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Luc
y n
d
Stut
W
d
i
n
g
ith
MS
"Children can't get MS."
"How I wish that
were true."
M
S
Multiple Sclerosis Society
Children can get
MS,
although it's very rare. But with the
MS
Society's support we can sll make the most of fily life.
They've got a freephone helplne
0808 800 8000
r
you can
visit
www.mssciety.org.k
to
fnd
out more or make
a donation.
MS Society.
Putting the pieces together.
The Multiple Sclerosis Sciety of Great
Britn
nd Northen Ireland is a charity registered
n
nglnd nd Wales
(207495)
nd Scotlnd
(SCOI6433)
CONTENTS
Volume 205 No 2747
NEWS
5
EDITORIAL Revolution ahead for
space exploration
6
UPFRONT Tuna pirates, Cancer drugs
and antidepressants don't mix
8
THIS WEEK
Space 2020:what NASA will do next. Air
turbulence aids quantum communication,
Chromosome caps presage brain's decline,
Health inequalities begin in childhood, Floral
heating, Dementia gene boosts IQ, Earth's
earliest movers
14
IN BRIEF Hazards of "third-hand" smoke, Bug's
assassin tactics, Beer is good for your bones
17
TECHNOLOGY
Smart talking software, Drive-by-wire caught in
the headlights, Designs on cellphone security
COVER STORY
The star that
shouldn't be
An "impossible"
stellar explosion
opens a new
window on the
early cosmos
Cover image
Tim Gra vestock
OPINION
22
New Nobels or not? Find out the Nobel
Foundation's verdict on pleas for extra Nobel
prizes from a panel convened by
New Scientist
23
One minute with
...
Nobel laureate Paul Nurse,
on the big future of biomedicine
24
LETTERS Talking to aliens, One wife or many?
26
Feathered-fossil hunting China's leading
dinosaur expert, Xu Xing, has named more
species of dinosaurs than anyone else alive
Healing
touch
The secret to
growing new
organs is to get
all touchy-feely
FEATURES
28
The star that shouldn't be (see right)
32
My big fat geek wedding What happens to
our bodies when we say "I dc'? There was only
one way to find out."
36
The healing touch (see right)
�
r
40
Martian sheen Are shiny boulders on Mars our ;
, -
�
•
best evidence yet for life on the Red Planet?
�
:
I
�
�
�
,
REGULARS
24
ENIGMA
44
BOOKS & ARTS
Reviews Reclaiming unhappiness from
psychiaty's grip, God vs messy genomes,
Why monogamists need big brains,
46
Interview Jeremy Rifkin explains why his new
book sees us morphing into
Homo empothicus
64
FEEDBACK Teacup tube-map, Aspects of "ph"
65
THE LAST WORD Warm paws in the snow
48
JOBS
&
CAREERS
Coming next week
Message from the caves
Writing was invented long
before civilisation
Brain paradox
When a "dementia gene"
makes you smarter
PLUS Jane Goodall on half
a century saving the wilds
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13 Februay 2010 I NewScientist 13
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EDITORIAL
Turning point for
space exploration
possibilities range from demonstrating
brand new technologies, such as ion engines
and lunar mining (see page 8), to further
developing robotics and other technologies
at which it excels.
Strategic change along these lines could
revitalise NASA and be the best possible
riposte to those who have written off
Constellation as an expensive attempt to
clone the achievements of the Apollo
programme in the 1960s. It will also
do wonders inrestoring the agency's fading
glamour, and its ability to inspire the next
generation of spacefarers.
A fair society is
better for all of us
The White House's plan for
NASA
may sound mundane, but it has
far-reaching consequences
MANY rightly assume that the poor are
relatively unhealthy. But the same goes
for almost everyone, save the richest,
according to a key review of the effects of
health inequalities in England. As we report
on page 11, the quest for social fairness should
begin with child development.
The implications are radical. Based on the
knowledge that people with degrees have
lower mortality rates than those without,
Michael Marmot's team asked what would
happen if everybody in England, aged 30 and
over, had the mortality rate of graduates. The
answer was there would be 202,000 fewer
premature deaths each year, accounting for
40 per cent of all deaths. Levelling health
disparities in rich nations will have a much
bigger impact than focusing on the worst off
.
•
IN THE almost half century since Yuri Gagarin
orbited the Earth, human space flight has been
the preserve of state agencies -first Russian
and American, and more recently Chinese too.
That could be set to change, as the US charts a
new course for its space agency, NASA.
The White House wants to scrap NASA's
Constellation programme, which has been
developing two new rockets to deliver
astronauts to the moon and take overthe task
of ferrying people to the International Space
Station after the space shuttles retire.
President Barack Obama's proposed budget,
which will implement this change, will likely
face fierce opposition in Congress, but ifit is
approved, NASA will be able to shift the latter
responsibility to private companies, leaving
it free to spend its money on other activities.
Paying commercial enterprises to take
astronauts aloft may not seem like such a big
change. After all, NASA has always contracted
with the private sector to provide its space
hardware, and companies like Virgin Galactic
have alreadyannounced plans to take paying
customers into space. But ifNASA can hand
over to private " space taxis" the routine
activities of delivering supplies and people
into orbit, it will be able to concentrate its
energies on truly revolutionary work. The
"If NASA hands over routine tasks to
private 'space taxis' it can focus its
efforts on truly revolutionary work"
Ifprivate companies succeed in developing
reliable vehicles for routine tasks, more
adventurous space exploration will be the
long-term winner. Private-sector companies
already reckon that they will be able to launch
astronauts for a fraction of the cost of a space
shuttle flight -and they could even undercut
Russia's Soyuz craft. Competition between
them could drive down prices even further.
As time goes on, there will be new
commercial opportunities for space tourism,
contract research, even private exploration
beyond low-Earth orbit for manufacturing,
minerals and more. A few decades from now,
human space flight could be supported more
by commercial activities than government
funding -and we'll look back in amazement to
the days when cumbersome national agencies
were allowed to monopolise our exploration
of the final frontier
.
•
Saying 'I do' to science
IN OUR celebrity-obsessed culture, weddings
can sometimes turn out to be little more than
publicity stunts. So some may think the
decision by one of our reporters to measure
hormone levels during her own vows is just
another gimmick (see page 32). In fact,
researchers rushed to help, as her wedding
offered a rare opportunity to study a real-life
situation, rather than a stage-managed lab test.
Theywere rewarded with plenty of insights
into a little-appreciated mystery: why so
many of us want to say"I do" in public
.
•
What's hot on NewScientist.com
o
�
PHYSICS
Found:
of gruesome human
week with an
"
artificially
it a particularly slippery
o
cosmic graffiti
experiments to
intelligent" assistant
specimen
Stephen Hawking's
eavesdropping stations
installed on his phone,
initials are written into
Could he trust itwith
SPACE
Pluto pics
the cosmic microwave
TECH
Super
-
st
r
on
g
the important stuff?
reveal a mottled world
background, Find more
nanopillars
Howto
Pluto may take a
in our interactive graphic make a brittle metal alloy
ZOOLOiiER
The
whopping 248 years
stronger and ducti Ie
troglodyte bird of
to orbit the sun, but its
•
iALLERY
The
by cutting it into tiny
South America
Do you have a burning desire
to work for New Scientist?
suface is changing at
New Scientisfs trainee scheme provides six
months of paid work experience in our London
office. Applicants need a degree in science or
technology and should demonstrate their flair
for journalism by sending in an unpublished
article of not more than 400 words describing a
recent scientific advance. Experience in online
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including a (V, the article and any published
writing, should reach us by 1 March. Email
Sophie.Thomson@new5cientist.com
�
UK's secret sites
barbell-shaped pillars
It's a bird that thinks
a much faster rate
Our dossierof some of
it's a bat. The split
the UK's most sensitive
TECH
Intelligence
personality of the
For breaking news,
government sites, from
in your pocket
Our
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reporter spends a
dwelling oilbird makes
newscientist.com
13 February 2010 I
NewScientist
15
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