tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/history-of-science-7649/articlesHistory of science – The Conversation2024-01-30T13:35:29Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2208312024-01-30T13:35:29Z2024-01-30T13:35:29ZBacklash to transgender health care isn’t new − but the faulty science used to justify it has changed to meet the times<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571543/original/file-20240125-15-cirbso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5778%2C3252&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anti-trans legislation adjudicates the bodily autonomy of those who do not conform to gender norms.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TransgenderRights/5105bf799bb64a7b88d180c1a410463a">Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the past century, there have been three waves of opposition to transgender health care. </p>
<p>In 1933, when the Nazis rose to power, they <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/90-years-on-the-destruction-of-the-institute-of-sexual-science/">cracked down on</a> transgender medical research and clinical practice in Europe. In 1979, a research report critical of transgender medicine <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M22-1480">led to the closure</a> of the most well-respected clinics in the United States. And since 2021, when <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/20/1183344228/arkansas-2021-gender-affirming-care-ban-transgender-blocked">Arkansas became the first U.S. state</a> among now <a href="https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/healthcare_youth_medical_care_bans">at least 21 other states</a> banning gender-affirming care for minors, we have been living in a third wave.</p>
<p>In my work as a <a href="https://gsrosenthal.com">scholar of transgender history</a>, I study the <a href="https://theconversation.com/gender-affirming-care-has-a-long-history-in-the-us-and-not-just-for-transgender-people-201752">long history of gender-affirming care</a> in the U.S., which has been practiced since at least the 1940s. Puberty blockers, hormone therapies and anatomical surgeries are <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-28/opinion-gender-affirming-care-is-not-new-or-experimental">neither experimental nor untested</a> and have been safely administered to cisgender, transgender and intersex adults and children for decades.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the archives of transgender medicine demonstrate that backlash against these practices has historically been rooted in pseudoscience. And today, an anti-science movement that aims to <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-antiscience-movement-is-escalating-going-global-and-killing-thousands/">discredit science altogether</a> is fueling the fire of the current wave of anti-trans panic.</p>
<h2>The 1930s − eugenics and sexology collide</h2>
<p>In the 1920s, the new science of hormones was just reaching maturation and <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469674858/wondrous-transformations/">entering mainstream consciousness</a>. In the field of sexology – the study of human sexuality, founded in 19th century Europe – scientists were excited about research on animals demonstrating that removing or transplanting gonads could effectively change an organism’s sex.</p>
<p>In 1919, the German sexologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-early-20th-century-german-trans-rights-activist-who-transformed-the-worlds-view-of-gender-and-sexuality-106278">Magnus Hirschfeld</a> founded the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/">Institut für Sexualwissenschaft</a> in Berlin, which became the world’s leading center for queer and transgender research and clinical practice. Hirschfeld worked closely with trans women as co-researchers throughout the 1920s. Several trans women also received care at the institute, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080%2F26895269.2020.1749921">orchiectomies</a> that halted the production of testosterone in their bodies.</p>
<p>Within months of Hitler’s rise to power in early 1933, a <a href="https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/6-may-1933-looting-of-the-institute-of-sexology/">mob of far-right students</a> broke into and shuttered the institute for being “<a href="https://daily.jstor.org/90-years-on-the-destruction-of-the-institute-of-sexual-science/">un-German</a>.” Some of the <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa26364">most famous images</a> of Nazi book burning show the institute’s library set ablaze in an outdoor plaza.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571540/original/file-20240125-21-rigby5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo of person in uniform throwing books into a bonfire" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571540/original/file-20240125-21-rigby5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571540/original/file-20240125-21-rigby5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571540/original/file-20240125-21-rigby5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571540/original/file-20240125-21-rigby5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571540/original/file-20240125-21-rigby5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571540/original/file-20240125-21-rigby5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571540/original/file-20240125-21-rigby5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Nazi party confiscated and burned ‘un-German’ books, including those from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa26364">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park</a></span>
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<p>Nazi ideology was based on another prominent field of science of that time: <a href="https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism">eugenics</a>, the belief that certain superior populations should survive while inferior populations must be exterminated. In fact, Hirschfeld’s sexology and Nazi race science had common roots in the Enlightenment-era effort to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2020.1794161">classify and categorize</a> the world’s life forms. </p>
<p>But in the late 19th century, many scientists went a step further and <a href="https://theconversation.com/proposed-1920s-orphanage-study-just-one-example-in-history-of-scientific-racism-37015">developed a hierarchy of human types</a> based on race, gender and sexuality. They were inspired by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-Darwinism">social Darwinism</a>, a set of pseudoscientific beliefs applying the theory of survival of the fittest to human differences. As race scientists imagined a fixed number of human races of varying intelligence, sexologists simultaneously sought to classify sexual behaviors as innate, inherited states of being: <a href="https://www.beacon.org/A-Queer-History-of-the-United-States-P1426.aspx">the “homosexual”</a> in the 1860s and <a href="https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/news/2016-08-die-transvestiten-sexology-and-pivotal-moments-in-trans-history">the “transvestite,”</a> a term coined by Hirschfeld himself, in 1910.</p>
<p>But where Hirschfeld and other sexologists saw the classification of queer and trans people as justifications for legal emancipation, eugenicists of the early 20th century <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/eugenic-sterilization-in-virginia/">in the U.S.</a> and <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/eugenics">Europe</a> believed sexually transgressive people <a href="https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilization-policies-in-the-us-targeted-minorities-and-those-with-disabilities-and-lasted-into-the-21st-century-143144">should be sterilized</a> and ultimately eradicated.</p>
<p>Based on this premise, the Nazis <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765155/pink-triangle-legacies/">murdered thousands of LGBTQ people</a> in the Holocaust.</p>
<h2>The 1970s − making model citizens</h2>
<p>In the 1950s and 1960s, transgender medicine bounced back in the U.S. Scientists and clinicians at several universities began experimenting with new <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo156724705.html">hormonal and surgical interventions</a>. In 1966, Johns Hopkins became the <a href="https://soundcloud.com/hopkins-medical-archives/gender-identity-clinic-press-conference-1966">first university hospital in the world</a> to offer trans health care. </p>
<p>By the 1970s, trans medicine went mainstream. <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674013797">Nearly two dozen university hospitals</a> were operating gender identity clinics and treating thousands of transgender Americans. Several trans women and men wrote <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/01/29/the-conundrum-of-conundrum/">popular autobiographical accounts</a> of their transitions. Trans people were even <a href="https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_507-cc0tq5s22t">on television</a>, talking about their bodies and fighting for their rights. </p>
<p>Yet trouble was brewing behind the scenes. Jon Meyer, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins, was skeptical of whether medical interventions really helped transgender people. In 1979, Meyer, along with his secretary Donna Reter, published a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1979.01780090096010">short academic paper</a> that ushered in the second wave of historic backlash to trans medicine.</p>
<p>In their study, Meyer and Reter contacted previous patients of the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic. To understand whether surgery had improved patients’ lives, the authors developed an “adjustment scoring system.” They assigned points to patients who were in heterosexual marriages and had achieved economic security since their operations, while deducting points from those who continued to engage in gender nonconformity, homosexuality, criminality, or sought mental health care.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571547/original/file-20240125-31-t8e03l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white image of transgender artist Coccinelle smiling beside her husband Francis Paul Bonnet" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571547/original/file-20240125-31-t8e03l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571547/original/file-20240125-31-t8e03l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571547/original/file-20240125-31-t8e03l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571547/original/file-20240125-31-t8e03l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571547/original/file-20240125-31-t8e03l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571547/original/file-20240125-31-t8e03l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571547/original/file-20240125-31-t8e03l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Some researchers defined a successful medical transition as one that resulted in visible conformity to gender norms and heterosexuality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/artiste-transgenre-coccinelle-et-son-mari-francis-paul-news-photo/1505597233">Reporters Associes/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Meyer and Reter believed that gender-affirming surgeries were successful only if they made model citizens out of transgender people: straight, married and law-abiding.</p>
<p>In their results, the authors found no negative effects from surgery, and no patients expressed regret. They concluded that “sex reassignment surgery confers no objective advantage in terms of social rehabilitation,” but it is “subjectively satisfying” to the patients themselves. This was not a damning conclusion. </p>
<p>Yet, within two months, Johns Hopkins had <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M22-1480">shuttered its clinic</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/02/archives/benefits-of-transsexual-surgery-disputed-as-leading-hospital-halts.html">The New York Times</a> reported that universities would feel pressure to similarly “curtail their operations and discourage others from starting to do them.” Indeed, only a <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M22-1480">handful of clinics remained</a> by the 1990s. Transgender medicine did not return to Johns Hopkins <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/long-shadow-cast-by-psychiatrist-on-transgender-issues-finally-recedes-at-johns-hopkins/2017/04/05/e851e56e-0d85-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html">until 2017</a>.</p>
<p>In requiring trans patients to enter straight marriages and hold gender-appropriate jobs to be considered successful, Meyer and Reter’s study was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02115944">homophobic and classist in design</a>. The study exemplified the <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479899371/trans-medicine/">pseudoscientific beliefs</a> at the heart of transgender medicine in the 1960s through the 1980s, that patients had to conform to societal norms – including heterosexuality, gender conformity, domesticity and marriage – in order to receive care. This was not an ideology rooted in science but in bigotry.</p>
<h2>The 2020s − distrust in science</h2>
<p>As in the 1930s, opposition to trans medicine today is part of a broad reactionary movement against what some far-right groups consider the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/project-2025-policy-manifesto-lgbtq-rights">toxic normalization</a>” of LGBTQ people. </p>
<p>Legislators have <a href="https://theconversation.com/penguin-random-house-pen-america-authors-and-parents-sue-florida-county-for-removing-books-on-race-and-lgbtq-themes-205945">removed books with LGBTQ content</a> from libraries and <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article254903187.html">disparaged them as “filth</a>.” A recent law in Florida <a href="https://www.them.us/story/florida-trans-bathroom-law">threatens trans people with arrest</a> for using public restrooms. Both Florida and Texas have pursued efforts to <a href="https://www.them.us/story/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-state-data-on-trans-texans">compile data on their trans citizens</a>. Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/trump-lgbtq-transgender-community-protections/676139/">campaign platform</a> calls for a nationwide ban on trans health care for minors and severe restrictions for adults.</p>
<p>And similar to the 1970s, opponents of trans medicine today frame gender-affirming care as a “debate,” even though <a href="https://glaad.org/medical-association-statements-supporting-trans-youth-healthcare-and-against-discriminatory/">all major U.S. medical associations</a> support these practices <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-states-stop-interfering-health-care-transgender-children">as medically necessary</a> and lifesaving. </p>
<p>But widespread <a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/andrew-jewett-science-under-fire/">distrust in science and medicine</a> in the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/anti-science-is-a-systematic-issueand-its-not-going-away/">wake of the COVID-19 pandemic</a> has affected how Americans perceive trans health care. Prohibitions on gender-affirming care have occurred simultaneously with the relaxing of pandemic restrictions, and some scholars argue that the movement against trans health care is part of a <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2022/04/11/what-anti-gender-and-anti-vaccines-politics-have-in-common-the-construction-of-gender-and-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-right-wing-discourses/">broader movement</a> aimed at discrediting scientific consensus.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571550/original/file-20240125-28-zetkg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Back of person wearing trans flag at the back of a legislative hearing room with a rotunda" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571550/original/file-20240125-28-zetkg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571550/original/file-20240125-28-zetkg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571550/original/file-20240125-28-zetkg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571550/original/file-20240125-28-zetkg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571550/original/file-20240125-28-zetkg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571550/original/file-20240125-28-zetkg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571550/original/file-20240125-28-zetkg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A rash of legislation restricting access to gender-affirming care claims to protect the health of children, despite lack of support from major U.S. medical associations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TransgenderHealthMissouri/442b19097c7f44a0a0864c4046aa5acb">Charlie Riedel/AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>Yet the adage “<a href="https://www.nsta.org/journal-college-science-teaching/journal-college-science-teaching-mayjune-2022/why-do-people-say-i">believe in science</a>” is not an effective rejoinder to these anti-trans policies. Instead, many trans activists today call for diminishing the role of medical authority altogether in <a href="https://www.americanscientist.org/blog/macroscope/its-time-to-stop-gatekeeping-medical-transition">gatekeeping access to trans health care</a>. Medical gatekeeping occurs <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644">through stringent guidelines</a> that govern access to trans health care, including mandated psychiatric evaluations and extended waiting periods that limit and control patient choice. </p>
<p>Trans activists have <a href="https://filtermag.org/wpath-trans-nonbinary-health-care/">fought with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health</a>, the organization that maintains these standards of care, by demanding greater bodily autonomy and depathologizing transsexuality. This includes pivoting to an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jsxmed/qdad019">informed consent model</a> where patients make decisions about their own bodies after discussing the pros and cons with their doctors. Trans activists have been rallying against medical authority since the early 1970s, including calling for <a href="https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/downloads/th83kz57z">access to hormones and surgeries on demand</a>.</p>
<p>It is not clear how the current third wave of backlash to transgender medicine will end. For now, trans health care remains a question dominated by medical experts on one hand and people who question science on the other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220831/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>G. Samantha Rosenthal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For as long as trans medicine has been around, so has its opposition. The tactics of prior waves of anti-trans policies are still in play today.G. Samantha Rosenthal, Associate Professor of History, Roanoke CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2133582024-01-03T20:26:46Z2024-01-03T20:26:46ZThe strange story of the grave of Copernicus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565952/original/file-20231215-19-1ympo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3994%2C2862&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God (1873)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomer_Copernicus,_or_Conversations_with_God#/media/File:Jan_Matejko-Astronomer_Copernicus-Conversation_with_God.jpg">Jan Matejko / Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nicholas Copernicus was the astronomer who, five centuries ago, explained that Earth revolves around the Sun, rather than vice versa. A true Renaissance man, he also practised as a mathematician, engineer, author, economic theorist and medical doctor.</p>
<p>Upon his death in 1543 in Frombork, Poland, Copernicus was buried in the local cathedral. Over the subsequent centuries, the location of his grave was lost to history.</p>
<h2>Who was Copernicus?</h2>
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<img alt="A portrait of a serious looking man" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565954/original/file-20231215-25-i46ixp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565954/original/file-20231215-25-i46ixp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565954/original/file-20231215-25-i46ixp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565954/original/file-20231215-25-i46ixp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565954/original/file-20231215-25-i46ixp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565954/original/file-20231215-25-i46ixp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565954/original/file-20231215-25-i46ixp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus from the town hall of Toruń (circa 1580).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus#/media/File:Nikolaus_Kopernikus.jpg">Unknown artist / Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/152408c0">Nicholas Copernicus</a>, or Mikołaj Kopernik in Polish, was born in Toruń in 1473. He was the youngest of four children born to a local merchant. </p>
<p>After his father’s death, Copernicus’s uncle assumed responsibility for his education. The young scholar initially studied at the University of Kraków between 1491 and 1494, and later at Italian universities in Bologna, Padua and Ferrara.</p>
<p>After studying medicine, canon law, mathematical astronomy, and astrology, Copernicus returned home in 1503. He then worked for his influential uncle, Lucas Watzenrode the Younger, who was the Prince-Bishop of Warmia.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/copernicus-revolution-and-galileos-vision-our-changing-view-of-the-universe-in-pictures-60103">Copernicus' revolution and Galileo's vision: our changing view of the universe in pictures</a>
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<p>Copernicus <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21614776/">worked as a physician</a> while continuing his research in mathematics. At that time, both astronomy and music were considered branches of mathematics. </p>
<p>During this period, he formulated two influential economic theories. In 1517, he developed the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0289.00063">quantity theory of money</a>, which was later re-articulated by John Locke and David Hume, and popularised by Milton Friedman in the 1960s. In 1519, Copernicus also introduced the concept now known as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25776118">Gresham’s law</a>, a monetary principle addressing the circulation and valuation of money.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A photo of a large brick cathedral." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548664/original/file-20230917-29-ztk9ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548664/original/file-20230917-29-ztk9ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548664/original/file-20230917-29-ztk9ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548664/original/file-20230917-29-ztk9ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548664/original/file-20230917-29-ztk9ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548664/original/file-20230917-29-ztk9ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548664/original/file-20230917-29-ztk9ck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nicholas Copernicus was buried in Frombork Cathedral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archcathedral_Basilica_of_the_Assumption_of_the_Blessed_Virgin_Mary_and_St._Andrew%2C_Frombork#/media/File:Frauenburger_Dom_2010.jpg">Holger Weinant / Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>The Copernican model of the universe</h2>
<p>The cornerstone of Copernicus’s contributions to science was his revolutionary model of the universe. Contrary to the prevailing Ptolemaic model, which maintained that Earth was the stationary centre of the universe, Copernicus argued that Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun.</p>
<p>Copernicus was further able to compare the sizes of the planetary orbits by expressing them in terms of the distance between the Sun and Earth.</p>
<p>Copernicus feared how his work would be received by the church and fellow scholars. His magnum opus, “<a href="https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/exhibns/month/apr2008.html">De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium</a>” (On the Movement of the Celestial Spheres), was only published just before his death in 1543. </p>
<p>The publication of this work set the stage for groundbreaking shifts in our understanding of the universe, paving the way for future astronomers such as Galileo, who was born more than 20 years after Copernicus’s death.</p>
<h2>The search for Copernicus</h2>
<p>The Frombork Cathedral serves as the final resting place of more than 100 people, most of whom lie in unnamed graves.</p>
<p>There were several unsuccessful attempts to locate Copernicus’s remains, dating as far back as the 16th and 17th centuries. Another failed attempt was made by the French emperor Napoleon after the 1807 Battle of Eylau. Napoleon held Copernicus in high regard as a polymath, mathematician and astronomer.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Photo of the inside of a cathedral" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565958/original/file-20231215-17-kqh2zj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565958/original/file-20231215-17-kqh2zj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565958/original/file-20231215-17-kqh2zj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565958/original/file-20231215-17-kqh2zj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565958/original/file-20231215-17-kqh2zj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565958/original/file-20231215-17-kqh2zj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565958/original/file-20231215-17-kqh2zj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Historians believed Copernicus would have been buried near a particular altar in Frombork Cathedral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archcathedral_Basilica_of_the_Assumption_of_the_Blessed_Virgin_Mary_and_St._Andrew%2C_Frombork#/media/File:Frombork_Cathedral_Interior.jpg">Julian Nyča / Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>In 2005, a group of Polish archaeologists took up the search. </p>
<p>They were guided by the theory of historian Jerzy Sikorski, who claimed that Copernicus, serving as the Canon of Frombork Cathedral, would have been buried near the cathedral altar for which he was responsible during his tenure. This was the Altar of Saint Wacław, now known as the Altar of the Holy Cross.</p>
<p>Thirteen skeletons were discovered near this altar, including an <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/copernicus-unearthed-115715830/">incomplete skeleton</a> belonging to a male aged between 60 and 70 years. This particular skeleton was identified as the closest match to that of Copernicus. </p>
<h2>Forensic science</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548662/original/file-20230917-23-c6vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photos of a human skull from the front and side." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548662/original/file-20230917-23-c6vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548662/original/file-20230917-23-c6vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548662/original/file-20230917-23-c6vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548662/original/file-20230917-23-c6vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548662/original/file-20230917-23-c6vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548662/original/file-20230917-23-c6vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548662/original/file-20230917-23-c6vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A skull believed to belong to Copernicus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://clkp.policja.pl/clk/badania-i-projekty/ciekawe-badania/172502,Czy-tak-wygladal-Mikolaj-Kopernik.html">Dariusz Zajdel / Centralne Laboratorium Kryminalistyczne Policji</a></span>
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<p>The skull of the skeleton served as the basis for a facial reconstruction.</p>
<p>In addition to morphological studies, DNA analysis is often used for the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0907491106">identification of historical or ancient remains</a>. In the case of the presumed remains of Copernicus, a genetic identification was possible due to the well-preserved state of the teeth. </p>
<p>A significant challenge lay in identifying a suitable source of reference material. There were no known remains of any relatives of Copernicus.</p>
<h2>An unlikely find</h2>
<p>In 2006, however, a new source of DNA reference material came to life. An astronomical reference book used by Copernicus for many years was found to contain hair among its pages. </p>
<p>This book had been taken to Sweden as war booty following the Swedish invasion of Poland in the mid-17th century. It is currently in the possession of the Museum Gustavianum at Uppsala University. </p>
<p>A meticulous examination of the book revealed several hairs, thought likely to belong to the book’s primary user, Copernicus himself. Consequently, these hairs were assessed as potential reference material for genetic comparison with the teeth and bone matter recovered from the tomb.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/who-owned-this-stone-age-jewellery-new-forensic-tools-offer-an-unprecedented-answer-204797">Who owned this Stone Age jewellery? New forensic tools offer an unprecedented answer</a>
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<p>The hairs were compared with the <a href="https://cs.astronomy.com/asy/b/astronomy/archive/2009/10/22/nicolaus-copernicus-old-old-blue-eyes.aspx">DNA from the teeth and bones</a> of the discovered skeleton. Both the mitochondrial DNA from the teeth and the skeletal sample matched those of the hairs, strongly suggesting that the remains were indeed those of Nicholas Copernicus.</p>
<p>The multidisciplinary effort, involving archaeological excavation, morphological studies and advanced DNA analysis, has led to a compelling conclusion. </p>
<p>The remains discovered near the Altar of the Holy Cross in Frombork Cathedral are highly likely to be those of Nicholas Copernicus. This monumental find not only sheds light on the final resting place of one of the most influential figures in the history of science, but also showcases the depth and sophistication of modern scientific methods in corroborating historical data.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darius von Guttner Sporzynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A team of archaeologists discovered the remains of the 16th-century father of modern astronomy, who demonstrated that the Earth orbits the Sun.Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168062023-12-05T13:17:38Z2023-12-05T13:17:38ZScientists have been researching superconductors for over a century, but they have yet to find one that works at room temperature − 3 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560888/original/file-20231121-15-k3mvg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C1417%2C2095&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The search for the room-temperature superconductor continues. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/superconductivity-royalty-free-image/521405206?phrase=superconductor&adppopup=true">Charles O'Rear/Corbis Documentary via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you hadn’t heard about superconductors before 2023, odds are you know what they are now. Researchers raised eyebrows early in the year with <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/short-spectacular-life-viral-room-temperature-superconductivity-claim">claims of operational room-temperature superconductors</a>, though none has been substantiated, and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05742-0">one paper</a> from researchers at the University of Rochester was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06774-2">retracted by the journal Nature</a> at the authors’ request in November. </p>
<p>But the hunt <a href="https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainssuperconductivity">for a superconductor</a> – that is, a material that can conduct electricity without resistance – that can operate at room temperature is nothing new. </p>
<p>Right now, superconductors can operate only at very cold temperatures. So, finding one that could work at room temperature without needing to be kept in a cold chamber could revolutionize everything <a href="https://theconversation.com/physicists-hunt-for-room-temperature-superconductors-that-could-revolutionize-the-worlds-energy-system-80707">from power grids</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/room-temperature-superconductors-could-revolutionize-electronics-an-electrical-engineer-explains-the-materials-potential-201849">medical equipment</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/room-temperature-superconductors-could-revolutionize-electronics-an-electrical-engineer-explains-the-materials-potential-201849">quantum computing</a>. But physicists first have to figure out how to make them work. </p>
<p>A Dutch physicist <a href="https://theconversation.com/superconductivity-at-room-temperature-remains-elusive-a-century-after-a-nobel-went-to-the-scientist-who-demonstrated-it-below-450-degrees-fahrenheit-213959">discovered the phenomenon of superconductivity</a> in the early 20th century, and since then, labs around the world have tested materials that can reach a superconductive state at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.50.4260">warmer and warmer temperatures</a>. </p>
<p>So, how do these materials manage to conduct electricity without resistance, and what sorts of technological possibilities lie on the horizon, with superconductor research improving every year? Here are three stories from The Conversation’s archive that explore the history, science and future of this incredible physical phenomenon. </p>
<h2>1. Physics behind the phenomenon</h2>
<p>How is it even possible to generate a current with zero electrical resistance, the basis for superconductivity? In order to do so, you must <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.108.1175">keep your conducting metal cold</a>. Really cold. Like, hundreds of degrees below zero. </p>
<p>“At normal temperatures, electrons move in somewhat erratic paths. They can generally succeed in moving through a wire freely, but every once in a while they collide with the nuclei of the material,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-superconductors-work-a-physicist-explains-what-it-means-to-have-resistance-free-electricity-202308">wrote Mishkat Bhattacharya</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5gCcMuMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">a physicist at</a> Rochester Institute of Technology. “These collisions are what obstruct the flow of electrons, cause resistance and heat up the material.”</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sJLSL61sLZ0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Superconductive materials repel magnetic fields, making it possible to levitate a magnet above a superconductor.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Normally, the nuclei of all atoms vibrate constantly, and they can bump into each other. In superconducting materials, the electrons in the current pass from atom to atom while vibrating at the same frequency as the nuclei of the atoms in the superconducting metal. This means that instead of colliding and generating heat, they’re moving in a <a href="https://www.energy.gov/science/bes/articles/electrons-line-dance-superconductor">smooth and coordinated way</a>. And it’s the cold temperatures that allow for this coordinated movement. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-superconductors-work-a-physicist-explains-what-it-means-to-have-resistance-free-electricity-202308">How do superconductors work? A physicist explains what it means to have resistance-free electricity</a>
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<h2>2. A century of superconductivity</h2>
<p>Mercury was the first material <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3490499">discovered as a superconducter</a>, by <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1913/onnes/facts/">Heike Kamerlingh Onnes</a> in 1911. His team had to cool liquid helium to -454 degrees Fahrenheit (-270 degrees Celsius) to observe the effect. They used wires made of mercury to send a current through the material, and then measured the effect of electrical resistance as “near enough null.” </p>
<p>Onnes and his team repeated the experiment several times to make sure the effect they’d observed was, in fact, superconductivity, and they also troubleshot all other possible explanations for the effect – electrical faults, open currents and so on. But they kept finding the same result, and after three years of testing, Onnes was able to demonstrate currents with truly zero resistance. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graph with the resistence of Mercury on the y axis and temperature on the x axis, showing a sharp drop." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The resistance of mercury as recorded on Oct. 26, 1911, by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes’ lab.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Superconductivity_1911.png">Heike Kamerlingh Onnes via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>“Superconductivity has always been tricky to prove because some metals can masquerade as superconductors,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/superconductivity-at-room-temperature-remains-elusive-a-century-after-a-nobel-went-to-the-scientist-who-demonstrated-it-below-450-degrees-fahrenheit-213959">wrote David D. Nolte</a>, <a href="https://galileo-unbound.blog/books-by-d-d-nolte/">an author of history of science books and a physicist at Purdue</a>. “The lessons learned by Onnes a century ago – that these discoveries require time, patience and, most importantly, proof of currents that never stop – are still relevant today.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/superconductivity-at-room-temperature-remains-elusive-a-century-after-a-nobel-went-to-the-scientist-who-demonstrated-it-below-450-degrees-fahrenheit-213959">Superconductivity at room temperature remains elusive a century after a Nobel went to the scientist who demonstrated it below -450 degrees Fahrenheit</a>
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<h2>3. A superconductive future</h2>
<p>One of the most important applications of a future room-temperature superconductor would be decreasing the heat wasted from electronics. Not only could electronics like cellphones and computers run much <a href="https://theconversation.com/physicists-hunt-for-room-temperature-superconductors-that-could-revolutionize-the-worlds-energy-system-80707">more quickly and efficiently</a>, but on a larger scale, electric grids, power lines and data centers could decrease <a href="https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3">their wasted heat</a>. This could be a huge win for the environment. </p>
<p>“If we succeed in making a room-temperature superconductor, then we can address the billions of dollars that it costs in wasted heat to transmit energy from power plants to cities,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/physicists-hunt-for-room-temperature-superconductors-that-could-revolutionize-the-worlds-energy-system-80707">wrote Pegor Aynajian</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=B_5QhO4AAAAJ&hl=en">a physicist at</a> Binghamton University, State University of New York. “Solar energy harvested in the vast empty deserts around the world could be stored and transmitted without any loss of energy, which could power cities and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”</p>
<p>A type of superconductor made from a ceramiclike material <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1987/summary/">discovered by scientists</a> at <a href="https://www.zurich.ibm.com/">IBM in Switzerland</a> could be one path to a room-temperature superconductor. Already, this class of materials has been shown to <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/high-temperature-superconductivity-understood-at-last-20220921/">work at higher – though still frigid – temperatures</a>, closer to -300 F (-184 C) than conventional superconductors like Onnes’ original mercury wires. </p>
<p>But while a room-temperature superconductor could revolutionize electronics and energy transmission, the right material still remains elusive. As Aynajian puts it, a room-temperature superconductor is quite literally “the next million-dollar question.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/physicists-hunt-for-room-temperature-superconductors-that-could-revolutionize-the-worlds-energy-system-80707">Physicists hunt for room-temperature superconductors that could revolutionize the world's energy system</a>
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<p><em>This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Claims about the discovery of a coveted room-temperature superconductor peppered the news in 2023. We pulled three stories from our archives on what superconductivity is and why scientists study it.Mary Magnuson, Assistant Science EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2123172023-12-01T13:39:03Z2023-12-01T13:39:03ZBringing classical physics into the modern world with Galileo’s Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549591/original/file-20230921-26-bwlj7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C1024%2C768&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Galileo, holding two balls, about to perform his legendary experiment. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/italian-astronomer-and-scientist-galileo-galilei-performs-news-photo/50965500?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Stringer via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you drop a light object and a heavy object from a tower, which one reaches the ground first? As you may recall from high school physics, this is a trick question. Neglecting air resistance, they both fall the same way and reach the ground at the same time – gravity means that their speeds increase at 9.8 meters per second squared, no matter what their mass. </p>
<p>That’s the premise behind <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Galileo-Galilei">Galileo Galilei’s</a> Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment, a classic thought experiment in the field of dynamics.</p>
<p>Dynamics is the physics specialization that studies motion and force. A “dynamicist,” one who studies dynamics, can do everything from improve a basketball player’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-math-behind-the-perfect-free-throw-91727">free throw</a> to help design spacecraft for <a href="https://doi.org/10.2514/1.A35684">interstellar travel</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.mae.ncsu.edu/people/lmsilver/">dynamicist</a>, I’ve spent much of my career helping students make sense of modern dynamics. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43-CfukEgs&t=170s">Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment</a> is one good way to do this. It can explain how classical mechanics – the field that engineers and educators employ every day – was brought into the modern world.</p>
<h2>Galileo’s Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment</h2>
<p>The Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment led to the curious realization that objects fall with the same accelerations regardless of their mass. But what happens when you place objects of different masses on a smooth table and push each of them with the same force? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/tribology">Even without accounting for friction</a>, the objects’ accelerations are now different. The lighter objects accelerate more than the heavy ones. When falling, their accelerations are the same, yet when sliding, they’re different. </p>
<p>Let’s now place the two objects <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/orbit/">in orbit</a>. Imagine one of them is the Sun and the other is the Earth. In classical mechanics, the Sun exerts a force on the Earth equal in magnitude to the force that the Earth exerts back on the Sun. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.space.com/17001-how-big-is-the-sun-size-of-the-sun.html">the Sun is huge compared with the Earth</a>. Shouldn’t the magnitude of the larger object’s force be larger? And while we’re at it, how would the magnitude of the Sun’s force on the Earth come to be equal to the magnitude of the Earth’s force on the Sun? </p>
<p>Heavy and light objects have equal accelerations when falling but different accelerations when sliding, and objects in space exert equal gravitational forces on each other despite having different masses. This all seems inconsistent, and a little confusing, right?</p>
<h2>Modern mechanics</h2>
<p>The problems above came from an ambiguity in the concept of force in classical mechanics. In classical mechanics, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2514/1.A35684">force is an interaction</a> between two objects, involving both objects. The magnitudes of the gravitational forces by the Sun and by the Earth depend on the masses of both bodies. The force was never just by the Sun or just by the Earth without regard to the other.</p>
<p>But <a href="http://labman.phys.utk.edu/phys222core/modules/m10/modern_physics.html">modern mechanics</a> – the physics of light, atoms, quantum mechanics and curved space-time – changed this concept of force. The modern force by the Sun and the modern force by the Earth are two separate forces, and they depend only on their own masses, excluding <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/pe/pe/2021/00000034/00000004/art00015?crawler=true">relativistic effects</a>.</p>
<p>In modern mechanics, the force is now an <a href="https://doi.org/10.2514/1.A35684">action by an object</a>, not an interaction between them. It is viewed as a <a href="https://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/152.mf1i.spring02/GravField.htm">force field</a> that radiates outward from its source, whose magnitude grows smaller the farther it is from its source. Modern mechanics is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.2514/1.A35684">field theory</a> – it deals with objects and the accelerations their force fields create. </p>
<p>So, what happened to the interaction force? Was it discarded? The answer is no, but it is no longer the most fundamental definition of force, either. In modern mechanics, the interaction force, represented by the letter F, is defined in terms of the action force field, represented by the letter P. The interaction force is now the <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2945/2023-11-24_figure_of_modern_to_classical.pdf?1700836147">action force</a> P times the mass m on which P acts, so F = mP.</p>
<p>Newton’s <a href="https://maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-english-translation-of-newton-s-principia-mathematica">second law of motion</a>, a fundamental part of classical mechanics, sets the interaction force F by an object equal to the mass m on which the object acts multiplied by its acceleration, so F = ma. The modern version sets the action force P by an object equal to the other object’s acceleration, so P = a. When multiplying P = a by m we get back F = ma. </p>
<p>Notice it was not about the math in classical mechanics being wrong – but more about the fundamental force being an action force and not an interaction force. </p>
<h2>The modern thinking</h2>
<p>The modern thinking reinterprets Galileo’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43-CfukEgs&t=170s">Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment</a>, the sliding blocks, the orbiting of the Earth around the Sun – and interactions in general. </p>
<p>In Galileo’s Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment, the light and heavy objects were falling due to the Earth’s action force, which does not depend on the masses of the falling objects, so their accelerations are naturally the same. </p>
<p>The light and heavy objects sliding on the smooth table were acted on by the same interaction forces. But the fundamental forces – the action forces – are different, so their accelerations are naturally different, too. </p>
<p>In the orbiting of the Earth around the Sun, the action forces by the Sun and by the Earth are no longer equal. The action force by the Sun, with its huge mass, is proportionally larger than the force by the Earth – as intuition suggests. </p>
<p>Science takes many years to evolve as it edges closer to revealing the nature of reality. One sees this in the evolution that led to modern mechanics – where scientists now embrace a theory of force fields that predicts the dynamics of objects, despite it being almost against common sense.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212317/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Larry M. Silverberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A centuries-old experiment shows the differences between classical and modern physics. Physicists use thought experiments like this to think about how objects move both on Earth and in the stars.Larry M. Silverberg, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147842023-10-05T12:33:59Z2023-10-05T12:33:59ZHow a disgruntled scientist looking to prove his food wasn’t fresh discovered radioactive tracers and won a Nobel Prize 80 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551579/original/file-20231002-27-bnczk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=392%2C8%2C5059%2C3473&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">George De Hevesy working in his lab at Stockholm University in 1944. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/hungarian-radiochemist-george-de-hevesy-at-work-in-his-news-photo/870101654?adppopup=true">Keystone Features/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Each October, the Nobel Prizes celebrate a handful of groundbreaking scientific achievements. And while many of the awarded discoveries revolutionize the field of science, some originate in unconventional places. For <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1943/hevesy/biographical/">George de Hevesy</a>, the 1943 Nobel Laureate in chemistry who discovered radioactive tracers, that place was a boarding house cafeteria in Manchester, U.K., in 1911. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551573/original/file-20231002-29-bnczk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white headshot of a young man with a mustache wearing a suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551573/original/file-20231002-29-bnczk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551573/original/file-20231002-29-bnczk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551573/original/file-20231002-29-bnczk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551573/original/file-20231002-29-bnczk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551573/original/file-20231002-29-bnczk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551573/original/file-20231002-29-bnczk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551573/original/file-20231002-29-bnczk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/George_de_Hevesy.jpg">Magnus Manske</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>De Hevesey had the sneaking suspicion that the staff of the boarding house cafeteria where he ate at every day was reusing leftovers from the dinner plates – each day’s soup seemed to contain all of the prior day’s ingredients. So he came up with a plan to test his theory. </p>
<p>At the time, de Hevesy was working with radioactive material. He <a href="https://tech.snmjournals.org/content/jnmt/24/4/291.full.pdf">sprinkled a small amount</a> of radioactive material in his leftover meat. A few days later, he took an electroscope with him to the kitchen and <a href="https://tech.snmjournals.org/content/jnmt/24/4/291.full.pdf">measured the radioactivity</a> in the prepared food. </p>
<p>His landlady, who was to blame for the recycled food, exclaimed “this is magic” when de Hevesy showed her his results, but really, it was just the first successful radioactive tracer experiment. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vlmJRrsAAAAJ&hl=en">We are</a> a team <a href="https://www.chemistry.msu.edu/faculty-research/faculty-members/liddick-sean.aspx">of chemists</a> and physicists <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MkkjF8YAAAAJ&hl=en">who work</a> at the <a href="https://frib.msu.edu">Facility for Rare Isotope Beams</a>, located at Michigan State University. De Hevesy’s early research in the field has revolutionized the way that modern scientists like us use radioactive material, and it has led to a variety of scientific and medical advances.</p>
<h2>The nuisance of lead</h2>
<p>A year before conducting his recycled ingredients experiment, Hungary-born de Hevesy had <a href="https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/articles/four-tales-george-de-hevesy.html">traveled to the U.K.</a> to start work with nuclear scientist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1908/rutherford/facts/">Ernest Rutherford</a>, who’d won a Nobel Prize just two years prior.</p>
<p>Rutherford was at the time <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/ed040p36">working with a radioactive substance</a> called radium D, a valuable byproduct of radium because of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/half-life-radioactivity">its long half-life</a> (22 years). However, Rutherford couldn’t use his radium D sample, as it had large amounts of lead mixed in. </p>
<p>When de Hevesy arrived, Rutherford asked him <a href="https://tech.snmjournals.org/content/jnmt/24/4/291.full.pdf">to separate the radium D</a> from the nuisance lead. The nuisance lead was made up of a combination of stable isotopes of lead (Pb). Each isotope had the same number of protons (82 for lead), but a different number of neutrons.</p>
<p>De Hevesy worked on separating the radium D from the natural lead using chemical separation techniques for almost two years, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1943/hevesy/lecture/">with no success</a>. The reason for his failure was that, unknown to anyone at the time, radium D was actually a different form of lead – namely the radioactive isotope, or radioisotope Pb-210. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, de Hevesy’s failure led to an even bigger discovery. The creative scientist figured out that if he could not separate radium D from natural lead, he could use it as a tracer of lead.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/hunting-for-rare-isotopes-the-mysterious-radioactive-atomic-nuclei-that-will-be-in-tomorrows-technology-86177">Radioactive isotopes</a>, like Pb-210, are unstable isotopes, which means that over time they will transform into a different element. During this transformation, called radioactive decay, they typically release particles or light, which can be <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/radioactivity">detected as radioactivity</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TJgc28csgV0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Through radioactivity, an unstable isotope can turn from one element to another.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This radioactivity acts as a signature indicating the presence of the radioactive isotope. This critical property of radioisotopes allows them to be used as tracers.</p>
<h2>Radium D as a tracer</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.iaea.org/topics/radiotracers">A tracer</a> is a substance that stands out in a crowd of similar material because it has unique qualities that make it easy to track. </p>
<p>For example, if you have a group of kindergartners going on a field trip and one of them is wearing a smartwatch, you can tell if the group went to the playground by tracking the GPS signal on the smartwatch. In de Hevesy’s case, the kindergartners were the lead atoms, the smart watch was radium D, and the GPS signal was the emitted radioactivity. </p>
<p>In the 1910s, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00000541">Vienna Institute of Radium Research</a> had a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2013.0070">larger collection of radium</a> and its byproducts than any other institution. To continue his experiments with radium D, de Hevesy moved to Vienna in 1912. </p>
<p>He collaborated with Fritz Paneth, who had also attempted the impossible task of separating radium D from lead without success. The two scientists “spiked” samples of different chemical compounds with small amounts of a radioactive tracer. This way they could study chemical processes by tracking the movement of the radioactivity <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/hevesy-lecture.pdf">across different chemical reactions</a></p>
<p>De Hevesy continued his work studying chemical processes using different isotopic markers for many years. He even was the first to introduce nonradioactive tracers. One nonradioactive tracer he studied was a heavier isotope of hydrogen, <a href="https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-is-deuterium">called deuterium</a>. Deuterium is 10,000 times less abundant than common hydrogen, but is roughly twice as heavy, which makes it easier to separate the two.</p>
<p>De Hevesy and his co-author used deuterium to track water in their bodies. In their investigations, they took turns ingesting samples and measuring the deuterium in their urine to study <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/134879a0">the elimination of water</a> from the human body. </p>
<p>De Hevesy was awarded the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1943/summary/">1943 Nobel Prize in chemistry</a> “for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes.” </p>
<h2>Radioactive tracers today</h2>
<p>More than a century after de Hevesy’s experiments, many fields now routinely use radioactive tracers, from medicine to materials science and biology. </p>
<p>These tracers can monitor the progression of disease in <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms23095023">medical procedures</a>, the uptake of nutrients in <a href="https://doi.org/10.2976/1.2921207">plant biology</a>, the age and flow of <a href="https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-249-2020">water in aquifers</a> and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apradiso.2021.110076">measurement of wear and corrosion of materials</a>, among other applications. Radioisotopes allow researchers to follow the paths of nutrients and drugs in living systems without invasively cutting the tissue.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551730/original/file-20231003-15-397yxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four brain scans, two in contrasted colors with the background shown as white and the brain as gray, two with the background shown as black and the brain shown either as gray or orange." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551730/original/file-20231003-15-397yxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551730/original/file-20231003-15-397yxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551730/original/file-20231003-15-397yxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551730/original/file-20231003-15-397yxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551730/original/file-20231003-15-397yxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551730/original/file-20231003-15-397yxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551730/original/file-20231003-15-397yxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Radioactive tracers, seen in the top left photo as a white spot and indicated by an arrow in the top right, are often used today in brain scans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/positron-emission-tomography-ct-scan-uses-a-royalty-free-image/1463929233?phrase=brain+scan+radioactive+tracer&adppopup=true">mr. suphachai praserdumrongchai/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In modern research, scientists focus on producing new isotopes and on developing procedures to use radioactive tracers more efficiently. The <a href="https://frib.msu.edu/">Facility for Rare Isotope Beams</a>, or FRIB, where the three of us work, has a program dedicated to the production and harvesting of unique radioisotopes. These radioisotopes are then used in medical and other applications. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/powerful-linear-accelerator-begins-smashing-atoms-2-scientists-on-the-team-explain-how-it-could-reveal-rare-forms-of-matter-185754">FRIB produces radioactive beams</a> for its basic science program. In the production process, a large number of unused isotopes are collected in a tank of water, where they can be later <a href="https://doi.org/10.1039/D0NJ04411C">isolated and studied</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552099/original/file-20231004-26-tls88s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two scientists, a woman wearing a white shirt and a man wearing a dark blue shirt, squat on the concrete ground in a laboartory with lots of machinery and shelves, and a green lit ceiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552099/original/file-20231004-26-tls88s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552099/original/file-20231004-26-tls88s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552099/original/file-20231004-26-tls88s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552099/original/file-20231004-26-tls88s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552099/original/file-20231004-26-tls88s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552099/original/file-20231004-26-tls88s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552099/original/file-20231004-26-tls88s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scientists Greg Severin and Katharina Domnanich at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One recent study involved the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1039/D0NJ04411C">isolation of the radioisotope Zn-62</a> from the irradiated water. This was a challenging task considering there were 100 quadrillion times more water molecules than Zn-62 atoms. Zn-62 is an important radioactive tracer utilized to follow the metabolism of zinc in plants and in nuclear medicine.</p>
<p>Eighty years ago, de Hevesy managed to take a dead-end separation project and turn it into a discovery that created a new scientific field. Radioactive tracers have already changed human lives in so many ways. Nevertheless, scientists are continuing to develop new radioactive tracers and find innovative ways to use them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214784/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Artemis Spyrou receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Liddick receives funding from the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. He is affiliated with the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharina Domnanich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some Nobel Prize-winning ideas originate in strange places, but still go on to revolutionize the scientific field. George de Hevesy’s research on radioactive tracers is one such example.Artemis Spyrou, Professor of Nuclear Physics, Michigan State UniversityKatharina Domnanich, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Michigan State UniversitySean Liddick, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2139592023-10-03T12:32:41Z2023-10-03T12:32:41ZSuperconductivity at room temperature remains elusive a century after a Nobel went to the scientist who demonstrated it below -450 degrees Fahrenheit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550757/original/file-20230927-17-jys9l4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C2%2C991%2C705&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Photograph of the first Solvay Conference in 1911 at the Hotel Metropole. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes is standing third from the right.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference#/media/File:1911_Solvay_conference.jpg">Benjamin Couprie/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On April 8, 1911, Dutch physicist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1913/onnes/facts/">Heike Kamerlingh Onnes</a> scribbled in pencil an almost unintelligible note into <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3490499">a kitchen notebook</a>: “near enough null.” </p>
<p>The note referred to the electrical resistance he’d measured during a landmark experiment that would later be credited as the discovery of superconductivity. But first, he and his team would need many more trials to confirm the measurement.</p>
<p>Their discovery opened up a world of potential scientific applications. The century since has seen many advances, but superconductivity researchers today can take lessons from <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1913/onnes/facts/">Onnes’ original, Nobel Prize-winning work</a>.</p>
<p>I have always been interested in origin stories. As a physics professor and the author of books on the <a href="https://galileo-unbound.blog/books-by-d-d-nolte/">history of physics</a>, I look for the interesting backstory – the twists, turns and serendipities that lie behind great discoveries. </p>
<p>The true stories behind these discoveries are usually more chaotic than the rehearsed narratives crafted after the fact, and some of the lessons learned from Onnes’ experiments remain relevant today as researchers search for new superconductors that might, one day, operate near room temperature.</p>
<h2>Superconductivity</h2>
<p>A rare quantum effect that allows electrical currents to flow without resistance in superconducting wires, <a href="https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainssuperconductivity">superconductivity allows for</a> a myriad of scientific applications. These include <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/0953-2048/30/1/014007">MRI machines</a> and powerful <a href="https://home.cern/news/series/superconductors/superconductors-boost-acceleration">particle accelerators</a>.</p>
<p>Imagine giving a single push to a row of glass beads strung on a frictionless wire. Once the beads start moving down the wire, they never stop, like a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/perpetual-motion">perpetual motion</a> machine. That’s the idea behind superconductivity – particles flowing without resistance.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Superconductivity happens when a current experiences no electrical resistance.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For superconductors to work, they need to be cooled to ultra-low temperatures colder than any Arctic blast. That’s how Onnes’ original work cooling helium to near <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/absolute-zero">absolute zero temperature</a> set the stage for his unexpected discovery of superconductivity.</p>
<h2>The discovery</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Heike-Kamerlingh-Onnes">Onnes</a>, a physics professor at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, built the leading low-temperature physics laboratory in the world in the first decade of the 20th century. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1913/onnes/biographical/">His lab</a> was the first to turn helium from a gas to a liquid by making the gas expand and cool. His lab managed to cool helium this way to a temperature of -452 degrees Farenheit (-269 degrees Celsius).</p>
<p>Onnes then began studying the electrical conductivity of metals at these cold temperatures. He started with mercury because mercury in liquid form can conduct electricity, making it easy to fill into glass tubes. At low temperatures, the mercury would freeze solid, creating metallic wires that Onnes could use in his conductivity experiments.</p>
<p>On April 8, 1911, his lab technicians transferred liquid helium into a measurement cryostat – a glass container with a vacuum jacket to insulate it from the room’s heat. They cooled the helium to -454 F (-270 C) and then measured the electrical resistance of the mercury wire by sending a small current through it and measuring the voltage.</p>
<p>It was then that Onnes wrote the cryptic “near enough null” measurement into <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3490499">his kitchen notebook</a>, meaning that the wire was conducting electricity without any measurable resistance.</p>
<p>That date of April 8 is often quoted as the discovery of superconductivity, but the full story isn’t so simple, because scientists can’t accept a scribbled “near-enough null” as sufficient proof of a new discovery.</p>
<h2>In pursuit of proof</h2>
<p>Onnes’ team performed its next experiment <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3490499">more than six weeks later</a>, on May 23. On this day, they cooled the cryostat again to -454 F (-270 C) and then let the temperature slowly rise. </p>
<p>At first they barely measured any electrical resistance, indicating superconductivity. The resistance stayed small up to -452 F, when it suddenly rose by over a factor of 400 as the temperature inched up just a fraction of a degree. </p>
<p>The rise was so rapid and so unexpected that they started searching for some form of electrical fault or open circuit that might have been caused by the temperature shifts. But they couldn’t find anything wrong. They spent five more months improving their system before trying again. On Oct. 26 they repeated the experiment, capturing the earlier sudden rise in resistance. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graph with the resistence of Mercury on the y axis and temperature on the x axis, showing a sharp drop." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549876/original/file-20230924-17-dcurwt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The resistance of mercury as recorded on Oct. 26, 1911, by Onnes’ lab.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Superconductivity_1911.png">Heike Kamerlingh Onnes via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One week later, Onnes presented these results to the first <a href="http://www.solvayinstitutes.be/html/solvayconference.html">Solvay Conference</a>, and two years later he received his Nobel Prize in physics, recognizing his low-temperature work generally but not superconductivity specifically. </p>
<p>It took another three years of diligent work before Onnes had his irrefutable evidence: He measured persistent currents that did not decay, demonstrating truly zero resistance and superconductivity on April 24, 1914.</p>
<h2>New frontiers for critical temperatures</h2>
<p>In the decades following Onnes’ discovery, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1654966">many researchers have explored</a> how metals act at supercooled temperatures and have learned more about superconductivity. </p>
<p>But if researchers can observe superconductivity only at super low temperatures, it’s hard to make anything useful. It is too expensive to operate a machine practically if it works only at -400 F (-240 C).</p>
<p>So, scientists began searching for superconductors that can work at practical temperatures. For instance, K. Alex Müller and J. Georg Bednorz at the <a href="https://www.zurich.ibm.com/">IBM research laboratory</a> in Switzerland figured out that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.16.579">metal oxides</a> like lanthanum-barium-copper oxide, known as LBCO, could be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.237.4819.1133">good candidates</a>.</p>
<p>It took the IBM team about three years to find superconductivity in LBCO. But when they did, their work <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01303701">set a new record</a>, with superconductivity observed at -397 F (-238 C) in 1986.</p>
<p>A year later, in 1987, a lab in Houston replaced lanthanum in LBCO with the element yttrium to create YBCO. They <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.58.908">demonstrated superconductivity at -292 F</a>. This discovery made YBCO the first practical superconductor, because it could work while immersed in inexpensive liquid nitrogen.</p>
<p>Since then, researchers have observed superconductivity at temperatures <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.50.4260">as high as -164 F</a> (-109 C), but achieving a room-temperature superconductor has remained elusive.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549878/original/file-20230924-15-nnist7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart of the discoveries of new superconductors plotted as critical temperature versus year of discovery, with each discovery labeled with a shape, color and abbreviation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549878/original/file-20230924-15-nnist7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549878/original/file-20230924-15-nnist7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549878/original/file-20230924-15-nnist7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549878/original/file-20230924-15-nnist7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549878/original/file-20230924-15-nnist7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549878/original/file-20230924-15-nnist7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549878/original/file-20230924-15-nnist7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Timeline of accomplishments in superconductivity research.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Timeline_of_Superconductivity_from_1900_to_2015.svg">Gingras.ol/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2023, two groups claimed they had evidence for room-temperature superconductivity, though both reports have been met with <a href="https://theconversation.com/hopes-fade-for-room-temperature-superconductor-lk-99-but-quantum-zero-resistance-research-continues-211733">sharp skepticism</a>, and both are now in limbo following further scrutiny.</p>
<p>Superconductivity has always been tricky to prove because some metals can masquerade as superconductors. The lessons learned by Onnes a century ago – that these discoveries require time, patience and, most importantly, proof of currents that never stop – are still relevant today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213959/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David D. Nolte receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Superconductivity may sound like science fiction, but the first experiments to achieve it were conducted over a century ago. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, credited with the discovery, won a Nobel Prize in 1913.David D. Nolte, Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2108722023-10-02T15:06:38Z2023-10-02T15:06:38ZNavigating the risks and benefits of AI: Lessons from nanotechnology on ensuring emerging technologies are safe as well as successful<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550432/original/file-20230926-17-jzcbex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C3000%2C1994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The course of nanotechnology, like the carbon nanotubes in this laboratory, has been guided by many stakeholders.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/researcher-deals-with-a-wafer-arrayed-with-carbon-nanotubes-news-photo/1227278541">VCG/VCG via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Twenty years ago, nanotechnology was the artificial intelligence of its time. The specific details of these technologies are, of course, a world apart. But the challenges of ensuring each technology’s responsible and beneficial development are surprisingly alike. Nanotechnology, which is <a href="https://www.nano.gov/about-nanotechnology">technologies at the scale of individual atoms and molecules</a>, even carried its own existential risk in the form of “<a href="https://science.howstuffworks.com/gray-goo.htm">gray goo</a>.”</p>
<p>As potentially transformative AI-based technologies continue to emerge and gain traction, though, it is not clear that people in the artificial intelligence field are applying the lessons learned from nanotechnology.</p>
<p>As scholars of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=b8NhWc4AAAAJ&hl=en">the future</a> <a href="https://search.asu.edu/profile/867279">of innovation</a>, we explore these parallels in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-023-01481-5">new commentary in the journal Nature Nanotechnology</a>. The commentary also looks at how a lack of engagement with a diverse community of experts and stakeholders threatens AI’s long-term success.</p>
<h2>Nanotech excitement and fear</h2>
<p>In the late 1990s and early 2000s, nanotechnology transitioned from a radical and somewhat fringe idea to mainstream acceptance. The U.S. government and other administrations around the world ramped up investment in what was claimed to be “<a href="https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/media/pdf/nni.pdf">the next industrial revolution</a>.” Government experts made compelling arguments for how, in the words of a foundational report from the <a href="https://trid.trb.org/view/636880">U.S. National Science and Technology Council</a>, “shaping the world atom by atom” would positively transform economies, the environment and lives.</p>
<p>But there was a problem. On the heels of <a href="https://www.economist.com/special/1999/06/17/food-for-thought">public pushback against genetically modified crops</a>, together with lessons learned from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/455290a">recombinant DNA</a> and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2022.100150">Human Genome Project</a>, people in the nanotechnology field had growing concerns that there could be a similar backlash against nanotechnology if it were handled poorly.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A whiteboard primer on nanotechnology – and its responsible development.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These concerns were well grounded. In the early days of nanotechnology, nonprofit organizations such as the <a href="https://www.etcgroup.org/content/size-matters">ETC Group</a>, <a href="https://foe.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/legacy/Nanomaterials_sunscreens_and_cosmetics.pdf">Friends of the Earth</a> and others strenuously objected to claims that this type of technology was safe, that there would be minimal downsides and that experts and developers knew what they were doing. The era saw <a href="https://www.wired.com/2005/06/when-nanopants-attack/">public protests against nanotechnology</a> and – disturbingly – even a bombing campaign by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.201">environmental extremists that targeted nanotechnology researchers</a>.</p>
<p>Just as with AI today, there were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137293688_5">concerns about the effect on jobs</a> as a new wave of skills and automation swept away established career paths. Also foreshadowing current AI concerns, worries about existential risks began to emerge, notably the possibility of self-replicating “nanobots” converting all matter on Earth into copies of themselves, resulting in a planet-encompassing “gray goo.” This particular scenario was even highlighted by Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy in a <a href="https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/">prominent article in Wired magazine</a>.</p>
<p>Many of the potential risks associated with nanotechnology, though, were less speculative. Just as there’s a growing focus on <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/06/02/the-15-biggest-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/?sh=3afff5b12706">more immediate risks associated with AI</a> in the present, the early 2000s saw an emphasis on examining tangible challenges related to ensuring the <a href="https://royalsociety.org/%7E/media/royal_society_content/policy/publications/2004/9693.pdf">safe and responsible development of nanotechnology</a>. These included potential health and environmental impacts, social and ethical issues, regulation and governance, and a growing need for public and stakeholder collaboration.</p>
<p>The result was a profoundly complex landscape around nanotechnology development that promised incredible advances yet was rife with uncertainty and the risk of losing public trust if things went wrong.</p>
<h2>How nanotech got it right</h2>
<p>One of us – Andrew Maynard – was at the forefront of addressing the potential risks of nanotechnology in the early 2000s as a researcher, co-chair of the interagency <a href="https://www.nano.gov/about-nni/working-groups/nehi">Nanotechnology Environmental and Health Implications</a> working group and chief science adviser to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication-series/project-emerging-nanotechnologies">Project on Emerging Technology</a>.</p>
<p>At the time, working on responsible nanotechnology development felt like playing whack-a-mole with the health, environment, social and governance challenges presented by the technology. For every solution, there seemed to be a new problem. </p>
<p>Yet, through engaging with a wide array of experts and stakeholders – many of whom were not authorities on nanotechnology but who brought critical perspectives and insights to the table – the field produced initiatives that laid the foundation for nanotechnology to thrive. This included <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2004/12/06/daily13.html">multistakeholder partnerships</a>, <a href="https://www.iso.org/committee/381983/x/catalogue/">consensus standards</a>, and initiatives spearheaded by global bodies such as the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/science/nanosafety/44108334.pdf">Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development</a>. </p>
<p>As a result, many of the technologies people rely on today are underpinned by advances in <a href="https://www.nano.gov/about-nanotechnology/applications-nanotechnology">nanoscale science and engineering</a>. Even some of the advances in AI <a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/moores-law-further-progress-will-push-hard-on-the-boundaries-of-physics-and-economics/">rely on nanotechnology-based hardware</a>.</p>
<p>In the U.S., much of this collaborative work was spearheaded by the cross-agency <a href="https://www.nano.gov/">National Nanotechnology Initiative</a>. In the early 2000s, the initiative brought together representatives from across the government to better understand the risks and benefits of nanotechnology. It helped convene a broad and diverse array of scholars, researchers, developers, practitioners, educators, activists, policymakers and other stakeholders to help map out strategies for ensuring socially and economically beneficial nanoscale technologies.</p>
<p>In 2003, the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/108th-congress/senate-bill/189">21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act</a> became law and further codified this commitment to participation by a broad array of stakeholders. The coming years saw a growing number of federally funded initiatives – including the Center for Nanotechnology and Society at Arizona State University (where one of us was on the board of visitors) – that cemented the principle of broad engagement around emerging advanced technologies.</p>
<h2>Experts only at the table</h2>
<p>These and similar efforts around the world were pivotal in ensuring the emergence of beneficial and responsible nanotechnology. Yet despite similar aspirations around AI, these same levels of diversity and engagement are missing. AI development practiced today is, by comparison, much more exclusionary. The White House has <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/05/04/readout-of-white-house-meeting-with-ceos-on-advancing-responsible-artificial-intelligence-innovation/">prioritized consultations with AI company CEOs</a>, and <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/oversight-of-ai-principles-for-regulation">Senate hearings</a> have <a href="https://theconversation.com/experts-alone-cant-handle-ai-social-scientists-explain-why-the-public-needs-a-seat-at-the-table-210848">drawn preferentially on technical experts</a>. </p>
<p>According to lessons learned from nanotechnology, we believe this approach is a mistake. While members of the public, policymakers and experts outside the domain of AI may not fully understand the intimate details of the technology, they are often fully capable of understanding its implications. More importantly, they bring a diversity of expertise and perspectives to the table that is essential for the successful development of an advanced technology like AI. </p>
<p>This is why, in our Nature Nanotechnology commentary, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-023-01481-5">we recommend learning from the lessons of nanotechnology</a>, engaging early and often with experts and stakeholders who may not know the technical details and science behind AI but nevertheless bring knowledge and insights essential for ensuring the technology’s appropriate success.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">UNESCO calls for broad participation in deciding AI’s future.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The clock is ticking</h2>
<p>Artificial intelligence could be the most transformative technology that’s come along in living memory. Developed smartly, it could positively change the lives of billions of people. But this will happen only if society applies the lessons from past advanced technology transitions like the one driven by nanotechnology.</p>
<p>As with the formative years of nanotechnology, addressing the challenges of AI is urgent. The early days of an advanced technology transition set the trajectory for how it plays out over the coming decades. And with the recent pace of progress of AI, this window is closing fast.</p>
<p>It is not just the future of AI that’s at stake. Artificial intelligence is only one of many transformative emerging technologies. <a href="https://quantumconsortium.org/">Quantum technologies</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-gene-editing-and-how-could-it-shape-our-future-199025">advanced genetic manipulation</a>, <a href="https://brain.ieee.org/topics/neurotechnologies-the-next-technology-frontier/">neurotechnologies</a> and more are coming fast. If society doesn’t learn from the past to successfully navigate these imminent transitions, it risks losing out on the promises they hold and faces the possibility of each causing more harm than good.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Maynard has received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation for research on the potential risks and benefits of nanotechnology. He was previously the co-chair of the Nanotechnology Environmental and Health Implications Working Group, and was Chief Science Advisor to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Dudley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two decades ago, the nanotechnology revolution avoided stumbling by bringing a wide range of people to the table to chart its development. The window is closing fast on AI following suit.Andrew Maynard, Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions, Arizona State UniversitySean Dudley, Chief Research Information Officer and Associate Vice President for Research Technology, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107682023-08-21T12:24:46Z2023-08-21T12:24:46ZCaroline Herschel was England’s first female professional astronomer, but still lacks name recognition two centuries later<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543255/original/file-20230817-13660-rbgibr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=65%2C133%2C1998%2C1572&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Herschel Museum in Bath, England, has a new display of a handwritten draft of Caroline Herschel’s memoirs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Juvenile_instructor_(1866)_(14577404920).jpg">Internet Archive Book Images via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Caroline-Lucretia-Herschel">Caroline Herschel</a>, the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259930283_The_Hidden_Giants">first English professional female astronomer</a>, made contributions to astronomy that are still important to the field today. But even many astronomers may not recognize her name.</p>
<p>Most scientists care about the newest techniques, data and theories in their field, but they often know very little about the history of their discipline. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5CChghwAAAAJ&hl=en">Astronomers, like me,</a> are no exception.</p>
<p>It wasn’t until I taught an intro to astronomy class that I learned about Caroline. Now, thanks to a new display of her papers <a href="https://herschelmuseum.org.uk/">at the Herschel Museum</a> in Bath, England, others will get to learn about her too. Her story reflects not only the priorities of astronomy but also how credit is assigned in the field.</p>
<h2>Her path to astronomy</h2>
<p>Caroline Herschel, born in 1750, did not have an easy childhood. After a bout with typhus left her scarred at a young age, her family assumed that she would never marry and <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/82017/the-age-of-wonder-by-richard-holmes/">treated her as an unpaid servant</a>. She was forced to complete household chores, despite showing a keen interest in learning from a young age. She eventually escaped her family to follow her older brother <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Herschel">William Herschel</a>, whom she adored, to Bath.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542891/original/file-20230815-25-k6lyuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustration of two people, and man and a woman, leaning over a table. The man polishes a lens on the table. Other astronomical instruments are visible behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542891/original/file-20230815-25-k6lyuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542891/original/file-20230815-25-k6lyuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542891/original/file-20230815-25-k6lyuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542891/original/file-20230815-25-k6lyuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542891/original/file-20230815-25-k6lyuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542891/original/file-20230815-25-k6lyuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542891/original/file-20230815-25-k6lyuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Caroline Herschel worked with her brother William on many pursuits.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Sir_William_Herschel_and_Caroline_Herschel._Wellcome_V0002731_%28cropped%29.jpg">A. Diethe/Wellcome Images via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Caroline was a somewhat unwilling astronomer at first. She didn’t become interested in astronomy until William was already thoroughly engrossed in the subject. Although <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/013361a0">she spoke somewhat disparagingly</a> about how she followed her brother to different interests, including music and astronomy, Caroline <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/013361a0">eventually acknowledged</a> her real interest in studying astronomical bodies.</p>
<p>Astronomers at the time were mainly interested in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/astronomy/Herschel-and-the-Milky-Way">finding new objects and mapping out the heavens</a> with precision. Using telescopes to look for new comets and nebulae was also popular. William Herschel became famous after his <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1781.0056">discovery of Uranus in 1781</a>, though he mistook the planet for a comet at first.</p>
<p>At the beginning of her career, Caroline worked as William’s assistant. She focused mostly on <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/82017/the-age-of-wonder-by-richard-holmes/">astronomical instrumentation tasks</a>, like polishing telescope mirrors. She also <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691148335/discoverers-of-the-universe">helped copy catalogs and took careful notes</a> about William’s observations. But then she began to make her own observations.</p>
<h2>Searching the skies</h2>
<p>In 1782, Caroline began recording the positions of new objects in her own logbook. It was through this work that <a href="https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1212.0809">she discovered several comets and nebulae</a>. On Aug. 1, 1782, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1787.0001">she discovered a comet</a> – meaning she was the first to see it in a telescope with her own eyes. This was the <a href="https://herschelmuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Herschel-Museum-buys-Caroline-Herschels-memoirs-FINAL.pdf">first comet discovery attributed to a woman</a>. She went on to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Caroline-Lucretia-Herschel">discover seven more comets</a> over the next 11 years.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543257/original/file-20230817-7412-iuf5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white portrait of an older lady wearing a ruffled bonnet, pointing at a paper. She's holding a magnifying glass." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543257/original/file-20230817-7412-iuf5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543257/original/file-20230817-7412-iuf5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543257/original/file-20230817-7412-iuf5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543257/original/file-20230817-7412-iuf5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543257/original/file-20230817-7412-iuf5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543257/original/file-20230817-7412-iuf5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543257/original/file-20230817-7412-iuf5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Caroline Herschel (1750−1848) was the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ETH-BIB-Herschel,_Caroline_(1750-1848)-Portrait-Portr_11026-092-SF.jpg">ETH Library via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the time of the Herschels’ work, it was the actual observation of an object that warranted public recognition, so Caroline was given credit only for the comets she saw through the telescope herself. For all of her other work, like recording and organizing all the data from William’s observations, she received less credit than William.</p>
<p>For instance, when Caroline took all of William’s observations and compiled them into a catalog, it was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41df1d85-a112-3847-84fe-5f10debf1250?seq=18">published under William’s name</a>. Caroline is mentioned only as an “assistant” in the paper.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, in recognition of her discoveries and her work as William’s assistant, King George III of England <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/82017/the-age-of-wonder-by-richard-holmes/">granted Caroline a salary</a>, making her the first professional female astronomer. </p>
<p>Later in life, Caroline reorganized the same catalog in a more efficient way, according to how practicing astronomers interested in looking for comets <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691148335/discoverers-of-the-universe">actually observed the night sky</a>. This updated catalog was later used as the basis of the <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1888MmRAS..49....1D/abstract">New General Catalogue</a>, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa91c9">astronomers still</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/science/ligo-neutron-stars-collision.html">use today</a> to organize the stars.</p>
<p>The Herschels also created the first – though not quite correct – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1785.0012">map of our galaxy, the Milky Way</a>.</p>
<h2>Who gets the credit in astronomy?</h2>
<p>Recognition for scientific work within the astronomical community is pretty different now than it was in the Herschels’ day. In fact, most of the astronomers who receive credit today are those whose work looks a lot like Caroline’s – recording and organizing data about astronomical observations. </p>
<p>Astronomers seldom put their eyeballs up to a telescope eyepiece anymore, and many of the most important discoveries are made by <a href="https://theconversation.com/james-webb-space-telescope-an-astronomer-on-the-team-explains-how-to-send-a-giant-telescope-to-space-and-why-167516">telescopes in space</a>. But astronomers still need to be able to make sense of all the data from these telescopes. Catalogs like the ones Caroline made are important tools for doing so. </p>
<p>Most people today haven’t heard of Caroline Herschel. Despite having several astronomical objects – and <a href="https://mailchi.mp/ace3dfcbde8a/dedicated_launch">even a satellite</a> – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_282">named after her</a>, she doesn’t have the same name recognition as the other astronomers of her time. Some of the lack of recognition is probably because her brother received all the credit for her catalog. Today, astronomers would give them both credit.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543270/original/file-20230817-17-oq5i48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photograph of a cluster of stars" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543270/original/file-20230817-17-oq5i48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543270/original/file-20230817-17-oq5i48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543270/original/file-20230817-17-oq5i48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543270/original/file-20230817-17-oq5i48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543270/original/file-20230817-17-oq5i48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543270/original/file-20230817-17-oq5i48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543270/original/file-20230817-17-oq5i48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cluster of stars NGC 7789 is unofficially nicknamed ‘Caroline’s Rose’ in honor of Caroline Herschel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caroline%27s_Rose_Open_Cluster_(NGC7789).jpg">Anton Vakulenko via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Herschel is just one in a long line of female astronomers who did not receive the credit they were due and whose work was used to justify prizes for male scientists instead. These issues aren’t just restricted to 18th-century science, but persist through modern astronomy as well. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jocelyn-Bell-Burnell">Jocelyn Bell Burnell</a>, who discovered the first radio pulsar, was <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06210-w">left off the 1974 Nobel Prize</a>, and the award was <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-all-nobel-prizes-be-canceled-for-a-year-97996">instead granted to her Ph.D. adviser</a>. </p>
<p>Although astronomy has come a long way since the 18th century, astronomers still need to think carefully about how to fairly recognize the people who participate in scientific discoveries. Acknowledging the contributions of astronomers like Caroline Herschel is a small step toward giving credit where credit is due.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to acknowledge other women astronomers who preceded Herschel.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210768/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kris Pardo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Astronomer Caroline Herschel’s work discovering and cataloging astronomical objects in the 18th century is still used in the field today, but she didn’t always get her due credit.Kris Pardo, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2065752023-06-18T20:08:12Z2023-06-18T20:08:12ZWhy is the sky dark at night? The 200-year history of a question that transformed our understanding of the Universe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528678/original/file-20230527-19-36mvgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3390%2C2841&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://esawebb.org/images/potm2301a/">ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Martel</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As dawn rose over the German city of Bremen on May 7 1823, <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1031">Heinrich Olbers</a> put the finishing touches to an article that left his name in history. After the deaths of his wife and daughter, Dr Olbers had recently given up his work as an opthalmologist to devote himself to his nocturnal passions: the stars, the Moon, meteorites and comets. </p>
<p>Like many of his peers, Olbers trained himself in astronomy. He gained a <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_27/July_1885/Some_Self-Made_Astronomers">solid reputation</a> in the academic world and spent long nights observing the sky from the observatory on the second floor of his house.</p>
<p>On that morning, Olbers had come to a strange conclusion: based on all that was known about the Universe at that time, the night sky should not have been dark. In fact, the entire heavens should have been glowing as brightly as the Sun.</p>
<p>Olbers was <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1990IAUS..139....3H/abstract">not the first</a> to note this paradox. But his name is the one we attach to it today. The enigma of the night sky’s darkness has echoed down the centuries from Olbers and the poet Edgar Allan Poe to 20th-century astronomers and space probes today.</p>
<h2>Finite light in an infinite Universe</h2>
<p>Like many of his contemporaries, Olbers followed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/1.881049">Isaac Newton and René Descartes</a> in believing the Universe was infinite.</p>
<p>If the Universe were finite and static, the force of gravity should draw all the stars together at a central point. But if the Universe stretched on forever, gravitational forces would on average be balanced in all directions. </p>
<p>But Olbers realised this model of the cosmos was inconsistent with observations. In a limitless Universe filled with an infinite number of stars, wherever we look at night our gaze should land on the surface of a star, in much the same way as every line of sight in a forest ends at a tree.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528760/original/file-20230529-17-zhp9e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A photo of densely packed tree trunks in a forest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528760/original/file-20230529-17-zhp9e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528760/original/file-20230529-17-zhp9e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528760/original/file-20230529-17-zhp9e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528760/original/file-20230529-17-zhp9e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528760/original/file-20230529-17-zhp9e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528760/original/file-20230529-17-zhp9e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528760/original/file-20230529-17-zhp9e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In an infinite forest, every line of sight leads to a tree trunk. In an infinite Universe, is the same true for stars?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pxhere.com/fr/photo/1273647">PXHere</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the problem Olbers raised in his <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2471191#page/163/mode/1up">paper</a> of May 7 1823: the cosmological model of the time suggested every point in the sky should be as bright as the surface of the Sun. There should be no night.</p>
<p>Olbers proposed a solution: the light from more distant stars was absorbed by dust or other material floating in space. The English astronomer John Herschel later pointed out this couldn’t be right, because anything absorbing that much light would eventually heat up enough to glow.</p>
<p>When Olbers died on March 2 1840, at the age of 81, the riddle we know today as Olbers’ paradox was unsolved.</p>
<h2>A poet’s intuition</h2>
<p>Eight years later, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, poet and writer Edgar Allan Poe <a href="https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1994QJRAS..35..177C">thought he had found an answer</a>. On February 3 1848, he gave a public lecture about his ideas to 60 people at the New York Society Library.</p>
<p>Veering between metaphysics and science, Poe argued the cosmos had emerged from a single state of matter (“Oneness”) that fragmented and dispersed under the action of a repulsive force.</p>
<p>This meant the Universe was a finite sphere of matter. If the finite universe is populated by a sufficiently small number of stars, then we won’t see one in every direction we look. The night can be dark again. </p>
<p>Even if we assume the Universe is infinite, if it began at some point in the past then the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/32357">time taken by light to reach us</a> would limit the size of the amount of the Universe we can see. This travel time would create a horizon beyond which distant stars would remain inaccessible. </p>
<p>Poe’s audience at the New York Society Library did not give him the rapturous reception he had hoped for. Later the same year, he published his theories in the prose poem <a href="https://www.eapoe.org/works/editions/eurekac.htm">Eureka</a>, which was little circulated.</p>
<p>The following year, on October 7 1849, Poe died at the age of 40. It would be more than a century before scientists confirmed his intuitions about the enigma of the dark night sky.</p>
<h2>Two and a half facts</h2>
<p>In the first half of the 20th century many new theories of the cosmos were developed, spurred on by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which explained gravity, space and time in new ways. In the second half of the century, these cosmological theories began to be tested with observations.</p>
<p>In 1963, <a href="https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1993QJRAS..34..157L">British astronomer Peter Scheuer</a> argued that cosmology was based on only “two and a half facts”: </p>
<ul>
<li>fact 1: the night sky is dark, which had been known for some time</li>
<li>fact 2: galaxies are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law">moving away from each other</a>, as shown by Hubble’s observations published in 1929</li>
<li>fact 2.5: the content of the Universe is probably evolving as cosmic time unfolds. </li>
</ul>
<p>Strong controversies on the interpretation of facts 2 and 2.5 agitated the scientific community in the 1950s and 1960s. Was the Universe essentially stationary, or had it begun in an enormous explosion – a Big Bang? Supporters of both sides conceded, however, they needed to explain the darkness of the night sky. </p>
<h2>The lifetime of stars</h2>
<p>British cosmologist Edward Harrison <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/204271b0">resolved the conflict</a> in 1964. He showed that the main factor determining the brightness of the night sky is actually the finite age of the stars. </p>
<p>The number of stars in the observable Universe is <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Herschel/How_many_stars_are_there_in_the_Universe">extremely large</a>, but it is finite. This limited number, each burning for a limited time, spread over a gigantic volume, lets darkness manifest itself between the stars. </p>
<p>Harrison later <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/322417a0">realised</a> this solution had already been proposed not only by Edgar Allan Poe, but by British physicist Lord Kelvin in 1901. </p>
<p>Observations in the 1980s confirmed the resolution proposed by Poe, Kelvin and Harrison. Olbers’ paradox had <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_gateway/1986SSRv...44..169W/ADS_PDF">finally been put to rest</a>.</p>
<h2>Fossil light</h2>
<p>Or perhaps not quite. Viewed from a different angle, there is another resolution to the paradox: the night sky is not actually so dark after all. </p>
<p>After the discovery of the expansion of the Universe in the late 1920s, scientists realised the Universe could have started off extremely compact, dense and hot. This is the “hot Big Bang” model we have today.</p>
<p>One core prediction of this model is the existence of “fossil light” released in the cosmic dawn. This fossil light should be observable today – but not with the naked eye, as the expanding Universe would have shifted it to longer wavelengths. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528761/original/file-20230529-19-ipn9fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528761/original/file-20230529-19-ipn9fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528761/original/file-20230529-19-ipn9fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528761/original/file-20230529-19-ipn9fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528761/original/file-20230529-19-ipn9fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528761/original/file-20230529-19-ipn9fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528761/original/file-20230529-19-ipn9fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When seen via microwave radiation, the sky is dominated by our Milky Way galaxy. But behind it we can see the fainter glow of the cosmic microwave background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia13239-plancks-view-of-the-whole-sky">ESA, HFI & LFI consortia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This radiation – the cosmic microwave background – was <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1965ApJ...142..419P/abstract">detected in 1964</a>. Now measured with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833880">exquisite accuracy</a>, the cosmic background radiation is the most common light in the Universe. </p>
<p>We now know the cosmos is also illuminated by <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1967ApJ...148..377P">a second, much fainter background light</a>, produced by galaxies as they form and evolve. This light is referred to as the cosmic ultraviolet, optical and infrared background. </p>
<p>So we can also answer Olbers’ paradox by saying the sky is not dark, but faintly glimmers with the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0003702818767133">dim relic radiation</a> of all that has been over the finite lifetime of the Universe.</p>
<h2>New answers, new questions</h2>
<p>In 2023, Olbers’ paradox has evolved into a rich field of research. In our own work, we carry out ever-more precise measurements of the brightness of the night sky, and simulate the stars of the cosmos with supercomputers. We can now determine the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/503/2/2033/6152275">number of stars</a> in the sky with great accuracy. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, puzzles remain. Last year the New Horizons space probe, out beyond the orbit of Pluto and away from the dust of the inner Solar System, found the sky is <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac573d/pdf">twice as bright</a> as we expected it to be.</p>
<p>And so the question of the darkness of the sky lives on, crossing ages and cultures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Biteau receives funding from University Paris-Saclay, CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche) and ANR (Agence National de la Recherche). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alberto Domínguez receives funding from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain) and Banco Santander - Universidad Complutense de Madrid.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Valls-Gabaud receives funding from the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>José Fonseca receives funding from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Juan Garcia-Bellido receives funding from MICINN (Spain) through various research projects.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Driver receives funding from the Australian Research Council which supports studies of the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL). Simon is also a member of the Hubble Space Telescope SkySURF program (measuring the EBL) and a member of the Messier team (a potential space mission which includes, as part of its science case, studies of the EBL).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hervé Dole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The darkness of the night sky seems so obvious as to need no explanation – yet it has intrigued and baffled scientists for centuries.Jonathan Biteau, Maître de conférence en physique des astroparticules, Université Paris-SaclayAlberto Domínguez, Investigador en Astrofísica, Universidad Complutense de MadridDavid Valls-Gabaud, Astrophysicien, Directeur de recherches au CNRS, Observatoire de ParisHervé Dole, Astrophysicien, Professeur, Vice-président, art, culture, science et société, Université Paris-SaclayJosé Fonseca, Assistant Research, Universidade do PortoJuan Garcia-Bellido, Catedratico de Fisica Teórica, Universidad Autónoma de MadridSimon Driver, ARC Laureate Fellow and Winthrop Research Professor at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, UWA., The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1964992023-01-26T07:40:39Z2023-01-26T07:40:39ZA hymn to the stars: what happens when science puts the universe into music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502416/original/file-20221221-26-6ss9zi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=269%2C8%2C2384%2C1374&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Discover how a picture of the sky can become a symphony.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YIERCD5PYY">Chandra X-ray Observatory</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A little over six months ago, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) delivered its first photographs, dazzling the world as it revealed the cosmos in glorious technicolour. The first picture transmitted in July showed a galaxy cluster located in the Southern hemisphere sky, 5.12 billion light years from Earth. In the words of <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet">US president Joe Biden</a>, it represented “the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe” taken by humanity so far.</p>
<p>But NASA didn’t content itself with unveiling these first JWST images visually. Tapping into the long love story between music and astronomy, <a href="https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/040/01GBD2NHNRTGNBEWTFQM0ZTCFQ">scientists mapped out the colours to different pitches of sound</a>. </p>
<h2>Music and astronomy: an ancient love story</h2>
<p>Music and space might not seem like natural partners – after all, no air means no sound. But to our forebears, the links were obvious. In Ancient Greece, thinkers such as Aristotle believed the Earth lay at the centre of the universe. This didn’t make it an unchanging ideal, however: to the ancients, terrestrial phenomena were ever-changing, a reflection of our planet’s imperfection. The sky, by contrast, was seen as immutable and eternal, and so worthy of emulation.</p>
<p>A few of the stars moved with respect to others – so-called “planets” in the etymological sense (for <em>planet</em> means “wandering star”). The ancients knew of seven of them: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, plus the Sun and the Moon. That number would go on to inform the composition of the days of the week as well as of the <a href="https://www.phys.uconn.edu/%7Egibson/Notes/Section3_7/Sec3_7.htm">musical scale</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, to the Ancient Greeks, each planet hung on a sphere, which, in turn, revolved around the Earth. Given that movement emitted sound here – such as when two objects rubbed against one another or when feet hit the ground – it made sense that the moving spheres in the cosmos should also produce sounds. Contrary to those heard on Earth, these were thought to be perfect, prompting the Ancients to use the stars as a template for terrestrial music. This is why in the Middle Ages astronomy and music were grouped together in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium"><em>quadrivium</em></a>, which also included arithmetic and geometry, and lay the foundations of the liberal arts education.</p>
<h2>Plotting the stars on the musical scale</h2>
<p>But how to weave together notes and planets? This is admittedly the trickiest part. Some scientists have linked a sound’s pitch to a planet’s distance, others with its speed. To add more intricacy to the compositions, at the time perceptions differed in the relative positions of the planets in the solar system.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500417/original/file-20221212-110473-4pofku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500417/original/file-20221212-110473-4pofku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500417/original/file-20221212-110473-4pofku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500417/original/file-20221212-110473-4pofku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500417/original/file-20221212-110473-4pofku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500417/original/file-20221212-110473-4pofku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1203&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500417/original/file-20221212-110473-4pofku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1203&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500417/original/file-20221212-110473-4pofku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1203&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The melodies assigned to the planets by Johannes Kepler, in his <em>Harmonices Mundi</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Oklahoma/Wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was one of the scientists to most notably draw on this Ancient Greek concept of “music of the spheres” (also known as <em>musica universalis</em>) to map out the planetary system. </p>
<p>Kepler’s findings would catapult us into the modern cosmos: he determined that not only was the Sun not at the centre of the solar system – as Nicolaus Copernicus had proposed in the previous century – but also that the planets revolved around it in an elliptical rather than circular motion. As a result, distance and speed changed in the course of the orbit. It became impossible to associate a single note with a single planet, driving him to the conclusion that planets sung melodies.</p>
<p>Of course, all this had to remain harmonious: for a planet to produce a melody, the highest sound had to chime well with the lowest. Eventually, Kepler abandoned his tunes to concentrate on spelling out his <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/310/orbits-and-keplers-laws/">third law</a> on planetary motion in 1619.</p>
<p>While we have long left the idea of planetary spheres behind, the “music of the spheres” left its mark – even today, songs and albums continue to bear its name, including Coldplay’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kPXSp9U1LO8uU9aFbxzIrSNYHded8K9gY">latest opus</a>. The relationship between astronomy and music went on to develop further, with music inspired by astronomical concepts, objects or people, or alternatively drawing on real astronomical data.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MRXC12BFStI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Three red giant stars reveal their pulsations in data from the Kepler space telescope. Their bright oscillation frequencies have been multiplied by 3 million to enter the audible frequency range. Note that the larger stars correspond to the lowest tones.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Kepler’s heirs</h2>
<p>Rather than mapping the planetary systems, Kepler’s heirs are now mapping the sky with sounds, following a few chosen rules. Intense light in an image translates into intense volume: a brighter object produce a louder sound. In turn, a sound’s duration corresponds to the object’s appearance: short for a star (which is basically a spot in an image), long for a nebulous cloud. </p>
<p>For the pitch, it could directly reflect the light frequency (higher pitch if higher frequency) or be a spatial coding (the higher the object is in the image, the higher the pitch). In that case, the image of a nebular “mountain” will produce a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9shIxS-W-8">sonorous rise and fall</a>. In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YIERCD5PYY">picture</a> of the centre of our Galaxy released for Chandra space telescope, both methods are combined: spatial coding with different light frequencies represented by different instruments (bells for X-rays, strings for visible light and a piano for infrared).</p>
<p>In 1606, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote that “the eternal silence of these infinite spaces” <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00008181">terrified him</a>. For modern day scientists, however, they’re a playground of light and especially of music.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/La9DB-bcy5Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Webb telescope data, translated into sound, “Southern ring”.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196499/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yaël Nazé ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Since ancient times, the stars have been set to music. Modern technology now enables scientists to convert images of space into real compositions.Yaël Nazé, Astronome FNRS à l'Institut d'astrophysique et de géophysique, Université de LiègeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1923762022-12-19T13:35:48Z2022-12-19T13:35:48ZWhy is astronomy a science but astrology is not?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499880/original/file-20221208-17038-cv8u59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C10%2C2389%2C1785&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Your zodiac sign – like Sagittarius, the archer – might be in the stars, but your future isn't.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/sagittarius-astrological-sign-on-ancient-clock-royalty-free-image/1180618747">scaliger/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Why is astronomy a science, but not astrology? – Katelyn, age 11, Arlington, Texas</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>Are you sure astrology isn’t a science? </p>
<p>Both astrology and astronomy are in the business of making predictions. The theories of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/astrology">astrology</a> claim that the positions of the planets and the stars influence who you are and what happens to you: your job, your personality and your romantic partner. Astrologers make these predictions based on the positions of the planets at the time of your birth. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/astronomy">Astronomy</a>, in contrast, makes predictions about such phenomena as the movements of planets and the expansion of galaxies. Astronomers explain their predictions with such properties as masses, distances and gravitational forces.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cTBDU3AAAAAJ&hl=en">philosopher</a> and an <a href="https://anthropology.wustl.edu/people/talia-dan-cohen">anthropologist</a> who study what science means to society, we think it is important to separate the question of whether something is a science from the question of whether it is true or false.</p>
<h2>Astrology makes scientific claims</h2>
<p>Science, in essence, involves making and testing factual claims about the world. Factual claims are true or false descriptions of the world (Joe is 1 meter tall) as opposed to descriptions of how we define things (1 meter is 1,000 milimeters). In this sense, astrologers, like astronomers, make factual claims about the world. To us, that makes astrology sound a lot like a set of scientific beliefs.</p>
<p>For a very long time, until the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26567121">17th or 18th century</a>, astronomy and astrology were <a href="https://en.unesco.org/silkroad/content/did-you-know-influence-astrology-science-astronomy-along-silk-roads">practiced side by side</a>. After all, knowing where the planets were relative to the stars was necessary to make accurate predictions about how their locations influenced human affairs. That’s why astronomers and astrologers populated medical schools and governments, advising people on what the heavens signaled was to come on Earth.</p>
<p>Even famed astronomers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0021828618793218">Galileo</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kepler/">Kepler</a> practiced astrology. Any rule that says they are scientists only if they make one set of factual claims but not when they make another set of factual claims divides these thinkers into two halves that aren’t meant to be contradictory. In both cases, they wanted to know how things worked so they could predict how things would go in the future.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ph3HCXtuCQw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">For centuries, astrology was a respected science right alongside astronomy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Being false vs. being unscientific</h2>
<p>But here’s the rub: When researchers test the predictions astrology makes about people’s lives, those predictions turn out to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/318419a0">no better</a> <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/DEAIAR">than guesswork</a>.</p>
<p>There is currently no broadly accepted evidence that galactic forces are capable of influencing the choices people make. The truck parked on the street exerts more <a href="https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/circles/Lesson-3/The-Apple,-the-Moon,-and-the-Inverse-Square-Law">gravitational pull</a> on you than Mars does, and the <a href="https://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/">radio waves</a> from your local station far outpower those from Jupiter, for instance.</p>
<p>There is an important difference between being false and being unscientific. Currently, astrological theories are false precisely because they make scientific claims about the world, and those claims turn out to be wrong. Although the predictions astrology makes are false, they are nonetheless a matter of science. That’s how we know they are wrong, after all.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499829/original/file-20221208-13989-yviwsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Diagram of constellations" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499829/original/file-20221208-13989-yviwsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499829/original/file-20221208-13989-yviwsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499829/original/file-20221208-13989-yviwsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499829/original/file-20221208-13989-yviwsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499829/original/file-20221208-13989-yviwsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499829/original/file-20221208-13989-yviwsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499829/original/file-20221208-13989-yviwsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Image from ‘Astronomy Without a Telescope’ (1869).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/ov6YFR">Internet Archive Book Images/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some people believe they find support for astrological predictions in their own personal experience. They read their horoscope and it seems just right: They did “meet someone interesting” or “benefit from listening to a close friend’s advice.” But the predictions are <a href="https://scitechdaily.com/the-barnum-effect-why-horoscopes-are-so-popular/">vague enough</a> that they would often be true even if astrology were utterly bogus. That’s why it can be difficult to figure out how to assess an astrologer’s predictions with precision.</p>
<p>Theories of astronomy, on the other hand, have evolved over the years with advances in technology. They are routinely corrected in response to increasingly precise measurements. For example, Einstein’s <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/andp.19163540702">theory of general relativity</a> got a boost over Newton’s because it predicted the precise migration of Mercury’s closest point to the Sun year after year. If astrology had the same ability to make correct predictions with such precision, it might still be a major focus of scientific attention.</p>
<h2>Why is astrology still popular?</h2>
<p>But then why do so many people find astrology so useful if its predictions are not well founded? Why are astrological signs and horoscopes so popular? </p>
<p>It seems that looking to the sky to make some sense of what’s going on right now and what’s going to happen in the future has appealed to a lot of different people at different times in history all over the world.</p>
<p>When it comes to what’s commonly known as Western astrology, many people find their astrological sign to be a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-are-horoscopes-still-thing-180957701/">source of meaning</a> in their lives. In fact, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/01/new-age-beliefs-common-among-both-religious-and-nonreligious-americans/">nearly 30% of Americans</a> believe in astrology. It’s one of many tools we have for telling stories about ourselves to make sense of who we are, why we are that way and why experiences that otherwise would feel meaningless and confusing seem to happen to us all the time. In this sense, astrology’s success might be less about prediction and more about what it offers in terms of meaning and interpretation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499827/original/file-20221208-12502-4yk09u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Silhouette of person looking up at a night sky next to camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499827/original/file-20221208-12502-4yk09u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499827/original/file-20221208-12502-4yk09u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499827/original/file-20221208-12502-4yk09u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499827/original/file-20221208-12502-4yk09u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499827/original/file-20221208-12502-4yk09u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499827/original/file-20221208-12502-4yk09u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499827/original/file-20221208-12502-4yk09u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Throughout history, people have looked to the stars to derive some form of meaning from existence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/silhouette-man-standing-against-star-field-royalty-free-image/956508114?adppopup=true">Christianto Soning/EyeEm via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among other things, astrology can be a useful prompt for self-reflection. It asks us whether we have traits typical of our astrological sign, and whether those we love have traits the theory suggests they ought to have. Thinking about our traits and relationships with the people around us is generally a good tool for understanding who we are, what we want to be and the meaning of our lives. Perhaps astrology is helpful in this way, independently of whether those traits are fixed by the stars. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.</em></p>
<p><em>And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192376/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Craver receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Talia Dan-Cohen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Astrology and astronomy were once practiced side by side by scientists like Galileo and Kepler. And they’re more similar than you might think.Talia Dan-Cohen, Associate Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. LouisCarl Craver, Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. LouisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1939302022-12-08T23:04:04Z2022-12-08T23:04:04ZAda Lovelace’s skills with language, music and needlepoint contributed to her pioneering work in computing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499373/original/file-20221206-10118-sz9tym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C14%2C2435%2C1657&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was more than just another mathematician.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Ada_Lovelace_portrait.jpg">Watercolor portrait of Ada King, Countess of Lovelace by Alfred Edward Chalon via Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ada Lovelace, known as the first computer programmer, was born on Dec. 10, 1815, more than a century before digital electronic computers were developed. </p>
<p>Lovelace has been hailed as a model for girls in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). A dozen biographies for young audiences were published for the 200th anniversary of her birth in 2015. And in 2018, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-ada-lovelace.html">The New York Times added hers</a> as one of the first “missing obituaries” of women at the rise of the #MeToo movement. </p>
<p>But Lovelace – properly Ada King, Countess of Lovelace after her marriage – drew on many different fields for her innovative work, including languages, music and needlecraft, in addition to mathematical logic. Recognizing that her well-rounded education enabled her to accomplish work that was well ahead of her time, she can be a model for all students, not just girls. </p>
<p>Lovelace was the daughter of the scandal-ridden romantic poet George Gordon Byron, aka Lord Byron, and his highly educated and strictly religious wife Anne Isabella Noel Byron, known as Lady Byron. Lovelace’s parents separated shortly after her birth. At a time when women were not allowed to own property and had few legal rights, her mother managed to secure custody of her daughter.</p>
<p>Growing up in a privileged aristocratic family, Lovelace was educated by home tutors, <a href="https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/adalovelace/2018/07/27/ada-lovelace-the-making-of-a-computer-scientist/">as was common for girls like her</a>. She received lessons in French and Italian, music and in suitable handicrafts such as embroidery. Less common for a girl in her time, she also studied math. Lovelace continued to work with math tutors into her adult life, and she eventually corresponded with mathematician and logician <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Augustus-De-Morgan">Augustus De Morgan</a> at London University about symbolic logic. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499374/original/file-20221206-8973-zv7gqi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="antique black-and-white photograph of a woman in an elaborate outfit" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499374/original/file-20221206-8973-zv7gqi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499374/original/file-20221206-8973-zv7gqi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499374/original/file-20221206-8973-zv7gqi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499374/original/file-20221206-8973-zv7gqi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499374/original/file-20221206-8973-zv7gqi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499374/original/file-20221206-8973-zv7gqi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499374/original/file-20221206-8973-zv7gqi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A rare photograph of Ada Lovelace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Ada_Byron_daguerreotype_by_Antoine_Claudet_1843_or_1850_-_cropped.png">Daguerreotype by Antoine Claudet via Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lovelace’s algorithm</h2>
<p>Lovelace drew on all of these lessons when she wrote her <a href="https://catalog.lindahall.org/discovery/delivery/01LINDAHALL_INST:LHL/12100178280005961#page=680">computer program</a> – in reality, it was a set of instructions for a mechanical calculator that had been built only in parts. </p>
<p>The computer in question was the <a href="https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/engines/">Analytical Engine</a> designed by mathematician, philosopher and inventor <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Babbage">Charles Babbage</a>. Lovelace had met Babbage when she was introduced to London society. The two related to each other over their shared love for mathematics and fascination for mechanical calculation. By the early 1840s, Babbage had won and lost government funding for a mathematical calculator, fallen out with the skilled craftsman building the precision parts for his machine, and was close to giving up on his project. At this point, Lovelace stepped in as an advocate. </p>
<p>To make Babbage’s calculator known to a British audience, Lovelace proposed to translate into English an article that described the Analytical Engine. The article was written in French by the Italian mathematician <a href="https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Menabrea/">Luigi Menabrea</a> and published in a Swiss journal. Scholars believe that <a href="https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/adas-algorithm/">Babbage encouraged her to add notes of her own</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J7ITqnEmf-g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Ada Lovelace envisioned in the early 19th century the possibilities of computing.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In her notes, which ended up twice as long as the original article, Lovelace drew on different areas of her education. Lovelace began by describing how to code instructions onto cards with punched holes, like those used for the <a href="https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/the-french-connection">Jacquard weaving loom</a>, a device patented in 1804 that used punch cards to automate weaving patterns in fabric. </p>
<p>Having learned embroidery herself, Lovelace was familiar with the repetitive patterns used for handicrafts. Similarly repetitive steps were needed for mathematical calculations. To avoid duplicating cards for repetitive steps, Lovelace used <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/28095230">loops, nested loops and conditional testing</a> in her program instructions.</p>
<p>The notes included instructions on how to calculate <a href="https://mathworld.wolfram.com/BernoulliNumber.html">Bernoulli numbers</a>, which Lovelace knew from her training to be important in the study of mathematics. Her program showed that the Analytical Engine was capable of performing original calculations that had not yet been performed manually. At the same time, Lovelace noted that the machine could only follow instructions and not “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Innovators/Walter-Isaacson/9781476708706">originate anything</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499815/original/file-20221208-7231-ctxrb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a yellowed sheet of paper with spreadsheet-like lines" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499815/original/file-20221208-7231-ctxrb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499815/original/file-20221208-7231-ctxrb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499815/original/file-20221208-7231-ctxrb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499815/original/file-20221208-7231-ctxrb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499815/original/file-20221208-7231-ctxrb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499815/original/file-20221208-7231-ctxrb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499815/original/file-20221208-7231-ctxrb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ada Lovelace created this chart for the individual program steps to calculate Bernoulli numbers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, Lovelace recognized that the numbers manipulated by the Analytical Engine could be seen as other types of symbols, such as musical notes. An accomplished singer and pianist, Lovelace was familiar with musical notation symbols representing aspects of musical performance such as pitch and duration, and she had manipulated logical symbols in her correspondence with De Morgan. It was not a large step for her to realize that the Analytical Engine could process symbols — not just crunch numbers — and even compose music. </p>
<h2>A well-rounded thinker</h2>
<p>Inventing computer programming was not the first time Lovelace brought her knowledge from different areas to bear on a new subject. For example, as a young girl, she was fascinated with flying machines. Bringing together biology, mechanics and poetry, she asked her mother for anatomical books to study the function of bird wings. She built and experimented with wings, and in her letters, she metaphorically expressed her longing for her mother in the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Ada_the_Enchantress_of_Numbers.html?id=jCKmtAEACAAJ">language of flying</a>. </p>
<p>Despite her talents in logic and math, Lovelace <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-78973-2">didn’t pursue a scientific career</a>. She was independently wealthy and never earned money from her scientific pursuits. This was common, however, at a time when freedom – including financial independence – was equated with the <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691178165/leviathan-and-the-air-pump">capability to impartially conduct scientific experiments</a>. In addition, Lovelace devoted just over a year to her only publication, the translation of and notes on Menabrea’s paper about the Analytical Engine. Otherwise, in her life cut short by cancer at age 37, she vacillated between math, music, her mother’s demands, care for her own three children, and eventually a passion for gambling. Lovelace thus may not be an obvious model as a female scientist for girls today.</p>
<p>However, I find Lovelace’s way of drawing on her well-rounded education to solve difficult problems inspirational. True, she lived in an age before scientific specialization. Even Babbage was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-prizes-most-often-go-to-researchers-who-defy-specialization-winners-are-creative-thinkers-who-synthesize-innovations-from-varied-fields-and-even-hobbies-186193">polymath</a> who worked in mathematical calculation and mechanical innovation. He also published a treatise on industrial manufacturing and another on religious questions of creationism. </p>
<p>But Lovelace applied knowledge from what we today think of as disparate fields in the sciences, arts and the humanities. A well-rounded thinker, she created solutions that were well ahead of her time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193930/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Corinna Schlombs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lovelace was a prodigious math talent who learned from the giants of her time, but her linguistic and creative abilities were also important in her invention of computer programming.Corinna Schlombs, Associate Professor of History, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1929642022-11-14T10:52:04Z2022-11-14T10:52:04ZEarth’s cathedrals: Europe’s mountains are cultural heritage, not just natural heritage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491056/original/file-20221021-12-zffs34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C23%2C3872%2C2562&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rocca Calascio is a mountaintop fortress in the province of L'Aquila in Italy. It bears witness to the long relationship between humanity and mountains, and how natural landscapes are also culture ones. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">UNESCO</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2019, alpinism was recognised by UNESCO as an <a href="https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/alpinism-01471">intangible heritage of humanity</a> and “shared culture made up of knowledge of the high-mountain environment, the history of the practice and associated values, and specific skills”. However, alpinism is inextricably linked to mountains – places of extraordinary interest that need to be defended even more. The <a href="https://www.alpconv.org/en/">Alpine landscape protection initiatives</a> address issues of territorial planning, sustainable development, tourism, agriculture, and energy, but it is also essential to consider these topics through the lens of mountains’ historical and cultural values.</p>
<p>One session at the 10th International Congress of the <a href="https://aisuinternational.org/torino-2022/">Associazione Italiana di Storia Urbana (Italian Society of Urban History)</a> focused on this very theme. Titled <a href="https://aisuinternational.org/en/torino-2022-sessioni-2/">“The mountain landscape between eremitic contemplation, aesthetic attraction and sporting conquest”</a>, the 6.03 session explored current challenges and called for mountains to be protected not only as a natural heritage, but also as cultural heritage.</p>
<p>To achieve this ambitious goal, we must know and highlight the multiple meanings and cultural values of mountain landscapes. Only then can we implement integrated protection strategies similarly to what happens in the most well-known monumental sites.</p>
<h2>Bearing the brunt of climate change</h2>
<p>Due to melting ice and snow, mountains’ ecosystems are <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-transforming-mountains-we-must-act-to-save-them-169886">particularly vulnerable to climate change</a>. They are also exposed to increasingly <a href="http://theconversation.com/dear-tourists-get-lost-when-social-contagion-creates-tourismophobia-130244">intensive visits</a>, which can damage them irreversibly if the values to be protected are not clearly identified. Their cultural relevance is often overlooked, however, or it’s exploited by tourism promotion and distorted by folklorisation phenomena.</p>
<p>Reflection on natural and cultural heritage should not be limited to sites of exceptional universal value; it must recognise mountain territories as places to be preserved not only for their environmental characteristics, but also for their historical and cultural values.</p>
<p>In the last 50 years, many alpine environments have significantly changed in appearance and in a few years’ time, several glaciers could be <a href="https://theconversation.com/listening-to-the-song-of-melting-glaciers-191041">gone for good</a>. This is not only a serious environmental problem, but an irreparable cultural loss. Glaciers are indeed archives of valuable information for science, as well as fading <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-must-be-a-catalyst-for-reform-of-the-world-heritage-system-191798">historical landscapes</a>.</p>
<p>From the 17th until the 19th century, upper-class young European men were expected to take on a ‘<a href="https://www.amazon.fr/Evolution-Grand-Tour-Anglo-Italian-Renaissance/dp/0714644749">Grand Tour</a>’ through Europe up to Italy. 'Eternal snows’ required the travellers to make at least one stop in the Alps on their adventurous and difficult journeys to get there (William Windham 1741; Pierre Martel 1742).</p>
<p>Hannibal <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hannibal-Carthaginian-general-247-183-BC/The-Alpine-crossing">crossed the Alps in 218 BC</a>, and left traces in the descriptions of historians. Constructed over the centuries, structures such as huts and shelters, roads, pilgrim hospices, and churches have shown how deep our relationship has been with mountain territories. During the First and Second World Wars, more notable material testimonies were left behind, including fortifications, tunnels, trenches, shelters, barracks and places of the Resistance.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hermitage of San Bartolomeo in Legio, Italy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491057/original/file-20221021-3368-z42jq1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491057/original/file-20221021-3368-z42jq1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491057/original/file-20221021-3368-z42jq1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491057/original/file-20221021-3368-z42jq1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491057/original/file-20221021-3368-z42jq1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491057/original/file-20221021-3368-z42jq1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491057/original/file-20221021-3368-z42jq1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hermitage of San Bartolomeo in Legio, Italy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These artefacts are part of a widespread cultural heritage, the knowledge of which is essential to recognise if we are to preserve them. In fact, such sites, often abandoned, are hardly perceived as monumental. What is needed is for them to be seen in a broad perspective that considers them a “system” to be protected for their historical, aesthetic, landscape, identity values, not just as individual artefacts.</p>
<h2>The cultural pull of mountain landscapes</h2>
<p>The spiritual and intellectual attraction to the mountains is testified by hermits, artists and scientists well before the age of mountaineering, which officially starts with the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/8/8/9119081/mont-blanc-first-ascent">first ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786</a>. However, expeditions to the mountains began much earlier for scientific and cultural reasons (<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/heights-of-reflection/from-meadows-to-mountaintops-albrecht-von-hallers-die-alpen/83DCD7EA3DF5AAA440F81421FB472303">Albrecht von Haller 1729</a>; <a href="https://www.edition-originale.com/fr/livres-anciens-1455-1820/philosophie/rousseau-lettres-ecrites-de-la-montagne-1764-47448">Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1764</a>; <a href="https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/premieres_ascensions_au_mont_blanc_1774_1787-9782707147035">Horace Benedict de Saussure 1774</a>).</p>
<p>Since then, scholars and travellers have turned their interest not only to monuments of antiquity but also toward the wonders of nature, specifically to the alpine glaciers. The first material evidence of Alpine visits was the <a href="https://www.eaae.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/EAAE-2019-Conservation-Consumption.pdf">“Temple de la Nature”</a>, a refuge built in 1795 in Montenvers to observe the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Mer-de-Glace">Mer de Glace</a>, still visible today among the hotels built later.</p>
<p>In the same years, Orazio Delfico’s ascent of the Gran Sasso d'Italia in 1794 was considered the first ascent of the highest peak of the Apennines. However, as early as 1573, Francesco de Marchi – an architect following Margaret of Austria – reached the mountain summit and published the chronicle of the ascension in his <a href="http://www.lagagransasso.it/gs/de_marchi.htm">“Treaty of Military Architecture”</a>. Other writers and scientists to have scaled mountains include Francesco Petrarca on Mont Ventoux in Provence (1336), Leon Battista Alberti on Monte Velino in Abruzzo (mid-15th century), Leonardo da Vinci on Monte Rosa and perhaps also in Abruzzo (late 15th century to early 16th Century).</p>
<h2>“Cathedrals of the Earth”</h2>
<p>In the 19th century, the English writer John Ruskin celebrated mountains by describing them as “<a href="https://issuu.com/dida-unifi/docs/volume_1/20">Cathedrals of the Earth</a>”. Following up on Lord Byron’s depiction of them as [“Palaces of Nature”], such an expression captured at once the landscapes’ magnificence and called upon visitors to respect them as sacred. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494203/original/file-20221108-18-kzijh6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494203/original/file-20221108-18-kzijh6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494203/original/file-20221108-18-kzijh6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494203/original/file-20221108-18-kzijh6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494203/original/file-20221108-18-kzijh6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494203/original/file-20221108-18-kzijh6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494203/original/file-20221108-18-kzijh6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494203/original/file-20221108-18-kzijh6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Ruskin’s sketch of the Aiguille Blaitière, circa 1856.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:The_Aiguille_Blaitiere.jpg">Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All this demonstrates a very close relationship between the protection of cultural and mountain heritage. Thus, mountains’ cultural values precede the mountaineering interest that developed with the birth of the Alpine Clubs first in the United Kingdom (1857), then in Austria (1862), Italy (1863) and France (1874). Since then, mountains have increasingly become synonymous with competitive challenges, sometimes with alienating outcomes.</p>
<p>Founded by John Muir in 1892 in San Francisco, the <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/">Sierra Club</a> was, by contrast, one of the first organisations for the conservation of the mountain landscape. Well ahead of his time, Muir held up mountain parks and reserves as a necessity for human well-being and ‘sources of life’.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It is by far the grandest of all of His special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter. It must be the sanctum sanctorum of the Sierras.” (John Muir, Letters to a Friend. Written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr (1866-1879) in J. Muir, Andare in montagna è tornare a casa. Scritti sulla natura selvaggia (trad. it. Caterina Bernardini) </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Any reflection about the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/next50/">future of heritage</a> must consider the close interaction between tangible and intangible heritage (otherwise there is the risk of neglecting the material assets connected to intangible values), and then extend it to the safeguard of the planet as a World Heritage. In this sense, it is necessary to integrate the defence of territory and environment with the identification of its multiple cultural values.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/next50/">50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention</a> (16 November 2022): World Heritage as a source of resilience, humanity and innovation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192964/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carla Bartolomucci ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Often thought of as eternal, mountains are vulnerable to climate change and tourism. To protect them, they should be recognised for their cultural values, not just their natural characteristics.Carla Bartolomucci, Associate professor of architectural conservation, University of L'AquilaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1943062022-11-11T16:31:17Z2022-11-11T16:31:17ZPermacrisis: what it means and why it’s word of the year for 2022<p>The Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2022 is “<a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/permacrisis">permacrisis</a>”. As accolades go, the managing director of Collins Learning, Alex Beecroft, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/nov/01/sums-up-2022-permacrisis-chosen-as-collins-word-of-the-year">has said</a> that this one “sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people”. </p>
<p>The word, most widely understood as a portmanteau of “permanent” and “crisis”, has been in use for a little longer. In April 2021, policy analysts in Europe <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/future-eu/opinion/the-age-of-permacrisis/">saw it</a> as defining the era in which we live. Some in Britain inevitably ascribe the genesis of that era to <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/permacrisis-ever-end-covid-pandemic-brexit-ukraine-crisis-latest-fpznr05qk">Brexit</a>. Others point to the <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/future-eu/opinion/the-age-of-permacrisis/">pandemic</a>. For others still, it was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/mar/23/theyre-entitled-to-know-the-world-isnt-always-a-safe-place-how-to-talk-to-your-children-about-the-permacrisis">Russia’s invasion of Ukraine</a> that made the word indispensable. As the writer David Shariatmadari <a href="https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/a-year-of-permacrisis/">has put it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Permacrisis” is a term that perfectly embodies the dizzying sense of lurching from one unprecedented event to another, as we wonder bleakly what new horrors might be around the corner.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1584499364004626432"}"></div></p>
<p>This represents a shift from the way the notion of crisis has been defined until now. However, digging into the philosophical roots of the word reveals that a crisis is not necessarily awful, but may, in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-crisis-and-the-dangers-of-tech-obsessed-long-termism-176951">long term</a>, prove a necessary and beneficial corrective. </p>
<h2>Crisis as necessary to progress</h2>
<p>Philosophers have long defined a crisis as a situation that forces an individual or group to a moment of thoughtful <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Crisis-and-Critique-On-the-Fragile-Foundations-of-Social-Life/Cordero/p/book/9781138393011">critique</a> – to a point where a new path is mapped out in relation to some issue of pressing concern. This definition stems from the ancient Greek term κρίσις or <em>krisis</em>, which describes a medical or political moment of opportunity that bifurcates into life or death, victory or defeat. </p>
<p>However, as philosopher of history Reinhart Koselleck <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=1598">has shown</a>, in modern philosophy, that ancient Greek notion of crisis undergoes a semantic shift. Its meaning changes radically, to refer to a contradiction between opposing forces that accelerates the transition of past into future. </p>
<p>This can be seen in <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/35194/capital-by-karl-marx-intro-ernest-mandel-trans-david-fernbach/9780140445701">Karl Marx</a>’s description of capitalism as a crisis-ridden economic system. In struggling to tame its forces of production, labour and machinery, <a href="https://theconversation.com/karl-marx-ten-things-to-read-if-you-want-to-understand-him-95818">Marx</a> contends, this system causes crises of overproduction: an excess of supply that cannot be met with an equivalent demand. These crises in turn foster opportunities for cultural, social and political innovation, the best 20th-century example of which is the creation of the welfare state. </p>
<p>“Crisis” is similarly defined in American philosopher Thomas Kuhn’s <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo13179781.html">approach</a> to the history of science. <a href="https://theconversation.com/set-in-stone-using-statue-related-metaphors-to-describe-history-misses-the-mark-180372">Kuhn</a> views progress in modern research as driven by crises within existing scientific paradigms. The progressive shift from Newtonian to Einsteinian paradigms in 20th-century physics most neatly illustrates his thinking. </p>
<p>In both cases, “crisis” is linked to the idea – the ideal, even – of progress. Marx believed that, because the rate of profit has a tendency to fall, capitalism would meet a final crisis and that this would lead to the emergence of communism: an entirely new and, crucially, better socio-political situation.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-climate-crisis-conflicts-meme-ing-our-way-through-the-apocalypse-131572">Permacrisis</a>” represents the contemporary inversion of this conception. It is similar to Marx’s idea that human history will lead to a final crisis, only it precludes any idea of further progress. Instead of leading to something better, it denotes a static and permanently difficult situation. </p>
<h2>A new realism</h2>
<p>This concept of permacrisis has its roots in contemporary systems theory, which claims that a crisis can become so complicated that we can’t predict its outcome. In this regard, in his 2008 book, <a href="http://www.hamptonpress.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=978-1-57273-801-0&Category_Code=ST">On Complexity</a>, French philosopher Edgar Morin argues that humanity now resides within a network of interlocking systems and any crisis in one of those systems will engender a crisis in all the others. </p>
<p>Morin uses the word “polycrisis” to describe this situation. It is an idea that is also used in historian Adam Tooze’s work on crisis and disaster. As Tooze <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/adam-tooze-chartbook-substack-newsletter-inflation-crisis/661467/">recently put it</a>, when considering the sheer accumulation of problems the world currently faces – from conflict and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-crisis-migration-cannot-be-the-only-option-for-people-living-on-drowning-islands-117122">climate crisis</a> to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-standard-ways-of-valuing-health-were-set-aside-during-the-pandemic-153222">pandemic</a> and rising inflation – “the whole is even more dangerous than the sum of the parts”. Interconnected microsystems, because of ever-shortening positive feedback loops, can very quickly trigger crisis, even catastrophe, in the wider macrosystem. </p>
<p>Taking this one step further, the shift from “polycrisis” to “permacrisis” implies that we now see our crises as situations that can only be managed, not resolved. Indeed, “permacrisis” suggests that every decision to accelerate a difficult situation in order to come out on the other side of it risks something far worse. </p>
<p>Take the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-prime-minister-forced-from-office-amid-economic-turmoil-chaos-in-parliament-and-a-party-in-disarray-192795">recent demise</a>, in the UK, of the Truss administration. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/emergency-budget-announcement-expert-reaction-to-new-uk-chancellors-attempt-to-calm-financial-markets-192669">decision</a> to resolve an economic crisis only heightened a self-defeating <a href="https://theconversation.com/chaos-in-westminster-why-liz-truss-finally-lost-control-of-mps-192921">political crisis</a> – which then very rapidly further <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-uk-is-facing-an-economic-crisis-heres-why-it-needs-to-find-a-global-solution-192823">compounded</a> the original economic crisis.</p>
<p>Permacrisis signals not only a loss of faith in progress, but also a new realism in relation to what people can cope with and achieve. Our crises have become so complex and deep-seated that they can transcend our capacity to understand them. Any decision to tackle them risks only making things worse. We are thus faced with a troubling conclusion. Our crises are no longer a problem. They are a stubborn fact.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194306/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Turnbull does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Crises are no longer something to fix but situations to manage.Neil Turnbull, Head of Department: English, Linguistics and Philosophy, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927902022-11-10T10:13:56Z2022-11-10T10:13:56ZWhen Marcel Proust talks physics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490365/original/file-20221018-6861-a9yv5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C37%2C4981%2C3183&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marcel Proust on a French postage stamp.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 100th anniversary of Marcel Proust’s death gives us an opportunity to remember his masterwork, <em>In Search of Lost Time</em>, a sort of French-style <em>Divine Comedy</em> first released in 1913. Much like the way Dante’s 13th-century work forms a neat summary of Medieval wisdom, <em>In Search of Lost Time</em> attempts to cover every facet of human knowledge acquired at the dawn of the 20th century.</p>
<p>It discusses aesthetics with archetypal artists (through characters such as Vinteuil, the composer; Elstir, the painter; and Bergotte, the writer), addresses medicine by touching on Freudian psychology, and broaches the art of battle, right at the cusp of World War I. Proust refers liberally to contemporary technological developments, including the telephone, which enables him to communicate with the ghost of his beloved grandmother, the train that leaves the Saint-Lazare station, and the wondrous airplane that appears to him as a god would to an Ancient Greek. He is familiar with the theory of evolution, stating “‘Selection'… seemed to me as incompatible… as it would be if preceded by the adjective 'Natural’.”</p>
<p>Ultimately, Proust runs through the many decisive scientific breakthroughs of his time. The early 20th century witnessed two revolutions in physics that shattered our established worldview: relativity, which disputed the absolute nature of time, and quantum mechanics, whose indeterminacy challenged reality itself.</p>
<p>Here are some of the passages where Proust refers to momentous advances in his work. </p>
<h2>Humble beginnings in school day memories</h2>
<p>In <em>Purgatory</em>, Canto 15, Dante alludes to the first law of optics, which theorises light reflection and will be formalised by Descartes in the 17th century. Proust invokes the second law, which concerns refraction, in a tender description of his relationship with his grandmother:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[My] thoughts were continued in her without having to undergo any deflection, since they passed from my mind into hers without change of atmosphere or of personality.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also recalls other lessons from high school:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[To] a physicist the space occupied by the tiniest ball of pith is explained by the harmony of action, the conflict or equilibrium, of laws of attraction or repulsion which govern far greater worlds.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These passages brim with the charm of bygone schooldays, when Proust would have carried out experiments such as electrifying an ebonite rod with a cat’s pelt. Any physicist would easily spot the Doppler effect in this sentence:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There was also a new whistle… that was itself exactly like the scream of a tramway, and, as it was not carried out of earshot by its own velocity, one thought of a single car, not endowed with motion, or broken down, immobilised, screaming at short intervals like a dying animal.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Doppler_Effect.gif" alt="DopplerEffect.gif"></p>
<p><em><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doppler_Effect.gif">Doleron/Wikipedia</a>, CC BY-SA 3.</em></p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It encountered in her the electric shock of a contrary will which violently repulsed it; I could see the sparks flash from her eyes.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, this last statement would have been disputed by Charles-Augustin Coulomb, whose law states that unlike charges attract while like charges repel each other!</p>
<h2>Proust’s X-ray vision</h2>
<p>Coming into more modern physics, Proust writes on several instances about ultraviolet and infrared rays. He also mentions X-rays, which were discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen. To quote his character, Françoise:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Madame knows everything; Madame is worse than the X-rays.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the book, this phrase is uttered at a time in the writer’s early youth, even though Proust was actually 24 when Röntgen made his discovery. It might therefore be suggested that the servant character of Françoise had some sort of prophetic gift. Later in the book, he returns to this physical phenomenon:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[This] strange print which seems to us to have so little resemblance to ourselves bears sometimes the same stamp of truth, scarcely flattering, indeed, but profound and useful, as a photograph taken by X-rays.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Proust even appears to claim to have a see-through vision of reality:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It was all very well for me to go out to dinner. I did not see the guests because when I thought I was observing them I was radiographing them.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He does not shy away, either, from the subject of radioactivity. Thought to have therapeutic properties, radioactive anti-ageing creams were popularly purchased at the time. In this regard, Proust ventures a bold metaphor when marvelling at the longevity of his character, Madame Swann, who represents:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“a more miraculous challenge to the laws of chronology than the conservation of radium to those of nature.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Madame Curie’s prized radium is an unstable element that decays over a period of 1,600 years. A long time, indeed, but other elements last even longer, given that stable isotopes have an infinite lifespan.</p>
<h2>Proust on time</h2>
<p>Naturally, time plays a fundamental role in Proust’s seminal work. The concept is present in both the opening line of the book (“For a long time I used to go to bed early”) and the closing one (“… in Time”).</p>
<p>Proust’s era saw a total overhaul in our perception of time. Of course, today, we still do not know what time really is any better than Saint Augustine, who once said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, Einstein’s relativity posits a type of time that is no longer absolute and eternal, but varies according to the framework of representation, that is to say, depending on the measurement. Proust demonstrates an intuition similar to that of the eminent physicist in his description of the church in Combray:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[All] these things made [it]… a building which occupied, so to speak, four dimensions of space – the name of the fourth being Time.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This reference to a four-dimensional space clearly echoes the concept of relativity. But was Proust familiar with Einstein’s theory? When asked this question years later, he explained himself in a letter:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Although it has indeed been written to me that I derive from him, or he from me, I do not understand a single word of his theories, not knowing algebra. And I doubt for my part that he has read my novels. It seems we have analogous ways of deforming Time.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A quantum view of reality</h2>
<p>Less apparent in the text are Proust’s dabblings in quantum mechanics. The then-nascent theory based on quanta – primary corpuscles of energy – was first proposed by Max Planck in 1900.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454158/original/file-20220324-25-1gw3huu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454158/original/file-20220324-25-1gw3huu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454158/original/file-20220324-25-1gw3huu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454158/original/file-20220324-25-1gw3huu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454158/original/file-20220324-25-1gw3huu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454158/original/file-20220324-25-1gw3huu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454158/original/file-20220324-25-1gw3huu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Max Planck in 1901.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck#/media/Fichier:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R0116-504,_Max_Planck.jpg">Bundesarchiv/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While attempting to comfort his sick grandmother, the narrator nods to this new idea in physics:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[According] to the latest scientific discoveries, the materialist position appeared to be crumbling.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Which discoveries does he have in mind here? We can only assume that he is speaking of quantum mechanics. Proust’s contemporary, Paul Valéry, also born in 1871, appears to evoke this same scientific theory. In <em>Reflections on the World Today</em> (1929), he writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[The light] is compromised… in the suit brought by discontinuity against continuity, probability against images… hidden reality against the mind that would track it down and, in a word, by the unintelligible against the intelligible.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Quantum mechanics clashed with the way we traditionally viewed the world. Classical physics is deterministic; we can use it to predict how things will happen. We can understand reality “for what it is”. However, with an electron, all we can do is calculate the probability of it making a given journey. In this way, determinism becomes collective, as we are aware of the distribution of a group of electrons but do not know where any particular one of them will end up. Quantum theory, which governs these behaviours, is a branch of physics that sometimes appears counterintuitive.</p>
<p>It relies on two seemingly contradictory postulates:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The Schrödinger equation, which regards evolution, is deterministic in nature. It is a dynamic law governing forces other than gravity, much like a more precise version of Newton’s law of universal gravitation.</p></li>
<li><p>However, quantum theory also includes the principle of “collapse,” which applies at the moment of measurement and chooses the result from among an infinite set of possibilities.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Proust flirts with this quantum paradox, writing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“She acquired an almost beggarly air from having (in place of the ten, the score that I recalled in turn without being able to fix any in my memory) but a single nose, rounder than I had thought, which made her appear rather a fool and had in any case lost the faculty of multiplying itself… Fallen into the inertia of reality, I sought to rebound.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He contrasts the multiple image that he keeps of this young dairymaid character with the sole reality that he offers himself, such that his vision “collapses” in the real world.</p>
<p>While quantum mechanics reveals a probabilistic material reality, Proust believes in the spiritual reality of human beings, musing that “other people exist for us only to the extent of the idea that we retain of them” and “the evidence of the senses is also an operation of the mind in which conviction creates the evidence”.</p>
<p>Quantum reality is dependent on the measurement made by the observer, similar to how any observation engenders a subjective mental translation: “[Reality] has no existence for us, so long as it has not been created anew by our mind.”</p>
<p><em>In Search of Lost Time</em> is a magnificent compendium, laden with humour, emotion, poetry and philosophy. As Proust peppers his writing with the ingredients of real life, the laws of physics nestled into his run-on sentences are more than merely decorative. He filters the world through an Impressionist vision of reality, not unlike the teachings of quantum mechanics.</p>
<p>Although many experts have regarded Proust as the greatest French writer of the 20th century, he was awarded no Nobel Prize, his ashes are not enshrined in the Panthéon, and no waxwork of him haunts the Musée Grévin. But he was ahead of his time, taking comfort in such macabre matters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[There] is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good… nor make the talented artist consider himself obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the admiration aroused by which will matter little to his body devoured by worms… All these obligations which have not their sanction in our present life seem to belong to a different world… So that the idea that Bergotte was not wholly and permanently dead is by no means improbable.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And so, too, did Proust enter this ideal realm that he had once wished for his fictional writer.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Enda Boorman for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192790/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>François Vannucci ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>From electricity to X-rays, the Doppler Effect and even quantum theory, Proust’s writing is littered with physics references.François Vannucci, Professeur émérite, chercheur en physique des particules, spécialiste des neutrinos, Université Paris CitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1902772022-09-14T17:00:27Z2022-09-14T17:00:27ZShould we really believe scientific facts will last forever when history is full of revolutions in thinking?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484353/original/file-20220913-4740-ica6sc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C0%2C5760%2C3828&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Phrenology has long since been overturned, but it was once very popular among scientists.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/phrenology-head-busts-1100787437">Holly Anne Cromer/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Astronomers once believed the Sun revolved around the Earth. In the 19th century, scientists thought the shape of a person’s skull could reveal their mental <a href="https://theconversation.com/neuroscientists-put-the-dubious-theory-of-phrenology-through-rigorous-testing-for-the-first-time-88291">strengths or weaknesses</a>. And in the 20th century, many scientists fiercely opposed the idea that continents drift. All views that have since been completely overturned.</p>
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<p>So can we trust the scientific truths of today? Is it possible to identify scientific ideas and claims that will last forever, and are not susceptible to future scientific revolutions? Some would say certainly not. But my new book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/identifying-future-proof-science-9780192862730?cc=gb&lang=en&#">Identifying future-proof science</a>, combines historical, philosophical and sociological enquiry to argue that it is often possible.</p>
<p>There is a philosophical stance sometimes called <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modesty-humility/">intellectual humility</a>, which involves doubting whether there are ultimate truths by looking at evidence from scientific revolutions and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/">paradigm shifts</a> (changes in systems of belief and knowledge) in history. </p>
<p>At first this seems very sensible, perhaps even rational. One might add that humility is a virtue. Who would dare to assert that some scientific claim, endorsed today, will still be endorsed by scientific communities operating 5,000 years from now?</p>
<p>Those sceptical of scientific assertions often employ a simple argument: scientists were sure in the past, and ended up being wrong. Physicist Albert Michelson (famed for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/light/The-Michelson-Morley-experiment">Michelson-Morley experiment</a>) <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.19.479.380.a">wrote in 1903</a>: “The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.” </p>
<p>This was shortly before physics was dramatically transformed by the development of <a href="https://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html">general relativity</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/">quantum mechanics</a>. There are many other such quotes, apparently demonstrating the overconfidence of even the best scientists. </p>
<p><a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes">Naomi Oreskes</a>, a historian and defender of science, wrote in her 2019 book <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179001/why-trust-science">Why Trust Science?</a> that “The history of science shows that scientific truths are perishable,” and “the contributions of science cannot be viewed as permanent.”</p>
<p>Physics Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674011205&content=reviews">has said</a>, “There are truths out there to be discovered, truths that once discovered will form a permanent part of human knowledge.” </p>
<p>But Oreskes’ <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179001/why-trust-science">response</a> is stark: “Weinberg is a brilliant man … But this comment reflects either a shocking ignorance of the history of science, or a shocking disregard of evidence compiled from another field.” She means history.</p>
<h2>Scientific facts</h2>
<p>What are “scientific facts”, then? According to intellectual humility, “facts” only exist in a weak sense: they are fleeting and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/">relative</a> to the current paradigm. In paradigm shifts throughout history, “facts” have often been left behind, with new ones taking their place. </p>
<p>People who subscribe to intellectual humility aren’t necessarily saying that nothing is permanent. They are saying we don’t know which claims (if any) are immune to future paradigm change. They also don’t say that we shouldn’t trust science; Oreskes is absolutely clear on that.</p>
<p>But intellectual humility starts to look absurd once pushed to its logical conclusion. It would mean that we don’t really know that the Sun is a star, that continents drift, that smoking causes cancer, or that contemporary global warming <a href="https://theconversation.com/co-levels-and-climate-change-is-there-really-a-controversy-119268">is real and caused by humans</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="image of a polar bear on an ice float." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484355/original/file-20220913-20-l55nhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Climate change is a fact.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/polar-bear-on-ice-floe-melting-1801610557">PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In all of these cases (and many more), scientific community opinion put the matter beyond reasonable doubt long ago. It is absurd to suppose that, in 50 years, following a scientific revolution, we might look back and say, “People used to believe that smoking causes cancer.” </p>
<p>If that were reasonable, one might also suppose that the Earth might be flat. The view slides into “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/">radical scepticism</a>”, where one supposes that we might all be living in a dream, or in <a href="https://philosophynow.org/issues/32/The_Truman_Show">The Truman Show</a>.</p>
<p>But what if I only think this way because I’m a cognitive prisoner, trapped within the conceptual scheme of the paradigm I’ve grown up in? Sure, to me it seems completely undeniable that the Sun is a star, and it seems absurd to doubt it. But perhaps it won’t seem so absurd to those living in a future paradigm. </p>
<h2>Observing the previously unobservable</h2>
<p>There’s a lot to learn from history. Consider the tale of continental drift, for example. It was once merely a speculation that continents move. Then during the 20th century it became a solid theory, and eventually a “scientific fact”, becoming the consensus view among scientists.</p>
<p>At this point, the sceptic might think that the solid scientific consensus proves nothing, since the consensus might have developed for bad reasons such as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/group-think-what-it-is-and-how-to-avoid-it-161697">groupthink</a>”. But look what happened next: we developed instruments which could actually watch continental drift <a href="https://sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/post/series.html">happening in real time</a>. Thus continental drift is clearly future-proof: we can see it happening.</p>
<p>Such developments are crucial for showing that a solid scientific consensus can be linked with truth. As my book shows, in cases where a truly solid scientific consensus, followed by the development of instruments which can look and see the thing or process in question, the scientific consensus has been vindicated.</p>
<p>There are many examples. We now have microscopes that can reveal the behaviour of viruses, and <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1231887?versioned=true">we see viruses</a> doing what we already knew they were doing. </p>
<p>We can also use microscopes to see the structures of all kinds of molecules, and once again, in any case where there was a solid scientific consensus regarding the structure (for example <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1176210">the hexagonal benzene ring</a> molecule), we find that the consensus was right. So too, when it comes to <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nl3039162">the double-helix structure of DNA</a>.</p>
<p>These cases show that a solid international scientific consensus can be trusted as revealing the truth. And that includes the cases where we have not yet developed (and may never develop) technologies allowing us to observe what is currently unobservable.</p>
<p>What about the concern that, in the past, scientific communities reached a strong consensus regarding some idea which has now been thoroughly rejected? </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r9QDqwZS704?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>I have worked out that, throughout the entire history of science, when the following two specific criteria have been met, the claim in question has never been overturned, but has instead simply been further corroborated.</p>
<p>First, at least 95% of relevant scientists are willing to state the claim unambiguously and without caveats or hedging. If prompted, they would be willing to call it an “established scientific fact”.</p>
<p>Second, the relevant scientific community is large, international and incorporates a substantial diversity of perspectives (as in, for example, climate science).</p>
<p>These criteria are only met when there is a huge mass of first-order scientific evidence for the claim in question. They stand as the best proxy we can ever have for the impossible alternative, namely to analyse all the scientific evidence ourselves, over many decades, from a large number of different perspectives. In practice, these two simple rules can help us identify future-proof science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Vickers received funding from The British Academy.</span></em></p>Two simple rules can help us identify future-proof science.Peter Vickers, Professor in Philosophy of Science, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1821162022-08-03T12:10:01Z2022-08-03T12:10:01ZFrom whistling arrows and trumpeting elephants to battle cries and eerie horns, ancient soldiers used sound to frighten and confuse their enemies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476981/original/file-20220801-82620-d81f5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1844%2C304%2C2539%2C1838&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Three soldiers (far right) carry karnyxes, long horns with frightening boar-headed mouths that produce eerie calls during battle.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-gundestrup-cauldron-decorated-silver-vessel-thought-to-news-photo/170980801">Prisma/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As if the tumultuous din of battle is not horrendous enough, over the ages humans have discovered plenty of ways to exploit sound in warfare. I found an astonishing variety of ancient acoustic weapons while <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ANJ77KkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">researching my book</a> “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691211084/greek-fire-poison-arrows-and-scorpion-bombs">Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs</a>: Unconventional Warfare in the Ancient World.” Deploying sound in war has evolved over millennia, from natural animal sounds and music to today’s advanced sonic devices.</p>
<h2>Calling a jig in the midst of battle</h2>
<p>In antiquity, cavalry horses were trained to endure the <a href="https://thehistorianshut.com/2017/09/03/an-ancient-spartan-military-secret-musical-instruments/">piercing pipe music</a> that led armies to battle. But a clever reversal of this training could spell victory.</p>
<p>In the seventh century B.C., the Kardians of Thrace, who lived in what is now northwest Turkey, were renowned for their cavalry. For entertainment, the mounted soldiers taught their horses to dance to pipes played at drinking parties. Rearing up and pawing the air, the horses kept time to the lively music.</p>
<p>Captured as a boy from Bisaltia in northeastern Greece, a prisoner named Naris heard about the marvelous dancing horses in the Kardian barbershop where he worked. According to the story <a href="http://www.attalus.org/old/athenaeus12a.html">recounted by the ancient Greek writer Athenaeus</a>, Naris escaped, returned to Bisaltia, and prepared to make war on Kardia.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477195/original/file-20220802-4891-bn2ywu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="bronze sculpture of a rearing horse with a Greek warrior mounted on its back" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477195/original/file-20220802-4891-bn2ywu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477195/original/file-20220802-4891-bn2ywu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477195/original/file-20220802-4891-bn2ywu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477195/original/file-20220802-4891-bn2ywu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477195/original/file-20220802-4891-bn2ywu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477195/original/file-20220802-4891-bn2ywu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477195/original/file-20220802-4891-bn2ywu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The horses threw their riders when they recognized the tunes and started to dance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Budapest_Rearing_Horse_and_Mounted_Warrior,_right_side,_by_E.C.Rae.png">'Rearing Horse and Mounted Warrior,' Leonardo da Vinci</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He had a secret weapon: a piper girl who had also escaped from Kardia. She taught the Bisaltian soldiers songs from Kardian banquets. Naris led his army out against the Kardian cavalry and signaled for his pipers to play. Pricking up their ears at the familiar tunes, the Kardian horses reared up to dance, throwing off their riders. In the chaos, the Bisaltians crushed the Kardians.</p>
<h2>When squeals terrorize living tanks</h2>
<p>Cavalrymen of classical antiquity accustomed their horses to the clash of bronze weapons. But in the fourth century B.C., when Alexander the Great’s successors <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+Greek+Warfare-p-9781119438854">brought war elephants from India</a>, the animals’ trumpeting threw horses into a frenzy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476978/original/file-20220801-14-mdcsca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Soldiers in armor and snarling pigs confront elephants with horn-shaped trunks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476978/original/file-20220801-14-mdcsca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476978/original/file-20220801-14-mdcsca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476978/original/file-20220801-14-mdcsca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476978/original/file-20220801-14-mdcsca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476978/original/file-20220801-14-mdcsca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476978/original/file-20220801-14-mdcsca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476978/original/file-20220801-14-mdcsca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexander driving off elephants with pigs and musical instruments in a detail from a French illuminated manuscript from 1420.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=46717">'Le Livre et le vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre,' The British Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-animals-in-classical-thought-and-life-9780199589425">Alexander had learned from King Porus</a> during his 326 B.C. Indian campaign that elephants have <a href="https://seaworld.org/animals/all-about/elephants/senses/">sensitive hearing and poor eyesight</a>, which makes them averse to unexpected loud, discordant sounds. When Alexander’s scouts reported that elephants were approaching, Porus advised Alexander’s horsemen to grab up pigs and trumpets and ride out to meet them. The shrill sound of the pigs combined with blaring trumpets sent the elephants fleeing.</p>
<p>In 280 B.C., the Romans first <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/876/elephants-in-greek--roman-warfare/">encountered war elephants</a>, brought to Italy by Greek King Pyrrhus. The riders in the howdah seats upon their backs created an ear-splitting commotion with drums and clanging spears, causing the Romans and their horses to panic.</p>
<p>But Romans noticed that Pyrrhus’ elephants were unnerved by high-pitched squeals of swine. Like Alexander, the Romans deployed pigs to deflect Pyrrhus’ pachyderms, which contributed to his heavy losses. Later, in 202 B.C., blasts of Roman war trumpets <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234%3Abook%3D15%3Achapter%3D12">panicked Carthaginian general Hannibal’s war elephants</a> in the Battle of Zama, ending the Second Punic War.</p>
<p>Some commanders tried to obtain an elephant or two to condition their horses in advance of battle. Perseus of Macedon prepared for a Roman attack with war elephants in 168 B.C. by having artisans build wooden models of elephants on wheels. Pipers hidden inside the huge mock-ups played harsh sounds, acclimating the Macedonian horses to the sight and sound of elephants. But Perseus’ preparations were for naught. Even though the mountainous terrain at the Battle of Pydna got the better of the Romans’ 20 elephants, <a href="https://www.livius.org/articles/battle/pydna-168-bce/">Rome was victorious</a>.</p>
<h2>War cries and wailing weapons</h2>
<p><a href="https://militaryhistorynow.com/2019/12/01/make-some-noise-military-historys-most-famous-battle-cries/">Bloodcurdling war cries</a> are a universal way of striking terror in foes. Maori war chants, the Japanese battle cry “Banzai!” (Long Live the Emperor) in World War II, the Ottomans’ “Vur Ha!” (Strike), the Spanish “Desperta Ferro!” (Awaken the Iron), and the “Rebel Yell” of Confederate soldiers <a href="https://www.history.com/news/8-legendary-battle-cries">are examples</a>. In antiquity, the sound of Greek warriors bellowing “Alala!” while banging swords on bronze shields was likened to hooting owls or a screeching flock of monstrous birds.</p>
<p>The Roman historian Tacitus described the hair-raising <a href="https://youtu.be/hMI-Vvse2vM">effects of the barritus</a>, the war cry of Germanic tribes. The Germans devised a simple technique for intensifying the barritus, which began as a low murmur. The chanting became a roar, then rose to a reverberating crescendo as the men held up their shields in front of their mouths to amplify the thunderous sound.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A musician plays a replica of a karnyx from almost 2,000 years ago.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another technological invention was the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003581500072152">karnyx, the Celtic war trumpet</a>. Romans were awed by the eerie, spine-tingling sounds made by the long bronze tube with a wide bell shaped like the <a href="http://www.emaproject.eu/events/concerts/146-the-carnyx-from-tintignac.html">gaping jaws of a fierce dragon, boar or wolf</a>. The horn’s loud, lugubrious tones “<a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/5B*.html">suited the tumult of war</a>,” wrote Diodorus Siculus around 50 B.C. Later Roman troops used the karnyx themselves.</p>
<p>Another early military sound technology was an arrow that created a fearsome noise. “Whistling” or “screaming” arrows (shaojian) made by the horseback archers of the steppes were <a href="https://www.atarn.org/chinese/whistle/whistle.htm">described by the Chinese chronicler Sima Qian</a> in about 100 B.C. A small, perforated bone or wood sound chamber – the whistle – was attached to the shaft behind the arrowhead. In battle, the shrieking sound of thousands of whistling arrows terrified enemies and their horses. <a href="http://www.manchuarchery.org/content/whistling-arrows-and-whistle-arrows">Screaming arrows</a> have been recovered from <a href="https://siberiantimes.com/science/others/features/meet-a-lifelike-2000-year-old-hun-warrior-with-his-bow-and-whistling-arrows/">archaeological sites in central Asia</a>.</p>
<p>Numerous other technologies to produce booming detonations to disorient and frighten enemies were described in ancient Chinese war manuals. These <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691178141/the-gunpowder-age">explosive devices employed gunpowder</a>, invented in China around A.D. 850, reaching Europe about 1250.</p>
<h2>Sound weapons in the modern era</h2>
<p>Music was used during World War II to cause stress and anxiety: The <a href="https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/listen-to-the-tango-the-red-army-used-to-intimidate-the-nazis-at-stalingrad/">Soviet army played Argentine tangos</a> through loudspeakers all night to keep German soldiers awake. U.S. loudspeaker teams blasted deafening rock music (including The Doors, Alice Cooper and The Clash) day and night during the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40090809">U.S. siege of Panamanian Gen. Manuel Noriega</a> in 1989. In the 2000s, <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/extremely-loud">Americans again deployed aggravating, incessant music</a> in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Sound weapons have their uses off the battlefield, too. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/culture-monster-blog/story/2011-04-04/classical-music-still-effective-at-dispersing-loitering-teens">Shopping centers have borrowed the idea</a>, broadcasting classical symphonies and <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bring-science-home-high-frequency-hearing/">frequencies registered only by teenage ears</a> to keep young loiterers away. In 2022, parliamentary authorities in New Zealand <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60362529">bombarded anti-COVID-19 vaccine protesters</a> with recordings of Barry Manilow songs on repeat to break up the crowd.</p>
<p>Recent development of weaponized sound energy is more ominous, often intended for civilian crowd control. Military scientists in the United States, Israel, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3028071/chinese-scientists-develop-handheld-sonic-weapon-crowd-control">China</a> and Russia have unveiled “nonlethal” high-decibel and pulsating high- and low-frequency armaments <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/04/when-music-is-violence">designed to assault the senses</a>. Examples include hand-held or tank-mounted magnetic acoustic devices, sonic-vibration cannons, and long-range acoustic devices, first used by U.S. forces in Iraq in 2004 and later by police against citizen protests in New York and Missouri.</p>
<p>Since 2016, American diplomats in Cuba, Russia, China and elsewhere have experienced “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-investigation-60-minutes-2022-02-20/">Havana Syndrome</a>,” associated with mysterious neurological and brain injuries thought to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/experts-suggest-us-embassies-were-hit-with-high-power-microwaves-heres-how-the-weapons-work-151730">inflicted by unknown high-powered microwave</a> or targeted sonic energy systems. Sound wave transmitters are not only psychologically toxic but can cause pain and dizziness, burns, irreversible damage to inner ears and possibly neurological and <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/qkve7q/the-new-sound-of-crowd-control">internal injuries</a>.</p>
<p>Since antiquity, human creativity in weaponizing devastating noise to confuse and overwhelm adversaries has progressed from intimidation to the infliction of physical injury.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the country where Barry Manilow music was used to break up a crowd.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrienne Mayor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since antiquity people have harnessed sound as a weapon, and the practice continues – in new high-tech ways – today.Adrienne Mayor, Research Scholar, Classics and History and Philosophy of Science, Stanford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1840302022-07-29T12:21:41Z2022-07-29T12:21:41ZCharles Henry Turner: The little-known Black high school science teacher who revolutionized the study of insect behavior in the early 20th century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475880/original/file-20220725-12-r36mpc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C1010%2C573&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Turner was the first scientist to prove certain insects could remember, learn and feel.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Charles I. Abramson</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a crisp autumn morning in 1908, an elegantly dressed African American man strode back and forth among the pin oaks, magnolias and silver maples of <a href="https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/parks/parks/browse-parks/view-park.cfm?parkID=68&parkName=O%27Fallon%20Park">O’Fallon Park in St. Louis, Missouri</a>. After placing a dozen dishes filled with strawberry jam atop several picnic tables, biologist Charles Henry Turner retreated to a nearby bench, notebook and pencil at the ready. </p>
<p>Following a midmorning break for tea and toast (topped with strawberry jam, of course), Turner returned to his outdoor experiment. At noon and again at dusk, he placed jam-filled dishes on the park tables. As he discovered, <a href="https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/BEES/euro_honey_bee.htm">honeybees (<em>Apis mellifera</em>)</a> were reliable breakfast, lunch and dinner visitors to the sugary buffet. After a few days, Turner stopped offering jam at midday and sunset, and presented the treats only at dawn. Initially, the bees continued appearing at all three times. Soon, however, <a href="https://mellenpress.com/author/charles-i-abramson/4825/">they changed their arrival patterns</a>, visiting the picnic tables only in the mornings.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnerbio.html">simple but elegantly devised experiment</a> led Turner to conclude that bees can perceive time and will rapidly develop new feeding habits in response to changing conditions. These results were among the first in a cascade of groundbreaking discoveries that Turner made about insect behavior.</p>
<p>Across his distinguished 33-year career, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.075">Turner authored 71 papers</a> and was the first African American to have his research <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ns-19.466.16">published in the prestigious journal Science</a>. Although his name is barely known today, <a href="https://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnermain.html">Charles Henry Turner was a pioneer in studying bees</a> and should be considered among the great entomologists of the 19th and 20th centuries. While researching <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557206/the-butterfly-effect-by-edward-d-melillo/">my book on human interactions with insects in world history</a>, I became aware of Turner’s pioneering work on insect cognition, which constituted much of his groundbreaking research on animal behavior.</p>
<h2>Humble beginnings</h2>
<p>Turner was born in Cincinnati in 1867, a mere two years after the Civil War ended. The son of a church custodian and a nurse who was formerly enslaved, he grew up under the specter of Jim Crow – a set of formal laws and informal practices that relegated <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws">African Americans to second-class status</a>.</p>
<p>The social environment of Turner’s childhood included school and housing segregation, frequent lynchings and the denial of basic democratic rights to the city’s nonwhite population. Despite immense obstacles to his educational goals and professional aspirations, Turner’s tenacious spirit carried him through.</p>
<p>As a young boy, he developed an abiding fascination with small creatures, capturing and cataloging thousands of ants, beetles and butterflies. An aptitude for science was just one of Turner’s many talents. At Gaines High School, he led his all-Black class, securing his place as valedictorian.</p>
<p>Turner went on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Cincinnati, and he became the first African American to receive a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Henry-Turner">doctorate in zoology from the University of Chicago</a>. Turner’s cutting-edge doctoral dissertation, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.920170502">The Homing of Ants: An Experimental Study of Ant Behavior</a>,” was later excerpted in the September 1907 issue of the Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology.</p>
<p>Despite his brilliance, Turner was unable to secure long-term employment in higher education. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-021-00855-9">University of Chicago refused to offer him a job</a>, and Booker T. Washington was too cash-strapped to hire him at the <a href="https://www.tuskegee.edu/about-us/history-and-mission">all-Black Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo of a large brick high school building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sumner High School in St. Louis, Mo., circa 1908.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://mohistory.org/collections/item/N46489">Missouri Historical Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following a brief stint at the University of Cincinnati and a temporary position at Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University), Turner spent the remainder of his career teaching at <a href="https://www.slps.org/domain/8207">Sumner High School in St. Louis</a>. As of 1908, his salary was a meager US$1,080 a year – <a href="https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1908">around $34,300 in today’s dollars</a>. At Sumner – without access to a fully equipped laboratory, a research library or graduate students – Turner made trailblazing discoveries about insect behavior. </p>
<h2>Probing the minds of insects</h2>
<p>Among Turner’s most significant findings was that wasps, bees, sawflies and ants – members of the <em>Hymenoptera</em> order – are <a href="https://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnerbio.html">not simply primitive automatons</a>, as so many of his contemporaries thought. Instead, they are organisms with the capacities to remember, learn and feel. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white engraving of a variety of bees from 1894." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bees were not well understood at the turn of the 20th century. Illustration published by Popular Encyclopedia, 1894.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/old-engraved-illustration-of-bees-antique-royalty-free-image/1211227581">mikroman6/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the early 1900s, biologists were aware that <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250070975/astinginthetale">flowers attracted bee pollinators by producing certain scents</a>. However, these researchers knew next to nothing about the visual aspects of such attractions, when bees were too far from the flowers to smell them. </p>
<p>To investigate, Turner pounded rows of wooden dowels into the O’Fallon Park lawn. Atop each rod, he affixed a red disk dipped in honey. Soon, bees began traveling from far away to his makeshift “flowers.”</p>
<p>Turner then added a series of “control” rods topped with blue disks that bore no honey. The bees paid little heed to the new “flowers,” <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1536088">demonstrating that visual signals provided guidance</a>, when the bees were too distant to smell their targets. Although a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07929978.1997.10676682">honeybee’s ability to detect red remains controversial</a>, scientists have determined that Turner’s bees were likely responding to something called <a href="https://www.encyclo.co.uk/meaning-of-achromatic_stimulus">achromatic stimuli</a>, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.075">allowed them to discern among various shades and tints</a>.</p>
<h2>Lasting legacies of an underappreciated pioneer</h2>
<p>Turner’s astounding range of findings from three decades of experiments established his reputation as an authority on the <a href="https://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnerbio.html">behavioral patterns of bees, cockroaches, spiders and ants</a>.</p>
<p>As a scientific researcher without a university position, he occupied an odd niche. In large part, his situation was the product of systemic racism. It was also a result of his commitment to training young Black students in science. </p>
<p>Alongside his scientific publications, Turner wrote extensively on African American education. In his 1902 essay “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=39R1AAAAMAAJ&q=Charles+Henry+Turner#v=snippet&q=Charles%20Henry%20Turner&f=false">Will the Education of the Negro Solve the Race Problem?</a>” Turner contended that trade schools were not the pathway to Black empowerment. Instead, he called for widespread public education of African Americans in all subjects: “if we cast aside our prejudices and try the highest education upon both white and Black, in a few decades there will be no Negro problem.”</p>
<p>Turner was only <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Henry-Turner">56 when he died of acute myocarditis</a>, an infectious heart inflammation. He was survived by two children and his second wife, Lillian Porter.</p>
<p>Turner’s scientific contributions endure. <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315802558">His articles continue to be widely cited</a>, and entomologists have subsequently <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/542031d">verified most of his conclusions</a>.</p>
<p>Despite the colossal challenges he faced throughout his career, Charles Henry Turner was among the first scientists to shed light on the secret lives of bees, the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557206/the-butterfly-effect-by-edward-d-melillo/">winged pollinators that ensure</a> the welfare of human food systems and the survival of Earth’s biosphere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184030/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward D. Melillo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The son of a formerly enslaved mother, Charles Henry Turner was the first to discover that bees and other insects have the ability to modify their behavior based on experience.Edward D. Melillo, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1843692022-06-09T12:41:46Z2022-06-09T12:41:46Z‘Jurassic World’ scientists still haven’t learned that just because you can doesn’t mean you should – real-world genetic engineers can learn from the cautionary tale<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467795/original/file-20220608-13-magyim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2000%2C1500&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">While resurrecting dinosaurs may not be on the docket just yet, gene drives have the power to alter entire species. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/dinosaur-in-the-lab-image-what-something-new-life-royalty-free-image/1080567850">Hiroshi Watanabe/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://www.jurassicworld.com">Jurassic World: Dominion</a>” is hyperbolic Hollywood entertainment at its best, with an action-packed storyline that refuses to let reality get in the way of a good story. Yet just like its predecessors, it offers an underlying cautionary tale of technological hubris that’s very real.</p>
<p>As I discuss in my book “<a href="https://filmsfromthefuture.com/">Films from the Future</a>,”
Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 “Jurassic Park,” based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel, didn’t shy away from grappling with the dangers of unfettered entrepreneurship and irresponsible innovation. Scientists at the time were getting closer to being able to manipulate DNA in the real world, and both book and movie captured emerging concerns that playing God with nature’s genetic code could lead to devastating consequences. This was famously captured by one of the movie’s protagonists, Dr. Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum, as he declared, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”</p>
<hr>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/jurassic-world-scientists-still-havent-learned-that-just-because-you-can-doesnt-mean-you-should-real-world-genetic-engineers-can-learn-from-the-cautionary-tale-184369&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In the latest iteration of the “Jurassic Park” franchise, society is coming to terms with the consequences of innovations that were, at best, ill-conceived. A litany of “coulds” over “shoulds” has led to a future in which resurrected and redesigned dinosaurs roam free, and humanity’s dominance as a species is under threat. </p>
<p>At the heart of these films are questions that are more relevant than ever: Have researchers learned the lesson of “Jurassic Park” and sufficiently closed the gap between “could” and “should”? Or will the science and technology of DNA manipulation continue to outpace any consensus on how to use them ethically and responsibly?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NkEU6fC_nhY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Imagine a world where dinosaurs and humans coexist.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>(Re)designing the genome</h2>
<p>The first draft of the human genome <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/35057062">was published to great fanfare</a> in 2001, setting the stage for scientists to read, redesign and even rewrite complex genetic sequences. </p>
<p>However, existing technologies were time-consuming and expensive, placing genetic manipulation out of reach for many researchers. The first draft of the human genome cost an estimated <a href="https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/DNA-Sequencing-Costs-Data">US$300 million</a>, and subsequent whole-genome sequences just under $100 million – a prohibitive amount for all but the most well-funded research groups. As existing technologies were refined and new ones came online, however, smaller labs – and even <a href="https://igem.org/">students</a> and <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/11/diybio-comes-of-age/">“DIY bio” hobbyists</a> – could experiment more freely with reading and writing genetic code.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467797/original/file-20220608-22-ddjvfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A DIY bio lab with equipment arranged on counters and cabinets against the walls." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467797/original/file-20220608-22-ddjvfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467797/original/file-20220608-22-ddjvfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467797/original/file-20220608-22-ddjvfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467797/original/file-20220608-22-ddjvfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467797/original/file-20220608-22-ddjvfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467797/original/file-20220608-22-ddjvfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467797/original/file-20220608-22-ddjvfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You can manipulate DNA in the comfort of your own home-based DIY bio lab.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/macowell/4821488307/in/pool-diylabs/">Mackenzie Cowell/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2005, bioengineer Drew Endy proposed that it should be possible to work with DNA the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04342">same way that engineers work with electronic components</a>. Much as electronics designers are less concerned with the physics of semiconductors than they are with the components that rely on them, Endy argued that it should be possible to create standardized DNA-based parts called “<a href="https://biobricks.org/">biobricks</a>” that scientists could use without needing to be experts in their underlying biology.</p>
<p>Endy’s and others’ work was foundational to the emerging field of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3239">synthetic biology</a>, which applies engineering and design principles to genetic manipulation. </p>
<p>Scientists, engineers and even <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/9anmk7/bioart-synthetic-biology-projects">artists</a> began to approach DNA as a biological code that could be digitized, manipulated and redesigned in cyberspace in much the same way as digital photos or videos are. This in turn opened the door to reprogramming plants, microorganisms and fungi to produce <a href="https://doi.org/10.2147/DDDT.S58049">pharmaceutical drugs</a> and other <a href="https://fortune.com/2021/08/06/synthetic-biology-plant-based-meats-bioengineering-environmental-impact/">useful substances</a>. Modified yeast, for example, produces the meaty taste of vegetarian <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20122-2">Impossible Burgers</a>.</p>
<p>Despite increasing interest in gene editing, the biggest barrier to the imagination and vision of the early pioneers of synthetic biology was still the speed and cost of editing technologies.</p>
<p>Then CRISPR changed everything.</p>
<h2>The CRISPR revolution</h2>
<p>In 2020, scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emanuelle Charpentier won the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02765-9">Nobel Prize in chemistry</a> for their work on a revolutionary new gene-editing technology that allows researchers to precisely snip out and replace DNA sequences within genes: CRISPR.</p>
<p>CRISPR was quick, cheap and relatively easy to use. And it unleashed the imagination of DNA coders.</p>
<p>More than any previous advance in genetic engineering, CRISPR enabled techniques from digital coding and systems engineering to be applied to biology. This cross-fertilization of ideas and methods led to breakthroughs ranging from using <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-write-hello-world-bacterial-dna-electricity-and-crispr-180976763/">DNA to store computer data</a> to creating 3D “<a href="https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/crispr-cleans-up-dna-origami/">DNA origami” structures</a>.</p>
<p>CRISPR also opened the way for scientists to explore redesigning entire species – including <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2013/03/15/174322143/its-called-de-extinction-its-like-jurassic-park-except-its-real">bringing back animals from extinction</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02087-5">Gene drives</a> use CRISPR to directly insert a piece of genetic code into an organism’s genome and ensure that specific traits are inherited by all subsequent generations. Scientists are currently experimenting with this technology to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01186-6">control disease-carrying mosquitoes</a>. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KgvhUPiDdq8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gene drives have the potential to alter the genetic makeup of an entire species.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the potential benefits of the technology, gene drives raise serious ethical questions. Even when applied to clear public health threats like mosquitoes, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/magazine/gene-drive-mosquitoes.html">these questions are not easy to navigate</a>. They get even more complex when considering hypothetical applications in people, such as <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/crispr-prime-editing-gene-doping-athletes.html">increasing athletic performance in future generations</a>.</p>
<h2>Gain of function</h2>
<p>Advances in gene editing have also made it easier to genetically alter the behavior of individual cells. This is at the heart of <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/how-to-fuel-the-biomanufacturing-revolution/">biomanufacturing technologies</a> that reengineer simple organisms to produce useful substances ranging from <a href="https://simpleflying.com/united-airlines-jet-fuel-from-thin-air/">aviation fuel</a> to <a href="https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2022/05/09/Synthetic-biology-and-the-future-of-food.-In-conversation-with-biology-by-design-co-Ginkgo-Bioworks">food additives</a>. </p>
<p>It’s also at the center of controversies surrounding genetically engineered viruses.</p>
<p>Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been rumors that the virus that causes COVID-19 resulted from genetic experiments gone wrong. While these rumors <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-mysterious-case-of-the-covid-19-lab-leak-theory">remain unsubstantiated</a>, they’ve renewed debate around the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/20/science/covid-lab-leak-wuhan.html">ethics of gain-of-function research</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467800/original/file-20220608-20-kw2z6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Gloved hands holding biohazard sample in lab" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467800/original/file-20220608-20-kw2z6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467800/original/file-20220608-20-kw2z6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467800/original/file-20220608-20-kw2z6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467800/original/file-20220608-20-kw2z6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467800/original/file-20220608-20-kw2z6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467800/original/file-20220608-20-kw2z6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467800/original/file-20220608-20-kw2z6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Modifying the genetic makeup of organisms and pathogens has both risks and benefits.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/36320619976">Ars Electronica/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-gain-of-function-research-matters-162493">Gain-of-function</a> research uses DNA editing techniques to alter how organisms function, including increasing the ability of viruses to cause disease. Scientists do this to predict and prepare for potential mutations of existing viruses that increase their ability to cause harm. However, such research also raises the possibility of a dangerously enhanced virus’s being released outside the lab, either accidentally or intentionally.</p>
<p>At the same time, scientists’ increasing mastery over biological source code is what has allowed them to <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/everything-you-need-to-know-about-mrna-vaccines/">rapidly develop the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines</a> to combat COVID-19. By precisely engineering the genetic code that instructs cells to produce harmless versions of viral proteins, vaccines are able to prime the immune system to respond when it encounters the actual virus.</p>
<h2>Responsible biological source code manipulation</h2>
<p>Prescient as Michael Crichton was, it’s unlikely that he could have envisioned just how far scientists’ abilities to engineer biology have advanced over the past three decades. <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-are-extinct-animals-we-can-should-resurrect-180954955/">Bringing back extinct species</a>, while an active area of research, remains <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390%2Fgenes9110548">fiendishly difficult</a>. However, in many ways, our technologies are substantially further along than those in “Jurassic Park” and the subsequent films.</p>
<p>But how have we done on the responsibility front?</p>
<p>Fortunately, consideration of the social and ethical side of gene editing has gone hand in hand with the science’s development. In 1975, scientists <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.72.6.198">agreed on approaches</a> to ensure that emerging recombinant DNA research would be carried out safely. From the get-go, the ethical, legal and social dimensions of the science were hard-wired into the <a href="https://www.genome.gov/Funded-Programs-Projects/ELSI-Research-Program-ethical-legal-social-implications">Human Genome Project</a>. DIY bio communities have been at the forefront of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/531167a">safe and responsible gene-editing research</a>. And social responsibility is integral to <a href="https://blog.igem.org/blog/2020/9/23/igem-and-the-value-of-responsibility">synthetic biology competitions</a>. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/12VfS2hAi7c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">DNA was never destiny.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet as gene editing becomes increasingly powerful and accessible, a community of well-meaning scientists and engineers is unlikely to be sufficient. While the “Jurassic Park” movies take dramatic license in their portrayal of the future, they do get one thing right: Even with good intentions, bad things happen when you mix powerful technologies with scientists who haven’t been trained to think through the consequences of their actions – and haven’t thought to ask experts who have.</p>
<p>Maybe this is the abiding message of “Jurassic World: Dominion” – that despite incredible advances in genetic design and engineering, things can and will go wrong if we don’t embrace the development and use of the technology in socially responsible ways.</p>
<p>The good news is that we still have time to close the gap between “could” and “should” in how scientists redesign and reengineer genetic code. But as “Jurassic World: Dominion” reminds moviegoers, the future is often closer than it might appear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184369/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Maynard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As genetic engineering and DNA manipulation tools like CRISPR continue to advance, the distinction between what science ‘could’ and ‘should’ do becomes murkier.Andrew Maynard, Professor of Responsible Innovation, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1784652022-05-09T19:07:21Z2022-05-09T19:07:21ZElectric eels inspired the first battery two centuries ago and now point a way to future battery technologies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461098/original/file-20220503-19080-rqhsia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=684%2C229%2C2885%2C1741&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prepare to be stunned by a technology that nature perfected.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/electric-eel-close-up-electrophorus-electricus-royalty-free-image/1298603276">maradek/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the world’s need for large amounts of portable energy grows at an <a href="https://www.rystadenergy.com/newsevents/news/press-releases/powering-up-global-battery-demand-to-surge-by-2030-supply-headaches-on-the-horizon/">ever-increasing pace</a>, many innovators have sought to replace current battery technology with something better.</p>
<p>Italian physicist <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Alessandro_Volta">Alessandro Volta</a> tapped into fundamental electrochemical principles when he invented the first battery in 1800. Essentially, the physical joining of two different materials, usually metals, generates a chemical reaction that results in the flow of electrons from one material to the other. That stream of electrons represents portable energy that can be <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXNKkcB0pI4">harnessed to generate power</a>. </p>
<p>The first materials people employed to make batteries were copper and zinc. Today’s best batteries – those that produce the highest electrical output in the smallest possible size – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00288">pair the metal lithium</a> with one of several different metallic compounds. There have been steady improvements over the centuries, but modern batteries rely on the same strategy as that of Volta: pair together materials that can generate an electrochemical reaction and snatch the electrons that are produced.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461100/original/file-20220503-43085-jyunol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Drawing of three electric fish species" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461100/original/file-20220503-43085-jyunol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461100/original/file-20220503-43085-jyunol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461100/original/file-20220503-43085-jyunol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461100/original/file-20220503-43085-jyunol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461100/original/file-20220503-43085-jyunol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461100/original/file-20220503-43085-jyunol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461100/original/file-20220503-43085-jyunol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1885 lithograph illustrates several species of electric fish.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/electric-fish-species-catfish-ray-eel-hand-royalty-free-illustration/876169752">ZU_09/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But as I describe in my book “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691197838/spark">Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life</a>,” even before humanmade batteries started generating electric current, electric fishes, such as the saltwater torpedo fish (<em><a href="https://www.fishbase.de/summary/2062">Torpedo torpedo</a></em>) of the Mediterranean and especially the various freshwater electric eel species of South America (order <em><a href="https://eol.org/pages/5477">Gymnotiformes</a></em>) were well known to produce electrical outputs of stunning proportions. In fact, electric fishes inspired Volta to conduct the original research that ultimately led to his battery, and today’s battery scientists still look to these electrifying animals for ideas.</p>
<h2>Copying the eel’s electric organ</h2>
<p>Prior to Volta’s battery, the only way for people to generate electricity was to rub various materials together, typically silk on glass, and to capture the resulting static electricity. This was neither an easy nor practical way to generate useful electrical power.</p>
<p>Volta knew electric fishes had an internal organ specifically devoted to generating electricity. He reasoned that if he could mimic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/bioelectric-organ">its workings</a>, he might be able to find a novel way to generate electricity.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461101/original/file-20220503-14-gviarx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="line drawing of 19th century man next to scientific apparatus" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461101/original/file-20220503-14-gviarx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461101/original/file-20220503-14-gviarx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461101/original/file-20220503-14-gviarx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461101/original/file-20220503-14-gviarx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461101/original/file-20220503-14-gviarx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461101/original/file-20220503-14-gviarx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461101/original/file-20220503-14-gviarx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration of Alessandro Volta next to his battery stack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/italian-physicist-alessandro-volta-royalty-free-image/92846303">PHOTOS.com via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
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<p>The electric organ of a fish is composed of long stacks of cells that look very much like a roll of coins. So Volta cut out coinlike disks from sheets of various materials and started stacking them, in different sequences, to see if he could find any combination that would produce electricity. These stacking experiments kept yielding negative results until he tried pairing copper disks with zinc ones, while separating the stacked pairs with paper disks wetted with saltwater.</p>
<p>This sequence of copper-zinc-paper fortuitously produced electricity, and the electrical output was proportionate to the height of the stack. Volta thought he had uncovered the secret of how eels generate their electricity and that he had actually produced an artificial version of the electric organ of fish, so he initially called his discovery an “artificial electric organ.” But it was not.</p>
<h2>What really makes eels electrifying</h2>
<p>Scientists now know the <a href="https://socratic.org/questions/what-is-an-electrochemical-reaction">electrochemical reactions</a> between dissimilar materials that Volta discovered have nothing to do with the way an electric eel generates its electricity. Rather, the eel uses an approach similar to the way our nerve cells generate their electrical signals, but on a much grander scale.</p>
<p>Specialized cells within the eel’s electric organ pump ions across a semipermeable membrane barrier to produce an electrical charge difference between the inside versus the outside of the membrane. When microscopic gates in the membrane open, the rapid flow of ions from one side of the membrane to the other generates an electrical current. The eel is able to <a href="http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2001/riis/electriceel3.htm">simultaneously open all of its membrane gates</a> at will to generate a huge jolt of electricity, which it unleashes in a targeted fashion upon its prey.</p>
<p>Electric eels don’t shock their prey to death; they just <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.08.034">electrically stun</a> it before attacking. An eel can generate hundreds of volts of electricity (American household outlets are 110 volts), but the eel’s voltage does not push enough current (amperage), for a long enough time, to kill. Each electric pulse from an eel lasts only a couple thousandths of a second and delivers less than 1 amp. That’s just 5% of household amperage.</p>
<p>This is similar to how electric fences work, delivering very short pulses of high-voltage electricity, but with very low amperage. They thus shock but do not kill bears or other animal intruders that try to get through them. It is also similar to a modern <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/TASER">Taser electroshock weapon</a>, which works by quickly delivering an extremely high-voltage pulse (about 50,000 volts) carrying very low amperage (just a few milliamps).</p>
<h2>Modern attempts to mimic the eel</h2>
<p>Like Volta, some modern electrical scientists searching to transform battery technology find their inspiration in electric eels.</p>
<p>A team of scientists from the United States and Switzerland is currently <a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/electric-eel-inspires-new-power-source/">working on a new type of battery inspired by eels</a>. They envision that their soft and flexible battery might someday be useful for internally powering medical implants and soft robots. But the team admits they have a long way to go. “The electric organs in eels are incredibly sophisticated; they’re far better at generating power than we are,” lamented <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=O6i_eZMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Michael Mayer</a>, a team member from the University of Fribourg. So, the eel research continues.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461103/original/file-20220503-43468-g6vpmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="seated men wearing tuxedos" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461103/original/file-20220503-43468-g6vpmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461103/original/file-20220503-43468-g6vpmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461103/original/file-20220503-43468-g6vpmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461103/original/file-20220503-43468-g6vpmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461103/original/file-20220503-43468-g6vpmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461103/original/file-20220503-43468-g6vpmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461103/original/file-20220503-43468-g6vpmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino shared a Nobel Prize for their work on lithium-ion batteries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/co-laureates-of-the-2019-nobel-prize-in-chemistry-us-news-photo/1187620463">Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In 2019, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the three scientists who <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/popular-information/">developed the lithium-ion battery</a>. In conferring the award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences asserted that the awardees’ work had “<a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/press-release/">laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society</a>.”</p>
<p>The “wireless” part is definitely true, since lithium-ion batteries now power virtually all handheld wireless devices. We’ll have to wait and see about the “fossil fuel-free society” claim, because today’s lithium-ion batteries are recharged with electricity often generated by burning fossil fuels. No mention was made of the contributions of electric eels.</p>
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<p>Later that same year, though, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution announced their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11690-z">discovery of a new South American species of electric eel</a>; this one is notably the strongest known bioelectricity generator on Earth. Researchers recorded the electrical discharge of a single eel at 860 volts, well above that of the previous record-holding eel species, <em><a href="https://www.fishbase.se/summary/4535">Electrophorus electricus</a></em>, that clocked in at 650 volts, and 200-fold higher that the top voltage of a single lithium-ion battery (4.2 volts).</p>
<p>Just as we humans try to congratulate ourselves on the greatness of our latest portable energy source, the electric eels continue to humble us with theirs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy J. Jorgensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One species of eel can discharge 860 volts of electricity – that’s 200-fold higher than the top voltage of a single lithium-ion battery.Timothy J. Jorgensen, Director of the Health Physics and Radiation Protection Graduate Program and Professor of Radiation Medicine, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1783902022-04-05T12:31:34Z2022-04-05T12:31:34ZHar Gobind Khorana: The chemist who cracked DNA’s code and made the first artificial gene was born into poverty in an Indian village<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454404/original/file-20220325-15-1bpb519.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C2968%2C2065&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Har Gobind Khorana pieced together how DNA encoded for the proteins that life relies on.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/NobelsKhorana1970/02038c5c01e743a4b0915106b10fd105">AP Photo/Paul Shane</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>2022 marked the 100th birthday of Nobel Prize winning chemist Har Gobind Khorana – or so we think. The exact date of his birth is not known, because Khorana was born in poverty in a British Indian class that rarely recorded such dates. As a child, he had to beg a neighbor for a glowing ember so his mother could light their daily cooking fire. He was 6 before he owned his first pencil. </p>
<p>Khorana emerged from this background to receive a Nobel Prize in 1968 for deciphering the genetic code that translates DNA sequences into the protein molecules that carry out the functions of living cells. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=wQsQxFoAAAAJ">I am writing</a> a biography of Khorana with the hope that his story will inspire young scientists from every background to pursue their dreams of exploration and discovery.</p>
<h2>Education and training</h2>
<p>In spite of his family’s poverty, Khorana’s father insisted on educating his children. He taught them to read and write early. The younger Khorana’s first four years of schooling <a href="https://www.abc-clio.com/products/A1856C/">took place under a tree</a> until his father helped establish a one-room school in their village. </p>
<p>Khorana attended the University of Punjab, where he obtained a Masters in Chemistry in 1945. That same year, the Indian government initiated a program that sent talented students abroad for training. Khorana belonged to the first cohort and obtained a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Liverpool in 1948.</p>
<p>Under his scholarship’s terms, he was due to return to India. But the previous year, Khoran had met and been captivated by Esther Silber, a Swiss woman. He opted to do a postdoctoral year in Switzerland. With no funding, he lived off his meager savings to work with Vladimir Prelog, one of the world’s leading organic chemists. </p>
<p>Khorana also began to read widely in German-language chemistry, which led him to become curious about a family of little-known synthetic reagents called carbodiimides that help form larger organic molecules from smaller components. One of these chemicals in particular, diccyclohexylcarbodiimide or DCC, became critical in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2011.12.008">Khorana’s future work on DNA</a>.</p>
<p>In 1949, Khorana returned to India alone, but his promised government job never materialized because the newly independent country was bankrupt. He managed to obtain a fellowship at the University of Cambridge in England, which was emerging as a global center of molecular biology. </p>
<p>The groundbreaking work happening there included the sequencing of protein molecules into their amino acid components as well as determining their structure. Francis Crick and James Watson would untangle the double helix structure of DNA there in 1953.</p>
<p>Khorana began using the chemical DCC to take apart and put together amino acid components of protein molecules. DCC also allowed him to put together strings of DNA, starting with their fundamental units, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/MLACourse/Original8Hour/Genetics/nucleotide.html">nucleotides</a>. </p>
<p>In 1952, Khorana was offered his own laboratory at the University of British Columbia. Esther and Khorana married and moved to Vancouver.</p>
<h2>Solving the genetic code</h2>
<p>In Vancouver, Khorana focused on using DCC to synthesize complex molecules, especially protein molecules called enzymes that govern metabolism. He succeeded in synthesizing <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/adenosine-triphosphate">ATP</a>, the molecule responsible for producing energy in cells.</p>
<p>By 1960, he had synthesized an even more complex molecule, Coenzyme A, which is involved in digestion. This success marked him as one of the most important biological chemists of his time. </p>
<p>Because DCC also allowed a researcher to string together DNA sequences, Khorana proposed a startlingly ambitious project – the <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1126/science.366749">creation of an artificial gene</a>. Nothing of this sort had ever been attempted, and it became the Holy Grail of Khorana’s laboratory.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454413/original/file-20220325-29-1754uaw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo of 18 people, all but one in white lab coats, lined up outside a building labeled 'Enzyme Research.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454413/original/file-20220325-29-1754uaw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454413/original/file-20220325-29-1754uaw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454413/original/file-20220325-29-1754uaw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454413/original/file-20220325-29-1754uaw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454413/original/file-20220325-29-1754uaw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454413/original/file-20220325-29-1754uaw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454413/original/file-20220325-29-1754uaw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Har Gobind Khorana and his laboratory at the Institute for Enzyme Research of University of Wisconsin at Madison, early 1960s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Matthew Jacob Thazhuthaveetil of the Indian Institute of Science at Bengaluru</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Khorana moved to the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1960. In 1961, biochemists Marshall Nirenberg and Heinrich Matthaei announced a way to translate DNA sequences into amino acid sequences outside a living cell. They first placed a variety of cell components in a test tube. When they then introduced short DNA sequences into the test tube, the system translated them into a sequence of amino acids that, in turn, formed part of a protein. </p>
<p>The effect on Khorana was electrifying. The chemical DCC allowed him to create any DNA sequence he wanted, which went beyond what Nirenberg and Matthaei could do. Inserting synthesized sequences into a test tube could produce all the amino acid sequences that DNA encodes. </p>
<p>Several labs were competing to do the same thing. Khorana’s worked around the clock in double shifts to solve the code first. By 1966, it was complete. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454408/original/file-20220325-17-1fy9ew8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo of two men in tuxedos shaking hands. Khorana, on the right, holds what looks like a box possibly containing a medal." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454408/original/file-20220325-17-1fy9ew8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454408/original/file-20220325-17-1fy9ew8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454408/original/file-20220325-17-1fy9ew8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454408/original/file-20220325-17-1fy9ew8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454408/original/file-20220325-17-1fy9ew8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454408/original/file-20220325-17-1fy9ew8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454408/original/file-20220325-17-1fy9ew8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Har Gobind Khorana receives the Nobel Prize from King Gustaf Adolf in Stockholm, Dec. 10, 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/NobelsKhorana1968/85b49167d066464baa73ad134f8c2fc3">AP Photo/Reportagebild</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Khorana and Nirenberg were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968 for Physiology or Medicine, which they shared with Robert Holley, who had discovered another molecule involved in protein formation.</p>
<h2>Later years</h2>
<p>Solving the genetic code was a detour in Khorana’s relentless pursuit of artificial genes. In 1970, Khorana moved his laboratory to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1972, he finally completed the <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1126/science.366749">total synthesis of a functional gene</a> outside a living organism. He also showed it could <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0021-9258(19)82144-0">function appropriately in a bacterium</a>.</p>
<p>In spite of his acknowledged success and prominence, racism marred Khorana’s life through much of his career. His daughter told me that, in both the U.K. and Canada, he was derided as a “Paki” by white residents. In Canada, he was paid less and expected to work more than white colleagues. She also noted, in the United States, that their mixed-race family did not dare travel together in the South. </p>
<p>Khorana’s legacy has also suffered from neglect that may be a result of racial bias. When author Horace Freeland Judson conducted interviews with molecular biologists for his pioneering 1979 history of molecular biology, “<a href="https://www.cshlpress.com/default.tpl?cart=1648668767593144928&action=full&--eqskudatarq=294&typ=sbt">The Eighth Day of Creation</a>,” he ignored Khorana – though scores of lesser white figures were interviewed and given their due. Even though Khorana and Crick were in constant contact during the years the genetic code was deciphered, Khorana gets only fleeting mention in <a href="https://cshlpress.com/default.tpl?action=full&--eqskudatarq=665&typ=ps&newtitle=Francis%20Crick%3A%20Hunter%20of%20Life%27s%20Secrets">Robert C. Olby’s biography of Crick</a>. </p>
<p>But this neglect is changing, as a new generation of writers have begun to construct a more accurate and inclusive history of science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sahotra Sarkar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Khorana rose from humble beginnings in India to decipher the genetic code. But his enormous contribution to science has been largely overlooked.Sahotra Sarkar, Professor of Philosophy and Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1784632022-03-11T13:19:52Z2022-03-11T13:19:52ZGuns, not roses – here’s the true story of penicillin’s first patient<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451134/original/file-20220309-25-206ycs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=62%2C209%2C3357%2C2439&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Penicillin ushered in the antibiotics revolution, with amazing results during war and peace.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-1928-alexander-fleming-a-scottish-researcher-discovered-news-photo/90736822">Science & Society Picture Library/SSPL via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Albert Alexander was dying. World War II was raging, and this police officer of the county of Oxford, England, had developed a severe case of sepsis after a cut on his face became badly infected. His blood was now teeming with deadly bacteria. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.289.6460.1721">According to his physician</a>, Charles Fletcher, Alexander was in tremendous pain, “desperately and pathetically ill.” The bacterial infection was eating him alive: He’d already lost one eye and had oozing abscesses all over his face and in his lungs.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451124/original/file-20220309-28-1p5rh2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="man in 1940s police uniform" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451124/original/file-20220309-28-1p5rh2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451124/original/file-20220309-28-1p5rh2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451124/original/file-20220309-28-1p5rh2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451124/original/file-20220309-28-1p5rh2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451124/original/file-20220309-28-1p5rh2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451124/original/file-20220309-28-1p5rh2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451124/original/file-20220309-28-1p5rh2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Albert Alexander in uniform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Linda Willason</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since all known treatment options were exhausted and death appeared imminent, Fletcher decided that Alexander was the perfect candidate to try a new, experimental therapy. On Feb. 12, 1941, Alexander became the first known person to be treated with penicillin. Within days he began to make a stunning recovery.</p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://medicine.iu.edu/faculty/13502/sullivan-william">professor of pharmacology</a>, and Alexander’s story is the prelude to my yearly lecture on antibiotics. Like many other microbiology instructors, I’d always told students that Alexander’s septicemia arose after he scratched his cheek on a thorn while pruning rosebushes. This popular account dominates the scientific literature as well as recent articles and books.</p>
<p>The problem is, while descriptions of the miraculous effect of penicillin in this case are accurate, the details of Alexander’s injury were muddled, likely by wartime propaganda.</p>
<h2>Breaking the mold</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451136/original/file-20220309-13-5iedmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="man looking into microscope" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451136/original/file-20220309-13-5iedmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451136/original/file-20220309-13-5iedmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451136/original/file-20220309-13-5iedmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451136/original/file-20220309-13-5iedmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451136/original/file-20220309-13-5iedmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451136/original/file-20220309-13-5iedmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451136/original/file-20220309-13-5iedmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovered antibiotic penicillin in 1928.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alexander-fleming-scottish-bacteriologist-18-december-1943-news-photo/102730610">Daily Herald Archive/SSPL via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The promise of penicillin as an antibiotic was first noted in 1928, when microbiologist Alexander Fleming noticed something funny in his petri dishes at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. Fleming’s cultures of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2048009/">staphylococcal bacteria did not grow well</a> on plates contaminated with a penicillium mold. Fleming discovered that the mold’s “juice” was lethal to some types of bacteria. </p>
<p>A decade later, a team of scientists led by Howard Florey at Oxford University began the arduous task of purifying the active substance from the “mold juice” and formally testing its antimicrobial properties. In August 1940, Florey and his colleagues published their striking findings that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(01)08728-1">purified penicillin safely wiped out numerous bacterial infections</a> in mice.</p>
<p>Florey then sought Fletcher’s help to try penicillin in a human patient. That patient would be Alexander, whose death seemed inevitable otherwise. As Fletcher stated, “There was all to gain for him in a trial of penicillin and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.289.6460.1721">nothing to lose</a>.”</p>
<p>At the time, purified penicillin was extremely scarce, since the mold was slow to grow and yielded precious little of the drug. Despite recycling unprocessed penicillin from Alexander’s urine, there just wasn’t enough available to finish off the infection once and for all. After 10 days of improvement, Alexander gradually relapsed. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.289.6460.1721">He died on March 15, 1941</a>, at the age of 43.</p>
<p>Despite the tragic outcome, Alexander’s case turbocharged interest in penicillin research. As Fletcher observed, “There was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.289.6460.1721">no doubt about the temporary clinical improvement</a>, and, most importantly, there had been no sort of toxic effect during the five days of continuous administration of penicillin.”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An ad promoting penicillin and its role in the war effort.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/fromdnatobeer/exhibition-making-yellow-magic.html">Schenley Laboratories, Inc. advertisement, 1944</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Almost exactly a year later, on March 14, 1942, doctors in Connecticut administered the antibiotic to a woman named <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/09/us/anne-miller-90-first-patient-who-was-saved-by-penicillin.html">Anne Miller</a> who was deathly ill with streptococcal septicemia. She made a full recovery and became the first patient cured with penicillin. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/07/11/penicillin-coronavirus-florey-wwii-infection/">Mass production of penicillin</a> became a top priority of the U.S. War Department, second only to the Manhattan Project. It is widely believed that <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805077780/the-mold-in-dr-floreys-coat">penicillin helped the Allies during World War II</a>, preventing wound infections and helping soldiers diagnosed with gonorrhea to return to the battlefield.</p>
<h2>The rosebush tale has been a thorn in their sides</h2>
<p>Albert Alexander has earned a place in history as the first known person to be treated with penicillin for a clinical condition. Almost as famous as his name is the purported cause of death: sepsis due to a scratch from rosebushes.</p>
<p>However, an alternative explanation was revealed in a <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/penicillin-oxford-story">2010 interview with Eric Sidebottom</a>, a historian and author of “<a href="http://www.offoxpress.com/oxford-medicine-a-walk-through-nine-centuries.html">Oxford Medicine: A Walk Through Nine Centuries</a>.” He claimed that Alexander was injured when his police station was hit during a German bombing raid on Nov. 30, 1940. Shrapnel from this attack caused the facial lacerations that led to Alexander’s fatal blood poisoning, he said.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451127/original/file-20220309-1729-ehbqqf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="elderly woman holds up a black and white photo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451127/original/file-20220309-1729-ehbqqf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451127/original/file-20220309-1729-ehbqqf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451127/original/file-20220309-1729-ehbqqf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451127/original/file-20220309-1729-ehbqqf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451127/original/file-20220309-1729-ehbqqf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451127/original/file-20220309-1729-ehbqqf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451127/original/file-20220309-1729-ehbqqf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sheila LeBlanc holding photo of her father, Albert Alexander, in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Linda Willason</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alexander’s daughter, Sheila LeBlanc, who moved to California and became an artist, confirmed Sidebottom’s account in a <a href="https://www.pe.com/2012/11/02/redlands-local-artists-share-childhood-bond/">2012 interview</a> with a local newspaper. She also revealed the grim consequences Alexander’s death had on his family. Since they’d lived in a house provided by the village, for the village constable, his death forced them to move out. LeBlanc, who was seven at the time, and her older brother were sent to an orphanage, since their mother had to find work.</p>
<p>Michael Barrett, a professor of biochemical parasitology at the University of Glasgow, also spoke to LeBlanc about the cause of Alexander’s injury. <a href="https://mosaicscience.com/story/penicillin-first-patient-history-albert-alexander-AMR-DRI/">Writing in 2018, Barrett stated</a> that while LeBlanc recalled that the constable’s house did have a beautiful rose garden, <a href="http://www.fnrcnewbury.org.uk/biography.asp?BiogID=225&PersonID=2467">her father’s fatal cut</a> was sustained during the German blitz.</p>
<p>In February 2022, I contacted Alexander’s granddaughter, Linda Willason, who is also an artist in California, to help set the record straight. Willason validated the shrapnel account and suggested that the rosebush story was “a bit of wartime propaganda.” By downplaying bombing injuries, the government likely hoped to maintain the public’s stiff upper lip.</p>
<p>While the nature of Alexander’s injury may seem a trivial detail, correcting the historical record is important. Alexander died in the line of duty, and the apocryphal rosebush story obscures his honorable actions. His descendants are hopeful the true account of his injury will now eclipse the false one.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450839/original/file-20220309-27-pxnrfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="blue plaque with white text on brick wall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450839/original/file-20220309-27-pxnrfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450839/original/file-20220309-27-pxnrfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450839/original/file-20220309-27-pxnrfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450839/original/file-20220309-27-pxnrfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450839/original/file-20220309-27-pxnrfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450839/original/file-20220309-27-pxnrfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450839/original/file-20220309-27-pxnrfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A plaque dedicated in 2021 shares the real story of Alexander’s injury.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Alexander_plaque.jpg">Newbury Town Council/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2021, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-berkshire-57208267">a plaque commemorating Alexander</a> was installed in Newbury that reads: “On war support duty in Southampton on 30th November 1940, Albert was injured in an air raid. Contracting staphylococcal and streptococcal septicaemia, he was transferred to the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where he was selected for the first clinical application of penicillin. … His place in the history of antibiotics is secure.”</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178463/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Sullivan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Albert Alexander was the first known person treated with penicillin. While his ultimately fatal case is well known in medical histories, the cause of his illness has been misattributed for decades.Bill Sullivan, Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology, Indiana University School of MedicineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1784732022-03-04T13:21:44Z2022-03-04T13:21:44ZWomen’s History Month: 5 groundbreaking researchers who mapped the ocean floor, tested atomic theories, vanquished malaria and more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449925/original/file-20220303-8225-r5fm6i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=281%2C74%2C3403%2C2477&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tu Youyou shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nobel-medicine-prize-2015-co-winner-chinese-youyou-tu-news-photo/500814006">Claudio Bresciani/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Behind some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries and innovations are women whose names might not be familiar but whose stories are worth knowing.</p>
<p>Of course, there are far too many to all fit on one list.</p>
<p>But here are five profiles from The Conversation’s archive that highlight the brilliance, grit and unique perspectives of five women who worked in geosciences, math, ornithology, pharmacology and physics during the 20th century.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349770/original/file-20200727-35-1udrgwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C1198%2C883&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Marie Tharp at work drafting a map at her desk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349770/original/file-20200727-35-1udrgwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C1198%2C883&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349770/original/file-20200727-35-1udrgwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349770/original/file-20200727-35-1udrgwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349770/original/file-20200727-35-1udrgwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349770/original/file-20200727-35-1udrgwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349770/original/file-20200727-35-1udrgwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349770/original/file-20200727-35-1udrgwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marie Tharp with an undersea map at her desk. Rolled sonar profiles of the ocean floor are on the shelf behind her.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/join-us-celebrating-marietharp100">Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the estate of Marie Tharp</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. Revealing and mapping the ocean floor</h2>
<p>As late as the 1950s, wrote Wesleyan University <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ruUF3z4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">geoscientist Suzanne OConnell</a>, “many scientists assumed the seabed was featureless.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349741/original/file-20200727-15-69lzu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="sketches of undersea features based on sonar" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349741/original/file-20200727-15-69lzu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349741/original/file-20200727-15-69lzu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349741/original/file-20200727-15-69lzu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349741/original/file-20200727-15-69lzu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349741/original/file-20200727-15-69lzu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1216&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349741/original/file-20200727-15-69lzu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1216&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349741/original/file-20200727-15-69lzu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1216&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration of Marie Tharp’s mapping process. (a) Shows the position of two ship tracks (A, B) moving across the surface. (b) Plots depth recordings as profiles. (c) Sketches features shown on the profiles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://mirrorservice.org/sites/gutenberg.org/4/9/0/6/49069/49069-h/49069-h.htm">The Floors of the Ocean, 1959, Fig. 1</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/marie-tharp-pioneered-mapping-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-6-decades-ago-scientists-are-still-learning-about-earths-last-frontier-142451">Enter Marie Tharp</a>. In 1957, she and her research partner started publishing detailed hand-drawn maps of the ocean floor, complete with rugged mountains, valleys and deep trenches. </p>
<p>Tharp was a geologist and oceanographer. Aboard research ships, she would carefully record the depth of the ocean, point by point, using sonar. One of her innovations was to translate this data into topographical sketches of what the seafloor looked like.</p>
<p>Her discovery of a rift valley in the North Atlantic shook the world of geology – her supervisor on the ship dismissed her idea as “girl talk,” and Jacques Cousteau was determined to prove her wrong. But she was right, and her insight was a key contribution to plate tectonic theory. That’s part of why, OConnell writes, “I believe Tharp should be as famous as Jane Goodall or Neil Armstrong.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/marie-tharp-pioneered-mapping-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-6-decades-ago-scientists-are-still-learning-about-earths-last-frontier-142451">Marie Tharp pioneered mapping the bottom of the ocean 6 decades ago – scientists are still learning about Earth's last frontier</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>2. Sympathetic observation of bird behavior</h2>
<p>Margaret Morse Nice was a field biologist who <a href="https://theconversation.com/margaret-morse-nice-thought-like-a-song-sparrow-and-changed-how-scientists-understand-animal-behavior-123734">got into the minds of her study subjects</a> to garner new insights into animal behavior. Most famously she observed song sparrows in the 1920s and ‘30s.</p>
<p>Rochester Institute of Technology professor of science, technology and society <a href="https://www.rit.edu/directory/kjwgla-kristoffer-whitney">Kristoffer Whitney</a> recounted what Nice called her “phenomenological method,” acknowledging the obvious “affection and anthropomorphism” you can see in her descriptions. </p>
<p>“When I first studied the Song Sparrows,” Nice wrote, “I had looked upon Song Sparrow 4M as a truculent, meddlesome neighbor; but … I discovered him to be a delightful bird, spirited, an accomplished songster and a devoted father.”</p>
<p>Despite earning no advanced degrees and being considered an amateur, Nice promoted innovations like the “use of colored leg bands to distinguish individual birds,” gained the respect of her better-known peers and enjoyed a long, successful career.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/margaret-morse-nice-thought-like-a-song-sparrow-and-changed-how-scientists-understand-animal-behavior-123734">Margaret Morse Nice thought like a song sparrow and changed how scientists understand animal behavior</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. A medical researcher in Maoist China</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449932/original/file-20220303-25-wxv1nj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="man and woman working at lab bench" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449932/original/file-20220303-25-wxv1nj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449932/original/file-20220303-25-wxv1nj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449932/original/file-20220303-25-wxv1nj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449932/original/file-20220303-25-wxv1nj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449932/original/file-20220303-25-wxv1nj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449932/original/file-20220303-25-wxv1nj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449932/original/file-20220303-25-wxv1nj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tu Youyou in a pharmacology lab with a colleague in the 1950s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/oct-5-2015-undated-file-photo-shows-tu-youyou-right-front-a-news-photo/491452698">Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, a young scientist named Tu Youyou headed a covert operation called Project 523 under military supervision. One of her team’s goals was to identify and systematically test substances used in traditional Chinese medicine in an effort to vanquish chloroquine-resistant malaria. </p>
<p>Emory University <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hLDgM4QAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">historian Jia-Chen Fu</a> described how “contrary to popular assumptions that Maoist China was summarily against science and scientists, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-secret-maoist-chinese-operation-that-conquered-malaria-and-won-a-nobel-48644">Communist party-state needed the scientific elite</a> for certain political and practical purposes.”</p>
<p>Tu followed a hunch about how to extract an antimalarial compound from the qinghao or artemisia plant. By 1971, her team had successfully “obtained a nontoxic and neutral extract that was called qinghaosu or artemisinin.” In 2015, she was honored with a Nobel Prize.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-secret-maoist-chinese-operation-that-conquered-malaria-and-won-a-nobel-48644">The secret Maoist Chinese operation that conquered malaria – and won a Nobel</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4. A mathematician who wouldn’t be diverted</h2>
<p>Not everyone gets called a “creative mathematical genius” by Albert Einstein. But Emmy Noether did.</p>
<p>Rutgers University <a href="https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/%7Etl548/">mathematician Tamar Lichter Blanks</a> wrote about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/emmy-noether-faced-sexism-and-nazism-100-years-later-her-contributions-to-ring-theory-still-influence-modern-math-163245">roadblocks Noether faced as a Jewish woman</a> who wanted to pursue a math career in early 1900s Germany. For a while, Noether supervised doctoral students without pay and taught university courses listed under the name of a male colleague.</p>
<p>All the while, she conducted her own research in theoretical physics, contributing to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Her most revolutionary work was in ring theory and is still pondered by mathematicians today.</p>
<p>Noether died less than two years after emigrating to the U.S. to escape the Nazis.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/emmy-noether-faced-sexism-and-nazism-over-100-years-later-her-contributions-to-ring-theory-still-influence-modern-math-163245">Emmy Noether faced sexism and Nazism – over 100 years later her contributions to ring theory still influence modern math</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>5. Testing nuclear theories one by one</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383299/original/file-20210209-23-13scq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Forever stamp with portrait of Chien-Shiung Wu." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383299/original/file-20210209-23-13scq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383299/original/file-20210209-23-13scq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383299/original/file-20210209-23-13scq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383299/original/file-20210209-23-13scq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383299/original/file-20210209-23-13scq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383299/original/file-20210209-23-13scq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383299/original/file-20210209-23-13scq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 2021 U.S. postage stamp featuring Chien-Shiung Wu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2021/0201ma-nuclear-physicist-chien-shiung-wu-to-be-honored-on-forever-stamp.htm">U.S. Postal Service</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While sometimes called the “Chinese Marie Curie” in her home country, nuclear physicist Chien-Shiung Wu is less well-known in the U.S., where she did the bulk of her work. Rutgers University-Newark <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-x2wJigAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">physicist Xuejian Wu</a> considered Chien-Shiung Wu (no relation) “an icon” who inspired his own career path.</p>
<p>As a grad student, Wu traveled by steamship to California in 1936, where she <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-postage-stamp-honors-chien-shiung-wu-trailblazing-nuclear-physicist-154687">fell in love with atomic nuclei research</a> at UC Berkeley, home of a brand new cyclotron. She worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II.</p>
<p>Among her many accomplishments, Wu’s careful experimental work discovered what’s called parity nonconservation – that is, that a physical process and its mirror reflection are not necessarily identical. Her colleagues who focused on the theoretical side of this breakthrough won the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics, but Wu was overlooked.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-postage-stamp-honors-chien-shiung-wu-trailblazing-nuclear-physicist-154687">New postage stamp honors Chien-Shiung Wu, trailblazing nuclear physicist</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178473/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Discover the stories of five trailblazing women – Tharp, Nice, Tu, Noether and Wu – who worked in STEM during the 20th century.Maggie Villiger, Senior Science + Technology EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1755872022-01-26T13:26:24Z2022-01-26T13:26:24ZWhen will the COVID-19 pandemic end? 4 essential reads on past pandemics and what the future could bring<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442590/original/file-20220125-21-10zigar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=650%2C42%2C4116%2C3030&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wishing won't be enough to make the pandemic history.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-wearing-a-face-mask-walks-past-digital-displays-news-photo/1212048671">David Cliff/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than two years after the first cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed, people are exhausted by the coronavirus pandemic, ready for all this to end. When – if ever – is it realistic to expect SARS-CoV-2 will recede from the headlines and daily life?</p>
<p>That’s the unspoken question beneath the surface of many of The Conversation’s articles about COVID-19. None of our authors can see the future, but many do have expertise that offers insights about what’s reasonable to expect. Here are four such stories from our archive. Written by historians and scientists, they each suggest a way to think about what’s at the end of the pandemic tunnel – and paths to get there.</p>
<h2>1. Past pandemics are not a perfect prediction</h2>
<p>Almost as soon as it hit, people were trying to figure out how the COVID-19 pandemic would proceed. It was tempting to look for clues in the course of the 1918 flu pandemic that killed as many as 50 million people worldwide. Could the waves of disease seen in the 1900s provide a road map for what could be expected a century later?</p>
<p>Daily deaths from COVID-19 were declining in the U.S. when historian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=41RCe6UAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Mari Webel</a> and virologist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ubfhdQwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Megan Culler Freeman</a> from University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences cautioned against reading too much into how things had gone for people generations ago. </p>
<p>It was so tempting to superimpose a timeline of flu surges on the modern calendar to get even a blurry forecast of what the coronavirus might have in store for us. “Scanning the historical record is one way to draw our own lives into focus and perspective,” wrote Webel and Culler Freeman. “Unfortunately, the end of influenza in summer 1919 <a href="https://theconversation.com/compare-the-flu-pandemic-of-1918-and-covid-19-with-caution-the-past-is-not-a-prediction-138895">does not portend the end of COVID-19 in the summer of 2020</a>.”</p>
<p>And for reasons ranging from biology to demographics to politics, that is one prediction that most certainly came true.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/compare-the-flu-pandemic-of-1918-and-covid-19-with-caution-the-past-is-not-a-prediction-138895">Compare the flu pandemic of 1918 and COVID-19 with caution – the past is not a prediction</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>2. Calling it over before it’s really over</h2>
<p>While the 1918 flu pandemic wasn’t an exact template for how the coronavirus would sweep the world, the earlier pandemic provided plenty of parallels when it came to human behavior.</p>
<p>University of Michigan historian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gzhca9MAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">J. Alexander Navarro</a> described how in the early 20th century Americans essentially <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-gave-up-on-flu-pandemic-measures-a-century-ago-when-they-tired-of-them-and-paid-a-price-156551">quit on effective social distancing precautions</a> when they got fed up with living constrained lives. Sound familiar?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442592/original/file-20220125-15-a46ov6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="masked clerks at desks in early 20th century" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442592/original/file-20220125-15-a46ov6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442592/original/file-20220125-15-a46ov6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442592/original/file-20220125-15-a46ov6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442592/original/file-20220125-15-a46ov6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442592/original/file-20220125-15-a46ov6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442592/original/file-20220125-15-a46ov6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442592/original/file-20220125-15-a46ov6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic, many people eventually tired of taking precautions, like wearing masks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-wear-cloth-surgical-style-masks-to-protect-against-news-photo/515181868">Bettman via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As case numbers declined, “People clamored to return to their normal lives. Businesses pressed officials to be allowed to reopen,” Navarro wrote. “Believing the pandemic was over, state and local authorities began rescinding public health edicts.”</p>
<p>With the burden of public health resting on individual choices, additional waves of flu crashed over the population. Some amount of wishful thinking, along with a premature return to “normal,” was likely to blame. People’s choices can affect whether an infectious disease outbreak ends or drags on.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-gave-up-on-flu-pandemic-measures-a-century-ago-when-they-tired-of-them-and-paid-a-price-156551">People gave up on flu pandemic measures a century ago when they tired of them – and paid a price</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. Once a virus comes, it never really leaves</h2>
<p>Infectious diseases are as old as humanity. Pointing to examples such as malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy and measles, Rutgers University – Newark historian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dKrEwMkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Nükhet Varlik</a> wrote, “Once added to the repertoire of pathogens that affect human societies, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-pandemics-end-history-suggests-diseases-fade-but-are-almost-never-truly-gone-146066">most infectious diseases are here to stay</a>.” Only smallpox has been completely eradicated, thanks to an intense global vaccination campaign.</p>
<p>Varlik’s own research has focused on plague, a bacterial disease that’s caused at least three pandemics in the past 5,000 years – including the 14th century’s Black Death – along with many more localized outbreaks over the years. Outbreaks wound down based on factors like “changes in temperature, humidity and the availability of hosts, vectors and a sufficient number of susceptible individuals,” Varlik wrote. “Some societies recovered relatively quickly from their losses caused by the Black Death. Others never did.” </p>
<p>The responsible bacterium, <em>Yersinia pestis,</em> is still with us today.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-pandemics-end-history-suggests-diseases-fade-but-are-almost-never-truly-gone-146066">How do pandemics end? History suggests diseases fade but are almost never truly gone</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442595/original/file-20220125-17-uqruw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="socially distanced line waiting at testing site" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442595/original/file-20220125-17-uqruw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442595/original/file-20220125-17-uqruw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442595/original/file-20220125-17-uqruw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442595/original/file-20220125-17-uqruw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442595/original/file-20220125-17-uqruw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442595/original/file-20220125-17-uqruw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442595/original/file-20220125-17-uqruw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Someday mass testing sites won’t be necessary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/free-covid-19-testing-site-was-hosted-by-reliant-nhealth-news-photo/1365460079">Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. The endemic endgame</h2>
<p>A post-pandemic world may still have COVID-19 in it. Many researchers suspect that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will become endemic, meaning it’s always around, with some level of constant ongoing transmission. The viruses that cause the flu and the common cold, for instance, are endemic.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XY7DNtgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Sara Sawyer</a>, <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/pac/arturo-barbachano-guerrero">Arturo Barbachano-Guerrero</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=l2lpnYkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Cody Warren</a>, a team of virologists and immunologists from the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote that SARS-CoV-2 might hit the sweet spot for a virus to become endemic by being just the right degree of transmissible: “Generally speaking, viruses that are highly contagious, meaning that they spread really well from one person to the next, <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-covid-19-here-to-stay-a-team-of-biologists-explains-what-it-means-for-a-virus-to-become-endemic-168462">may never die out on their own</a> because they are so good at finding new people to infect.”</p>
<p>[<em>More than 140,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140K">Join the list today</a>.]</p>
<p>SARS-CoV-2 spreads easily through the air. Even people who aren’t experiencing any symptoms can pass the coronavirus to others. These factors, along with today’s heavily interconnected global society, make it unlikely COVID-19 is going away completely anytime soon.</p>
<p>For now, these scholars write, the best we can likely hope for is stabilized rates of SARS-CoV-2 that settle down into predictable patterns, like flu season. If you want to help hurry things along toward this end stage, do what you can to make yourself an inhospitable host for the coronavirus – most notably, <a href="https://theconversation.com/alpha-then-delta-and-now-omicron-6-questions-answered-as-covid-19-cases-once-again-surge-across-the-globe-174703">keep up to date with recommended COVID-19 vaccinations</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-covid-19-here-to-stay-a-team-of-biologists-explains-what-it-means-for-a-virus-to-become-endemic-168462">Is COVID-19 here to stay? A team of biologists explains what it means for a virus to become endemic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
None of our authors can see the future, but many do have expertise that offers insights about what’s reasonable to expect.Maggie Villiger, Senior Science + Technology EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1726052022-01-05T19:09:56Z2022-01-05T19:09:56ZA century ago, Australia was ground zero for eclipse-watchers – and helped prove Einstein right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437492/original/file-20211214-25-mcaved.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C102%2C1697%2C1533&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:36._Solar_corona,_Australian_eclipse,_Sept._21,_1922_(22748022995).jpg">Ontario Picture Bureau/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1922, Australia was even more remote from the rest of the world than it is today. But when it came to astronomy, that year it was the centre of everyone’s attention.</p>
<p>On September 21, the shadow of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-a-solar-eclipse-33019">total solar eclipse</a> would cross the entire continent, from Eighty Mile Beach in Western Australia, right through the outback, and out over the Pacific Ocean just south of the Queensland-New South Wales border.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436295/original/file-20211208-149721-1hhv2a7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Vintage newspaper eclipse map" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436295/original/file-20211208-149721-1hhv2a7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436295/original/file-20211208-149721-1hhv2a7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436295/original/file-20211208-149721-1hhv2a7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436295/original/file-20211208-149721-1hhv2a7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436295/original/file-20211208-149721-1hhv2a7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436295/original/file-20211208-149721-1hhv2a7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436295/original/file-20211208-149721-1hhv2a7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map published in the Argus newspaper, showing the eclipse track.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Argus</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Astronomers came from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, India and Britain – journeying to places so remote that many Australians had never heard of them before their names started appearing in the press. </p>
<p>The scientists were there not just for the spectacle, but also in the hope their observations of the eclipse would validate Albert Einstein’s then-controversial theory of general relativity, postulated just seven years earlier. </p>
<p>Einstein’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-einsteins-theory-of-general-relativity-3481">theory</a>, broadly speaking, suggested gravity can bend the very fabric of space-time itself. One possible way to test this was to photograph the background of stars both before and during an eclipse. The Sun’s gravity should bend the light from the distant stars as it passes in front of them, causing them to appear in a slightly different position – and the eclipse would allow astronomers to make this observation by helpfully blotting out the Sun’s glare.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-einsteins-theory-of-general-relativity-3481">Explainer: Einstein's Theory of General Relativity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>War and weather</h2>
<p>The first world war prevented astronomers from investigating Einstein’s 1915 prediction. But a total solar eclipse on May 29 1919 offered the first decent chance to prove him right. Britain mounted two separate expeditions in the hope at least one of them could make the necessary observations. In <a href="https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218271818430046">Sobral, Brazil</a>, the team led by Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson suffered equipment failure. But on the island of Principe off Africa’s west coast, Arthur Eddington, despite inclement weather, successfully photographed the event.</p>
<p>Dyson, after viewing Eddington’s photographic plates, pronounced “there can be no doubt that they confirm Einstein’s prediction”. But many sceptics remained unconvinced.</p>
<p>The next suitable eclipse was in Australia on September 21 1922. The famous Lick Observatory in California had used its fine 12-metre camera to photograph several previous eclipses, and director William Wallace Campbell was determined his observatory would solve “the Einstein problem” in Australia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-a-solar-eclipse-33019">Explainer: what is a solar eclipse?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Campbell’s chosen location – Wallal, on the WA coast 320km south of Broome, was remote and almost inaccessible. But it had virtually no chance of cloud, and the eclipse there would last longest, offering a full five minutes of totality. </p>
<p>Shallow seas meant the expedition’s ships could not get close to shore, and instead had to ferry the equipment ashore at high tide with the help of local Indigenous people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437488/original/file-20211214-25-1s3kjo6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Eighty Mile Beach" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437488/original/file-20211214-25-1s3kjo6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437488/original/file-20211214-25-1s3kjo6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437488/original/file-20211214-25-1s3kjo6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437488/original/file-20211214-25-1s3kjo6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437488/original/file-20211214-25-1s3kjo6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437488/original/file-20211214-25-1s3kjo6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437488/original/file-20211214-25-1s3kjo6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eighty Mile Beach at Wallal, during low tide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Finlayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Royal Australian Navy also played an essential role in transporting the heavy and delicate equipment to Wallal, where Campbell’s group, which also included Canadian and New Zealand astronomers, had set up camp near the telegraph station. </p>
<p>Also at Wallal were astronomers from the Perth Observatory, the Kodiakanal Solar Observatory in India, and a smaller private British expedition. The various teams made several practice runs, knowing they would get just one chance at the eclipse itself.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437489/original/file-20211214-25-7j4z3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Eclipse observation site at Wallal" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437489/original/file-20211214-25-7j4z3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437489/original/file-20211214-25-7j4z3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437489/original/file-20211214-25-7j4z3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437489/original/file-20211214-25-7j4z3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437489/original/file-20211214-25-7j4z3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437489/original/file-20211214-25-7j4z3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437489/original/file-20211214-25-7j4z3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Location of the eclipse observation site, viewed seaward. Left of the vehicle are remains of Wallal Telegraph Station, including a well.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Finlayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Afterwards, having spent months studying the huge photographic plates created during the eclipse, Campbell telegraphed Einstein to tell him the observations were indisputable. A remote corner of Australia had played a pivotal role in proving one of the fundamental truths of the Universe.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437490/original/file-20211214-13-1ikfssh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart of star displacements from 1923 scientific paper" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437490/original/file-20211214-13-1ikfssh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437490/original/file-20211214-13-1ikfssh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437490/original/file-20211214-13-1ikfssh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437490/original/file-20211214-13-1ikfssh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437490/original/file-20211214-13-1ikfssh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437490/original/file-20211214-13-1ikfssh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437490/original/file-20211214-13-1ikfssh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Star displacements observed during the 1922 eclipse, consistent with the movements predicted by Einstein’s theory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Campbell & Trumper/Lick Observatory Bulletin 1923</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, other astronomers and amateur enthusiasts right across Australia were turning their eyes heavenwards as the eclipse passed overhead. South Australia sent an expedition to Cordillo Downs in the state’s northeast, led by Government Astronomer George Dodwell. His remote journey, laden with bulky equipment, was an undertaking of heroic proportions. Yet now, Cordillo Downs is chiefly known for its historic woolshed. </p>
<p>In the eastern states travel was somewhat easier, and many of the public gathered in Goondiwindi on the Queensland-NSW border to watch the eclipse. Scientist, businessman and philanthropist <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/grimwade-sir-wilfrid-russell-7054">Sir Wilfrid Russell Grimwade</a> organised a trip there from Melbourne; Sydney Observatory sent its astronomers; Sydney University mounted an expedition led by physicist <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/vonwiller-oscar-ulrich-8932">Oscar Vonwiller</a> that also included <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/pigot-edward-francis-8048">Father Edward Pigot</a>, president of the NSW branch of the British Astronomical Association. Queensland’s Governor, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nathan-sir-matthew-7728">Sir Matthew Nathan</a>, motored out for the event, and locals came from miles around. </p>
<p>Twenty of Pigot’s fellow members of the British Astronomical Association opted to travel to nearby Stanthorpe, while special trains carried Brisbane residents to Sandgate for the viewing. The indefatigable scientist Reverend Skertchly travelled from Brisbane to Mount Tamborine, where he made many different observations and later described viewing the corona as an epiphany.</p>
<h2>Time for recognition</h2>
<p>Australians from all walks of life engaged with the eclipse. Wonderful photographic records exist of the event, as well as special brochures and copious newspaper coverage. Scientific enthusiasm was mingled with fun, bringing together not just astronomers but also schoolchildren, Indigenous peoples, outback camel drivers, and the wider community. </p>
<p>Yet, a century later, this extraordinary coming together of global and local people isn’t very well documented in the places it happened. In September 1972, Goondiwindi’s citizens marked the golden jubilee of the eclipse, but we are not aware of any formal plans to mark its centenary this year. </p>
<p>At Wallal, which is close to a large and popular caravan park on Eighty Mile Beach, there is no mention of the momentous observations that helped prove Einstein’s genius. Perhaps a commemorative plaque or installation there would be a fitting place to start.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-counted-20-billion-ticks-of-an-extreme-galactic-clock-to-give-einsteins-theory-of-gravity-its-toughest-test-yet-173157">We counted 20 billion ticks of an extreme galactic clock to give Einstein's theory of gravity its toughest test yet</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A total eclipse that travelled the full width of Australia in 1922 offered astronomers the chance to confirm Einstein’s theory of general relativity - and for the community to enjoy a rare spectacle.Brian Finlayson, Honorary Principal Fellow in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of MelbourneRay Sumner, Geographer, California State University, Dominguez HillsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.