulae that reveal their true brightness , and thus their distance , by their pulsation period—a relation discovered by Henrietta Swan Leavitt .
Soon after Hubble realized that the universe was bigger than many had thought , he found that it was still growing .
In 1929 he discovered that spectral features in the starlight from distant galaxies appeared redder—that is , they had longer wavelengths—than the same features in nearby stars .
If this effect was interpreted as a Doppler shift—the natural spreading of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other galaxies were moving away from one another and from us .
Indeed , the farther away they were , the faster their recession seemed to be .
This was the first clue that our cosmos was not static but was expanding all the time .
The universe also appeared to contain much that we could not see .
In 1933 Fritz Zwicky estimated the mass of all the stars in the Coma cluster of galaxies and found that they make up only about 1 percent of the mass necessary to keep the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was dubbed “ the missing mass problem , ” but many scientists at the time doubted Zwicky 's suggestion that hidden matter might be to blame .
The question remained divisive until the 1970s , when work by Vera Rubin and W. Kent Ford ( observing stars ) and by Morton Roberts and Robert Whitehurst ( making radio observations ) showed that the outer parts of galactic disks would also fly apart unless they were subject to a stronger gravitational pull than stars and gas alone could provide .
Finally , most astronomers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ dark matter ” must be present .
“ We have peered into a new world , ” Rubin wrote , “ and have seen that it is more mysterious and more complex than we had imagined.
” Scientists now believe that dark matter outnumbers visible matter by about a factor of five , yet we are hardly closer than we were in the 1930s to figuring out what it is .
Gravity , the force that revealed all that dark matter , has proved to be nearly as baffling .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Einstein published his general theory of relativity , which transcended Isaac Newton 's mechanics and revealed that gravity is actually the deformation of the fabric of space and time .
This new theory was slow to take hold .
Even after it was shown to be correct by observations of a 1919 solar eclipse , many dismissed the theory as an interesting quirk—after all , Newton 's laws were still good enough for calculating most things .
“ The discoveries , while very important , did not , however , affect anything on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lockyer told the New York Times after the eclipse .
For almost half a century after it was proposed , general relativity was sidelined from the mainstream of physics .
Then , beginning in the 1960s , astronomers started discovering new and extreme phenomena that only Einstein 's ideas could explain .
One example lurks in the Crab Nebula , one of the best-known objects in the sky , which is composed of the expanding debris from a supernova witnessed by Chinese astronomers in a.d. 1054 .
Since it appeared , the nebula @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how ?
Its light source was a longtime puzzle , but the answer came in 1968 , when the dim star at its center was revealed to be anything but normal .
It was actually an ultracompact neutron star , heavier than the sun but only a few miles in radius and spinning at 30 revolutions per second .
“ This was a totally unexpected , totally new kind of object behaving in a way that astronomers had never expected , never dreamt of , ” said Jocelyn Bell Burnell , one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ star 's excessive spin sends out a wind of fast electrons that generate the blue light .
The gravitational force at the surface of such an incredibly dense object falls way outside of Newton 's purview—a rocket would need to be fired at half the speed of light to escape its pull .
Here the relativistic effects predicted by Einstein must be taken into account .
Thousands of such spinning neutron stars—called pulsars—have been discovered .
All are believed to be remnants of the cores of stars that exploded as supernovae , offering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of nature under extreme conditions .
The most exotic result of Einstein 's theory was the concept of black holes—objects that have collapsed so far that not even light can escape their gravitational pull .
For decades these were only conjecture , and Einstein wrote in 1939 that they “ do not exist in physical reality.
” But in 1963 astronomers discovered quasars : mysterious , hyperluminous beacons in the centers of some galaxies .
More than a decade passed before a consensus emerged that this intense brightness was generated by gas swirling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ galaxies ' cores .
It was the strongest evidence yet that these bizarre predictions of general relativity actually exist .
When did the universe begin ?
Did it even have a beginning ?
Astronomers had long debated these questions when , in the middle of the 20th century , two competing theories proposed very different answers .
The “ hot big bang ” model said the cosmos began extremely small , hot and dense and then cooled and spread out over time .
The “ steady state ” hypothesis held that the universe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forever .
The contest was settled by a serendipitous discovery .
In 1965 radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were trying to calibrate a new antenna at Bell Labs in New Jersey .
They had a problem : no matter what they did to reduce background interference , they measured a consistent level of noise in every direction .
They even evicted a family of pigeons that had been nesting in the antenna in the hope that they were the source of the problem .
But the signal persisted .
They had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cold .
Instead it is warmed to nearly three kelvins ( just above absolute zero ) by weak microwaves .
Penzias and Wilson had accidentally uncovered the “ afterglow of creation ” —the cooled and diluted relic of an era when everything in the universe was squeezed until it was hot and dense .
The finding tipped the balance firmly in favor of the big bang picture of cosmology .
According to the model , during the earliest , hottest epochs of time , the universe was opaque , rather like the inside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ repeatedly scattered by electrons .
When the temperature fell to 3,000 kelvins , however , the electrons slowed down enough to be captured by protons and created neutral atoms .
Thereafter light could travel freely .
The Bell Labs signal was this ancient light , first released about 300,000 years after the birth of the universe and still pervading the cosmos—what we call the cosmic microwave background .
It took a while for the magnitude of the discovery to sink in for the scientists who made it .
“ We were very pleased @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the antenna noise ] , but I do n't think either of us really took the cosmology very seriously at first , ” Wilson says .
“ Walter Sullivan wrote a first-page article in the New York Times about it , and I began to think at that point that , you know , maybe I better start taking this cosmology seriously.
” Measurements of this radiation have since enabled scientists to understand how galaxies emerged .
Precise observations of the microwaves reveal that they are not completely uniform over the sky .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ slightly cooler .
The amplitude of these fluctuations is only one part in 100,000 , but they are the seeds of today 's cosmic structure .
Any region of the expanding universe that started off slightly denser than average expanded less because it was subjected to extra gravity ; its growth lagged further and further , the contrast between its density and that of its surroundings becoming greater and greater .
Eventually these clumps were dense enough that gas was pulled in and compressed into stars , forming galaxies .
The crucial point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this process are fed the initial fluctuations measured in the cosmic microwave background , which represent the universe when it was 300,000 years old .
The output after 13.8 billion years of virtual time have elapsed is a cosmos where galaxies resemble those we see , clustered as they are in the actual universe .
This is a real triumph : we understand , at least in outline , 99.998 percent of cosmic history .
It is not only the big cosmic picture that we have come to understand .
A series of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the elemental building blocks that make up stars , planets and even our own bodies .
Starting in the 1950s , progress in atomic physics led to accurate modeling of stars ' surface layers .
Simultaneously , detailed knowledge of the nuclei not just of hydrogen and helium atoms but also of the rest of the elements allowed scientists to calculate which nuclear reactions dominate at different stages in a star 's life .
Astronomers came to understand how nuclear fusion creates an onion-skin structure in massive stars as atoms successively fuse to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with iron in the innermost , hottest layer .
Astronomers also learned how stars die when they exhaust their hydrogen fuel and blow off their outer gaseous layers .
Lighter stars then settle down to a quiet demise as dense , dim objects called white dwarfs , but heavier stars shed more of their mass , either in winds during their lives or in an explosive death via supernova .
This expelled mass turns out to be crucial to our own existence : it mixes into the interstellar medium and recondenses into new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The concept was conceived by Fred Hoyle , who developed it during the 1950s along with two other British astronomers , Margaret Burbidge and Geoffrey Burbidge , and American nuclear physicist William Fowler .
In their classic 1957 paper in Reviews of Modern Physics ( known by the initials of its authors as BBFH ) , they analyzed the networks of the nuclear reactions involved and discovered how most atoms in the periodic table came to exist .
They calculated why oxygen and carbon , for instance , are common , whereas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ galaxy , it turns out , is a huge ecological system where gas is being recycled through successive generations of stars .
Each of us contains atoms forged in dozens of different stars spread across the Milky Way that lived and died more than 4.5 billion years ago .
Scientists long assumed this process was seeding planets—and possibly even life—around stars other than our own sun .
But we did not know for sure whether planets existed outside our solar system until the 1990s , when astronomers developed clever methods for identifying worlds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see directly .
One technique looks for tiny periodic changes in a star 's movement caused by the gravitational pull of a planet orbiting it .
In 1995 Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz used this strategy to detect 51 Pegasi b , the first known exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star .
The technique can reveal a planet 's mass , the length of its “ year ” and the shape of its orbit .
So far more than 800 exoplanets have been found this way .
A second technique works better for smaller @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a planet transits in front of it .
An Earth-like planet passing a sunlike star can cause a dimming of about one part in 10,000 once per orbit .
The Kepler spacecraft launched in 2009 found more than 2,000 planets this way , many no bigger than Earth .
A big surprise to come from astronomers ' success in planet hunting was the variety of different planets out there—many much larger and closer to their stars than the bodies in our solar system—suggesting that our cosmic neighborhood may be somewhat special .
By @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the elements that form planets , stars and galaxies originated .
The final piece in this puzzle , however , arrived very recently and from a seemingly unrelated inquiry .
General relativity had predicted a phenomenon called gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime produced by the movement of massive objects .
Despite decades of searching for them , however , no waves were seen—until September 2015 .
That was when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory ( LIGO ) detected the first evidence of gravitational waves in the form of a “ chirp ” —a minute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then dies away .
In this case , it was caused by two black holes in a binary system that had started out orbiting each other but gradually spiraled together and eventually converged into a single massive hole .
The crash occurred more than a billion light-years away .
LIGO 's detectors consist of mirrors four kilometers apart whose separation is measured by laser beams that reflect light back and forth between them .
A passing gravitational wave causes the space between the two mirrors to jitter by an amount millions of times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ single atom—LIGO is indeed an amazing feat of precision engineering and perseverance .
Since that first find , more than a dozen similar events have been detected , opening up a new field that probes the dynamics of space itself .
One event was of special astrophysical interest because it signaled the merger of two pulsars .
Unlike black hole mergers , this kind of collision , a splat between two ultradense stars , yields a pulse of optical light , x-rays and gamma rays .
The discovery filled a gap in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had explained the genesis of many of the elements in space but were flummoxed by the forging of gold .
In the 1970s David N. Schramm and his colleagues had speculated that the exotic nuclear processes involved in hypothetical mergers of pulsar stars might do the job—a theory that has since been validated .
Despite the incredible progress in astronomy over the past 175 years , we have perhaps more questions now than we did back then .
Take dark matter .
I am on record as having said more than 20 years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's nature long before today .
Although that prediction has proved wrong , I have not given up hope .
Dark energy , however , is a different story .
Dark energy entered the picture in 1998 , when researchers measuring the distances and speeds of supernovae found that the expansion of the universe was actually accelerating .
Gravitational attraction pulling galaxies toward one another seemed to be overwhelmed by a mysterious new force latent in empty space that pushes galaxies apart—a force that came to be known as dark energy .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do not know what causes it or why it has the particular strength it does—and we probably will not understand it until we have a model for the graininess of space on a scale a billion billion times smaller than an atomic nucleus .
Theorists working on string theory or loop quantum gravity are tackling this challenge , but the phenomenon seems so far from being accessible by any experiment that I am not expecting answers anytime soon .
The upside , however , is that a theory that could account for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also yield insights into the very beginning of our universe , when everything was so compressed and dense that quantum fluctuations could shake the entire cosmos .
Which brings us to another major question facing us now : How did it all begin ?
What exactly set off the big bang that started our universe ?
Did space undergo a period of extremely rapid early expansion called inflation , as many theorists believe ?
And there is something else : some models , such as eternal inflation , suggest that “ our ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of spacetime in a vast archipelago—one big bang among many .
If this hypothesis is true , different big bangs may cool down differently , leading to unique laws of physics in each case—a “ multiverse ” rather than a universe .
Some physicists hate the multiverse concept because it means that we will never have neat explanations for the fundamental numbers that govern our physical laws , which may in this grander perspective be just environmental accidents .
But our preferences are irrelevant to nature .
About 10 years ago I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we were asked by someone in the audience how much we would bet on the multiverse concept .
I said that on a scale of betting my goldfish , my dog or my life , I was nearly at the dog level .
Andrei Linde , who had spent 25 years promoting eternal inflation , said he would almost bet his life .
Later , on being told this , physicist Steven Weinberg said he would happily bet my dog and Linde 's life .
Linde , my dog and I will all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But none of this should be dismissed as metaphysics .
It is speculative science—exciting science .
And it may be true .
And what will happen to this universe—or multiverse—of ours ?
Long-range forecasts are seldom reliable , but the best and most conservative bet is that we have almost an eternity ahead with an ever colder and ever emptier cosmos .
Galaxies will accelerate away and disappear .
All that will be left from our vantage point will be the remnants of the Milky Way , Andromeda and smaller neighbors .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ may be annihilated , there may be occasional flashes when black holes evaporate—and then silence .
This possible future is based on the assumption that the dark energy stays constant .
If it decays , however , there could be a “ big crunch ” with the universe contracting in on itself .
Or if dark energy strengthens , there would be a “ big rip ” when galaxies , stars and even atoms are torn apart .
Other questions closer to home tantalize us .
Could there be life on any of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Here we are still in the realm of speculation .
But unless the origin of life on Earth involved a rare fluke , I expect evidence of a biosphere on an exoplanet within 20 years .
I will not hold my breath for the discovery of aliens , but I think the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a worthwhile gamble .
Success in the search would carry the momentous message that concepts of logic and physics are not limited to the hardware in human skulls .
Until now , progress in cosmology and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instruments and technology and less than 5 percent to armchair theory .
I expect that balance to persist .
What Hubble wrote in the 1930s remains a good maxim today : “ Not until the empirical resources are exhausted , need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation.
” There have been many particularly exhilarating eras in the past 175 years—the 1920s and 1930s , when we realized the universe was not limited to the Milky Way , and the 1960s and 1970s , when we discovered objects that defy classical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quasars , and clues about the beginning of time from the cosmic microwave background .
Since then , the pace of advancement has crescendoed rather than slackened .
When the history of science gets written , this amazing progress will be acclaimed as one of its greatest triumphs—up there with plate tectonics , the genome and the Standard Model of particle physics .
And some major fields in astronomy are just getting going .
Exoplanet research is only 25 years old , and serious work in astrobiology is really only starting .
Some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aliens who know all the answers already .
I find that encouraging .

In 1835 French philosopher Auguste Comte asserted that nobody would ever know what the stars were made of. “We understand the possibility of determining their shapes, their distances, their sizes and their movements,” he wrote, “whereas we would never know how to study by any means their chemical composition, or their mineralogical structure, and, even more so, the nature of any organized beings that might live on their surface.”
Comte would be stunned by the discoveries made since then. Today we know that the universe is far bigger and stranger than anyone suspected. Not only does it extend beyond the Milky Way to untold numbers of other galaxies—this would come as a surprise to astronomers of the 19th and early 20th century to whom our galaxy was “the universe”—but it is expanding faster every day. Now we can confidently trace cosmic history back 13.8 billion years to a moment only a billionth of a second after the big bang. Astronomers have pinned down our universe's expansion rate, the mean density of its main constituents, and other key numbers to a precision of 1 or 2 percent. They have also worked out new laws of physics governing space—general relativity and quantum mechanics—that turn out to be much more outlandish than the classical laws people understood before. These laws in turn predicted cosmic oddities such as black holes, neutron stars and gravitational waves. The story of how we gained this knowledge is full of accidental discoveries, stunning surprises and dogged scientists pursuing goals others thought unreachable.
Our first hint of the true nature of stars came in 1860, when Gustav Kirchhoff recognized that the dark lines in the spectrum of light coming from the sun were caused by different elements absorbing specific wavelengths. Astronomers analyzed similar features in the light of other bright stars and discovered that they were made of the same materials found on Earth—not of some mysterious “fifth essence” as the ancients had believed.
But it took longer to understand what fuel made the stars shine. Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) calculated that if stars derived their power just from gravity, slowly deflating as their radiation leaked out, then the sun's age was 20 million to 40 million years—far less time than Charles Darwin or the geologists of the time inferred had elapsed on Earth. In his last paper on the subject, in 1908, Kelvin inserted an escape clause stating that he would stick by his estimate “unless there were some other energy source laid up in the storehouse of creation.”
That source, it turned out, is nuclear fusion—the process by which atomic nuclei join to create a larger nucleus and release energy. In 1925 astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin used the light spectra of stars to calculate their chemical abundances and found that, unlike Earth, they were made mainly of hydrogen and helium. She revealed her conclusions in what astronomer Otto Struve described as “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.” A decade later physicist Hans Bethe showed that the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium was the main power source in ordinary stars.
What is the source of the sun's power? The answer—fusion—came in 1938. Credit: SOHO (ESA and NASA)
At the same time stars were becoming less mysterious, so, too, was the nature of fuzzy “nebulae” becoming clearer. In a “great debate” held before the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., on April 26, 1920, Harlow Shapley maintained that our Milky Way was preeminent and that all the nebulae were part of it. In contrast, Heber Curtis argued that some of the fuzzy objects in the sky were separate galaxies—“island universes”—fully the equal of our Milky Way. The conflict was settled not that night but just a few years later, in 1924, when Edwin Hubble measured the distances to many nebulae and proved they were beyond the reaches of the Milky Way. His evidence came from Cepheids, variable stars in the nebulae that reveal their true brightness, and thus their distance, by their pulsation period—a relation discovered by Henrietta Swan Leavitt.
Soon after Hubble realized that the universe was bigger than many had thought, he found that it was still growing. In 1929 he discovered that spectral features in the starlight from distant galaxies appeared redder—that is, they had longer wavelengths—than the same features in nearby stars. If this effect was interpreted as a Doppler shift—the natural spreading of waves as they recede—it would imply that other galaxies were moving away from one another and from us. Indeed, the farther away they were, the faster their recession seemed to be. This was the first clue that our cosmos was not static but was expanding all the time.
The universe also appeared to contain much that we could not see. In 1933 Fritz Zwicky estimated the mass of all the stars in the Coma cluster of galaxies and found that they make up only about 1 percent of the mass necessary to keep the cluster from flying apart. The discrepancy was dubbed “the missing mass problem,” but many scientists at the time doubted Zwicky's suggestion that hidden matter might be to blame. The question remained divisive until the 1970s, when work by Vera Rubin and W. Kent Ford (observing stars) and by Morton Roberts and Robert Whitehurst (making radio observations) showed that the outer parts of galactic disks would also fly apart unless they were subject to a stronger gravitational pull than stars and gas alone could provide. Finally, most astronomers were compelled to accept that some kind of “dark matter” must be present. “We have peered into a new world,” Rubin wrote, “and have seen that it is more mysterious and more complex than we had imagined.” Scientists now believe that dark matter outnumbers visible matter by about a factor of five, yet we are hardly closer than we were in the 1930s to figuring out what it is.
Gravity, the force that revealed all that dark matter, has proved to be nearly as baffling. A pivotal moment came in 1915 when Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity, which transcended Isaac Newton's mechanics and revealed that gravity is actually the deformation of the fabric of space and time. This new theory was slow to take hold. Even after it was shown to be correct by observations of a 1919 solar eclipse, many dismissed the theory as an interesting quirk—after all, Newton's laws were still good enough for calculating most things. “The discoveries, while very important, did not, however, affect anything on this earth,” astronomer W.J.S. Lockyer told the New York Times after the eclipse. For almost half a century after it was proposed, general relativity was sidelined from the mainstream of physics. Then, beginning in the 1960s, astronomers started discovering new and extreme phenomena that only Einstein's ideas could explain.
One example lurks in the Crab Nebula, one of the best-known objects in the sky, which is composed of the expanding debris from a supernova witnessed by Chinese astronomers in a.d. 1054. Since it appeared, the nebula has kept on shining blue and bright—but how? Its light source was a longtime puzzle, but the answer came in 1968, when the dim star at its center was revealed to be anything but normal. It was actually an ultracompact neutron star, heavier than the sun but only a few miles in radius and spinning at 30 revolutions per second. “This was a totally unexpected, totally new kind of object behaving in a way that astronomers had never expected, never dreamt of,” said Jocelyn Bell Burnell, one of the discoverers of the phenomenon. The star's excessive spin sends out a wind of fast electrons that generate the blue light. The gravitational force at the surface of such an incredibly dense object falls way outside of Newton's purview—a rocket would need to be fired at half the speed of light to escape its pull. Here the relativistic effects predicted by Einstein must be taken into account. Thousands of such spinning neutron stars—called pulsars—have been discovered. All are believed to be remnants of the cores of stars that exploded as supernovae, offering an ideal laboratory for studying the laws of nature under extreme conditions.
The most exotic result of Einstein's theory was the concept of black holes—objects that have collapsed so far that not even light can escape their gravitational pull. For decades these were only conjecture, and Einstein wrote in 1939 that they “do not exist in physical reality.” But in 1963 astronomers discovered quasars: mysterious, hyperluminous beacons in the centers of some galaxies. More than a decade passed before a consensus emerged that this intense brightness was generated by gas swirling into huge black holes lurking in the galaxies' cores. It was the strongest evidence yet that these bizarre predictions of general relativity actually exist.
When did the universe begin? Did it even have a beginning? Astronomers had long debated these questions when, in the middle of the 20th century, two competing theories proposed very different answers. The “hot big bang” model said the cosmos began extremely small, hot and dense and then cooled and spread out over time. The “steady state” hypothesis held that the universe had essentially existed in the same form forever.
The contest was settled by a serendipitous discovery. In 1965 radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were trying to calibrate a new antenna at Bell Labs in New Jersey. They had a problem: no matter what they did to reduce background interference, they measured a consistent level of noise in every direction. They even evicted a family of pigeons that had been nesting in the antenna in the hope that they were the source of the problem. But the signal persisted. They had discovered that intergalactic space is not completely cold. Instead it is warmed to nearly three kelvins (just above absolute zero) by weak microwaves. Penzias and Wilson had accidentally uncovered the “afterglow of creation”—the cooled and diluted relic of an era when everything in the universe was squeezed until it was hot and dense.
The finding tipped the balance firmly in favor of the big bang picture of cosmology. According to the model, during the earliest, hottest epochs of time, the universe was opaque, rather like the inside of a star, and light was repeatedly scattered by electrons. When the temperature fell to 3,000 kelvins, however, the electrons slowed down enough to be captured by protons and created neutral atoms. Thereafter light could travel freely. The Bell Labs signal was this ancient light, first released about 300,000 years after the birth of the universe and still pervading the cosmos—what we call the cosmic microwave background. It took a while for the magnitude of the discovery to sink in for the scientists who made it. “We were very pleased to have a possible explanation [for the antenna noise], but I don't think either of us really took the cosmology very seriously at first,” Wilson says. “Walter Sullivan wrote a first-page article in the New York Times about it, and I began to think at that point that, you know, maybe I better start taking this cosmology seriously.”
Measurements of this radiation have since enabled scientists to understand how galaxies emerged. Precise observations of the microwaves reveal that they are not completely uniform over the sky. Some patches are slightly hotter, others slightly cooler. The amplitude of these fluctuations is only one part in 100,000, but they are the seeds of today's cosmic structure. Any region of the expanding universe that started off slightly denser than average expanded less because it was subjected to extra gravity; its growth lagged further and further, the contrast between its density and that of its surroundings becoming greater and greater. Eventually these clumps were dense enough that gas was pulled in and compressed into stars, forming galaxies. The crucial point is this: Computer models that simulate this process are fed the initial fluctuations measured in the cosmic microwave background, which represent the universe when it was 300,000 years old. The output after 13.8 billion years of virtual time have elapsed is a cosmos where galaxies resemble those we see, clustered as they are in the actual universe. This is a real triumph: we understand, at least in outline, 99.998 percent of cosmic history.
It is not only the big cosmic picture that we have come to understand. A series of discoveries has also revealed the history of the elemental building blocks that make up stars, planets and even our own bodies.
Starting in the 1950s, progress in atomic physics led to accurate modeling of stars' surface layers. Simultaneously, detailed knowledge of the nuclei not just of hydrogen and helium atoms but also of the rest of the elements allowed scientists to calculate which nuclear reactions dominate at different stages in a star's life. Astronomers came to understand how nuclear fusion creates an onion-skin structure in massive stars as atoms successively fuse to build heavier and heavier elements, ending with iron in the innermost, hottest layer.
Inside the Crab Nebula is a neutron star: classical physics fails, and relativity applies. Credit: NASA, ESA and Hubble Heritage Team (STSCI and AURA)
Astronomers also learned how stars die when they exhaust their hydrogen fuel and blow off their outer gaseous layers. Lighter stars then settle down to a quiet demise as dense, dim objects called white dwarfs, but heavier stars shed more of their mass, either in winds during their lives or in an explosive death via supernova. This expelled mass turns out to be crucial to our own existence: it mixes into the interstellar medium and recondenses into new stars orbited by planets such as Earth. The concept was conceived by Fred Hoyle, who developed it during the 1950s along with two other British astronomers, Margaret Burbidge and Geoffrey Burbidge, and American nuclear physicist William Fowler. In their classic 1957 paper in Reviews of Modern Physics (known by the initials of its authors as BBFH), they analyzed the networks of the nuclear reactions involved and discovered how most atoms in the periodic table came to exist. They calculated why oxygen and carbon, for instance, are common, whereas gold and uranium are rare. Our galaxy, it turns out, is a huge ecological system where gas is being recycled through successive generations of stars. Each of us contains atoms forged in dozens of different stars spread across the Milky Way that lived and died more than 4.5 billion years ago.
Scientists long assumed this process was seeding planets—and possibly even life—around stars other than our own sun. But we did not know for sure whether planets existed outside our solar system until the 1990s, when astronomers developed clever methods for identifying worlds that are too dim for us to see directly. One technique looks for tiny periodic changes in a star's movement caused by the gravitational pull of a planet orbiting it. In 1995 Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz used this strategy to detect 51 Pegasi b, the first known exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star. The technique can reveal a planet's mass, the length of its “year” and the shape of its orbit. So far more than 800 exoplanets have been found this way. A second technique works better for smaller planets. A star dims slightly when a planet transits in front of it. An Earth-like planet passing a sunlike star can cause a dimming of about one part in 10,000 once per orbit. The Kepler spacecraft launched in 2009 found more than 2,000 planets this way, many no bigger than Earth. A big surprise to come from astronomers' success in planet hunting was the variety of different planets out there—many much larger and closer to their stars than the bodies in our solar system—suggesting that our cosmic neighborhood may be somewhat special.
By this point scientists understood where almost all the elements that form planets, stars and galaxies originated. The final piece in this puzzle, however, arrived very recently and from a seemingly unrelated inquiry.
General relativity had predicted a phenomenon called gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime produced by the movement of massive objects. Despite decades of searching for them, however, no waves were seen—until September 2015. That was when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected the first evidence of gravitational waves in the form of a “chirp”—a minute shaking of spacetime that speeds up and then dies away. In this case, it was caused by two black holes in a binary system that had started out orbiting each other but gradually spiraled together and eventually converged into a single massive hole. The crash occurred more than a billion light-years away. LIGO's detectors consist of mirrors four kilometers apart whose separation is measured by laser beams that reflect light back and forth between them. A passing gravitational wave causes the space between the two mirrors to jitter by an amount millions of times as small as the diameter of a single atom—LIGO is indeed an amazing feat of precision engineering and perseverance.
Since that first find, more than a dozen similar events have been detected, opening up a new field that probes the dynamics of space itself. One event was of special astrophysical interest because it signaled the merger of two pulsars. Unlike black hole mergers, this kind of collision, a splat between two ultradense stars, yields a pulse of optical light, x-rays and gamma rays. The discovery filled a gap in the classic work of BBFH: the authors had explained the genesis of many of the elements in space but were flummoxed by the forging of gold. In the 1970s David N. Schramm and his colleagues had speculated that the exotic nuclear processes involved in hypothetical mergers of pulsar stars might do the job—a theory that has since been validated.
Despite the incredible progress in astronomy over the past 175 years, we have perhaps more questions now than we did back then.
Take dark matter. I am on record as having said more than 20 years ago that we would know dark matter's nature long before today. Although that prediction has proved wrong, I have not given up hope. Dark energy, however, is a different story. Dark energy entered the picture in 1998, when researchers measuring the distances and speeds of supernovae found that the expansion of the universe was actually accelerating. Gravitational attraction pulling galaxies toward one another seemed to be overwhelmed by a mysterious new force latent in empty space that pushes galaxies apart—a force that came to be known as dark energy. The mystery of dark energy has lingered—we still do not know what causes it or why it has the particular strength it does—and we probably will not understand it until we have a model for the graininess of space on a scale a billion billion times smaller than an atomic nucleus. Theorists working on string theory or loop quantum gravity are tackling this challenge, but the phenomenon seems so far from being accessible by any experiment that I am not expecting answers anytime soon. The upside, however, is that a theory that could account for the energy in the vacuum of space might also yield insights into the very beginning of our universe, when everything was so compressed and dense that quantum fluctuations could shake the entire cosmos.
Which brings us to another major question facing us now: How did it all begin? What exactly set off the big bang that started our universe? Did space undergo a period of extremely rapid early expansion called inflation, as many theorists believe? And there is something else: some models, such as eternal inflation, suggest that “our” big bang could be just one island of spacetime in a vast archipelago—one big bang among many. If this hypothesis is true, different big bangs may cool down differently, leading to unique laws of physics in each case—a “multiverse” rather than a universe. Some physicists hate the multiverse concept because it means that we will never have neat explanations for the fundamental numbers that govern our physical laws, which may in this grander perspective be just environmental accidents. But our preferences are irrelevant to nature.
About 10 years ago I was on a panel at Stanford University where we were asked by someone in the audience how much we would bet on the multiverse concept. I said that on a scale of betting my goldfish, my dog or my life, I was nearly at the dog level. Andrei Linde, who had spent 25 years promoting eternal inflation, said he would almost bet his life. Later, on being told this, physicist Steven Weinberg said he would happily bet my dog and Linde's life. Linde, my dog and I will all be dead before the question is settled. But none of this should be dismissed as metaphysics. It is speculative science—exciting science. And it may be true.
And what will happen to this universe—or multiverse—of ours? Long-range forecasts are seldom reliable, but the best and most conservative bet is that we have almost an eternity ahead with an ever colder and ever emptier cosmos. Galaxies will accelerate away and disappear. All that will be left from our vantage point will be the remnants of the Milky Way, Andromeda and smaller neighbors. Protons may decay, dark matter particles may be annihilated, there may be occasional flashes when black holes evaporate—and then silence.
This possible future is based on the assumption that the dark energy stays constant. If it decays, however, there could be a “big crunch” with the universe contracting in on itself. Or if dark energy strengthens, there would be a “big rip” when galaxies, stars and even atoms are torn apart.
Other questions closer to home tantalize us. Could there be life on any of these new planets we are discovering? Here we are still in the realm of speculation. But unless the origin of life on Earth involved a rare fluke, I expect evidence of a biosphere on an exoplanet within 20 years. I will not hold my breath for the discovery of aliens, but I think the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a worthwhile gamble. Success in the search would carry the momentous message that concepts of logic and physics are not limited to the hardware in human skulls.
Until now, progress in cosmology and astrophysics has owed 95 percent to advancing instruments and technology and less than 5 percent to armchair theory. I expect that balance to persist. What Hubble wrote in the 1930s remains a good maxim today: “Not until the empirical resources are exhausted, need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation.”
There have been many particularly exhilarating eras in the past 175 years—the 1920s and 1930s, when we realized the universe was not limited to the Milky Way, and the 1960s and 1970s, when we discovered objects that defy classical physics, such as neutron stars and quasars, and clues about the beginning of time from the cosmic microwave background. Since then, the pace of advancement has crescendoed rather than slackened.
When the history of science gets written, this amazing progress will be acclaimed as one of its greatest triumphs—up there with plate tectonics, the genome and the Standard Model of particle physics. And some major fields in astronomy are just getting going. Exoplanet research is only 25 years old, and serious work in astrobiology is really only starting. Some exoplanets may have life—they may even harbor aliens who know all the answers already. I find that encouraging.


scientificamerican--2020-09-01--Welcome to 175 Years of Discovery

Welcome to 175 Years of Discovery

A few years after the first issue of this magazine was published , a New Jersey carpenter found traces of gold in California 's American River , setting in motion a Gold Rush in which some 100,000 prospectors flooded the Sierra Nevada seeking their fortune .
Rufus Porter , inventor , muralist and founder of this magazine , saw a different opportunity than the average 49er .
He wanted to ferry paying passengers from the East Coast to California via hydrogen airship , a huge craft that would make the trip in three days .
That scheme never took off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still going strong .
SciAm has endured in part because of continual self-evaluation and reinvention .
In that spirit , we decided to use this anniversary issue to take a hard look at our past , by analyzing the shifting ways we 've talked about science ( “ The Language of Science ” ) and by excavating and owning up to some of the most egregious material we 've printed ( “ Reckoning with Our Mistakes ” ) .
We chose to tell a few of the more entertaining stories from our history—like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for us on the hydrogen bomb , leading the feds to raid our offices , burn 3,000 copies of the magazine , and eventually find our editor in chief “ subversive and disloyal ” ( “ Nuclear Reaction ” ) .
But we are most interested in the sweep of scientific progress that Scientific American has spent nearly 18 decades covering .
After all , when our first issue came out in 1845 , the planet Neptune had yet to be discovered ; today cosmologists soberly debate the existence of parallel universes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the smartest writers and scientists around describe how we—as in we inquisitive humans—got from there to here and where we 're headed next .

A few years after the first issue of this magazine was published, a New Jersey carpenter found traces of gold in California's American River, setting in motion a Gold Rush in which some 100,000 prospectors flooded the Sierra Nevada seeking their fortune. Rufus Porter, inventor, muralist and founder of this magazine, saw a different opportunity than the average 49er. He wanted to ferry paying passengers from the East Coast to California via hydrogen airship, a huge craft that would make the trip in three days. That scheme never took off. Scientific American, however, is still going strong.
SciAm has endured in part because of continual self-evaluation and reinvention. In that spirit, we decided to use this anniversary issue to take a hard look at our past, by analyzing the shifting ways we've talked about science (“The Language of Science”) and by excavating and owning up to some of the most egregious material we've printed (“Reckoning with Our Mistakes”). We chose to tell a few of the more entertaining stories from our history—like the time Hans Bethe wrote an article for us on the hydrogen bomb, leading the feds to raid our offices, burn 3,000 copies of the magazine, and eventually find our editor in chief “subversive and disloyal” (“Nuclear Reaction”).
But we are most interested in the sweep of scientific progress that Scientific American has spent nearly 18 decades covering. After all, when our first issue came out in 1845, the planet Neptune had yet to be discovered; today cosmologists soberly debate the existence of parallel universes. In the articles that follow, some of the smartest writers and scientists around describe how we—as in we inquisitive humans—got from there to here and where we're headed next.


scientificamerican--2020-09-01--Quantum Computing May Be Closer Than You Think

Fully functional quantum computers and a new quantum industry may appear much sooner than many have anticipated—thanks to five new National Quantum Information Science Research centers just announced by the U.S. Department of Energy .
This latest development in the recently launched National Quantum Initiative Act , signed into law in December 2018 , comes with $ 625 million in funding over five years .
It ’ s a huge deal : for the first time , researchers from academia , U.S. national labs and industry will be working side by side aiming to speed up the fundamental quantum information @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bring us closer to advanced quantum technologies and the grandest goal of quantum information science , creating a fault-tolerant quantum computer that can indefinitely compute without errors .
Why do we need quantum computers ?
We need them to speed up the process of scientific discovery so that we can address some our greatest global challenges , from designing new materials for more efficient carbon capture plants and batteries to better drugs and vaccines .
Traditionally , material design has depended a lot on either happy accidents or a long and tedious iterative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ half a century , classical computers have greatly accelerated this process by performing molecular simulations .
Still , classical computers can ’ t simulate complex molecules with enough accuracy , and that ’ s where quantum computing will be able to help .
Quantum computers rely on the same physical rules as atoms to manipulate information .
Just like traditional , classical , computers execute logical circuits to run software programs , quantum computers use the physics phenomena of superposition , entanglement and interference to execute quantum circuits .
One day soon , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calculations out of the reach of the most advanced current and future classical supercomputers .
But to get there , we will need to build quantum machines that compute without errors .
Quantum computers rely on fragile qubits , short for quantum bits , which are only of use when they are in a delicate quantum state .
Any external disturbances or “ noise , ” such as heat , light or vibrations , inevitably yanks these qubits out of their quantum state and turns them into regular bits .
Overcoming this hurdle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ team , and we need scores of scientists from academia , the national labs and industry to get us there .
This is where the new centers come in .
At last , they will get the talent from all our R & D sectors to work together on quantum-related issues .
Take the problem of building a quantum system that would compute without errors .
Our best theories estimate that to get there , we should build machines with tens of millions of qubits on a single cooled-down chip .
But we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quantum chips the size of football fields .
To avoid it , we need many breakthroughs—meaning we have to invest in research at scale .
Luckily , some of the latest results show that it ’ s possible to reduce the number of qubits we need to implement error-correcting codes .
But even if we achieve this , we will have to overcome another hurdle : linking quantum processors , just like we connect today ’ s computer chips inside data centers using intranets .
This requires quantum interconnects that transfer the fragile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s qubits into a different quantum format ( say , photons ) that “ communicate ” the data to another processor .
Advances in this space must unite disparate technologies like superconducting qubits and fiber optics , while solving outstanding challenges in materials science and quantum communications .
Research teams could probably solve these problems , and many other challenges the quantum information science community is tackling , individually .
But it would take decades , and we can ’ t afford to wait this long .
Partnerships and collaboration , through the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chance of making the quantum leap we need .
With a long-term vision of establishing a robust national quantum ecosystem , academia , national labs and industry partners at last have a quantum roadmap .
Now it ’ s up to all the partners in this joint effort to create a quantum ecosystem and industry .
We ’ ll need plenty of the wit , talent , creativity and enthusiasm of a skilled and diverse quantum workforce to make it happen .

Fully functional quantum computers and a new quantum industry may appear much sooner than many have anticipated—thanks to five new National Quantum Information Science Research centers just announced by the U.S. Department of Energy. This latest development in the recently launched National Quantum Initiative Act, signed into law in December 2018, comes with $625 million in funding over five years.
It’s a huge deal: for the first time, researchers from academia, U.S. national labs and industry will be working side by side aiming to speed up the fundamental quantum information science research. And more research should bring us closer to advanced quantum technologies and the grandest goal of quantum information science, creating a fault-tolerant quantum computer that can indefinitely compute without errors.
Why do we need quantum computers? We need them to speed up the process of scientific discovery so that we can address some our greatest global challenges, from designing new materials for more efficient carbon capture plants and batteries to better drugs and vaccines. Traditionally, material design has depended a lot on either happy accidents or a long and tedious iterative process of experimentation. Over the past half a century, classical computers have greatly accelerated this process by performing molecular simulations. Still, classical computers can’t simulate complex molecules with enough accuracy, and that’s where quantum computing will be able to help.
Quantum computers rely on the same physical rules as atoms to manipulate information. Just like traditional, classical, computers execute logical circuits to run software programs, quantum computers use the physics phenomena of superposition, entanglement and interference to execute quantum circuits. One day soon, they should be able to perform mathematical calculations out of the reach of the most advanced current and future classical supercomputers.
But to get there, we will need to build quantum machines that compute without errors. Quantum computers rely on fragile qubits, short for quantum bits, which are only of use when they are in a delicate quantum state. Any external disturbances or “noise,” such as heat, light or vibrations, inevitably yanks these qubits out of their quantum state and turns them into regular bits.
Overcoming this hurdle is beyond the limits of a single team, and we need scores of scientists from academia, the national labs and industry to get us there. This is where the new centers come in. At last, they will get the talent from all our R&D sectors to work together on quantum-related issues.
Take the problem of building a quantum system that would compute without errors. Our best theories estimate that to get there, we should build machines with tens of millions of qubits on a single cooled-down chip. But we don’t want to cool down quantum chips the size of football fields. To avoid it, we need many breakthroughs—meaning we have to invest in research at scale. Luckily, some of the latest results show that it’s possible to reduce the number of qubits we need to implement error-correcting codes.
But even if we achieve this, we will have to overcome another hurdle: linking quantum processors, just like we connect today’s computer chips inside data centers using intranets. This requires quantum interconnects that transfer the fragile quantum information stored in the processor’s qubits into a different quantum format (say, photons) that “communicate” the data to another processor. Advances in this space must unite disparate technologies like superconducting qubits and fiber optics, while solving outstanding challenges in materials science and quantum communications.
Research teams could probably solve these problems, and many other challenges the quantum information science community is tackling, individually. But it would take decades, and we can’t afford to wait this long. Partnerships and collaboration, through the new centers, will offer us the chance of making the quantum leap we need. With a long-term vision of establishing a robust national quantum ecosystem, academia, national labs and industry partners at last have a quantum roadmap.
Now it’s up to all the partners in this joint effort to create a quantum ecosystem and industry. We’ll need plenty of the wit, talent, creativity and enthusiasm of a skilled and diverse quantum workforce to make it happen.


scientificamerican--2020-09-01--Doctors Chase Treatment for Kids Threatened by Dangerous COVID-19 Syndrome

On a warm , mid-June afternoon a concerned mother brought her 11-year-old daughter , who had a high fever and a severe bellyache , to the emergency room at Hasbro Children ’ s Hospital in Providence , R.I. After doctors ruled out the usual suspects for the symptoms , such as bacterial infections and appendicitis , they started to seriously consider a diagnosis that would have been inconceivable two months prior : an emergent and potentially fatal inflammatory condition that occurs in children about four weeks after they are exposed to the new coronavirus .
The rare disease—called multisystem inflammatory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.S. or pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome in the U.K. , where it was first defined this past spring—is a hyperimmune response to SARS-CoV-2 .
It disproportionately affects Black , Hispanic and Latino children .
In some cases of MIS-C , resembling the bacterial overloads of toxic shock syndrome , youngsters arrive at the hospital with shock symptoms and organ failure .
In others , they experience a high fever and inflammatory symptoms resembling those of Kawasaki disease , which strikes children ’ s blood vessels .
Or the illness can look like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affected kids still have a high fever and widespread inflammation .
Nearly all of the children treated for MIS-C survive and appear to be healthy afterward .
But when it is undiagnosed or untreated , the condition can permanently damage the heart or cause death .
The disease is so new that there is no consensus on several of its fundamental features or on how to treat it .
But insights from doctors who have been confronting MIS-C this summer , along with new research about its victims , are starting to reveal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ small study published on August 18 in Nature Medicine concluded that the condition is distinct from Kawasaki disease , as many doctors suspected .
And several large research efforts that have recently been launched could soon clarify how to diagnose MIS-C and identify trends in treatments that seem to work best .
As of August 20 , 694 MIS-C cases and 11 deaths had been reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
About 1,000 cases had been documented worldwide by late July .
Children are hospitalized for COVID-19 more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to various reports , but doctors say the latter is more dangerous .
Although most youngsters recover , they often do so after severe illness .
According to three recent studies , between 64 percent and 80 percent of those hospitalized for the condition required intensive care treatment , compared with about 33 percent of children hospitalized for COVID-19 .
With so few cases and descriptive studies , no diagnostic tests and no randomized controlled experimental results to guide treatment , hospital pediatricians have had to dig deep to figure out how to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a Brown University pediatric infectious disease ( ID ) specialist , and her colleague Sabina Holland managed the case at Hasbro .
Keen for insight , Chiang followed evaluation guidelines developed by the Children ’ s Hospital of Philadelphia to the point where they read , “ Consult ID ” —in other words , she should consult herself .
“ I thought , ‘ Ha ha .
Okay .
So now what do I do ?
’ ” she recalls .
Because there are no doctors who have any depth of experience @ @ @ @ @ @ @ huddling in-house with colleagues in specialties such as cardiology , hematology and rheumatology .
Some of them are consulting far-flung colleagues with experience in treating the inflammatory Kawasaki disease , which has unknown causes , affects a few thousand young children annually in the U.S. and is more common in Japan .
As Chiang pursued clues for how to treat her patient , she came across limited CDC guidelines , as well as a Webinar for clinicians hosted by the agency .
The latter featured a doctor affiliated with Imperial College London and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who described dozens of area children who came down with MIS-C ’ s characteristic high fever and severe inflammation , which seemed to arise about a month after exposure to the new coronavirus .
Chiang learned that four weeks before coming to the hospital , two of the Hasbro patient ’ s family members had recovered at home from relatively mild cases of COVID-19 .
The girl tested positive at the hospital for the coronavirus and for antibodies to it .
Along with imaging scans , blood-work results and the CDC ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to MIS-C—the first reported case in Rhode Island .
Rapid , accurate diagnosis of MIS-C is crucial for treating children before the illness damages their heart or causes other life-threatening complications.
“ Kids come in kind of irritable and feverish and then , hours later , they just suddenly tank , ” says Russell McCulloh , a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children ’ s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha .
In some cases , hospitalized children quickly developed coronary artery inflammation , cardiac dysfunction such as a weakly pumping heart or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are placed on a so-called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine to do the work of the heart or lungs or on a mechanical ventilator to do the work of the latter .
U.S. children ’ s hospitals , the American College of Rheumatology and the American Academy of Pediatrics have recently published guidance for physicians on how to evaluate , diagnose and treat MIS-C , such as the material Chiang consulted .
But that information is preliminary .
As more cases advance doctors ’ understanding , the guidelines will likely evolve , McCulloh says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about a dozen cases now .
Guidelines , however , are not as useful as diagnostic criteria , which have yet to be developed , according to pediatric rheumatologist Grant Schulert .
He works with teams at Cincinnati Children ’ s Hospital that have treated several youngsters diagnosed with MIS-C. For now , case definitions are written so broadly , they could muddy diagnoses , Schulert says .
Another problem , he notes , is that MIS-C case definitions often specify using antibody tests for the virus , which indicate that patients have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent past .
Those results are a useful marker in regions currently experiencing a peak in infections , Schulert says , but not in places in which the virus has been slowly creeping among people for many months—such as much of the Midwest , where he works .
“ In the winter , if we see a patient with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 who is antibody-positive , we can not necessarily assume that they were infected in the past four weeks , ” he says .
“ This highlights the need to understand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more biologically based classification and diagnostic criteria can be constructed.
” The common thread across all cases , says Michael Levin , the pediatric infectious disease specialist who appeared in the CDC Webinar , is severe inflammation of multiple organ systems , as evidenced by blood markers , along with exposure to SARS-CoV-2 .
Levin ’ s team was the first to define MIS-C when it did so for the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health .
The CDC and World Health Organization soon followed .
To avoid misdiagnosis , doctors have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other conditions , ranging from tick-borne illnesses to sepsis .
But the fear of missing a potential MIS-C patient can lead hospital physicians to perform excessive and unnecessary testing in patients with fevers , says pediatric infectious disease specialist Jocelyn AngShe and her colleagues have treated at least three dozen MIS-C patients at Children ’ s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit .
Figuring out how to treat MIS-C is even more fraught than diagnosing it , some doctors say .
“ Right now we ’ re using really blunt treatment based off of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t have better information , ” McCulloh says .
Given that some MIS-C symptoms overlap with those for Kawasaki disease and other inflammatory illnesses , physicians have , with some success , relied on treatments for those conditions to tamp down the inflammation and the overactive immune system that brought it on .
Treatments include intravenous immunoglobulin—an anti-inflammatory blood product—as well as steroids and monoclonal antibodies .
In mild cases , some patients recover with minimal intervention that stabilizes their blood pressure or breathing while their immune system settles down .
But there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which drugs , if any , are effective or the best course of action .
As a stopgap move until randomized controlled treatment studies are funded , researchers have launched case-registry efforts in the U.S. and U.K .
In one led by Imperial College Londonhealth care workers representing 90 different hospitals in 39 countries , including Brazil , Norway , and Pakistan , have entered their lengthy MIS-C case and treatment details in an anonymized online database .
With statistical corrections for bias in treatments based on disease severity , analysts could compare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across many places .
With enough entries , helpful guidance could come by the end of the year , Levin says .
Similarly , the CDC has funded a study led by Boston Children ’ s Hospital that is collecting data at more than 70 U.S. hospitals and analyzing risk factors and outcomes among 2,000 children and young adults hospitalized with COVID-19 and MIS-C .
The group reported the features and treatment of 186 patients with MIS-C in 26 U.S. states , and its analysis is ongoing , says Adrienne Randolph , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Children ’ s and the project ’ s principal investigator .
And a multinational study , funded by the European Commission and led by Imperial College London , is collecting blood samples from patients with COVID-19 , MIS-C and other infections .
The researchers are looking for telltale compounds in blood in order to classify conditions by their molecular signature for use in diagnosis , Levin says .
Initial results could come this fall .
As for Chiang ’ s challenging case in June , her patient recovered well and has shown no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago the girl ’ s mother told Chiang that her daughter was anxious , probably from the experience with MIS-C , which included two hospitalizations and multiple drug treatments .
Chiang empathizes and sees the big picture .
“ I can imagine being a young adult like her , ” she says .
“ You have this illness that is brand new , so doctors have very little experience in treating it .
And you hear all these things in the media about how scary the disease is .
I can imagine that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more about the coronavirus outbreak from Scientific American here .
And read coverage from our international network of magazines here .

On a warm, mid-June afternoon a concerned mother brought her 11-year-old daughter, who had a high fever and a severe bellyache, to the emergency room at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, R.I. After doctors ruled out the usual suspects for the symptoms, such as bacterial infections and appendicitis, they started to seriously consider a diagnosis that would have been inconceivable two months prior: an emergent and potentially fatal inflammatory condition that occurs in children about four weeks after they are exposed to the new coronavirus.
The rare disease—called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) in the U.S. or pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome in the U.K., where it was first defined this past spring—is a hyperimmune response to SARS-CoV-2. It disproportionately affects Black, Hispanic and Latino children. In some cases of MIS-C resembling the bacterial overloads of toxic shock syndrome, youngsters arrive at the hospital with shock symptoms and organ failure. In others, they experience a high fever and inflammatory symptoms resembling those of Kawasaki disease, which strikes children’s blood vessels. Or the illness can look like neither of those threats, even though affected kids still have a high fever and widespread inflammation. Nearly all of the children treated for MIS-C survive and appear to be healthy afterward. But when it is undiagnosed or untreated, the condition can permanently damage the heart or cause death.
The disease is so new that there is no consensus on several of its fundamental features or on how to treat it. But insights from doctors who have been confronting MIS-C this summer, along with new research about its victims, are starting to reveal important clues. For instance, a small study published on August 18 in Nature Medicine concluded that the condition is distinct from Kawasaki disease, as many doctors suspected. And several large research efforts that have recently been launched could soon clarify how to diagnose MIS-C and identify trends in treatments that seem to work best.
As of August 20, 694 MIS-C cases and 11 deaths had been reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1,000 cases had been documented worldwide by late July. Children are hospitalized for COVID-19 more than they are for MIS-C, according to various reports, but doctors say the latter is more dangerous. Although most youngsters recover, they often do so after severe illness. According to three recent studies, between 64 percent and 80 percent of those hospitalized for the condition required intensive care treatment, compared with about 33 percent of children hospitalized for COVID-19.
With so few cases and descriptive studies, no diagnostic tests and no randomized controlled experimental results to guide treatment, hospital pediatricians have had to dig deep to figure out how to help the young victims. Silvia Chiang, a Brown University pediatric infectious disease (ID) specialist, and her colleague Sabina Holland managed the case at Hasbro. Keen for insight, Chiang followed evaluation guidelines developed by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to the point where they read, “Consult ID”—in other words, she should consult herself. “I thought, ‘Ha ha. Okay. So now what do I do?’” she recalls.
Because there are no doctors who have any depth of experience with MIS-C, infectious disease physicians are huddling in-house with colleagues in specialties such as cardiology, hematology and rheumatology. Some of them are consulting far-flung colleagues with experience in treating the inflammatory Kawasaki disease, which has unknown causes, affects a few thousand young children annually in the U.S. and is more common in Japan.
As Chiang pursued clues for how to treat her patient, she came across limited CDC guidelines, as well as a Webinar for clinicians hosted by the agency. The latter featured a doctor affiliated with Imperial College London and St. Mary’s Hospital in London, who described dozens of area children who came down with MIS-C’s characteristic high fever and severe inflammation, which seemed to arise about a month after exposure to the new coronavirus. Chiang learned that four weeks before coming to the hospital, two of the Hasbro patient’s family members had recovered at home from relatively mild cases of COVID-19. The girl tested positive at the hospital for the coronavirus and for antibodies to it. Along with imaging scans, blood-work results and the CDC’s description, the evidence added up to MIS-C—the first reported case in Rhode Island.
Rapid, accurate diagnosis of MIS-C is crucial for treating children before the illness damages their heart or causes other life-threatening complications.“Kids come in kind of irritable and feverish and then, hours later, they just suddenly tank,” says Russell McCulloh, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha. In some cases, hospitalized children quickly developed coronary artery inflammation, cardiac dysfunction such as a weakly pumping heart or even heart failure so severe that patients are placed on a so-called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine to do the work of the heart or lungs or on a mechanical ventilator to do the work of the latter.
U.S. children’s hospitals, the American College of Rheumatology and the American Academy of Pediatrics have recently published guidance for physicians on how to evaluate, diagnose and treat MIS-C, such as the material Chiang consulted. But that information is preliminary. As more cases advance doctors’ understanding, the guidelines will likely evolve, McCulloh says. He and his colleagues have treated about a dozen cases now. Guidelines, however, are not as useful as diagnostic criteria, which have yet to be developed, according to pediatric rheumatologist Grant Schulert. He works with teams at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital that have treated several youngsters diagnosed with MIS-C. For now, case definitions are written so broadly, they could muddy diagnoses, Schulert says.
Another problem, he notes, is that MIS-C case definitions often specify using antibody tests for the virus, which indicate that patients have been infected at some point in the recent past. Those results are a useful marker in regions currently experiencing a peak in infections, Schulert says, but not in places in which the virus has been slowly creeping among people for many months—such as much of the Midwest, where he works. “In the winter, if we see a patient with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 who is antibody-positive, we cannot necessarily assume that they were infected in the past four weeks,” he says. “This highlights the need to understand the biology of MIS-C, so a more biologically based classification and diagnostic criteria can be constructed.”
The common thread across all cases, says Michael Levin, the pediatric infectious disease specialist who appeared in the CDC Webinar, is severe inflammation of multiple organ systems, as evidenced by blood markers, along with exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Levin’s team was the first to define MIS-C when it did so for the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. The CDC and World Health Organization soon followed.
To avoid misdiagnosis, doctors have to also consider a laundry list of other conditions, ranging from tick-borne illnesses to sepsis. But the fear of missing a potential MIS-C patient can lead hospital physicians to perform excessive and unnecessary testing in patients with fevers, says pediatric infectious disease specialist Jocelyn Ang. She and her colleagues have treated at least three dozen MIS-C patients at Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit.
Figuring out how to treat MIS-C is even more fraught than diagnosing it, some doctors say. “Right now we’re using really blunt treatment based off of other diseases, because we don’t have better information,” McCulloh says. Given that some MIS-C symptoms overlap with those for Kawasaki disease and other inflammatory illnesses, physicians have, with some success, relied on treatments for those conditions to tamp down the inflammation and the overactive immune system that brought it on. Treatments include intravenous immunoglobulin—an anti-inflammatory blood product—as well as steroids and monoclonal antibodies. In mild cases, some patients recover with minimal intervention that stabilizes their blood pressure or breathing while their immune system settles down. But there are no data so far to demonstrate which drugs, if any, are effective or the best course of action.
As a stopgap move until randomized controlled treatment studies are funded, researchers have launched case-registry efforts in the U.S. and U.K. In one led by Imperial College London, health care workers representing 90 different hospitals in 39 countries, including Brazil, Norway, and Pakistan, have entered their lengthy MIS-C case and treatment details in an anonymized online database. With statistical corrections for bias in treatments based on disease severity, analysts could compare how well specific approaches worked for patients across many places. With enough entries, helpful guidance could come by the end of the year, Levin says.
Similarly, the CDC has funded a study led by Boston Children’s Hospital that is collecting data at more than 70 U.S. hospitals and analyzing risk factors and outcomes among 2,000 children and young adults hospitalized with COVID-19 and MIS-C. The group reported the features and treatment of 186 patients with MIS-C in 26 U.S. states, and its analysis is ongoing, says Adrienne Randolph, a senior associate in critical care at Boston Children’s and the project’s principal investigator. And a multinational study, funded by the European Commission and led by Imperial College London, is collecting blood samples from patients with COVID-19, MIS-C and other infections. The researchers are looking for telltale compounds in blood in order to classify conditions by their molecular signature for use in diagnosis, Levin says. Initial results could come this fall.
As for Chiang’s challenging case in June, her patient recovered well and has shown no lasting problems. But a few weeks ago the girl’s mother told Chiang that her daughter was anxious, probably from the experience with MIS-C, which included two hospitalizations and multiple drug treatments. Chiang empathizes and sees the big picture. “I can imagine being a young adult like her,” she says. “You have this illness that is brand new, so doctors have very little experience in treating it. And you hear all these things in the media about how scary the disease is. I can imagine that would be a bit hard.”
Read more about the coronavirus outbreak from Scientific American here. And read coverage from our international network of magazines here.


scientificamerican--2020-09-01--Science Briefs From Around the World

Science Briefs From Around the World

Hi , I ’ m Scientific American assistant news editor Sarah Lewin Frasier .
And here ’ s a short piece from the August 2020 issue of the magazine , in the section called Advances : Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science , Technology and Medicine .
The article is titled “ Quick Hits , ” and it ’ s a rundown of some noncoronavirus stories from around the globe .
A new study models how a gigantic , morphing blob of liquid iron in Earth 's outer core underneath the Canadian Arctic is losing its grip on the North @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blob below Siberia is pulling the pole away .
A geologic-dating effort suggests the fossil of a millipedelike creature found on the island of Kerrera formed 425 million years ago , making it possibly the oldest-known fossilized land animal .
( Older land animals have been spotted indirectly , through preserved tracks . )
Researchers discovered Africa 's largest-ever collection of fossilized human footprints , left in volcanic mud about 10,000 years ago .
Many of them came from a group of 17 people , mostly women , all walking in the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Viking ship , buried below a farmer 's field , to stop a wood-eating fungus from destroying it .
Ground-penetrating radar had found the ship in 2018 , and a new wood sample analysis revealed that it could not be preserved underground .
This spring a satellite-tagged cuckoo completed an epic 12,000-kilometer journey from Zambia to Mongolia .
It had originally been tagged in Mongolia in 2019 and traversed 16 countries in its round-trip migration .
Scientists found that king penguin excrement releases nitrous oxide–also known as laughing gas .
It forms as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ compounds .

Full Transcript
Hi, I’m Scientific American assistant news editor Sarah Lewin Frasier. And here’s a short piece from the August 2020 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine. The article is titled “Quick Hits,” and it’s a rundown of some noncoronavirus stories from around the globe.
From Canada:
A new study models how a gigantic, morphing blob of liquid iron in Earth's outer core underneath the Canadian Arctic is losing its grip on the North magnetic pole. A second, intensifying blob below Siberia is pulling the pole away.
From Scotland:
A geologic-dating effort suggests the fossil of a millipedelike creature found on the island of Kerrera formed 425 million years ago, making it possibly the oldest-known fossilized land animal. (Older land animals have been spotted indirectly, through preserved tracks.)
From Tanzania:
Researchers discovered Africa's largest-ever collection of fossilized human footprints, left in volcanic mud about 10,000 years ago. Many of them came from a group of 17 people, mostly women, all walking in the same direction.
From Norway:
Archaeologists are excavating a 20-meter Viking ship, buried below a farmer's field, to stop a wood-eating fungus from destroying it. Ground-penetrating radar had found the ship in 2018, and a new wood sample analysis revealed that it could not be preserved underground.
From Zambia and Mongolia:
This spring a satellite-tagged cuckoo completed an epic 12,000-kilometer journey from Zambia to Mongolia. It had originally been tagged in Mongolia in 2019 and traversed 16 countries in its round-trip migration.
And from Antarctica:
Scientists found that king penguin excrement releases nitrous oxide–also known as laughing gas. It forms as soil bacteria eat the droppings' nitrogen-rich compounds.
That was “Quick Hits.” I’m Sarah Lewin Frasier.
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]


scientificamerican--2020-09-01--How Those Bogus Reports on 'Ineffective' Neck Gaiters Got Started

In early August , there was a lot of hubbub around a study that purportedly showed that wearing a neck gaiter , the sleeve-like face covering popular especially among runners , might be worse at stemming the spread of COVID-19 than not wearing a mask at all .
Headlines popped up spreading the news , sparking conversations far and wide and forcing many to reconsider their preferred style of face mask .
A Washington Post story said “ some cotton cloth masks are about as effective as surgical masks , while thin polyester spandex gaiters may be worse than going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to neck gaiters , said the study “ found that one type of face covering might actually be doing more harm than good.
” But the study didn ’ t show that , nor was it designed to .
It was actually a test on how to test masks inexpensively , not to determine which one was most effective .
The researchers set up a green laser beam in a dark room .
A masked subject was then asked to speak so that the droplets from the speaker ’ s mouth showed up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process was video recorded on a cell phone , after which researchers calculated the number of droplets that showed up .
The process was repeated 10 times for each mask ( 14 in total , one of which was a neck gaiter ) and the setup cost less than $ 200 .
What was meant as a study on the pricing and efficacy of a test turned into , at least in some journalistic circles , a definitive nail-in-the-coffin for gaiters .
Days after the initial reports that neck gaiters might not only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a new round of new reports came out saying that those initial reports were overblown and misleading .
The authors of the study even held a press conference where they emphasized that their study was never meant to test the effectiveness of masks .
They only tested one gaiter-style mask , which says nothing about that style of mask in general .
The combination of reporting on the actual findings of the study and the direct comments from the authors seems to have abated the anti-neck gaiter fervor .
But all of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been prevented .
You could make the argument that it ’ s not a scientist ’ s job to worrying about how their science might be interpreted .
It ’ s their job to do the research and publish it in a scientific manuscript .
Leave the communicating for someone else .
But that ’ s not how the spread of information works .
Fewer and fewer newsrooms have staffers with scientific backgrounds , or who are dedicated to scientific reporting .
To be clear , journalists don ’ t need to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reporting on science does require a certain amount of expertise .
When newsrooms ask reporters to cover more and more topic areas and this specialization decreases , an attention to detail is sometimes lost .
So , the onus to help journalists ( and frankly , all nonscientists ) get the facts straight falls to the scientists doing the science .
That ’ s where science communication training comes in .
Science communication , or scicomm as it ’ s known colloquially , is not a core part of coursework in a majority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and graduate levels .
This trend is slowly changing as more institutions incorporate scicomm into their curriculums .
Outside of academia , nonprofits and scientific societies are taking up the mantle .
I work for the American Geophysical Union ( AGU ) , a society for Earth and space scientists , in the Sharing Science program , where we teach scientists to communicate with nonscientists through courses , workshops , webinars and other trainings .
Aside from the AGU , there is the American Association for the Advancement of Science ( AAAS ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Communicating Science and the science storytelling organization The Story Collider , to name just to name a few .
We teach the so-called “ soft skills ” that the ivory tower of science has shunned for so long but that are so necessary in effectively communicating .
One thing we stress is “ know your audience.
” Scientists must think about how their science will be perceived , no matter how relevant or not it might be to the broader public .
Science does not exist in a vacuum ; it never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ especially with anything related to COVID-19 , scientists much be hypervigilant when communicating results and try , to the best of their abilities , to account for as many interpretations as possible .
Yes , it is onerous , especially on top of the multitude of other responsibilities that come with being a scientist , but it is necessary .
The traditional ways in which scientists communicate their results ( i.e.
, scientific manuscripts ) are not going away anytime soon .
However , and while it may be an unfair ask , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communicate their science to their peers ; they must always think about nonscience audiences as the lines between science and “ the public ” continue to blur .
Training scientists to effectively communicate to , or at least think about , diverse audiences is a necessary part of science .

In early August, there was a lot of hubbub around a study that purportedly showed that wearing a neck gaiter, the sleeve-like face covering popular especially among runners, might be worse at stemming the spread of COVID-19 than not wearing a mask at all. Headlines popped up spreading the news, sparking conversations far and wide and forcing many to reconsider their preferred style of face mask. A Washington Post story said “some cotton cloth masks are about as effective as surgical masks, while thin polyester spandex gaiters may be worse than going maskless.” A Forbes article, referring to neck gaiters, said the study “found that one type of face covering might actually be doing more harm than good.”
But the study didn’t show that, nor was it designed to. It was actually a test on how to test masks inexpensively, not to determine which one was most effective. The researchers set up a green laser beam in a dark room. A masked subject was then asked to speak so that the droplets from the speaker’s mouth showed up in the green beam. The whole process was video recorded on a cell phone, after which researchers calculated the number of droplets that showed up. The process was repeated 10 times for each mask (14 in total, one of which was a neck gaiter) and the setup cost less than $200. What was meant as a study on the pricing and efficacy of a test turned into, at least in some journalistic circles, a definitive nail-in-the-coffin for gaiters.
Days after the initial reports that neck gaiters might not only be useless but maybe even harmful, a new round of new reports came out saying that those initial reports were overblown and misleading. The authors of the study even held a press conference where they emphasized that their study was never meant to test the effectiveness of masks. They only tested one gaiter-style mask, which says nothing about that style of mask in general. The combination of reporting on the actual findings of the study and the direct comments from the authors seems to have abated the anti-neck gaiter fervor. But all of this this—or most of it, anyway—likely could have been prevented.
You could make the argument that it’s not a scientist’s job to worrying about how their science might be interpreted. It’s their job to do the research and publish it in a scientific manuscript. Leave the communicating for someone else. But that’s not how the spread of information works.
Fewer and fewer newsrooms have staffers with scientific backgrounds, or who are dedicated to scientific reporting. To be clear, journalists don’t need to be scientists to understand science, but reporting on science does require a certain amount of expertise. When newsrooms ask reporters to cover more and more topic areas and this specialization decreases, an attention to detail is sometimes lost. So, the onus to help journalists (and frankly, all nonscientists) get the facts straight falls to the scientists doing the science. That’s where science communication training comes in.
Science communication, or scicomm as it’s known colloquially, is not a core part of coursework in a majority of degree-granting science programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This trend is slowly changing as more institutions incorporate scicomm into their curriculums. Outside of academia, nonprofits and scientific societies are taking up the mantle.
I work for the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a society for Earth and space scientists, in the Sharing Science program, where we teach scientists to communicate with nonscientists through courses, workshops, webinars and other trainings. Aside from the AGU, there is the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Stony Brook–affiliated Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and the science storytelling organization The Story Collider, to name just to name a few. We teach the so-called “soft skills” that the ivory tower of science has shunned for so long but that are so necessary in effectively communicating.
One thing we stress is “know your audience.” Scientists must think about how their science will be perceived, no matter how relevant or not it might be to the broader public. Science does not exist in a vacuum; it never has. But especially now, and especially with anything related to COVID-19, scientists much be hypervigilant when communicating results and try, to the best of their abilities, to account for as many interpretations as possible. Yes, it is onerous, especially on top of the multitude of other responsibilities that come with being a scientist, but it is necessary.
The traditional ways in which scientists communicate their results (i.e., scientific manuscripts) are not going away anytime soon. However, and while it may be an unfair ask, scientists must not only be able to communicate their science to their peers; they must always think about nonscience audiences as the lines between science and “the public” continue to blur. Training scientists to effectively communicate to, or at least think about, diverse audiences is a necessary part of science.


scientificamerican--2020-09-01--Science Briefs from around the World

Science Briefs from around the World

Hi , I ’ m Scientific American assistant news editor Sarah Lewin Frasier .
And here ’ s a short piece from the August 2020 issue of the magazine , in the section called Advances : Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science , Technology and Medicine .
The article is titled “ Quick Hits , ” and it ’ s a rundown of some noncoronavirus stories from around the globe .
From Canada : A new study models how a gigantic , morphing blob of liquid iron in Earth 's outer core underneath the Canadian Arctic is losing its grip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second , intensifying blob below Siberia is pulling the pole away .
From Scotland : A geologic-dating effort suggests the fossil of a millipedelike creature found on the island of Kerrera formed 425 million years ago , making it possibly the oldest-known fossilized land animal .
( Older land animals have been spotted indirectly , through preserved tracks . )
From Tanzania : Researchers discovered Africa 's largest-ever collection of fossilized human footprints , left in volcanic mud about 10,000 years ago .
Many of them came from a group of 17 people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same direction .
From Norway : Archaeologists are excavating a 20-meter Viking ship , buried below a farmer 's field , to stop a wood-eating fungus from destroying it .
Ground-penetrating radar had found the ship in 2018 , and a new wood sample analysis revealed that it could not be preserved underground .
From Zambia and Mongolia : This spring a satellite-tagged cuckoo completed an epic 12,000-kilometer journey from Zambia to Mongolia .
It had originally been tagged in Mongolia in 2019 and traversed 16 countries in its round-trip migration .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ king penguin excrement releases nitrous oxide–also known as laughing gas .
It forms as soil bacteria eat the droppings ' nitrogen-rich compounds .
[ The above text is a transcript of this podcast . ]