The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2020 Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  ROSS ANDERSEN: A Journey into the Animal Mind

  KELLY CLANCY: Sleep No More

  DANIEL DUANE: What Remains

  DAVID H. FREEDMAN: With a Simple Twist, a “Magic” Material Is Now the Big Thing in Physics

  RIVKA GALCHEN: The Eighth Continent

  BAHAR GHOLIPOUR: The Tumultuous History of a Mysterious Brain Signal That Questioned Free Will

  ADAM GOPNIK: Younger Longer

  SARA HARRISON: Right Under Our Noses

  PATRICK HOUSE: I, Language Robot

  FERRIS JABR: Beauty of the Beasts

  SARAH KAPLAN: Ghosts of the Future

  ADAM MANN: Intelligent Ways to Search for Extraterrestrials

  DEANNA CSOMO MCCOOL: Total Eclipse

  JON MOOALLEM: “We Have Fire Everywhere”

  MELINDA WENNER MOYER: Vaccines Reimagined

  SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE: New Blood

  DOUGLAS PRESTON: The Day the Dinosaurs Died

  TIM REQUARTH: The Final Five Percent

  JOHN SEABROOK: The Next Word

  JOSHUA SOKOL: Troubled Treasure

  JOSHUA SOKOL: The Hidden Heroines of Chaos

  SHANNON STIRONE: The Hunt for Planet Nine

  NATALIE WOLCHOVER: A Different Kind of Theory of Everything

  ANDREW ZALESKI: The Brain That Remade Itself

  Contributors’ Notes

  Other Notable Science and Nature Writing of 2019

  Read More from the Best American Series

  About the Editors

  Connect with HMH

  Footnotes

  Copyright © 2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  Introduction copyright © 2020 by Michio Kaku

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Best American Series® is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. The Best American Science and Nature Writing™ is a trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhbooks.com

  ISSN 1530-1508 (print) ISSN 2573-475X (ebook)

  ISBN 978-0-358-07429-8 (print) ISBN 978-0-358-07424-3 (ebook)

  v1.1020

  Cover image © Jarun Ont Akrai / Shutterstock

  “A Journey into the Animal Mind” by Ross Andersen. First published in The Atlantic, March 2019. Copyright © 2019 by The Atlantic Monthly Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Used under license.

  “Sleep No More” by Kelly Clancy. First published in Wired, January 15, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Kelly Clancy. Reprinted by permission of Kelly Clancy.

  “What Remains” by Daniel Duane. First published in California Sunday Magazine, April 4, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Duane. Reprinted by permission of Daniel Duane.

  “With a Simple Twist, a ‘Magic’ Material Is Now the Big Thing in Physics” by David H. Freedman. First published in Quanta Magazine, April 30, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Quanta Magazine. This article is reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation.

  “The Eighth Continent” by Rivka Galchen. First published in The New Yorker, May 6, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Rivka Galchen. Reprinted by permission of Rivka Galchen.

  “The Tumultuous History of a Mysterious Brain Signal That Questioned Free Will” by Bahar Gholipour. First published in The Atlantic, September 10, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Bahar Gholipour. Reprinted by permission of Bahar Gholipour.

  “Younger Longer” by Adam Gopnik. First published in The New Yorker, May 20, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Adam Gopnik. Reprinted by permission of Adam Gopnik.

  “Right Under Our Noses” by Sara Harrison. First published in Wired, June 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Sara Harrison. Reprinted by permission of Sara Harrison.

  “I, Language Robot” by Patrick House. First published in Los Angeles Review of Books, October 21, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Patrick House. Reprinted by permission of Patrick House.

  “Beauty of the Beasts” by Ferris Jabr. First published in The New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Ferris Jabr. Reprinted by permission of Ferris Jabr.

  “Ghosts of the Future” by Sarah Kaplan. First published in The Washington Post, December 6, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by The Washington Post. All rights reserved. Used under license.

  “Intelligent Ways to Search for Extraterrestrials” by Adam Mann. First published in The New Yorker, October 3, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Adam Mann. Reprinted by permission of Adam Mann.

  “Total Eclipse” by Deanna Csomo McCool. First published in Aeon online magazine, April 8, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Deanna D. McCool. Reprinted by permission of Deanna D. McCool.

  “‘We Have Fire Everywhere’” by Jon Mooallem. First published in The New York Times Magazine, July 31, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Jon Mooallem. Reprinted by permission of Jon Mooallem.

  “Vaccines Reimagined” by Melinda Wenner Moyer. First published in Scientific American, June 2019, Vol. 320, Issue 6. Copyright © 2019 by Melinda Wenner Moyer. Reprinted by permission of Melinda Wenner Moyer.

  “New Blood” by Siddhartha Mukherjee. First published in The New Yorker, July 22, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

  “The Day the Dinosaurs Died” (originally titled “The Day the Earth Died”) by Douglas Preston. First published in The New Yorker, March 29, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Douglas Preston. Reprinted by permission of Douglas Preston.

  “The Final Five Percent” by Tim Requarth. First published in Longreads, October 22, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Timothy W. Requarth. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

  “The Next Word” by John Seabrook. First published in The New Yorker, October 14, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by John Seabrook. Reprinted by permission of The New Yorker.

  “Troubled Treasure” by Joshua Sokol. First published in Science Magazine, May 24, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Joshua Sokol. Reprinted by permission of Joshua Sokol.

  “The Hidden Heroines of Chaos” by Joshua Sokol. First published in Quanta Magazine, May 20, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Quanta Magazine. This article is reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation.

  “The Hunt for Planet Nine” by Shannon Stirone. First published in Longreads, January 22, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Shannon Stirone. Reprinted by permission of Shannon Stirone.

  “A Different Kind of Theory of Everything” by Natalie Wolchover. First published in The New Yorker, February 19, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Condé Nast. Reprinted by permission of Condé Nast.

  “The Brain That Remade Itself” by Andrew Zaleski. First published in OneZero, February 27,
2019. Copyright © 2019 by Andrew Zaleski. Reprinted by permission of Andrew Zaleski.

  Foreword

  I’m writing this from within a very strange time capsule, not at the moment it’s sealed nor at the moment it’s opened, but from somewhere weird in between. I’m writing this from New York City in the middle of April 2020. The coronavirus pandemic feels to be in full swing, but for all I know, this could just be the early ramp-up to something still unimaginable. This year’s guest editor, Michio Kaku, wrote his introduction this past winter, when this virus was news but not yet the omnipresent fact of daily life around the world; you’re reading this in the fall of 2020 or later and know so much that’s still to come for me. I’m going to read this again then, in the pages of our book instead of as I’m typing it at the little desk now wedged into my bedroom, so this is a time capsule but also a letter to my future self—​I hope she, and all of you, are okay. (Who knows what late 2020 will be like, but in April we are doing a lot of telling people we write to, “I hope you’re doing okay.”)

  I thought last year’s foreword would be the weird one—​I wrote it eight months pregnant, in a fever dream of hormones and deadlines. A few months ago, thinking about this year’s foreword, I thought I would write about how the intervening year had changed my relationship to the stories in this anthology: about being a mother, about reading my son picture books about ocean fish and space exploration, about Ronald McNair and John Muir, and about the wonder and curiosity I hope we’re seeding. I thought I would write about my son’s future and the world we’re leaving for future generations. A few months ago, those fears and questions felt pressing enough. Now it’s plenty to say, “We’re safe today, and we’re going to do our best tomorrow for ourselves and whoever we can help.”

  In thinking about the role of science writing, right now and whenever you’re reading this, it’s impossible not to think of an essay from last year’s collection, Ed Yong’s “When the Next Plague Hits,” originally published in 2018 by The Atlantic. No one knew then that SARS-CoV-2 was coming, but many people knew something was, and that we were not ready. But there are no essays about the coronavirus in this collection—​these pieces were all published in 2019, a time capsule of their own. Don’t think of them as a relic of the Before, but as a reminder that the world is huge and full of mystery, full of scientists and writers working to understand it, full of storytellers making of that work so many beautiful and valuable things.

  The world these essays describe is still out there, even as so many researchers work from home instead of their labs. Joshua Sokol shines a light on the long-ignored contributions of two women to the discovery of chaos theory in his beautifully reported piece “The Hidden Heroines of Chaos.” In “The Hunt for Planet Nine,” Shannon Stirone shadows the researchers searching for a suspected new planet in the outer reaches of our solar system. She covers everything from the origins of the solar system to the history of planet discoveries, from the good-natured bickering of two researchers to the crystal-clear night sky above an observatory, all in service of asking: “What is happening beyond where we can see?”

  These are also the stories of individual human lives—​as individual as any can be with the bonds of pain and love that connect us. Tim Requarth explores the unknowable depths of both neuroscience and family in “The Final Five Percent,” about his brother’s traumatic brain injury. In “Sleep No More,” Kelly Clancy tells the story of a married couple, Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel, who upended their lives to research a cure for the prion disease that killed Vallabh’s mother and that she inherited. And in “Total Eclipse,” Deanna Csomo McCool does the unimaginable (at least it is to me, writing this one room over from my sleeping baby): writing with grace and love and incredible clarity about her daughter’s death. I am in awe of how McCool made her grief into a gift for her readers.

  Writers are also grieving losses in the natural world—​of species and glaciers and forests, and, underneath it all, the loss of our sense of safety and stability in the warming decades to come. In “What Remains,” Daniel Duane grapples with the human love for the experience and idea of wilderness as he chronicles the life and death of a glacier. Jon Mooallem’s “‘We Have Fire Everywhere’” braids a gripping minute-by-minute narration of a woman’s attempt to outrun—​or outdrive—​the wildfire consuming her California town with a no less urgent study of what’s brought us to a moment when so much of our world is on fire: “It was all more evidence that the natural world was warping, outpacing our capacity to prepare for, or even conceive of, the magnitude of disaster that such a disordered earth can produce.”

  In “Ghosts of the Future,” Sarah Kaplan situates the Cambrian explosion—​and its monument in the fossil record, the Burgess Shale—​amid the history of life and humanity’s power to alter its future. That history is a record of boom and bust, swinging between flourishing and cataclysm on a thin thread of luck. In response to the point made by her scientist–tour guide that, as intelligent life, we are so lucky to be able to witness evidence of life’s path, Kaplan writes, “What a profound responsibility that is. What a beautiful gift.”

  I wrote last year’s foreword around an essay by Tony Kushner, extending his argument about the impossibility of apolitical art to the impossibility of apolitical science and nature writing. (If anyone wants to keep emailing me about how these selections are too political, I can’t stop you. Nor, apparently, could an entire essay about why that stance is not only misguided but dangerous. You can reach me at BASNSeries@​gmail​.com, and you can find information about submitting work for future editions of the anthology at jaimegreen​.net/​BASN.) This year, I keep hearing these lines from the opening of N. K. Jemisin’s novel The Fifth Season:

  This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine.

  But this is the way the world ends.

  When asked if she found it challenging to write for so long in such a grim world, Jemisin said (if I can paraphrase) that she doesn’t think her Broken Earth trilogy is grim or hopeless at all. She said it’s a story about survival—​about surviving the end of the world. She reminds us that the end of the world is survivable, not just by the planet but by us.

  The world has had many ends, from mass extinction events to a mother’s loss of her daughter. We keep writing it, we keep witnessing it, we keep finding the stories and wonder and beauty and pain, and we keep trying to understand.

  In the meanwhile, I hope you’re doing okay.

  Jaime Green

  Introduction

  One fateful day, my daughter asked for my help studying for the New York State Regents exam, required of all public high school students in New York. When she told me the exam was in geology, I relished the idea of sitting down with my daughter and opening her eyes to the wonderous discoveries in the field.

  I began to think of all the ways I could introduce her to the fundamental underlying principles behind geology. For example, continental drift allows us to see how our geology changed over millions of years, shaping the world today. The recycling of rock, starting with volcanic igneous rock, allows us to see how rock gets recycled and where it came from. And analyzing how earthquakes set off underground waves that penetrate the earth allows us to determine what is inside the earth. I made a short list of the organizing principles behind geology.

  Then my daughter brought me actual sample copies of the Regents exam. I was shocked. It consisted of page after page of the names of scores of minerals and crystals to be memorized. The exam was a mind-numbing exercise in rote memorization. Staring at this immense list of irrelevant trivia, which students would forget the day after the exam, my daughter then asked me, “Daddy, why would anyone want to become a scientist?”

  I have never felt so humiliated in my life. I almost felt like ripp
ing up the exam booklet. As a physicist, I had spent my entire life trying to reveal some of the scientific secrets of the universe and then imparting this knowledge to the public. And now my own daughter was telling me that science was so boring and tedious that she wondered why anyone could possibly want to become a scientist.

  Later, I began to realize that this perception—​the false impression that science is a boring list of memorized and useless trivia—​is not just an isolated problem, but one that is prevalent throughout all of society. I recalled the story once told by Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate in physics. When he was a child, he fondly recalled, his father would take him into the forest and teach him there about the nature of birds: how evolution has determined their shape and color and why they act the way they do. Eventually, he became quite an expert in understanding the basic principles underlying their behavior and physical characteristics. One day a bully challenged him and, pointing to a nearby bird, demanded that Richard tell him its name. Richard was caught off guard. He could tell you everything about that bird, except its name. Then the bully said to him that he must be stupid.

  In that instant of time, Richard learned a profound lesson about science. Most people think that science consists of giving fancy names to irrelevant, obscure things. In fact, that is the principal reason why some people are turned off by science.

  So scientists and science writers have a monumental task: making science exciting and relevant to the average person, so that they care about science. If we fail in this endeavor, then we must face dire consequences. This is not an academic question.

  First of all, science and technology are at the root of all the wealth and prosperity we see in society. The Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, which lifted civilization out of poverty and misery, was unleashed by our understanding of Newton’s mechanics and the steam engine. The electric revolution of the early 1900s, which lit up our cities and created powerful dynamos and engines, was a by-product of our new understanding of the laws of electromagnetism. The current revolution in high tech, electronics, computers, and the internet was pioneered by the creation of the transistor and the laser, and our future will be determined by rapid advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. Beyond that, by midcentury we expect rapid advances in quantum computers, fusion power, and brain-computer interface.