The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2020 Read online

  In the postwar era, however, scientists often got lazy and preferred to work in their ivory towers, far away from the noise and bustle of the masses—​until one event shook them out of their complacency. In the 1980s, physicists proposed the construction of the Superconducting Super Collider, a gigantic particle accelerator that would reveal some of the secrets of the creation of the universe. It was to be built outside Dallas, Texas, and would ensure the leadership of American physics for decades to come. It was to be the crowning achievement of American science. However, internal squabbles among physicists and cost overruns had made Congress wary of funding this huge machine. Physicists failed to convince the general public of the worth of building a $4 billion machine in order to conduct pure science.

  So the congressional vote was taken, and the Super Collider was abruptly canceled in 1993. This sent shock waves through the scientific community. Congress had previously given physicists a billion dollars to dig a gigantic circular hole for the Super Collider. When Congress canceled the project, it allotted another billion dollars to fill up the hole. So Congress spent two billion dollars digging a huge hole and then filling it up!

  Eventually, with the United States dropping out, the Europeans took over and built a smaller machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) outside Geneva, Switzerland. Not surprisingly, the Vatican for high-energy physics is now in Geneva, not Texas, and the LHC went on to find the celebrated Higgs boson particle, a discovery that earned the Nobel Prize for two physicists who proposed it.

  The lesson here is that scientists pay a dear price when they isolate themselves and fail to excite the public. Ultimately, the taxpayer foots the bill, and scientists have to convince the public of the worth of their research. During the Cold War, Congress was willing to fund exotic science projects because we were competing with the Russians. But in the post–Cold War era, when funding for science has diminished in Russia, scientists must make a pitch directly to the public about funding expensive research projects. Crudely speaking, we scientists must leave the ivory tower and learn how to sing for our supper.

  Meanwhile, science has advanced to the point where it is vital to our nation’s future that the public understand the concepts of science. Biotechnology has given us the power to alter life itself. How far should we take it? Computers have advanced to the point where they can begin to mimic human behavior. Will this threaten the jobs of millions of people? Satellites clearly show that the Earth is heating up. How much of the warming is due to human activity, and what do we do about it?

  In my opinion, one of the keys to reaching the public is to write captivating science articles about science. Although I am a research physicist (working on string theory), I try to engage the public whenever I can, since our future depends critically on science. After all, after everything is said and done, the wealth and prosperity we see around us come from science and technology. In selecting the two dozen articles for this book, I tried to list some of the outstanding characteristics that would create compelling, exciting, and fascinating stories.

  I looked for three ways in which writers might have done this. First, the best stories try to capture the excitement felt by the scientists who are doing the research. They capture the personal drama of scientists making huge personal sacrifices in order to prove a certain hypothesis or theory. Even after a string of failures, these scientists doggedly continue to toil in the laboratory. You begin to wonder what motivates them to try again and again, despite the odds stacked against them. You begin to understand what makes them tick.

  Second, compelling stories can bring us the drama of that “aha” moment, after weary months or years spent toiling in the lab or in the field, when everything seems to fit together. (For the great Greek mathematician Archimedes, it was when he discovered the laws of buoyancy and, according to legend, ran naked in the streets of Athens shouting “Eureka!”) Out of a mass of random pieces of data, suddenly the puzzle pieces begin to fit together, and the scientist can see the overall picture emerge—​perhaps a new scientific principle that may extend far beyond the laboratory. For example, culture is wonderful and can inspire us and enrich our lives, but culture is limited to the planet Earth. For me as a physicist, it is the joy of knowing that, perhaps on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy, an alien has discovered the very same physical principle, and one that is universal throughout the cosmos.

  Third, a well-told science article can get us excited about the potential benefits of a scientific discovery to all of humanity. When the Human Genome Project finally revealed our genetic code, that discovery not only gave us unprecedented insight into who we are and where we come from but also opened the door to one day vanquishing ancient illnesses that have haunted us since the dawn of time.

  So, based on these three criteria, here is my selection of the best articles in science of the past year.

  One of the most important areas of scientific progress has been unraveling the genetics of deadly diseases. Not only can these diseases spark epidemics that kill thousands, but some diseases, like the recent coronavirus coming out of China, can even cause massive disruptions in the world economy.

  To appreciate the importance of the Human Genome Project, remember that President Richard Nixon, with much fanfare and hoopla, launched the War on Cancer back in the 1970s. His administration would create a medical milestone: a historic cure for one of the deadliest of diseases. The basic philosophy was, if you threw enough money at the problem, you could solve it.

  Fifty years later, cancer remains one of the greatest killers in modern society, and cancer treatment still hasn’t changed much. Even today, doctors treat cancer in the same way—​by zapping it (with radiation), slicing it (via surgery), and poisoning it (with chemotherapy). The problem with declaring a War on Cancer was that nobody knew the basic science behind cancer in the 1970s. Now we realize that cancer is, at its root, a disease that affects our genes, and the breakthrough was the Human Genome Project, which opened the floodgates to discovery and allowed scientists to list all the mutations in our chromosomes. Identifying these mutations, in turn, has opened up new avenues to attack cancer, such as modifying and strengthening our immune system so that it can recognize and kill cancer cells. So, as Siddhartha Mukherjee discusses in “New Blood,” immunotherapy, by introducing an entirely new avenue to attack cancer, has been a game-changer.

  Melinda Wenner Moyer notes in her essay “Vaccines Reimagined” that there is even wild speculation that a single cure for a wide variety of diseases might be found. For example, if there is a common pathway by which many types of viruses gain entry into our cells, then, by genetic engineering, we might be able to close that pathway and instantly render harmless entire classes of viruses.

  As the world population gets older, there is increasing interest in using this genetic firepower to unlock the secrets of the aging process, as discussed by Adam Gopnik in “Younger Longer.” But as we unravel the genetics of aging, we would do well to listen to a cautionary tale. In Greek mythology, the goddess Aurora, who was immortal, fell in love with Tithonus, a mortal man. When Aurora begged Zeus to grant her lover the gift of immortality, Zeus finally granted her wish. But Aurora made a crucial mistake. She forgot to ask for the gift of eternal youth as well. Sadly, as the centuries rolled on, Tithonus became older, feebler, and more decrepit, but he could never die. If one day we become immortal, let us hope we do not do so before also curing the ravages of aging.

  Biotechnology has opened up entirely new avenues to attack bacteria and viruses. But there are limits to what we can do by manipulating our genes. As recounted by Kelly Clancy in “Sleep No More,” doctors have become increasingly aware that some diseases (like mad cow disease) are not caused by viruses or bacteria at all, but by renegade proteins called “prions” that wreak havoc by spreading to other proteins via contact.

  Furthermore, although biotechnology has helped us make remarkable progress in attacking certain diseases, there remain some ancient diseases for whic
h we have no cure at all.

  In particular, scientists are still clueless when it comes to diseases of the brain. Historically, the brain has been a black box, its complex inner workings a mystery to modern medicine. On the one hand, scientists are amazed at what they have discovered about the power and flexibility of the brain, the most complex object in the known universe, with 100 billion neurons, each one connected in turn to 10,000 other neurons. For example, as Andrew Zaleski relates in “The Brain That Remade Itself,” one young boy lost about one-sixth of his entire brain yet could still function.

  On the other hand, the suffering caused by diseases of the brain can cause unending tragedy. Despite advances in drug therapies, suicide and depression continue to ruin and devastate countless lives, as revealed in Deanna Csomo McCool’s sad article “Total Eclipse.” Suicide remains one of the greatest killers of young people, yet science does not really know why it happens.

  Similarly, science is still struggling with the question of the link between our brains and our behavior. For example, does this link affect criminal behavior? Is there a “crime gene”? Can criminals blame their crimes on the biochemistry of their neurons? In “The Final Five Percent,” Tim Requarth raises sticky ethical questions, especially those that arise when a person who is clearly brain-damaged commits a heinous crime. How much is he personally responsible if his brain is damaged? Can he say, “My brain made me do it”?

  Are we morally responsible for our acts? In other words, do we have free will? Bahar Gholipour, in “The Tumultuous History of a Mysterious Brain Signal That Questioned Free Will,” discusses a celebrated experiment that showed that even before we make a decision, our brains send out a signal, which can be seen in brain scans. In other words, these results suggest that there is no free will. We are, in some sense, slaves of our own brains. But a new series of experiments have called this conclusion into question, by indicating that random events can also generate these signals. The debate still rages on. What is at stake is nothing less than the origin of human behavior.

  And speaking of brains and behavior, there is a running debate about the brains of animals and robots. As humans, we are clearly conscious and self-aware of our actions. But what about animals? As Ross Andersen discusses in “A Journey into the Animal Mind,” some scientists believe that animals are conscious, but have a different type of consciousness. Our consciousness is dominated by what we see with our eyes, while dogs are guided by thousands of smells and aromas, bats and dolphins live in a world of sonic waves, and bees can see ultraviolet radiation and hence recognize flowers in totally different ways from us. To bridge the gap between humans and other animals, scientists are now creating a machine that can detect smells, almost like a dog. This could also have practical implications, as Sara Harrison details in “Right Under Our Noses”—​for instance, in sniffing out explosives of terrorists or locating the bodies of crime victims.

  If animals are indeed conscious, then can a case be made that machines are also conscious? Can machines even be indistinguishable from humans? As our computers and AI systems become increasingly powerful and begin to rival human abilities, at what point will robots be indistinguishable from humans? This possibility is explored in Patrick House’s article “I, Language Robot,” and in “The Next Word” by John Seabrook, who relates that AI is now used to create software that can imitate a person’s writing with uncanny accuracy. In fact, people are sometimes unable to tell the difference between a paragraph written by a human and one written by a machine. Remarkable feats like this are just the beginning.

  All these breakthroughs were spearheaded by research in a laboratory. But we cannot tell the story of science without mentioning that we do not live in an isolated laboratory, and that our activities influence the larger society and the environment around us.

  In “The Hidden Heroines of Chaos,” Joshua Sokol notes that women who played a crucial role in developing many branches of science were often reduced to footnotes or were forgotten entirely, such as in the development of chaos theory. (Sadly, history is full of examples of women scientists failing to get the recognition they deserved. Sophie Germain, the great French mathematician, had to disguise herself as a man in order to publish in math journals. Jocelyn Bell, who discovered the pulsar, was passed over for a Nobel Prize in Physics for her historic discovery. The work of the late Vera Rubin, who published some of the earliest articles on the presence of dark matter, was ignored for most of her professional life.) Perhaps in the future, scientists will learn their lesson and give appropriate credit to everyone who makes a great discovery, regardless of gender. (When the great mathematician Emmy Noether was passed over for a position at the University of Göttingen, mathematician David Hilbert remarked in disgust, “We are a university, not a bathhouse.”)

  As science probes the mysteries of our environment, we cannot help but wonder at how evolution has given us the tremendously rich variety of life-forms that surround us. One persistent question, mentioned by Darwin himself, is the strange prevalence of beauty in nature. Everywhere we look, we see an explosion of rich colors and forms. The gorgeous flowers found in our own backyards often rival some of world’s greatest works of art. But if evolution favors the fittest, then why do we have the flourishing of “useless” beauty? Darwin thought that, in addition to natural selection (survival of the fittest), nature also follows sexual selection, that is, beauty provides some hidden evolutionary advantage to animals in seeking a mate. A male peacock sprouted extravagantly colored feathers in order to prove to a female that it was so vigorous and healthy that it could afford to waste energy on such “useless” displays. This question has been hotly debated since Darwin’s time, and the debate continues to this day, as explored in “Beauty of the Beasts” by Ferris Jabr.

  We can see the wonders of evolution at work in the essay “Ghosts of the Future,” where Sarah Kaplan investigates the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago. Back then, after billions of years when life on earth was dominated by single-celled organisms, suddenly there was an explosion of multicellular life-forms. Nature was experimenting with hundreds of different body shapes and organs, which burst forth from the fossil record. Our own body shape, a linear spinal cord with four appendages, is just one of the many life-forms produced by nature during this crucial time.

  In “Troubled Treasure,” Joshua Sokol gives us a very different take on this treasure trove of fossils. Remember that, as illustrated in the movie Jurassic Park, delicate creatures were accidentally encased in clear amber millions of years ago. Perhaps, the movie suggests, the blood of dinosaurs was also sealed in amber, and perhaps it could be used to clone dinosaurs and bring them back to life. In reality, scientists do not expect to find the blood of the dinosaurs preserved in amber, but delicate tissues from insects, feathers, snakes, worms, and more have been found preserved this way, especially in Myanmar. This treasure trove of amber gives us a rare snapshot of life up to 100 million years ago, but unfortunately, today’s political conflicts can disrupt this priceless treasure. Because some rare amber specimens can fetch tens of thousands of dollars on the black market, there is a vibrant trade in illegal amber. In fact, competing political and military groups have tried to control this lucrative trade, endangering the very existence of a precious and irreplaceable evolutionary legacy.

  Any discussion of the impact of science on the environment must mention California, which, as Daniel Duane discusses in “What Remains,” has recently borne the brunt of much environmental chaos. Old photographs and satellite pictures show the unmistakable fact that, sadly, the magnificent glaciers of Yosemite and elsewhere are in decline, receding as the Earth is heating up. California is also afflicted by huge fires sweeping across both the northern part of the state, engulfing vital areas like the Napa Valley wine country, and the southern part, where even the homes of Hollywood movie stars are affected. This story is graphically told by Jon Mooallem in “‘We Have Fire Everywhere.’”

  These catastrophes, many
scientists believe, are self-inflicted, caused in part by our dependence on fossil fuels. But nature has also given us natural disasters that show how devastating and profound other environmental disasters can be.

  In Douglas Preston’s “The Day the Dinosaurs Died,” we learn that paleontologists can now give us one of the clearest blow-by-blow accounts of what happened 66 million years ago when a huge meteor or comet slammed into the Yucatán of Mexico, helping to end the 200-million-year domination of the dinosaurs and paving the way for the rise of mammals and, eventually, you and me. By digging into the underwater Yucatán crater itself and by analyzing the treasure trove of fossils found at Hell Creek, Montana, paleontologists have found graphic evidence of this monumental explosion, from the original fireball, global meteor showers, tsunami, and firestorm to the eventual plunge into darkness of the entire Earth as the debris from the impact cut off sunlight. Eventually, close to 90 percent of all life-forms perished.

  The dinosaurs, unfortunately, did not have a space program, so they are not here to debate the question.

  We, however, do have a space program and might one day use spaceships to avoid a similar fate. The outstanding articles from the past year collected here not only cover scientific advances in understanding inner space but also soar into outer space. In fact, today entrepreneurs, investors, and billionaires, not just scientists, are setting their sights on outer space.

  We could be entering a new golden era of space exploration as costs continue to drop, Silicon Valley billionaires open their checkbooks to exciting new projects, and more countries and corporations field a new array of booster rockets.