《A Short History of Nearly Everything》


 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    As I sit  bearing majesticallyencouraging and tactful notes from Ian tattersal of tural orypointing out, inter alia, t Perigueux is not a  it is inventive but atouco italicize taxonomic divisions above t I ently misspelled Olorgesaille, a place t I recently visited, and so on insimilar vein text covering ise, early humans.

    Goodness kno, but itis to Dr. tattersall and all of t to mention t t many begin to tely tion ofted to t ience in ansedquestion: quot;Im sorry, but can you explain t again?quot;In ted States: Ian tattersall of tural ory in Nemoutcer in Lebanon, Nement of Natural Resources, Ioy; Mike Voory of Nebraskaand Asate Park near Orca University, Storm Lake, Io, director of researc asonObservatory, Gor of Yelloone National Park,and ional Park; Frank Asara of ty of California atBerkeley; Oliver Payne and Lynn Addison of tional Geograpy; James O.

    Farloy; Roger L. Larson, professor of marine geopy of R ortar-telegram neen of Dallas, texas; and taff of torical Society in DesMoines.

    In England: David Caplin of Imperial College, London; Ricey, Les Ellis, and Katural ory Museum; Martin Raff of University College, London; Rosalinditute of Biological Antitute; and Keitimes.

    In Australia: t Evans of oria Bennett of tralian National University in Canberra; Louise Burke andJoy of estern Australia; toria; timFlannery, director of tralian Museum in Adelaide; and taff oftate Library of Neh ales in Sydney.

    And elseer manager at ton, and Dr. Emma Mbua, Dr. Koen Maes, and Jillani Ngalla of tionalMuseum in Nairobi.

    I am also deeply and variously indebted to Patrick Janson-Smitulett, Larry Finlay, Steve Rubin, Jed Mattes, Carol on, Ct,David Bryson, Felicity Bryson, Dan McLean, Nick Soutrick Gallagaff of the peerless and ever-cheery howe Library in hanover, Newhampshire.

    Above all, and as al to my dear hia.

 CONTENTS

    ACKNOLEDGMENtS

    INtRODUCtION

    1 o Build a Universe

    2 elcome to tem

    3 the Reverend Evanss Universe

    4 things

    5 tone-Breakers

    6 Science Red in tooth and Claw

    7 Elemental Matters

    8 Einsteins Universe

    9 ty Atom

    10 Getting t

    11 Muster Marks Quarks

    12 th Moves

    13 Bang!

    14 the Fire Below

    15 Dangerous Beauty

    16 Lonely Planet

    17 Into troposphere

    18 the Bounding Main

    19 the Rise of Life

    20 Small orld

    21 Life Goes On

    22 Good-bye to All t

    23 the Richness of Being

    24 Cells

    25 Darion

    26 tuff of Life

    27 Ice time

    28 terious Biped

    29 tless Ape

    30 Good-bye

    NOtES

    BIBLIOGRAPhY

    INDEX

    t Leo Szilard once announced to  ;I dont intend to publiso record ts for tion of God.quot;quot;Dont you ts?quot; Bethe asked.

    quot;Yes,quot; said Szilard.

    quot;s, but  knos.quot;

    -ian von Baeyer,taming tom

 INTRODUCTION

    elcome. And congratulations. I am delig you could make it. Getting easy, I kno, I suspect it tle toughan you realize.

    to begin o be rillions of drifting atoms o assemblein an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. Its an arrangement sospecialized and particular t it ried before and  t many years (icles , cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience t generally underappreciated state knoence.

    oms take trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience attomic level. For all ted attention, your atoms dont actually care about you-indeed, dont even kno you are t even kno ticles, after all, and not even t is a sliging notiont if you o pick yourself apart om at a time, you omic dust, none of o a single overarco keep you you.

    t atoms are fickle and time of devotion is fleeting-fleeting indeed.

    Even a long o only about 650,000  modestmilestone flas, or at some ot ts, for reasons unknoomsly disassemble, and go off to be ots it for you.

    Still, you may rejoice t it  all. Generally speaking in t doesnt, sofar as ell. toms t so liberally and congeniallyflock togeto form living tly toms t decline to do itelse may be, at try life is curiously mundane:

    carbon, rogen, a little calcium, a das dusting ofots-not find in any ordinary drugstore-and tsall you need. t toms t make you is t they make you.

    t is of course the miracle of life.

    atoms make life in oty else;indeed, t ter or air or rocks, nostars and planets, no distant gassy clouds or smake terial. Atoms are so numerous and necessary t  t actually exist at all. t requires to fillitself icles of matter or to produce ligy and ties on ually be a universe at all. For t time t. toms and no universe for to float about in.

    t all anywhere.

    So toms. But t t you oms and t t of  you o be y-first century and smart enougo kno, you also o be traordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on Eartrickybusiness. Of t ed since time, most-99.99 percent-are no longer around. Life on Eart onlybrief but dismayingly tenuous. It is a curious feature of our existence t  t is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguis.

    ts for only about four million years, so if you  be as fickle as toms t made you. You must beprepared to c yourself-sion,everyto do so repeatedly. ts muco get from quot;protoplasmal primordial atomic globulequot; (as t andSullivan song put it) to sentient uprigo mutate neraitsover and over in a precisely timely manner for an exceedingly long  3.8 billion years you ed on it, groy sails, laid eggs, flicked tongue, been sleek,been furry, lived underground, lived in trees, been as big as a deer and as small as a mouse,and a million tiniest deviation from any of tionary ss, and youmigony sop of your y feet for amouthful of delicious sandworms.

    Not only o be attacime immemorial to a favoredevolutionary line, but you remely-make t miraculously-fortunate in yourpersonal ancestry. Consider t t for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older tains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on bottractive enougo find a mate, o reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fateand circumstances to live long enougo do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors randed, stuck fast, untimely ed from its lifes quest of delivering a tiny cic material to tpartner at t moment in order to perpetuate tarycombinations t could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly-in you.

    t  icular  from tall to ttle of t someturned into us, and alsosome of s a great deal to cover, of course,  isnt really. Itcouldnt be. But ime  is.

    My oarting point, for s rated science book t I ext ered, unloved, grimly y-but near t it ration t justcaptivated me: a cuta  intot ing about a quarter ofits bulk.

    Its o believe t time ionbefore, but evidently I  for I clearly remember being transfixed. I suspect, in y,my initial interest e image of streams of unsuspecting eastboundmotorists in tates plunging over tral America and t gradually my attention did turnin a more sco tific import of tion t ted of discrete layers, ending in ter  as to tion, and I remembert;?quot;I didnt doubt tness of tion for an instant-I still tend to trust ts of scientists in trust tion-but I couldnt for t  no eye rate, could look like and be made of. to me t  amiracle. t ion h science ever since.

    Excited, I took t nig before dinner-an action t I expectprompted my moto feel my fore-and, starting page, I read.

    And   exciting at all. It  actually altogether comprehensible.

    Above all, it didnt ansions t tration stirred up in a normalinquiring mind: ? And if it isburning a t  to touct of terior melting-or is it? And  burns itself out, o t sink out?

    But trangely silent on sucails-indeed, silent on everytanticlines, synclines, axial faults, and t o keep tuffsecret by making all of it soberly unfato suspect tt altogete impulse. to be a mystifying universalconspiracy among textbook auto make certain terial t rayedtoo near teresting and  least a longdistance peresting.

    I no ters imotey, and tim Flannery are t jump out froma single station of t (and ts not even to mention te but godlike Ric sadly none of te any textbook I ever used. All mine ten bymen (it ing notion t everyt te ers end ion of questions time. So I gre science  suspecting t it needntbe, and not really t it at all if I could . too, became my position for along time.

    ter-about four or five years ago-I  t moonlit ocean, o me ainuncomfortable forcefulness t I didnt kno t t I o live on. I y but t Lakes. Didnt est idea. I didnt knoyime or less, and  or not. (I am very pleased to tell you t until te 1970s scientists didnt knoo tions eit didnt talk about it very audibly.)And ocean salinity of course represented only t sliver of my ignorance. I didntknoon ein, didnt kno understands could look at a layer of rock on a canyon ell you   kno, uned urge to knotleabout tters and to understand . t to me remained test of all amazements-ists . s rocks are or er? arted and  om? And o t-or perists so often seem to kno till cant predict aneartell us o tednesday?

    So I decided t I e a portion of my life-t nourns out-toreading books and journals and finding saintly, patient experts prepared to ans ofoutstandingly dumb questions. to see if it isnt possible to understand andappreciate-marvel at, enjoy even-ts of science at a level tisnt too tec isnt entirely superficial either.

    t  folloended to be.

    Anyo cover and muco do it, so lets begin.

 PART I LOST IN THE COSMOS

the same plane.

    tion. . . .

    It’s perfect, you know.

    It’s gorgeous.

    It’s almost uncanny.

    -Astronomer Geoffrey Marcy

    describing tem

 1 HOW TO BUILD A UNIVERSENO MATTER

    ry you o grasp just iny, iallyunassuming, is a proton. It is just oo small.

    A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, antial thing.

    Protons are so small t a little dib of ink like t on tained in ons are exceedingly microscopic, to say t.

    No) sons doo abillionts normal size into a space so small t it on look enormous.

    Noo t tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter. Excellent. You are ready to starta universe.

    I’m assuming of course t you ionary universe. If you’d preferinstead to build a more old-fasandard Big Bang universe, you’ll need additionalmaterials. In fact, you o gat mote and particle ofmatter bet into a spot so infinitesimallycompact t it  all. It is knoy.

    In eit ready for a really big bang. Naturally, you ire to a safeplace to observe tacle. Unfortunately, to retire to because outside ty to expand, it  be spreading outto fill a larger emptiness. t exists is t creates as it goes.

    It is natural but o visualize ty as a kind of pregnant dot  ty has no “around”

    around it. t to occupy, no place for it to be. e can’t even ask

    lately popped into being, like a good idea, or ing t moment. time doesn’t exist. tfor it to emerge from.

    And so, from nothing, our universe begins.

    In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory mucoo s and expansive for any form ofy assumes ion. In tlively second (a second t many cosmologists e careers to so ever-finery and t govern pe t. t of  noenbillion degrees of it, enougo begin tions t create ter elements—principally  one atom in a es, 98 percent of all tter t is a place of t ifying possibility,and beautiful, too. And it  time it takes to make a sandwich.

    ter of some debate. Cosmologists  of creation  or someto be  13.7 billion years, but toriously difficult to measure, as  at some indeterminate point in tant past, for reasons unkno knoo science as t = 0. e were on our way.

    t deal  kno kno ion of te arecent one. tre, aBelgian priest-sc tentatively proposed it, but it didn’t really become an activenotion in cosmology until tronomers made anextraordinary and inadvertent discovery.

    t ilson. In 1965, trying to make useof a large communications antenna oories at troubled by a persistent background noise—a steady, steamy  made anyexperimental ing and unfocused. It came from everypoint in t, tronomers dideveryto track doe tested everyelectrical system. t instruments, cs, ed plugs.

    to t tape over every seam and rivet. to t it clean of er paper as “ric material,” or ried worked.

    Unknoo t ty miles a Princeton University, a team of scientists led byRobert Dicke rying so diligently to getrid of. ton researc ed in trop George Gamo if you looked deep enougo spaceyou sion left over from ted t by time it crossed tness of tion rumentt migenna at unately, neiton team, had read Gamow’s paper.

    t Penzias and ilson ed. t least t of it, 90 billiontrillion miles a pons—t ancient ligime and distance ed to micro as Gamo oput tive. If you to tate Building (ing noreet level representing t of t time ofilson and Penzias’s discovery t distant galaxies anyone ected  tiet distant t tieth.

    Penzias and ilson’s finding pusance o he sidewalk.

    Still una Princeton anddescribed to   suggest a solution. Dicke realized atonce wo young men  been scooped,” old he phone.

    Soon afterropicles: one by Penzias andilson describing team explaining itsnature. Alt been looking for cosmic background radiation,didn’t kno erpreted itscer in any paper, tonresearc only sympato Dennis Overbye in Lonely s of togetood t til t it in times .

    Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is sometune your television to any c doesn’t receive, and about 1 percent of tatic you see is accounted for by t remnant of t timeyou complain t t you can alcheuniverse.

    Alt tion us not to t as anexplosion in tional sense. It , sudden expansion on a ?

    One notion is t pery   one of an eternal cycle of expanding and collapsing universes, like ttribute to y or t any rate, t introduced ameasure of instability into t  seems impossible t you could getsomet t t once t proof t you can. It may be t our universe is merely part of many largeruniverses, some in different dimensions, and t Big Bangs are going on all time all overt may be t space and time ogetoo alien for us to imagine—and t ts some sort oftransition p from a form  understand to one can. “to religious questions,” Dr. Andrei Linde, a cosmologist atStanford, told times in 2001.

    t about tself but about he bang.

    Not long after, mind you. By doing a lot of matc goes on inparticle accelerators, scientists believe to 10-43seconds after t ofcreation,  you . e mustn’t sraordinary number t comes before us, but it isperco one from time to time just to be reminded of trillion trillion trillionths of a second.

    **A ific notation: Since very large numbers are cumbersome to e and nearly impossible to read, scientistsuse a siples) of ten in ten 1010 and 6,500,000becomes 6.5 x 106. tiples of ten: 10 x 10 (or 100) becomes 102; 10 x 10 x 10 (or1,000) is 103; and so on, obviously and indefinitely. ttle superscript number signifies tive notations provide latter in print (especially essentially a mirror image,  number indicating to t of t (so 10-4 means 0.0001). tet remains an amazement to me t anyone seeing quot;1.4 x 109 km3’  once t t signifies 1.4Most of  ts of to an idea called inflation t propounded in 1979 by a junior particlep, t Stanford, no MIt, named Alan Guty-t t o attend a lecture on t Dicke. ture inspired Guto take an interest in cosmology, andin particular in the universe.

    tual result ion t a fraction of a moment aftertion, t a sudden dramatic expansion. It inflated—ineffect ran aself, doubling in size every 10-34seconds. ted no more t’s one million million million million milliont it cosomet least 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times bigger. Inflation t make our universe possible. it it, tter and tars, just drifting gas and everlasting darkness.

    According to Gut one ten-milliontrilliontrilliontrillionty emerged. After anoterval it romagnetism and trong and uff of pant later by sary particles—tuff of stuff. From notall, suddenly tons, protons, electrons, neutrons, and mucandard Big Bang theory.

    Sucities are of course ungraspable. It is enougo kno in a single crackinginstant  —at least a -yearsacross, according to t possibly any size up to infinite—and perfectly arrayed fortion of stars, galaxies, and otems.

    is extraordinary from our point of vieurned out for us. If t a tiny bit differently—if gravity ionally stronger or a little more sloly—tnever able elements to make you and me and tand on. ybeen a trifle stronger, tself miged tent, precisely t values to give it t dimensions and density and componentparts.  been ered void.

    t some experts believe trillions and trillions of ty span of eternity, and t t in ticular one is t t in. As Edryonof Columbia University once put it: “In anso tion of  our Universe is simply one of time tobillion cubic kilometers, and no less a  tion t many general readers are as unmatical as I am, I  least in a cer dealing hings on a cosmic scale.

    time.” to tempts.”

    Martin Rees, Britain’s astronomer royal, believes t te number, eac attributes, in different combinations, and t  combines t alloo exist. ore: “If tock of clot surprised to find asuit t fits. If t of numbers, ticular set of numbers suitable to life. e are in t one.”

    Rees maintains t six numbers in particular govern our universe, and t if any of tly t be as to exist as it does requires t ed to comparatively stately manner—specifically, in a  converts seven one-ts mass to energy. Lo value very slig to 0.006 percent,say—and no transformation could take place: t of ly—to 0.008 percent—and bonding  ted. In eitest t  be here.

    I s everyt rigerm, gravity may turn out to be alittle too strong, and one day it may  t collapsingin upon itself, till it crusself doo anoty, possibly to start t may be too il everyt t terial interactions, sot t is inert and dead, but very roomy. tion ist gravity is just rigical density” is ts’ term for it—and t it  just t dimensions to alloo go on indefinitely.

    Cosmologists in ter moments sometimes call t—teveryt rigivelyas closed, open, and flat.)Noion t o all of us at some point is:  to t  your ains?

    would you find beyond?

    tingly, is t you can never get to t’s notbecause it ake too long to get t  because even ifyou traveled outraigely and pugnaciously, you  an outer boundary. Instead, you o  in t t adequately imagine, in conformance ein’s tivity (o in due course). For t it isenougo kno  adrift in some large, ever-expanding bubble. Rat allo to be boundless but finite. Space cannot even properly be saidto be expanding because, as t and Nobel laureate Steven einberg notes, “solarsystems and galaxies are not expanding, and space itself is not expanding.” Rat. It is all someto intuition. Or as t J.

    B. S.  only queerer tis queerer than we can suppose.”

    t is usually given for explaining ture of space is to try to imaginesomeone from a universe of flat surfaces, oEartter ’s surface, he would never find an edge.

    eventually return to t ed, and terlyconfounded to explain  ion in space asour puzzled flatlander, only we are flummoxed by a higher dimension.

    Just as tand at ter and say: “t all began. termostpoint of it all.” e are all at ter of it all. Actually,  kno for sure;  prove it matically. Scientists just assume t  really be ter of t t  t t be till,  actually know.

    For us, t raveled in talk about—is amillion million million million (t’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles across. Butaccording to most t large—ta-universe, as it is sometimescalled—is vastly roomier still. According to Rees, t-years to tten not “en zeroes, not even  , t going totrouble of trying to envision some additional beyond.

    For a long time t troubled a lot of people—namely t it couldn’t begin to explain   of all tter t exists ed  matter consisted exclusively of lig ioned earlier. Not one particle of tuff so vital to our orogen, oxygen, and all t—emergedfrom tion. But—and roubling point—to forge ts, you need t and energy of a Big Bang. Yet t didn’t produce they come from?

    Interestingly, to t question  erm “Big Bang” sarcastically, as a. e’ll get to ly, but before urn to tion of  migaking a fees to consider just wly “here” is.

 2 WELCOME TO THE SOLAR SYSTEMAS

    tRONOMERS t amazing truck a matc tiniest tant starster and even potential ability of planets mucooremote to be seen—planets so distant t it ake us o get telescopes ture ion so preposterouslyfaint t total amount of energy collected from outside tem by all of togeting began (in 1951) is “less triking the words of Carl Sagan.

    In s, t a great deal t goes on in t astronomers can’t findo reflect t until 1978no one iced t Pluto  year, a youngastronomer named James Cy at tory in Flagstaff, Arizona, ine examination of pograpo ain but definitely oto. Consulting acolleague named Robert on,  w  was a moon.

    And it  just any moon. Relative to t, it  moon in tem.

    tually someto Pluto’s status as a planet,  anyo  to be one and t meant t Pluto was mucem, including our own, are larger.

    Noural question is ook so long for anyone to find a moon in our oem. t it is partly a matter of  trumentsand partly a matter of ruments are designed to detect, and partly it’s just Pluto.

    Mostly it’s ruments. In tronomer ClarkC people t astronomers get out at nigories and scan t’s not true. Almost all telescopes very tiny little pieces of tance to see a quasar or  for black  a distant galaxy. telescopes t scans t by tary.”

    e ists’ renderings into imagining a clarity of resolution tdoesn’t exist in actual astronomy. Pluto in Cy’s pograp and fuzzy—a piece ofcosmic lint—and its moon is not tically backlit, crisply delineated companion orbyou  in a National Geograping, but rat a tiny and extremelyindistinct  of additional fuzziness. Suc, t it took seven yearsfor anyone to spot tly confirm its existence.

    One nice touc Cy’s discovery  it aff, for it  Pluto  place. t seminal event in astronomy o t of tronomer Percival Lo Boston families (tty about Boston being to Cabots, o God), endoory t bears  is most indeliblyremembered for  Mars  by industrious Martians forpurposes of conveying er from polar regions to t productive lands nearer tor.

    Loion  ted, someune,an undiscovered nint, dubbed Planet X. Loies ected in ts of Uranus and Neptune, and devoted t years of o trying tofind t ain  tunately, least partly exed by , and to abeyance e. ly as a ing attention a), tory directors decided to resume to t end ombaugh.

    tombaugraining as an astronomer, but  and ute,and after a year’s patient searcted Pluto, a faint point of ligtery firmament. It  all triking tions on ence of a planet beyond Neptuneproved to be compreombaug once t tulated, but any reservations  ter of t  aside in tattended almost any big neory in t easily excited age. t American-discovered planet, and no one o be distracted by t t it a distant icy dot. It o at least partly because t tters made amonogram from Loials. Lo order, and tombaugten, except among planetary astronomers,o revere him.

    A feronomers continue to t X out ten times ter, but so far out as to be invisible to us. (Ittle sunlig it o reflect.) t it be a conventional planet like Jupiter or Saturn—it’s mucoo far a;alking perrillion miles—but more like a sun t never quite made it. Moststar systems in tarred), wary sun a sligy.

    As for Pluto itself, nobody is quite sure  is, or  is made of, mosp  it really is. A lot of astronomers believe it isn’t a planet at all,but merely t object so far found in a zone of galactic debris kno. t ually tronomer named F. C. Leonard in 1930,but tcive  are knos—tcome past pretty regularly—of s (among t visitors ake) come fromtant Oort cloud, about wly.

    It is certainly true t Pluto doesn’t act mucs. Not only is it runty andobscure, but it is so variable in its motions t no one can tell you exactly ury s orbit on more or less to’sorbital patipped (as it  of alignment at an angle of seventeen degrees, like t tilted rakiss orbit is so irregular t for substantialperiods on eacs lonely circuits around t is closer to us tune is. Formost of tune  tem’s most far-flung planet.

    Only on February 11, 1999, did Pluto return to tside lane, to remain for t228 years.

    So if Pluto really is a planet, it is certainly an odd one. It is very tiny: just one-quarter of 1percent as massive as Eart it doop of ted States, it quite y-eigates. t extremely anomalous; it means tour planetary system consists of four rocky inner planets, four gassy outer giants, and a tiny,solitary iceball. Moreover, to suppose t o findotion of space. terCy spotted Pluto’s moon, astronomers began to regard t section of ttentively and as of early December 2002 ional trans-Neptunian Objects, or Plutinos as ternatively called. One, dubbed Varuna, is nearlyas big as Pluto’s moon. Astronomers nos. ty is t many of typically tiveness, of just 4 percent, about t four billion miles away.

    And  exactly? It’s almost beyond imagining. Space, you see, is justenormous—just enormous. Let’s imagine, for purposes of edification and entertainment, t to go on a journey by rockets go terribly far—just to tem—but o get a fix on  a smallpart of it we occupy.

    No  be  t, it ake seven o get to Pluto. But of course  travel at anyt speed. e’ll o go at ther more lumbering.

    t speeds yet ac are t, ty-five thousand miles an hour.

    t ember1977)  Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune  o use a “gravity assist” tec  to t in a kind of cosmicversion of “crack t took to reacocross t of Pluto. t if  until January 2006 (entatively sco depart for Pluto) akeadvantage of favorable Jovian positioning, plus some advances in tec tting ake rat allevents, it’s going to be a long trip.

    No to realize is t space is extremely ful. Our solar system may be t trillions of miles, butall tuff in it—ts and tumblingrocks of teroid belt, comets, and oting detritus—fills less trilliont none of tem ely drao scale. Most scs ss coming one after t neigervals—ter giants actually castsrations—but t to get tune in reality isn’t just a little bit beyond Jupiter, it’s er—five times farter ter is from us, so far out t itreceives only 3 percent as muc as Jupiter.

    Sucances, in fact, t it isn’t possible, in any practical terms, to draem to scale. Even if you added lots of fold-out pages to your textbooks or used a reallylong s of poster paper, you  come close. On a diagram of tem toscale, o about ter of a pea, Jupiter ao  (and about terium, so you be able to see it anyauri, our nearest star, ten t Jupiter tence, and Pluto o ill be over ty-five feet away.

    So tem is really quite enormous. By time anning, life-giving Sun—o t is little more t star. In suco understand significant objects—Pluto’s moon, for example—tention.

    In t, Pluto il tions, Neptune  to  to contain ty moons. total no least ninety,” about a t t ten years.

    t to remember, of course, is t actually knoem.

    Noice as  Pluto is t Pluto. If you cinerary, you  trip to tem, and I’m afraid  t. Pluto may be t object marked onscs, but tem doesn’t end t, it isn’t even close to endingt get to tem’s edge until  celestial realm of drifting comets, and  reac cloud for anot ten ter edge of tem, asto is barely one-fifty-the way.

    Of course o tillrepresents a very big undertaking for us. A manned mission to Mars, called for by tPresident Bus of passing giddiness, ly dropped  it  $450 billion and probably result in torn to tatters by icles from w be shielded).

    Based on ely no prospectt any  tem—ever. It is just too far.

    As it is, even elescope,  see even into t cloud, so actually kno it is ts existence is probable but entirely ical.

    *About all t can be said  t cloud is t it starts someretco t ofmeasure in tem is tronomical Unit, or AU, representing tance from*Properly called t cloud, it is named for tonian astronomer Ernst Opik, ence in 1932, and for tcronomer Jan Oort, wions eiger.

    to to is about forty AUs from us, t of t cloud about fiftyt is remote.

    But let’s pretend again t o t cloud. t tnotice is  is out  it’s not even test star in t is a remarkable t t tdistant tiny to s in orbit. It’s not a very strongbond, so ts drift in a stately manner, moving at only about 220 miles an ime to time some of ts are nudged out of t by some sligational perturbation—a passing star perimes ted into tiness of space, never to be seen again, but sometimes to a long orbit aroundt ts, pass tem. Just occasionally tray visitors smack into somet’s oer of tem. It is  is going to take a long time to get tleast—so  for nourn to it mucer in tory.

    So t’s your solar system. And  tem? ell,not deal, depending on  it.

    In t term, it’s not perfect vacuum ever created by  asempty as tiness of interstellar space. And t deal of tilyou get to t bit of somet neigauri,ar cluster knoerms, but t is still a imes fartrip to the Moon.

    to reac by spacesake at least ty-five trip you still  be any a lonely clutcars in t no-years of travel. And so it ried to star-he cosmos.

    Just reacer of our oake far longer ted asbeings.

    Space, let me repeat, is enormous. tance betars out t speeds approac, tasticallycances for any traveling individual. Of course, it is possible t alien beingstravel billions of miles to amuse ting crop circles in iltsening ts out of some poor guy in a pickup truck on a lonely road in Arizona(t eenagers, after all), but it does seem unlikely.

    Still, statistically ty t t there is good.

    Nobody knoimates range from 100 billionor so to per one of 140 billion or so ot Cornell namedFrank Drake, excited by suc a famous equation designed tocalculate ties.

    Under Drake’s equation you divide tars in a selected portion of tars t are likely to ary systems; divide t by tary systems t could tically support life; divide t by to a state of intelligence; and so on. At eac even  conservative inputs tions just in t to be somewhemillions.

    an interesting and exciting t. e may be only one of millions of advancedcivilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, tance betions is reckoned to be at least t makes it sound. It means for a start t even if to see us in telescopes, tc t leftEartcion and tockings and poom is, or a gene, and y by rubbing a rodof amber ’s quite a trick. Any message o begin “Dear Sire,” and congratulate us on tery of ance so far beyond us as to be,  beyond us.

    So even if  really alone, in all practical terms ed ts in t large at 10 billion trillion—a number vastlybeyond imagining. But  of space tly scattered. “If ed into te, “t you  rillion trillion.” (t’s 1033, or a one folloy-three zeroes.) “orlds are precious.”

    is good ne in February 1999 ternational AstronomicalUnion ruled officially t Pluto is a planet. t.

 3 THE REVEREND EVANS’S UNIVERSE

    too brig Evans, aquiet and celescope onto tains of Australia, about fifty miles  of Sydney, and does an extraordinary to t and finds dying stars.

    Looking into t is of course t. Glance at t sky and s of it—tars not as t as t lefttar, our fait actually  last January or in 1854 or at any time since teentury and ne just reac. t  it ill burning on te 680 years ago. Stars die all time.  Bob Evans does better tried is spot ts of celestial farewell.

    By day, Evans is a kindly and noired minister in ting Cralia,eentury religiousmovements. But by nigitan of tssupernovae.

    Supernovae occur ar, one mucacularly explodes, releasing in an instant time brigars in its galaxy. “It’s like a trillion  once,” says Evans. If a supernova explosion -years of us,o Evans—“it s it.

    But t, and supernovae are normally mucoo far ao ,most are so unimaginably distant t t reacestt t distinguisars in t t of space t  filled before. It is t sky t the ReverendEvans finds.

    to understand  tandard dining room table covered in a blacktableclot across it. ttered grains can bet of as a galaxy. Noeen ables like t one—enougofill a al-Mart parking lot, say, or to make a single line t. No to any table and let Bob Evans  a glance  it. t grain of salt is the supernova.

    Evans’s is a talent so exceptional t Oliver Sacks, in An Ant on Mars, devotesa passage to er on autistic savants—quickly adding t “tiont istic.” Evans,  Sacks, laug tion t  beeitistic or a savant, but o explain quite  comes from.

    “I just seem to ar fields,” old me, ic look, ranquil edge of t icularly good at otremember names well.”

    “Or chen.

    o see elescope. I  Evans o maneuver. In fact,  outside but to a crooreroomoff tcelescope—a  is about t-er tank—rests in a . o observe, rips to a smalldeck off tcops of eucalyptustrees groter-box vie is more t too bright, he finds his supernovae.

    term supernova rop namedFritz Zzerland, Zo titute of tec once distinguisy and erratic talents.  seem to be outstandingly brigtle more tating buffoon.” A fitness buff, en drop to teco demonstrate y to anyone  it. oriously aggressive, ually becoming so intimidating t collaborator, a gentle man named alter Baade, refused to be left alone . Onat least one occasion Zened to kill Baade, ilson Observatory, if ech campus.

    But Zartling brilliance. In turned tention to a question t roubled astronomers: ts of ligars. Improbably ron—tomic particle t  been discovered in England by JamesC be at t of toccurred to  if a star collapsed to t of densities found in toms, t ed core. Atoms erally be crusogetrons forced into trons. You ar.

    Imagine a million really ill not even close. tron star is so dense t a single spoonfulof matter from it  after tar t of energy leftover—enougo make t bang in tant explosionssupernovae. t events in creation.

    On January 15, 1934, tract of apresentation t ed by Z StanfordUniversity. Despite its extreme brevity—one paragrapy-four lines—tractcontained an enormous amount of ne provided t reference to supernovaeand to neutron stars; convincingly explained tion; correctly calculatedted supernovaexplosions to tion of a mysterious neionary to say t. Neutron stars  be confirmed for ty-four years. tion,t been verified yet. Altogetract ecrop Kip S. t prescient documents in tory of pronomy.”

    Interestingly, Zanding of whis would happen.

    According to t understand to be able tosubstantiate alent ly—to do tical sweeping up.

    Z to recognize t t nearly enougo oget t be some otational influence—ter. One to see  if a neutron star s  even lig escape its immense gravitationalpull. You ely, Zracted almost no notice. er, tRobert Oppenurned tention to neutron stars in a landmark paper,  asingle reference to any of Z doions concerning dark matter attract serious attention for nearly four decades. e can only assume t  of pushis period.

    Surprisingly little of to us  6,000 stars are visible to t 2,000 can be seenfrom any one spot. itars you can see from a single locationrises to about 50,000, and  leaps to 300,000. iteen-incelescope, suco count not in stars but in galaxies. From ensof billions of stars. table numbers, but even o take in,supernovae are extremely rare. A star can burn for billions of years, but it dies just once andquickly, and only a fears explode. Most expire quietly, like a campfire at daypical galaxy, consisting of a ars, a supernova tle bit like standingon tion platform of tate Building elescope and searctan in t us say, someone ligy-first-birthday cake.

    So er got in touco ask if ts for ing supernovae, tronomical community t  of his mind.

    At time Evans en-incelescope—a very respectable size for amateur stargazingbut  of to do serious cosmology—and ofind one of tronomical ory before Evansstarted looking in 1980, fey supernovae  time I visited of 2001,  recorded y-fourty-fifter and a ty-sixtain advantages. Most observers, like most people generally, are int of sky largely to  first. elescopes are cumbersome tional time is consumed o position. Evans could sle sixteen-incelescope around like a tail gunner in a dogfigicular point in telescope o do fifty or sixty.

    Looking for supernovae is mostly a matter of not finding to 1996  a s of peering andpeering. Once een days, but anotime  tfinding any at all.

    “tually a certain value in not finding anyt s to te at heabsence of evidenceis evidence.”

    On a table beside telescope acks of pos and papers relevant to s,and ronomicalpublications, and at some time you must  tos of distant nebulae and t clouds of celestial lig delicate and moving splendor. Evans’s . t blurry black-and-tle points of ness. One ed a sars rifling flare t I o put close to my face to see.

    told me, ar in a constellation called Fornax from a galaxy knooastronomy as NGC1365. (NGC stands for Nealogue, o say, it’sa database.) For sixty million silent years, t from tar’s spectacular demise traveledunceasingly til one nig of 2001 it arrived at Eartiniest brig sky. It  Evans on-scented ted it.

    “tisfying, I t t traveling formillions of years t at t moment as it reac t bit of sky and sees it. It just seems rig an event of t magnitudesnessed.”

    Supernovae do muc a sense of ypes (one of ticular, knoant to astronomy because it alical mass. For t can be used as a standard candle to measure te of the universe.

    In 1987 Saul Perlmutter at tings  out to find a more systematic metter devised a nifty system using sopicated computers andcal cameras. It automated supernovaing. telescopes could noake tures and let a computer detect telltale brigs t marked a supernova explosion. In five years, ecter and  Berkeley found forty-teursare finding supernovae elescope attcelevision,” Evans said ouc took all t of it.”

    I asked empted to adopt tecoo muc to of est supernova and smiled—“Ican still beat times.”

    tion t naturally occurs is “  be like if a star exploded nearby?” Ournearest stellar neigauri, 4.3 lig if to c oft event spreading across tipped from a giant can.  be like if co   off our bones? ouldpeople still go to  crops? ould anyone deliver to tores?

    eeks later, back in toions to Joensen, an astronomer at Dartmout travels out at t, but so does tructiveness, so you’d learnabout it and die from it in tant. But don’t ’s not going to happen.”

    For t of a supernova explosion to kill you, o be“ridiculously close”—probably en ligypes of radiation—cosmic rays and so on.” tains of spooky lig  be a goodtent enougo put on sucospic zone  normally protects us fromultraviolet rays and ots. it tospunateenougo step into sunligty quickly take on t us say, anovercooked pizza.

    t t suc  ensen said, is t it takes a particular kind of star to make a supernova int place. A candidate star must be ten to ty times as massive as our o e size t’s t close. t likely candidate elgeuse,  someterestingly unstable is going on t Betelgeuse isfifty t-years away.

    Only imes in recorded ory o bevisible to t in 1054 t created tar brigo be seen during trecent   ably safe 169,000 light-years away.

    Supernovae are significant to us in one otral  t be cer—t ted lots of lig no s. ter, but for a very long time nobody could figure out  er. t you needed somet—ter even ttest stars—toforge carbon and iron and ts  erial. Supernovae provided tion, and it as singular in manner as Fritz Z.

    uary in Nature as a “cosmologist and controversialist” and bot certainlyure ’s obituary, “embroiled in controversy for most of his life”

    and “put o mucance, and  evidence, t tural ory Museum’s treasured fossil of an Arceryx doo tologists, Eart only seeded by life from space but also by many of its diseases, suced at one point t ingnoses rils underneatothem.

    It  of facetiousness, for a radiobroadcast in 1952. ed out t notanding of pfor , ically begin to expand.

    eady-state tantly expanding andcontinually creating neter as it .  if stars imploded te s of —100 million degrees or more, enougo begin togenerate ts in a process knos ors, received a Nobel Prize. .

    According to ar e enoug to create all ts and spray to terstellar medium as it is kno could eventually coalesce into neems.

    it became possible at last to construct plausible scenarios for   his:

    About 4.6 billion years ago, a great s some 15 billion miles acrossaccumulated in space e. Virtually all of it—99.9percent of tem— to make t of ting materialt  over, ted close enougogeto be joined byelectrostatic forces. t of conception for our planet. All over tesolar system, t grains formed larger and larger clumps.

    Eventually to be called planetesimals. As tured or split or recombined in endless random permutations,but in every encounter todominate t around wraveled.

    It all o groiny cluster of grains to a baby planetsome  to aken only a feens of thousands of years.

    In just 200 million years, possibly less, tially formed, till moltenand subject to constant bombardment from all t remained floating about.

    At t, about 4.5 billion years ago, an object to Eart enougerial to form a companion sp ist, terial self into a single clump, and  o t companions us yet. Most of terial, it ist, came from t, not its core, ally, is almost aled as a recent one, butin fact it  proposed in t t it is people paying any attention to it.

    a ts eventual size, it oform an atmosply of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, metof stuff t e  from te  of a green, t en a toesomehow life did.

    For t 500 million years tinued to be pelted relentlessly bycomets, meteorites, and otic debris, er to fill ts necessary for tion of life. It  and yet some going. Some tiny bag of cce. e were on our way.

    Four billion years later people began to our story next takes us.

    PARt  II ture and Nature’s la Ne.

    -Alexander Pope

 4 THE MEASURE OF THINGS

    IF YOU o select t convivial scientific field trip of all time, you could certainlydo ion of 1735. Led by a named Pierre Bouguer and a soldier-matician named C y of scientists and adventurers o Peru riangulating distances the Andes.

    At time people ely become infected o understand to determine  y’s goal o tle tion of t by measuring tance aroundt) along a line reaco, to just beyond Cuenca in ance of about two hundred miles.

    1Almost at once to go imes spectacularly so. In Quito, torssome of toones. Soonafter, tion’s doctor anding over a anist became deranged. Ot senior member ofty, a man named Pierre Godin, ran off een-year-old girl and could not beinduced to return.

    At one point to suspend o sort out a problem s. Eventually opped speakingand refused to ogety  it   suspicions from officials  to believe t a group of Frencists ravel o measure t made no sense atall. ter it still seems a reasonable question.  ts in France and save t of ture?

    tly  t eigury scientists, ticular,seldom did ternative ly ical problem t  arisen ronomer Edmond o South America,much less had a reason for doing so.

    * triangulation, tecric fact t if you knoriangle and t all its otleaving your c you and I decided o triangulation, t t do is put some distance bets say for argumentt you stay in Paris and I go to Mosco t time. Noing t is, you and I and t forms a triangle. Measuret can be simplycalculated. (Because terior angles of a triangle alo 180 degrees, if you knoantly calculate triangle and tells you t tronomer,o  tance from Eart ground level, triangulation are t t triangles dont reaco space but rato side on amap. In measuring a degree of meridian, te a sort of criangles marche landscape.

    ional figure. In tive career, ain, a cartograpry at ty of Oxford, deputycontroller of t, astronomer royal, and inventor of te autatively on magnetism, tides, and tions of ts, and fondly on ts of opium. ed tuarial table, proposed met ts distance from ticalmet of season. t do, interestingly enoug t bears  t   didn’tbecome  until 1758, some sixteen years after h.

    For all s, est contribution to o take part in a modest scientific hies of his day:

    Robert  remembered no person to describe a cell, andt and stately Sir Copually an astronomer first and arcectsecond, t is not often generally remembered nourned to tions of celestial objects.

    It  planets o orbit in a particular kind of oval knoo quote Ric it understood o a coupleof o wion.

    aking credit for ideas t  necessarily   declined noo s on terestingand inventive grounds t it isfaction of discovering tead “conceal it for some time, t ot kno.” If  any more on tter,  no evidence of it. o t t traveled toCambridge and boldly called upon ty’s Lucasian Professor of Matics, IsaacNe he could help.

    Ne beyond measure, but solitary, joyless, pricklyto t of paranoia, famously distracted (upon s of bed in tedly sometimes sit for s to riveting strangeness.  ory, tat Cambridge, but t bizarre experiments. Once ed a bodkin—a long needle of t used for seo  and rubbed it around“bet my eye and to [t to see  noting. Onanotared at to determine  ito spend somedays in a darkened room before his eyes forgave him.

    Set atop traits, ional cen sendency topeculiarity. As a student, frustrated by tations of conventional matics, ed an entirely ne told no one about it for ty-sevenyears. In like manner, ics t transformed our understanding of ligion for troscopy, and again c to ss forthree decades.

    For all ed for only a part of erests. At least o alcs. t meredabblings but ions.  ad of a dangerously icalsect called Arianism,   trinity(sligon’s college at Cambridge rinity).  endless udying t temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem (teacter to scan original texts) in t it icalclues to tes of t and ttac toalc. In 1936, t Jo a trunk ofNe auction and discovered onis t t ics or planetary motions, but  to turn basemetals into precious ones. An analysis of a strand of Neained mercury—an element of interest to alcs, ters, and ter-makersbut almost no one else—at a concentration some forty times tural level. It is pertle  rouble remembering to rise in the morning.

    Quite o get from  in August1684  to ter account of a Ne, Abra oric encounters:

    In 1684 Dro visit at Cambridge [and] after timetoget  t s supposing ttraction too bereciprocal to tance from it.

    to a piece of matics kno t of tion, t sure exactly how.

    SrIsaac replied immediately t it or, struck , asked . ‘edit,’  fart could not find it.

    tounding—like someone saying  couldn’tremember on agreed to redo tions and produce a paper.  tired fortensive reflection and scribbling, and at lengteruralis Principia Matica or Matical Principles of NaturalPter knohe Principia .

    Once in a great e and unexpected t people can’t quite decide . Principia s. It made Neantly famous. Fort of s and  person in Britain knigific ac. Even t Germanmatician Gottfried von Leibniz, on ter figyfor tion of t ributions to matics equal to all ted  al may approaceiment t herssince.

    Alt inaccessible books ever ten”

    (Neentionally made it difficult so t  be pestered by matical“smatterers,” as  o t. It not onlyexplained matically ts of  also identified ttractive forcet got t place—gravity. Suddenly every motion in the universe madesense.

    At Principia ’s  on’s tion (e, very baldly, t ation in  raigil some ots to slo it; and t every action e andequal reaction) and ation. tates t every object in ts a tug on every ot may not seem like it, but as you sit  cat—totle(indeed, very little) gravitational field. And t on s is, to quote Feynman again,“proportional to tance bet anotance bets, ttractionbetimes  most of us could make practical use of, but atleast e t it is elegantly compact. A couple of brief multiplications, a simpledivision, and, bingo, you knoational position really universal laure ever propounded by a on isregarded eem.

    Principia’s production   drama. to  as ion Nee over ty for ton refused to release t tle sense. Only ic stle diplomacy and t liberalapplications of flattery did o extract tic professor.

    raumas  yet quite over. ty o publis no, citing financial embarrassment. ty ly flop called tory of Fised t t fora book on matical principles  great, paid for tion out of . Neributed noto make matters ime  accepted a positionas ty’s clerk, and  ty could no longer afford to provideo be paid instead in copies of tory of Fishes .

    Neides, tions ofplanets, icular trajectory before to Eart flung into space as t spins beneat  ittook a o seep in. But one revelation became almostimmediately controversial.

    tion t t quite round. According to Nerifugal force of t in a sligtening at t tor,  meant t t be taly as it land. Specifically, ten as you moved a good nes of tion t tsphere, which was everyone.

    For ury people rying to  tly bymaking very exacting measurements. One of t suctempts o Bermudaending to make a fortune scooping pearlsfrom t  Nor one to e an experience. In teentury Bermuda e. t tional tools for dealingy e. t even yet an agreed lengtical mile. Over t miscalculations  sen missed Bermuda-sized targets by dismaying margins. Norrigonometry and to bring a little matical rigorto navigation and to t end ermined to calculate th of a degree.

    Starting  to ted yearsmarco York, repeatedly stretc, all t meticulous adjustments for tep o measure t York attime of day and on t measurement inLondon. From termine te tance around t  ludicrouslyambitious undertaking—a mistake of test fraction of a degree  by miles—but in fact, as Noro “ling”—or, more precisely, to  six ric terms,  at 110.72 kilometers per degree of arc.

    In 1637, Norerion, tice ,   teen editions and ill in printty-five years after urned to Bermuda  you are spinning depends on or to 0 at the poles.

    successful planter and devoting o  love, trigonometry. y-eig o report t ion. In fact, . On te, and someraumatized t ed muc of o persecutingNorwood in any small way hink of.

    Norional pain by making poor marriages.

    One of ted by tinually laid small cNor, causing ion and necessitating repeated trips acrossBermuda to defend crials came to Bermuda and Nor  rigonometry, aken as communications  reated to adreadful execution. So little is kno it may in fact be t  is certainly true is t  them.

    Meanermining to France.

    tronomer Jean Picard devised an impressively complicated metriangulation involving quadrants, pendulum clocks, zenitors, and telescopes (forobserving tions of ter). After trundling and triangulatinge measure of 110.46 kilometersfor one degree of arc. t source of pride for t it ed ontion t t spon no .

    to complicate matters, after Picard’s deateam of Giovanni andJacques Cassini repeated Picard’s experiments over a larger area and came up s tsuggested t tter not at tor but at t Nely   prompted to dispatco Souto take nes.

    to measure near tor, to determine ifty t mountainslines. In fact, tains of Peru antly lost incloud t team often o  , ted one of t nearly impossible terrains on Earto tado —“muced”—and t most certainly is. t only to scale some of t cains—mountainst defeated even t to reacains to ford , nearly all of it unced andfar from any source of supplies. But Bouguer and La Condamine tenacious, and tuck to task for nine and a ered years.

    Sly before concluding t, t a second Frenceam, takingmeasurements in nortable discomforts of to dangerous ice floes),  a degree  longer near ton y-ters stouter op to bottom around the poles.

    Bouguer and La Condamine t nearly a decade o t o learn no t even t to find it. Listlessly, ted t t Frenceam . till notspeaking, turned to t and took separate ships home.

    Sometured by Ne a plumb bob ain ain, affected by tain’sgravitational mass as . If youmeasured tion accurately and  tain, you couldcalculate tational constant—t is, ty, kno th.

    Bouguer and La Condamine ried t C ed by botecies and tion laydormant for anoty years until resurrected in England by Nevil Maskelyne, tronomer royal. In Dava Sobel’s popular book Longitude, Maskelyne is presented as a ninnyand villain for failing to appreciate t ed to  mentioned in  least foro ain of sufficiently regular so judge its mass.

    At y agreed to engage a reliable figure to tour tiso see if sucain could be found. Maskelyne kne sucronomer and surveyor C to measure an astronomical event of great importance:

    t Venus across tireless Edmond ed years before t if you measured one of ted points on triangulation to  tance to t calibrate tances to all tem.

    Unfortunately, transits of Venus, as t years apart, but t for a century or more, and time.

    3But t transit came due in 1761,nearly ter ific  ronomical event before.

    itinct for ordeal t cerized tists set off for more tions around to Siberia, Ccy-taineigill ot out from Saly, Germany, Ireland, andelsewhere.

    It  cooperative international scientific venture, and almost everyo problems. Many observers ions but opened tes to find equipment broken or ropical .

    Once again ted to provide t memorably unlucky participants.

    Jean C montraveling to Siberia by coac, and sleigeinstruments over every perilous bump, only to find t vital stretc transit ietury.

    rivers, t of unusually  to blame on er ting strange instruments at to escape  s.

    Unluckier still il, il set off from France a yearaime to observe transit from India, but various setbacks left ill at sea on transit—just about t place to be since steady measurements ching ship.

    Undaunted, Le Gentil continued on to India to a t transit in 1769. ityears to prepare, ed a first-rate vieation, tested and retested ruments,and ate of perfect readiness. On transit, June4, 1769, o a fine day, but, just as Venus began its pass, a cloud slid in front of t exactly tion of transit: teenminutes, and seven seconds.

    Stoically, Le Gentil packed up ruments and set off for t port, but en routeracted dysentery and ill o a s  er setting off, and  ives ically plundered ate.

    In comparison, tments experienced by Britain’s eigtered observers along ing partnersructions o travel to Sumatra and c transit t after just one nig sea ttacked by a Frence. (Altists ernationally cooperativemood, nations .) Mason and Dixon sent a note to ty observing t itseemed an’t to be called off. In reply t and cing t t tion and scientific community ing on tto proceed  in trievable loss of tations. Cened,t en route ra o transit inconclusively from topped on tlantic outcrop of St.  Maskelyne, idalflows.

    Soon afterurned to England ly more seasoned—set off for four long and often perilousyears surveying to settle aboundary dispute betates of illiam Penn and Lord Baltimore and tive colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland. t er took on symbolic importance as tates. (Altask, tributed severalastronomical surveys, including one of tury’s most accurate measurements of a degreeof meridian—an ac t brougtlingof a boundary dispute betocrats.)Back in Europe, Maskelyne and erparts in Germany and France o t transit measurements of 1761 ially a failure. One of t too many observations, en proved contradictory and impossible to resolve. ting of aVenusian transit fell instead to a little-kno from a sunny op in tai, and t on to c andclaim Australia for tisurn tion fortronomer Josepo calculate t tance from tottle over 150 million kilometers. (transits in teentury alloronomers to put t 149.59 million kilometers, ers.) t last ion in space.

    As for Mason and Dixon, turned to England as scientific nersurn up atseminal events in eigury science, remarkably little is kno eit and feten references. Of Dixon tionary of National Biograpes intriguingly t o  t to tion to supply a plausible explanatory circumstance, and adds t Dur from ion hing more isknown.

    Mason is only slig in 1772, at Maskelyne’s be, ed to find a suitable mountain for tational deflectionexperiment, at lengting back t tain tral Scottis above Locay, and . urned to tkno eriously, urned up in P cly on titution.  been backto America since completing een years earlier and rons to greet er he was dead.

    ito survey tain, to Maskelyne. So for four montent in a remote Scottis ing a team of surveyors, ion. to find tain from all t deal oftedious calculating, for on ion at some pointon or around tain. It ially just a confusing mass of numbers, but tonnoticed t if o connect points of equal , it all became mucantly get a sense of tain.

    ed contour lines.

    Extrapolating from s, ton calculated t 5,000 million million tons, from  s and tcontour lines into t bad for a summer’s work.

    Not everyone isfied s, coming of t  it  possible to get a truly accurate figure  knoual density of tain. For convenience, ton  tain y as ordinary stone, about 2.5 times t of er, but ttle more ted guess.

    One improbable-seeming person ter ry parsonnamed Joe e and comparatively uation, Mic scientific teentury and muceemed for it.

    Among a great deal else, ure of earted muco magnetism and gravity, and, quite extraordinarily, envisioned ty of black ive deductiont not even Ne in life ronomy, it ruction in making telescopes, a kindness for wary science ever since.

    4But of all t Micer impactt for measuring tunately,  ts and boto a brilliant but magnificently retiring London scientist named henryCavendish.

    Cavendiso a life of sumptuous privilege—ively, of Devons— gifted Englisistof  also trangest. o a “degree bordering on disease.” Any act .

    Once o find an Austrian admirer, fres step. Excitedly trian began to babble out praise. For a fes Cavendiss as if t object and to takeany more, fled do te, leaving t door  y. Even edter.

    Altimes venture into society—icularly devoted to tific soirées of t naturalist Sir Josep o ts t Cavendis to be approac. t o o y as if by accident and to “talk as4In 1781  person in to discover a planet. ed to call it George,after tis ead it became Uranus.

    it o vacancy.” If tifically  receive amumbled reply, but more often t to curn to find an actual vacancy and t of Cavendishfleeing for a more peaceful corner.

    ary inclinations allourn o a largelaboratory ricity, , gravity, gases, anyto do ion of matter. teentury ime  greenselyinterested in ties of fundamental tricity inparticular—and began seeing en e in an electricalstorm. In France, a c named Pilatre de Rozier tested ty of  a stroke t ible and t eyebro necessarily a permanent feature ofone’s face. Cavendis, conducted experiments in ed jolts of electrical current, diligently noting til imes his consciousness, no longer.

    In tring of signal discoveries—among muc person to isolate  to combine o form er—but almost notirely divorced from strangeness. to tinuing exasperation of ists, en alluded in publiso ts of contingent experiments t  told anyone about. In iveness  merely resemble Ne actively exceeded s ricalconductivity ury aime, but unfortunately remained undiscovereduntil t century er part of il te nineteentury ook on taskof editing Cavendisime credit o others.

    Among muc telling anyone, Cavendisicipated tion of energy, Oon’s Laial Pressures, Ricions, Cricalconductivity. t’s just some of it. According to torian J. G. Croidal friction on sloation of t of localatmospures, and some of terogeneous equilibria.” Finally,  clues t led directly to ts kno t of t found until 1962. But our interest kno  ty-seven, urned tention to tes of equipment t  to ly out of simplescientific respect—by John Michell.

    us looked like noteentury version of a Nautilus ed orsion  t of tational deflection of t measurement of tational constant, and fromrictly speaking, th could be deduced.

    Because gravity s in orbit and makes falling objects land endto t as a po it is not really. It is only poivesense, o anot, like t an elemental level gravity is extraordinarily unrobust. Eacime you pick up a bookfrom a table or a dime from tlessly overcome tationalexertion of an entire planet.  Cavendisrying to do y at tremely feat level.

    Delicacy  a o taining tus, so Cavendisook up a position in an adjoining room and made ions elescope aimed tingand involved seventeen delicate, interconnected measurements, ook nearly ayear to complete.  last ions, Cavendis ttle over 13,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds, or six billion trillionmetric tons, to use tric ton is 1,000 kilograms or 2,205 pounds.)today, scientists  tect t of asingle bacterium and so sensitive t readings can be disturbed by someone yay-five feet a t significantly improved on Cavendiss of1797. t best estimate for Eart is 5.9725 billion trillion metric tons, adifference of only about 1 percent from Cavendiserestingly, all of timates made by Nealevidence at all.

    So, by te eigury scientists knes distance from ts; and no determining tively straiger all, terials erally att. But no.  tom and invent television, nylon, and instantcoffee before t t.

    to understand ravel norto Scotland and begin  and genialman, of ed a new science called geology.

    5to a p, mass and e different tays tyour  like a planet.

    travel to ter but no less massive. On Eartical purposes, massand reated as synonymous. at least outside the classroom.

 5 THE STONE-BREAKERS

    At JUSt time t ing s in London, four  to take placeton. tton, of course, but good ne cleared to ree ton’s fear of embarrassment.

    ton s a man of t insig conversation, a delig rival o understanding terious slo sunately, it  doanyone could begin to understand.  audiblesig entirely innocent of rorical accompliss.” Nearly every line ation to slumber. errations , discussing . . . something:

    t is composed of terials, not of te predecessor of t, but of t,  land  beneaterof the ocean.

    Yet almost singlee brilliantly, ed transformed our understanding of tton o a prosperousScottis of material comfort t alloellectual betterment. udiedmedicine, but found it not to urned instead to farming, ate in Bers. Edinburgt time er of intellectual vigor, and ton luxuriated in its enricies.

    y called ter Club,  Joseping sparks asBenjamin Franklin and James att.

    In tradition of tton took an interest in nearly everytometaped experiments igated metoured salt mines, speculated on ty, collectedfossils, and propounded tion of air, and tion,among muc icular interest was geology.

    Among tions t attracted interest in t fanatically inquisitive age ime—namely, aintops.  t tion fell into tunists,  everytyplaces, could be explained by rising and falling sea levels. t mountains,ures self, and were cersloshem during periods of global flooding.

    Opposing tonists,  volcanoes and earts, continually c but clearly ooonists also raised aions about  in flood. If t at times to cover t during times of tranquility, suc t toprofound internal forces as here.

    It ers t ton ional insights.

    From looking at  soil ed by t particles of tinually ed elses naturalconclusion tually be e smoot everyional process, some form of rene, t created neo keep taintops,  been deposited during floods, but ains t it  created neinents and t up mountain c is not too muco say t geologists grasp tions of t for te tectonics. Above all, on’s ted  Earts of time, far more ts o transform utterly our understanding of th.

    In 1785, ton ivemeetings of ty of Edinburg attracted almost no notice at all. It’s not o see  to his audience:

    In ted; for, after tuated by , it is by tion of tter of t titutes trinsic in relation to t violent fracture and divulsion; but till to seek; andit appears not in t is not every fracture and dislocation of tances of mineral veins,are found.

    Needless to say, almost no one in test idea . Encouraged by o expand ouc someumble onto clarity in a more expansive format, ton spent t ten yearspreparing wo volumes in 1795.

    togeto nearly a t pessimistic friends  from anyted ed of quotations from Frencill in the original French.

    A ticing t it  publisil 1899, more turyafter ton’s deat all.

    ton’s trong candidate for t read important book in science(or at least  so many otestgeologist of tury and a man t.

    Luckily ton ics atty of Edinburg only e silken prose but—to many years at ton’s elboually understood on rying to say,most of time. In 1802, five years after ton’s deation of ttonian principles, entitled Illustrations of ttonian tefully received by took an active interest in geology,,  to change. And how.

    In ter of 1807, teen like-minded souls in London got toget tavern at Long Acre, in Covent Garden, to form a dining club to be called ty. to meet once a monto sions over a glass or t at a deliberately y fifteenso discourage tions  soon becameapparent,  titutional,  ers, lemen, of course—and tening to eclipse tific society in try.

    t til June,  off to spend t people erestin minerals, you understand, or even academics for t part, but simply gentlemen ime to indulge a  a more or less professional level. By 1830, the like again.

    It is o imagine no geology excited teentury—positively grippedit—in a  no science ever em, a plump and ponderous study of a type of rockcalled grey ant bestseller, racing tions, even t costeigrue tonian style, unreadable. (As even a Murcer conceded, it otal  of literary attractiveness.”) And o America to give a series of lectures in Boston, selloutaudiences of t a time packed into titute to ranquilizingdescriptions of marine zeolites and seismic perturbations in Campania.

    t t especially in Britain, men of learning venturedinto tryside to do a little “stone-breaking,” as t. It  takenseriously, and tended to dress e gravity, in top s and dark suits, exceptfor t it o do his fieldwork in anacademic gown.

    ttracted many extraordinary figures, not least tioned Murc t ty or so years of er foxes, converting aeronauticallyco puffs of drifting feat, and sal agility needed to read times or play a erest in rocks and became ounding sness a titan of geologicalthinking.

    t and autive pamps itles like “Revolution  Bloodsed in a faintly lunatic-sounding conspiracy called “t,” in o s King George III in t as  in  ter. Parkinson co Australia before t lydropped. Adopting a more conservative approaco life, erest in geologyand became one of ty and tant geological text, Organic Remains of a Former orld, oday, udy of tion t knoo fame. In 1785, ory to ural ory museum in a raffle. ter Square, on Lever, rained collecting of natural  til1805,  and tion  quite as remarkable in cer but more influential t ton died and only seventy miles atis of  Scots were feckless drunks.

    As tern eentury gentlemen scientists, Lyell came from abackground of comfortable ellectual vigor. inction of being a leading auty on t Dante and on mosses.

    (Ortricium lyelli, ors to tryside  some time on, is named for erest in natural ory, but it Oxford, ion to geology.

    Buckland  of a cy. s, but  least as mucricities. icularly noted for a menagerieof  o roam to eat ion. Depending ons to Buckland’s  be served baked guinea pig, mice inbatter, roasted  Asian sea slug. Buckland o find meritin t ting. Almostinevitably, y on coprolites—fossilized feces—and ablemade entirely out of ion of specimens.

    Even wing serious science his manner was generally singular. Once Mrs.

    Buckland found , ement: “My dear, I believe t Csteps are undoubtedly testudinal.”

    togeto tcclote,oise.

    Plunking it onto te, t foro t t itsfootprints did indeed matcudying. C Buckland a buffoon—t  Lyell appeared to find o go touring land in 1824. It er trip t Lyell decided to abandon a career in lae o geology full-time.

    Lyell remely ssig t of ,ually  altogetpeculiarity , ed by t, of taking up improbable positions onfurniture—lying across ting  of a canding up” (to quote en   tocks  touc King’s College in London from 1831 to 1833. It imet ed upon ts first voiced byton a generation earlier. (Altton in tudent of Playfair’s reon’s day and Lyell’s troversy, en confused unian–Plutonian dispute. ttlebecame an argument betastroparianism—unattractive terms for animportant and very long-running dispute. Catastrops, as you mig from t t cataclysmic events—floods principally, ropunism are often ogetastropicularly comforting to clerics like Buckland because it alloo incorporate to serious scientific discussions. Uniformitarians by contrast believedt c nearly all Eartime. ton  it  people read, and so  people’s minds, t.

    Lyell believed t ts eady—t everyt  could be explained by events still going on today. Lyell and s didn’t just disdain catastropested it. Catastrops believed textinctions  of a series in  and replaceds—a belief t turalist t. o “a succession ofrubbers of  t table and called for a neoo convenient a o explain tedto foster indolence, and to blunt ty,” sniffed Lyell.

    Lyell’s  oversig  inconsiderable. o explain convincingly ain ranges  of coaccept Louis Agassiz’s idea of ice ages—“tion of termed it—and  t mammals “ fossiliferousbeds.” ed tion t animals and plants suffered sudden anniions, andbelieved t all tiles, fised since time. On all of timately be proved wrong.

    Yet it o overstate Lyell’s influence. t tions in Lyell’s lifetime and contained notions t so tietury. Darook a first edition e after “t merit of t it altered tone of one’s mind, and t,  partially t,  ion. It is a testament to trengt in tso abandon just a part of it to accommodate t tinctions, it nearlykilled t t is anoter.

    Meaning out to do, and not all of it  smoothly.

    From tset geologists tried to categorize rocks by t ten bitter disagreements about  te t became kno Devonian Controversy.

    t Roderick Murcly to te raged for years and greremely ed. “De la Becy dog,” Murce to a friend in a typical outburst.

    Some sense of trengter titlesof Martin J. S. Rud and somber account of t DevonianControversy. tlemanlyDebate” and “Unraveling t to “ttacked,” “Reproofs and Recriminations,” “ts ting a Provincial in t t tledin 1879  of coming up o beinserted betwo.

    Because tis active in tisin ty of Devon. Cambriancomes from t els ing elseo tains on tzerland.Permian recalls tains. ForCretaceous (from tin for “ced to a Belgian geologisthe perky name of J. J. d’Omalius d’halloy.

    Originally, geological ory o four spans of time: primary, secondary,tertiary, and quaternary. tem oo neat to last, and soon geologists ributing additional divisions  ofuse altogeternary  kept by otoday onlytertiary remains as a common designation everys athing.

    Lyell, in roduced additional units knoocene (“most recent”), Pliocene(“more recent”), Miocene (“moderately recent”), and t a little recent”). Lyell originally intended to employ “-syncions as Meiosyncial man, objected on etymological grounds andsuggested instead an “-eous” pattern, producing Meioneous, Pleioneous, and so on. terminations hing of a compromise.

    Noime is divided first into four greatc life”). to anyy subgroups, usually called periods timesknoems. Most of taceous, Jurassic,triassic, Silurian, and so on.

    1tocene, Miocene, and so on— recent (but paleontologically busy) sixty-five million years, and finally  of ter places: Illinoian, Desmoinesian, Croixian, Kimmeridgian, and so on in likevein. Altogeto Joens of dozens.”

    Fortunately, unless you take up geology as a career, you are unlikely ever to hemagain.

    Furtter is t tages or ages in Nortnames from tages in Europe and often only rougersect in time. tian stage mostly corresponds age in Europe, plus atiny bit of tly earlier Caradocian stage.

    Also, all textbook to textbook and from person to person, so t someauties describe seven recent epocent oo, you ertiary and quaternary taken out and replaced by periods of differentlengto t Arc Proterozoic. Sometimes too you ermPo describe the Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoiceras.

    Moreover, all to units of time . Rocks are divided into quite separate unitsknoems, series, and stages. A distinction is also made bete and early(referring to time) and upper and loo layers of rock). It can all get terriblyconfusing to nonspecialists, but to a geologist tters of passion. “I  apory,”

    tisologist Ricey ten o a long-running tietury dispute over he Cambrian and Ordovician.

    At least today ed dating teco table. For most ofteentury geologists could dra rating position t alted on tiquity of an Icon ter t t it en ten timesten thousand” years earlier.

    Alting periods, tage of peopleo try. t tempt orical sourcesand concluded, in a y tome called Annals of testament , t testing  if you are ever required to memorize t riassic Jurassic, etc.) as ths.

    created at midday on October 23, 4004B.C. , an assertion t orians andtextbook ers ever since.

    2tent mytally—and one propounded in many serious books—tUssed scientific beliefs o teentury, and t it raigepime’s Arroes as a typicalexample tence from a popular book of til Lyell publis ted t t, no. As Martin J. S.

    Ruds it, “No geologist of any nationality s advocated a timescale confined s of a literalistic exegesis ofGenesis.” Even teentury produced,noted t no God made  day,but merely “in t beginning, ed “millions uponmillions of years.” Everyone agreed t t. tion was simply .

    One of tter early attempts at dating t came from ted t if you divided total amount of salt in t added eac t tence, unately no one kne increased eac impracticable.

    t attempt at measurement t could be called remotely scientific e de Buffon, in t  ted appreciable amounts of —t  to anyone  t any imating te of dissipation. Buffon’sexperiment consisted of ing spil te  and timating te of  loss by toucly at first) as to be someimate, but a radical notion nonetened ion for expressing it. A practical man,  oncefor less ed tions t ings.

    By teentury most learned people t t leasta fe probably notmore t. So it came as a surprise  created tretc, Surrey, and Sussex, aken, by ions,306,662,400 years to complete. tion ly for being so arrestinglyspecific but even more for flying in ted  th.

    3Itproved so contentious t Dar from tion of tually all books find a space for riking variability in tails associated  in 1650, otill ote te of Earted beginning as October 26. At least one book of note spells ;Us; tter isinterestingly surveyed in Step Little Piggies.

    3Dar number. In a later o be found in anaverage acre of Englisry soil was 53,767.

    problem at its  remained, obe old, but no one could figure out a o make it so.

    Unfortunately for Darion came to ttention of tLord Kelvin (, ill just plain illiam t be elevated to til 1892, ively).

    Kelvin  extraordinary figures of teentury—indeed of anycentury. tist z, no intellectual sloucet Kelvin est “intelligence and lucidity, and mobility of t” of anyman . “I felt quite edly.

    timent is understandable, for Kelvin really orian superman. , tics at titution ransferred to Glasgo ted to Glasgoy at tender age of ten. Bytime ies, udied at institutions in London and Paris,graduated from Cambridge (op prizes for roics, and someime to launcy as ed afelloerten (in Frencics of sucy t o publis ty-to Glasgoy totake up a professorsural pion  fifty-threeyears.

    In till 1907 and ty-te 661papers, accumulated 69 patents (from ed t led directly to tion of refrigeration, devised te temperaturet still bears ed ting devices t alloelegrams to be sentacross oceans, and made innumerable improvements to sion, from tion of a popular marine compass to tion of t deptical acs.

    ical romagnetism, t,ionary.

    4 y to calculatet age of tion occupied mucting it rig effort, in 1862 for an article in apopular magazine called Macmillan’s , suggested t tcautiously allo t ions could be icular ed tself, but I offer ion by t P.  Atkins, just to provide a sense of t;t; t, ted last; t La not even be a la; In briefest terms, tates t a little energy is aled. You cant ualmotion device because no matter , it ually run do la you cant create energy and t you cant reduce temperatures to absolute zero; tes, times expressedjocularly as (1) you cant  break even, and (3) you cant get out of the game.

    “sources noo us are prepared in t storeion”—but it   t unlikely.

    itime Kelvin  in ions and lesscorrect. inually revised imates doo 100 million years, to 50 million years, and finally, in 1897, to a mere 24 millionyears. Kelvin  being   t couldexplain inuously for more tens ofmillions of years at most  exing its fuel. t follo tsplanets ively, but inescapably, youthful.

    t nearly all tradicted teentury t of fossil evidence.

 6 SCIENCE RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW

    IN 1787, SOMEONE in Nely ten—found anenormous ticking out of a stream bank at a place called oodbury Creek. t belong to any species of creature still alive, certainly not in New Jersey.

    From tle is kno is t to o a  time, dinosaurs were unknown.

    t to Dr. Caspar istar, tion’s leading anatomist, a meeting of ty in P autumn. Unfortunately,istar failed completely to recognize tiousand uninspired remarks to t t it ed so little interest t it  in a storeroom and eventually disappeared altogether.

    So t dinosaur bone ever found  to be lost.

    t t attract greater interest is more ttle puzzling, for its appearancecame at a time  about tanimals. trange assertion by t Frencuralist te de Buffon—ed sper—t living to te in  and muceemed oire Naturelle , agnant, tive, and t size or vigor, titutions rose from its rotting ss. Insuc even tive Indians lacked virility. “tive organs were“small and feeble.”

    Buffon’s observations found surprisingly eager support among oters, especiallyt complicated by actual familiarity ry. ADutc native American males  only reproductivelyunimposing, but “so lacking in virility t ts.” Sucy and could be found repeated or ecexts tillnear teentury.

    Not surprisingly, sucly met in America. ted a furious (and, unless text is understood, quite betal in es on tate of Virginia , and induced o send ty soldiers into to find a bull moose to present to Buffon asproof of tature and majesty of American quadrupeds. It took to trackdoable subject. t, unfortunately lacked tJefferson  Sullivan tfully included a rack of antlers from an elk orstag ion t ttacead. er all, would know?

    Meany—naturalists o assemble t elep-like creature kno first as “t American incognitum” but lateridentified, not quite correctly, as a mammot of ta place called Big Bone Lick in Kentucky, but soon oturning up all over. America,it appeared, ruly substantial creature—one t ions.

    In to demonstrate tum’s bulk and ferocity, turalists appear to ly carried aimated its size by afactor of six and gave it frig came from a Megalonyx, or giantground slot ty and ferocity of tiger,” and portrayed it in illustrations as pouncingo prey from boulders. usks otive orer screusks in upsidedooot, isfyingly aggressive aspect.

    Anotusks so t t ture ic and o ancself to trees inent consideration about tum,  it appeared to be extinct—afact t Buffon cs incontestably degenerate nature.

    Buffon died in 1788, but troversy rolled on. In 1795 a selection of bones made to Paris, ology, tocratic Georges Cuvier. Cuvier akingiculated bones and  ure of an animal from a single tooten nameto t no one in America  to ea formal description of t, Cuvier did so, and ts officialdiscoverer.  a mastodon (eeth”).

    Inspired by troversy, in 1796 Cuvier e a landmark paper, Note on ts, in  time a formal tinctions.  from time to time tastropures . For religious people, including Cuvier able implications since it suggested an unaccountable casualness on t of Providence. to e species only to  later? tion rary to t C t every living t  abide t t o vaniso t, to evolve). So  to  t be scientific and political value in sending a party to explore terior of Americabeyond t at trepid adventurers sized creatures grazing on teous plains.

    Jefferson’s personal secretary and trusted friend Meriuralist for tion. ted to advise  to look out foro animals living and deceased ar.

    In t, t tocratic and celebrated Cuvier ion t into t ions. illiam Smitruction on tCoal Canal. On tting in a coacion t ually make ation. to interpret rocks,to be some means of correlation, a basis on  t o realize t t every crata certainspecies of fossils disappeared  levels. By noting a, you could  tive ages of rocks o make a map ofBritain’s rock strata, rials in 1815 and one of modern geology. (tory is compreer’s popular book t Cunately, , Smiterested in understanding trata and content myself  it is so,”  come he Province of a Mineral Surveyor.”

    Smition  regarding  strata  ened tinctions. to begin  confirmed t God  creatures not occasionally butrepeatedly. t so mucile. It also made itinconveniently necessary to explain  o succeeding eons. Clearly to extinctions ted for by a single Noacter to isfaction by suggesting t Genesis applied only to t recentinundation. God, it appeared,  ract or alarm Moses  extinctions.

    So by teentury, fossils aken on a certain inescapableimportance, o see tunate. Suddenly, in any case, bones urning up all over. Several otunities arose for Americans to claim t all ed. In1806 tion passed tion in Montana, anarea er literally trip over dinosaur bones, and even examined failed to make anyt. Otprints icut River Valley of Neer a farm boy named Plinus Moody spied ancient tracks on a rock ledge at Soutts. Some of t least survive—notably tion of t Yale. Found in 1818, tdinosaur bones to be examined and saved, but unfortunately  recognized for il 1855. In t same year, 1818, Caspar istar died, but ainunexpected immortality  named ttall named a deliger anical purists still insist on spelling it aria .

    By time, ological momentum o England. In 1812, atLyme Regis on t coast, an extraordinary ceen, depending on range fossilized seamonster, seventeen feet long and noeep anddangerous cliffs along the English Channel.

    It art of a remarkable career. Anning  ty-five yearsgato visitors. (So be tongue ter “Splesiosaurus, anoter, and one of t and best pterodactyls. tec  terribly relevant at time since nobody t a dinosaur   turesstrikingly unlike anyt now find.

    It  simply t Anning  spotting fossils—tt—but t sract test delicacy and  damage. If youever o visit t marine reptiles at tural ory Museumin London, I urge you to take it for to appreciate ty ofually unaided  basic tools innearly impossible conditions. took en years of patient excavation.

    Altrained, Anning o provide competent draions forsc even age of  finds were rare and s of y.

    It ory of paleontology t in fact tell and ry doctor in Sussex.

    Mantell ed amateur paleontologist. o ed and observant  in rural Sussex, Mrs. Mantell  for a stroll do  to fill pot—a curved broone,about t. Kno in fossils, and tmigook it to ell could see at once it ootera little study became certain t it  remely large—tens of feet long—and from taceous period.  on allcounts, but t had been seen before or evenimagined.

    A irely upend ood about t, and urgedby al appetite—to proceed ion, Mantell devoted taking years to seeking evidence tosupport  tooto Cuvier in Paris for an opinion, but tFrenc as being from a amus. (Cuvier later apologized eristic error.) One day erian Museum inLondon, Mantell fell into conversation old ootudying, Soutycomparison confirmed tell’s creature became Iguanodon , aftera basking tropical lizard to  in any manner related.

    Mantell prepared a paper for delivery to ty. Unfortunately it emerged tanot a quarry in Oxfords been formallydescribed—by t to work in e.

    It ually suggested to Buckland by his friend Dr.

    James Parkinson, t maybe recalled,  a geologist, and  , for transactions of ty of London , ed t ture’steet attacly to t placed in sockets in t iced to realize  meant:

    Megalosaurus irely neype of creature. So alt demonstrated littleacuity or insig ill t publision of a dinosaur, and so to ell goes t for t line ofbeings.

    Una disappointment o be a continuing feature of ellcontinued ing for fossils—, til  fossilcollection in Britain. Mantell  doctor and equally gifted bone er, but o support botalents. As ing mania greon and consumed muc  to undering tion of books t feoorations of ty copies and left of pocket—an uncomfortably substantial sum for times.

    In some desperation Mantell  on turning o a museum andcedly realized t suc leman, not to mention as a scientist, and so o visit ter ing botice and ually o sell most of ion to pay off s. Soon after,  aking th her.

    Remarkably, roubles  beginning.

    In trict of Syden a place called Crystal Palace Park, tands a strange and forgotten sig life-sized models of dinosaurs. Not manypeople travel t once t popular attractions inLondon—in effect, as Ricey ed, t te a lotabout t strictly correct. ts nose,as a kind of spike, and it stands on four sturdy legs, making it look like a ratout anda crouc  t tscould cause great rancor and bitterness, but tural ory  ter of fiercer and more enduring reds t beasts knownas dinosaurs.

    At time of truction, Sydensspacious park o re-erect tal Palace, t-iron structure t erpiece of t Exion of 1851, and fromook its name. t of concrete, traction. On Ney-one prominentscientists ified t among t table est star of tology. ime ed several productive years to making Gideon Mantell’s lifehell.

    Orained as a doctor.

    omist and so devoted to udies t imes illicitly borros from cadavers and took tion.

    Once  removed, O cobble and ctage, o rest int parlor.  ts o say upon finding an unattaco a at t can only be imagined. One assumes t t formed any terriblyadvanced conclusions  later, a fraugrieved t again.

    In 1825, aged just ty-one, Oo London and soon after o ensive, but disordered, collections ofmedical and anatomical specimens. Most of t to titution by Joer, a distinguisireless collector of medical curiosities, but alogued or organized, largely because ter er’s death.

    Oly distinguision and deduction. At time o be a peerless anatomist incts for reconstructionalmost on a par  Cuvier in Paris.  on tomy ofanimals t ed first refusal on any animal t died at to ion. Once urned o find a fres  on all kinds of animals living and extinct—from platypuses,eco tinct giantbirds called moas t il eaten out of existence by t to describe teryx after its discovery in Bavaria in 1861 and tto e a formal epitapogetomicalpapers, a prodigious output.

    But it  means “terrible lizard” and  name. Dinosaurs, as all terrible—some s and probably extremelyretiring—and t empically   tures ilian and  ly good Greek  for some reasonc to use it. Anoty of specimens at time) dinosaurs constitute not one but tiles: the lizard-hipped saurischians.

    O an attractive person, in appearance or in temperament. A pogrape middle years s and sinister, like torianmelodrama, o frig scruple in tions. o e. Even Owen’s son (wer killed o able coldness of .”

    ed gifts as an anatomist allo a barefaceddisies. In 1857, turalist t. ion ofCory  Oed as Professor ofComparative Anatomy and P t Sc ion al error, old t tion o them by Dr.

    O named  Oakingcredit for one of o a bitter dispute ist over tfor a teeth.

    ate to persecute t ty to blackball a young man named Robert Grant . Grant oniso discover to tomical specimens o conduct o pursue o an understandably dispirited obscurity.

    But no one suffered more from Otentions tragic Gideon Mantell. After losing ice,and most of ion, Mantell moved to London. teful yearin  glory for naming and identifying tell errible accident. , greangled in t a gallop overroug left , crippled, and in ch a spine damaged beyond repair.

    Capitalizing  on  Mantell’s  enfeebled  state, O about systematically expungingMantell’s contributions from t Mantell  for tell continued to try to dooriginal researc Oy to ensure t most of ed. In 1852, unable to bear any more pain or persecution, Mantell took  to t orof terian Museum.

    But ts  quite finiser Mantell’s deatingly uncableobituary appeared in terary Gazette. In it Mantell omist ributions to paleontology ed by a “ of exactknouary even removed ted it instead to Cuvier and Oyle ural sciences doubted thorship.

    By tage, ransgressions o catctee of ty—a committee of en on an extinct mollusc called te. “es in ory of terrible Lizard, “t quite asoriginal as it appeared.” te, it turned out, eur naturalist named Ced ata meeting of ty. O meeting, but failed to mentionted a report of o ty—in ally,ened ture Belemnites o a permanent tarnisation, even amongers.

    Eventually o do to Oed off ties. As a final insult erian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons.

    Oant researc tter edto one unexceptionable pursuit for ion of tisy ion of London’s Natural ory Museum. ton, opened in 1880, is almost entirely a testament to his vision.

    Before Oion of te, andeven t  to gain access. In tisivevisitors o make a ten application and undergo a brief intervieo determine if t to be admitted at all. to return a second time to pick up a ticket—t isassuming tervieime to viereasures. Even t alloolinger. Oo o t of encouraging o visit in to devote most of to public displays. o put informative labels on eac people couldappreciate  unexpectedly, . h.

    museums situtes. By making tural ory Museum an institution for everyone, Oransformed our expectations ofw museums are for.

    Still, ruism in general to  official acts o lobby against a proposal to erect a statue inmemory of Cain belated,inadvertent triumpoday atue commands a masterly vieaircase of tural ory Museum, o tare gravely over peoplesnacking on cups of tea and jam dougs.

    It o suppose t Ricty rivalries marked tof nineteentury paleontology, but in fact o come, time from overseas. InAmerica in tury tacularlyvenomous, if not quite as destructive. It range and ruthniel Charles Marsh.

    tered, quarrelsome, jealous,mistrustful, and ever unology.

    tual friends and admirers, even naming fossil species after eac a pleasant oget e sure yt o consuming red over t ty years. It is probably safe to sayt no tural sciences her more.

    Marstle time in tfinding t to to notice t orian, “lyingevery anyted. Alt background—ate Ne financier George Peabody. erest in natural ory, Peabody  for  Yale andprovided funds sufficient for Marso fill it  ook his fancy.

    Cope ly into privilege—urous of tana er and roops  do Little Big ing for bones nearby.  ed out to  t t prudent time to be taking treasures from Indian lands, Cope t fora minute and decided to press on any one point o a party of suspicious Cro o edlytaking out and replacing eeth.

    For a decade or so, Marsual dislike primarily took tsniping, but in 1877 it erupted into grandiose dimensions. In t year a Coloradosceac h a friend.

    Recognizing tic saurian,” Lakes tfully dispatco boted Cope sent Lakes a rouble and asked  to tell anyone of o pass to Cope. Mars it  t .

    It also marked tart of a  became increasingly bitter,underen ridiculous. times stooped to one team’s diggers t team’s. Cope  jimmying open crates t belonged toMarsed eac and eacs.

    Seldom—perly and successfully byanimosity. Over t several years to almost 150. Nearly every dinosaur t tegosaurus, brontosaurus, diplodocus, triceratops—hem.

    1Unfortunately, te t tenfailed to note t a neo “discover” a species calledUintaty-times. Ittook years to sort out some of tion messes t sorted outyet.

    Of tific legacy ial. In a breatrious career, e some 1,400 learned papers and described almost 1,300 neypes, not just dinosaurs)—more tput in bot  unfortunately  into a ratatedescent in er years. ed a fortune in 1875, ed un everytrast finiser.

    In eresting obsession. It became ype specimen for is, t  for type specimen of a species is t set of1table exception being tyrannosaurus rex, which was found by Barnum Brown in 1902.

    bones found, but since no first set of s, to fill. It ooppose it. to t end, Cope ar Institute, a learned society inPs of tar.

    Unfortunately, after   t sypure one ype specimenfor one’s oition and ly sill notype specimen for modern humans.

    As for tic asylum in Clap far from well .

    Mantell’s ted spine remained on display at terian Museum for nearly a centurybefore being mercifully obliterated by a German bomb in tz.  remained ofMantell’s collection after o  aken to Neer became a distinguisually attaining ter of Native Affairs. In 1865 ed tion, including tooto ton,  started it all—arguably t important tootology—is no longer on display.

    Of course dinosaur ing didn’t end  nineteentury fossilers. Indeed, to a surprising extent it  begun. In 1898, t fellbetrove greater by far ticed, really—at a place called Bone Cabin Quarry, only a fe Como Bluff, yoming. to be found  of t, tsomeone  a cabin out of t t t bones ed from te, and tens of t followed.

    t is t by turn of tietury, paleontologists erally tons ofold bones to pick over. t till didn’t  comfortably support t t obviously contained. If Earty million years old or so, as t Lord Kelvin insisted, t creatures must o being and gone out again practically in tant. It just made no sense.

    Otists besides Kelvin turned to tst only deepened tainty. Samuel on, a respected geologist at trinity Collegein Dublin, announced an estimated age for ting. o tention, edusing ta and put t 153 million years. Jorinity, decidedto give Edmond s idea a ions t . ed t t fit neatly enougions but unfortunately not y.

    Suc by teentury, depending on  you consulted, you could learn t t stood bet range. As late as 1910, one of t respected estimates, by t t pertle as 55 million years.

    Just  intractably confused, along came anotraordinaryfigure  Ne Rutty able evidence t t leastmany her more.

    Remarkably, ural, spontaneous, scientificallycredible, and  alcon, it turned out,  beenso er all. And exactly  came to be is of course anotory.

 7 ELEMENTAL MATTERSCHEMISTRY

    AS AN earnest and respectable science is often said to date from 1661,  o distinguis it en erratic transition. Into teentury scable in botionable  , given t materials, he could make himselfinvisible.

    Perter typifies trange and often accidental nature of cs early days t gold could someilled from y ofcolor seems to or in y buckets of  for monte processes, ed t into a noxious paste and to a translucent ance. None of it yieldedgold, of course, but a strange and interesting ter a time, tancebegan to glo often spontaneously burst into flame.

    tential for tuff—s meaning “lig lost on eager businesspeople, but ties of manufacture made it too costly to exploit. An ounce of pailed forsix guineas—peroday’s money—or more than gold.

    At first, soldiers o provide terial, but suc rial-scale production. In t named Karl(or Carl) Sco manufacture p t ery of p Sches.

    Scraordinary and extraordinarily luckless fellotle in tus,  elements—cungsten, nitrogen, and oxygen—and got credit for none oft into publication aftersomeone else ly. annic acid, and  to see tential of c made otremely hy.

    Scable scoming ence on tasting a little of everytoriously disagreeable substances as mercury, prussic acid(anot150 years later Er (see page 146). Scually caug forty-t oxicced for tunned and terminal look on hisface.

    ere t and Swedish-speaking, Scheele would have enjoyed universal acclaim.

    Instead credit ended to lodge ed cs, mostly from t for various breakinglycomplicated reasons could not get imely manner. Instead credit to Josepley, ly, but latterly, in to receive credit for textbooks still attribute co , but ty-six years after Scheele had.

    Altry ury t separated Neill o go. Rigo teentury (and in Priestley’s case a little beyond) scientistseveryually found, t just tiated airs, depicated marine acids, perraqueousexions, and, above all, pon, tance t  to be tive agentin combustion. Some, terious élanvital, t brouge objects to life. No one kne you could enliven it  of electricity (anotion Mary Sed to full effect in ein ) and t it existed insome substances but not otwo brancry:

    organic (for tances t  to ) and inorganic (for t didnot).

    Someone of insigo t cry into t oine-Laurent Lavoisier. Born in 1743, Lavoisiery (itle for t a practicing sitution called ted taxes and fees on be. Alts mild and fair-minded, t did not tax t only ten arbitrarily. ForLavoisier, titution  it provided o follo oday’s money.

    ter embarking on tive career pateen-year-olddauging of s and minds botellect and soon ively alongside her husband.

    Despite to put in five  days—time to be commissioner of gunpoo deter smugglers, ric system, and coauture Cs.

    As a leading member of to take aninformed and active interest in opical—ism, prison reform, tion of insects, ter supply of Paris. It Lavoisier made some dismissive remarks about a neion t ted to tist. t tist never forgave .

    t. At a time  anybody eresting po incidentally, some ts  to befound—Lavoisier failed to uncover a single one. It certainly  for  of beakers.

    Lavoisier een t o an almost preposterous degree, t private laboratory in existence.

    Instead ook t ponand mepic airs. ified oxygen and  t, o bring rigor, clarity, and meto cry.

    And  did in fact come in very remely exacting studies requiring tmeasurements. termined, for instance, t a rusting object doesn’t lose ed t tracting elemental particles from t  realization tmatter can be transformed but not eliminated. If you burned ts matter  amount of stuff in the same.

    tion of mass, and it ionary concept.

    Unfortunately, it coincided ype of revolution—tirely on the wrong side.

    Not only  ically builtt enclosed Paris—an edifice so loat it  ttacked by tizens. Capitalizing on t, noionalAssembly, denounced Lavoisier and suggested t it  time for his hanging.

    Soon after do long after t e Corday, but by time it oolate for Lavoisier.

    In 1793, terror, already intense, ratced up to a oberMarie Antoinette  to tine. tardy plans to slip ao Scotland, Lavoisier ed. In May y-one felloribunal (in acourtroom presided over by a bust of Marat). Eiged acquittals, but Lavoisier andtaken directly to tion (noe of t of Frencines. Lavoisier cepped up and accepted e. Less ter, on July 27, Robespierrecerrorsly ended.

    A er atue of Lavoisier ed in Paris and mucil someone pointed out t it looked notioning tor admitted t ician and p—apparently  no one ice or, iced, . tatue of Lavoisier-cum-Condorcet o remain in place for anotury until t aken aed down for scrap.

    In trous oxide, or lauger it  its use “tended by a  ury it y, ime devoted to little else. ters put on “laugeers could refres inion and tertain taggerings.

    It  until 1846 t anyone got around to finding a practical use for nitrous oxide, asan anestic. Goodness kno of t obvious practicalapplication.

    I mention to make t t cry, eentury, rat its bearings in t decades of teentgeology ietly it o do ations ofequipment—tance, no centrifuges until tury,severely restricting many kinds of experiments—and partly it as gentlemen, o be drao geology, natural ory, and physics.

    (tly less true in continental Europe tain, but only slig isperelling t one of t important observations of tury, Broion,ure of molecules,  by a c but by a Scottisanist, Robert Broiced, in 1827,  tiny grains of pollensuspended in er remained indefinitely in motion no matter osettle. tual motion—namely tions of invisible molecules—ery.)t  not been for a splendidly improbable cer namedCount von Rumford, itle, began life in oburn,Massacts, in 1753 as plain Benjamin tious,“ure and figure,” occasionally courageous and exceedingly briguntroubled by anyt nineteen een years  at tbreak of revolution in ts, for a time spying on teful year of 1776, facing arrest“for lukey,” ai-Royalists armed s of  tar, bags of feat desire to adorn h.

    to England and to Germany, o t of Bavaria, so impressing ties t in 1791 von Rumford of t the English Garden.

    In betakings, ime to conduct a good deal of solidscience.  auty on t toelucidate tion of fluids and tion of ocean currents. ed several useful objects, including a drip coffeemaker, type of range still knooine-Laurent. t asuccess and ted. Rumford stayed on in France,  his former wives, in 1814.

    But our purpose in mentioning  in 1799, during a comparatively briefinterlude in London, itution, yet anoties t popped into being all over Britain in te eigeenturies. For a time it  titution of standing to actively promote try, and t  entirely to a brilliant young mannamed ed titution’s professor of cry slyafter its inception and rapidly gained fame as an outstanding lecturer and productiveexperimentalist.

    Soon after taking up ion, Davy began to bang out nes one afteranotassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, and aluminum or aluminium,depending on which branch of English you favor.

    1s not somucute as because ecricity to a molten substance—electrolysis, as it is knoogets, a fiftotal of   unfortunately as a young man tac to tpleasures of nitrous oxide. taco t  (literally) times a day. Eventually, in 1829, it is t to have killed him.

    Fortunately more sober types   person to intimate ture of an atom (progress t ely a little furtalian ic name of Lorenzo Romano Amadeo Carlo Avogadro, Count of Quarequa and Cerreto,made a discovery t erm—namely, t type, if kept at temperature, ainidentical numbers of molecules.

    table about Avogadro’s Principle, as it became kno, itprovided a basis for more accurately measuring t of atoms. UsingAvogadro’s matics, cs ually able to , for instance, t atypical atom er of 0.00000008 centimeters,  no one kne Avogadro’s appealingly simple principle for almost fiftyyears.

    2Partly tiring fellole ists, publistended nomeetings—but also it ings to attend and fe. trial Revolution eristic indecisiveness onDavys part.  isolated t in 1808,  alumium. For son reason  better oft and c to aluminum four years later. Americans dutifully adopted term, but mai Britising out t it disrupted ttern establisrontium, so they added a vowel and syllable.

    2to ter adoption of Avogadros number, a basic unit of measure in cry, s value is placed at 6.0221367 x 1023, udents ing just  is, so I canreport t it is equivalent to to cover ted States to a depter in t drink cans t acked, cover to adept number of American pennies rillionaire. It is a big number.

    driven in large part by developments in cry, and yet as an organized science crybarely existed for decades.

    ty of London  founded until 1841 and didn’t begin to produce aregular journal until 1848, by  learned societies in Britain—Geological,Geograpicultural, and Linnaean (for naturalists and botanists)—least ty years old and often mucitute of Cry didn’t come intobeing until 1877, a year after ty. Becausecry o get organized, neant breakt begin to become general until t international cry congress, in Karlsruhe,in 1860.

    Because cs for so long ion, conventions o emerge. Untilo tury, t mean er to one cbut o anot ed everywhere.

    Cs also used a bey of symbols and abbreviations, often self-invented.

    Sters by decreeing tts be abbreviated on tin names, in ferrum ) and t for silver is Ag (from tinargentum ). t so many of tions accord rogen, O for Oxygen, s Englisinate nature, not itsexalted status. to indicate toms in a molecule, Berzelius employed asuperscript notation, as in er, for no special reason, to render t: h2O.

    Despite tidyings-up, cry by teenturyoprominence in 1869 of an odd and crazed-looking professor at ty of St. Petersburgnamed Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev.

    Mendeleyev (also sometimes spelled Mendeleev or Mendeléef) tobolsk, in t of Siberia, into a ed, reasonably prosperous, and verylarge family—so large, in fact, t ory  track of exactly een ceen. All agree, atany rate, t Dmitri . Luck  alri  to raordinary ory. All  il 1848, o penury. Determined to get  cion, table Mrs. Mendeleyev cri four to St.

    Petersburg—t’s equivalent to traveling from London to Equatorial Guinea—and deposited titute of Pedagogy. orn out by s, ser.

    Mendeleyev dutifully completed udies and eventually landed a position at ty. tent but not terribly outstanding c, kno once a year, ts in tory.

    ty-five, o toy o arrange ts. At time, elements omic ance). Mendeleyev’s breakto see t table.

    As is often tually been anticipated teur c in England named Joed t  certain properties—in a sense to every eigly unime  quite yet come, Ne taves and likened t to taves on a piano keyboard. Peration, but tally preposterous and  gatimes ask  s to play ttle tune. Discouraged, Neher.

    Mendeleyev used a slig approacs into groups of seven,but employed fundamentally t andive. Because ties repeated tionbecame knoable.

    Mendeleyev o aire in Nortience elseically. Using a broadly similar concept, s in alroical columns called groups. tantly s ofrelationso side. Specifically,tical columns put toget ies. ts ontop of silver and silver sits on top of gold because of ties as metals, erminant intron valences, for al ro is knoomic number.

    tructure of atoms and tons  all t is necessary is to appreciate t one proton, and so it omic number of one and comes first on t; uraniumy-tons, and so it comes near tomic number of ninety-two.

    In ted out, cry really is just a matter of counting.

    (Atomic number, incidentally, is not to be confused omic rons in a given element.) till a great deal t knoood.  common element in tno one element, s existence  even been suspectedbefore t—and t on Eart in t roscopeduring a solar eclipse,  beisolated until 1895. Even so, to Mendeleyev’s invention, cry ing.

    For most of us, table is a ty in tract, but for cs itestablise orderliness and clarity t can ated. “it adoubt, table of ts is t elegant organizational cever devised,” e Robert E. Krebs in tory and Use of Our Earts, and you can find similar sentiments in virtually every ory of cry in print.

    today y-turally occurring ones plus acouple of dozen t ed in labs. tual number is sligentiousbecause ts exist for only milliontssometimes argue over ed or not. In Mendeleyev’s dayjust sixty-ts  part of o realize t ts as t make a complete picture, t many pieces ed, s  in whey werefound.

    No one knoally, s migomic  ain is tanyt is found  neatly into Mendeleyev’s great scheme.

    teentury  great surprise for cs. It began in 1896  of uranium salts on a e out some time later, o discovert ts , just as if te o ligs ting rays of some sort.

    Considering tance of urned tter over to a graduate student for investigation. Fortunately tudent  émigré from Poland named Marie Curie. orking  certain kinds of rocks poured out constant and extraordinary amounts of energy,yet  diminisectable il Einstein explained t ting mass into energy in an exceedingly efficient way.

    Marie Curie dubbed t “radioactivity.” In ts—polonium, ry, and radium.

    In 1903 tly ary, in 1911, to ry and p McGill University in Montreal t Ruterested in tive materials. it immense reserves of energy s of matter,and t tive decay of t for most of th.

    t radioactive elements decayed into ots—t one dayyou om of uranium, say, and t you om of lead. trulyextraordinary. It aneously.

    Ever tist, Rut to see t ticalapplication in ticed t in any sample of radioactive material, it alook t of time for o decay—ted  teady, reliable rate of decay could be used as a kind of clock. By calculating backerial ly it its age. ested a piece of pitc to be 700million years old—very muc people o grant th.

    In traveled to London to give a lecture at titution—t organization founded by Count von Rumford only 105 years before,t poant eon compared ness of te Victorians. Ruto talk about egration tivity, as part of  chblende.

    tactfully—for t, if not aledt Kelvin ed t t ions out. Rut oto radioactivity tly y-four million yearsKelvin’s calculations allowed.

    Kelvin beamed at Rutful presentation, but  unmoved. ed to  astute and important contribution to science—far greater thermodynamics.

    As

    scientific  revolutions,  Rut universallyaccepted. Jorenuously insisted o t ty-nine million years old, and opped only to  Rutoo mucime. But even ric dating, as decay measurements became kno ual age. Science  track, but still .

    Kelvin died in 1907. t year also sari Mendeleyev. Like Kelvin, ive enceof radiation or tron or anyt .  mostly storming out of labs and lecture  101 es Paul Stratis an unstable element.”

    Radiation, of course,  on and on, literally and in ed. In to experience clear signs of radiation sickness—notably dull acless .

    Marie Curie spent t of inction in to foundted Radium Institute of ty of Paris in 1914. Despite o t because after ted an affair  t ly indiscreet toscandalize even t least tter.

    For a long time it  anytic as radioactivitymust be beneficial. For years, manufacturers of toote and laxatives put radioactivets, and at least until te 1920s tel in tless otured iceffects of its “Radioactive mineral springs.” Radioactivity  banned in consumerproducts until 1938. By time it e for Madame Curie, , is so pernicious and long lasting t even noo  in lead-lined boxes, and to see t don protective clothing.

    to ted and untingly  atomic scientists, by tietury it  Eartionablyvenerable, tury of science ly say quite  to get a nesoomic one.

    PARt  III   A NE AGE DANSA P is toms’  atoms.

    -Anonymous

 8 EINSTEIN’S UNIVERSEAS

    tEENtury dreo a close, scientists could reflect isfaction tt of teries of tricity, magnetism,gases, optics, acoustics, kinetics, and statistical meco name just a feron, andradioactivity, invented tt, ttle erg.

    If a ted, accelerated, perturbed, distilled, combined, yand majestic t ill tend to e t in capitals: tromagnetic Field t, Ricions, C, tions, andoting. truments t ty  t for science to do.

    In 1875, eo matics or to p ily not to cury, ion and refinement, not revolution. Planck didn’t listen. udiedtical po ropy, a process at t of to ious young man.

    1In 1891 s and learned to  tant ropy been done already, in tance by a retiring sc Yale University namedJ. illard Gibbs.

    Gibbs is per brilliant person t most people  tot of near invisibility, ually t from t studying in Europe, icut. For  ten years at Yale  even botodrao tracted an average of sligudent asemester. ten  to folloe form of notationt many found incompre buried among ions  brilliance.

    In 1875–78, Gibbs produced a series of papers, collectively titledOn terogeneous Substances , t dazzlingly elucidated t is a measure of randomness or disorder in a system. Darrell Ebbing, in textbook GeneralCry, very usefully suggests t of tand in sequence from ace to king, can be said to be in its ordered state. S tate. Entropy is a   state is and of determining ticular outcomes o ionspublisable journal you o understand additional concepts sucies, lattice distances, and stoicric relations ts the general idea.

    nearly everytures, surfaces, solids, pions,electrocation, and osmosis,” to quote illiam  Gibbs did  apply simply to  and energy at t of large and noisy scale of team engine, but  and influential at tomic level of cions. Gibbs’s Equilibrium  for reasons t defy speculation Gibbs co publisions in transactions of ticut Academy of Arts and Sciences,a journal t managed to be obscure even in Connecticut, oo late.

    Undaunted—urned to otters.

    2e surnto t, but first  make a slig relevant!) detour toCleveland, Oitution t of early middle years named Albert Miced by  Eds t produced curious anddisturbing results t ions for muc followed.

    Mic actually intending to, anding belief in sometable, invisible, unately  to permeate tes, embraced by Need by nearly everyoneever since, tion of absolute centrality in nineteentury p traveled across tiness of space. It  and electromagnetism ypes of vibrations. Vibrations must occur in sometingdevotion to, an ete as 1909, t Britis J. J. ting:

    “t a fantastic creation of tive p is as essential to us aster it ty incontestably establis it didn’t exist. People, in s, taco ther.

    If you needed to illustrate teentury America as a land of opportunity,you could  Mico a family of poor Jeed States  and greo pay for college, raveled to ason, D.C.,and took to loitering by t door of te   Ulysses S. Grant utional. (It  age.) In tiated ot t Grant agreed to secure for  t Michelson learned his physics.

    ten years later, by no terested in trying to measure somet—a kind of s as tions ofNe as it pusen unlucky in life.   orld ar.  to look after ters er sy-five, an Allied bomb fell on everytime of accumulations. t in aconspiracy to assassinate ler and executed.

    respect to an observer depending on  or a, but no one  a o measure t occurred toMic for raveling to ismoving a, and  if you took careful enougs atopposite seasons and compared ligravel time betwo, you would have youranswer.

    Micalked Alexander Graor of telepoproviding to build an ingenious and sensitive instrument of Micerferometer, ed by t sidious measurements. te and exing, and o be suspended fora time to permit Mic compre by 1887 ts. t at all ists ed to find.

    As Caltecrop Kip S. tten: “t turned out to betions and at all seasons.” It   in t Neimeevery famous negative result in tory of p American so  not for tyyears. Meanysmell, in tific t.

    Remarkably, and despite ietury da an end,urrets and pinnacles to be added, a feo be carved,” in ter in Nature.

    In fact, of course, t to enter a century of science and anytand everytists  in a beicles and antiparticles, ence in spans of time t make nanoseconds look plodding and uneventful,ranspireness on scales far belos of imagining. e  toenter tum age, and t person to pusunateMax Planck.

    In 1900, noical p at ty of Berlin and at tadvanced age of forty-tum ted tenergy is not a continuous ter but comes in individualized packets,, and a good one. In t term it ion to ts in t itdemonstrated t lig be a er all. In term it ion for t  all events, t clue t t to change.

    But t—t ion, no access to a laboratory, and ter t of tional patent office in Bern, o be promoted to tecly been rejected.) Einstein, and in t one eventful year ted to Annalen derPo C. P. Snoest in tory of poelectric effect by means of Planck’s neum ticles in suspension (ion), and one outlining a special tivity.

    t s auture of ligomake television possible, among othings).

    3t atoms doindeed exist—a fact t e. the world.

    Einstein  grele ined tness to come. Famously  learn to speak until rical business failing, to Milan, butAlbert, by noeenager,  to Szerland to continue ion—trance exams on t try. In 1896 izensoavoid military conscription and entered tecitute on a four-year coursedesigned to c eac but not outstandingstudent.

    In 1900 ed and o contribute papers toAnnalen der P paper, on traum to 1904 atistical meco discover t tlyproductive J. illard Gibbs in Connecticut  atistical Mechanics of 1901.

    At time udent, a  of  up foradoption. Einstein never saer, s, in 1902, Einstein took a job ent office,  seven years.   so co distract  y in 1905.

    Called “On trodynamics of Moving Bodies,” it is one of t extraordinaryscientific papers ever publis ed as for  said. It notes or citations, contained almost no matics, made no mention of any  , and ackno one individual, a3Einstein ;for services to tical p; o  sixteen years, till1921, to receive te a long time, all t not all compared ected trino in 1957 but  il 1995, ty-eiger, ort Ruska, ron microscope in 1932 and received ury after t. Since Nobel Prizes are never ay can be asimportant a factor as ingenuity for prizewinners.

    colleague at tent office named Mic e C. P. Snoein“, unaided,  listening to to a surprisingly large extent, t is precisely w he had done.”

    ion, E =mc2, did not appear  came in a brief supplementt folloer. As you andsfor energy, m for mass, and c2for t squared.

    In simplest terms, ion says is t mass and energy have an equivalence.

    ted matter; matter is energy ing to times itself) is a truly enormous number, ion is saying is t t—a really —of energy bound upin every material thing.

    4You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you ain  frame no less tential energy—enougoexplode y very large oliberate it and really . Everytrapped. e’re just not very good at getting it out. Even a uranium bomb—tenergetic t—releases less t of t couldrelease if only we were more cunning.

    Among mucein’s tion ant streams of  melting a could do it by converting mass to energy extremely efficiently à laE =mc2.) Itexplained ars could burn for billions of years  racing tto.)At a stroke, in a simple formula, Einstein endos and astronomers  t ant and supreme. Notake it. It broug (no pun intended, exactly) tot of our understanding of ture of t incidentally, it alsosolved t clear t it didn’t exist. Einsteingave us a universe t didn’t need it.

    Ps as a rule are not overattentive to ts of Sent officeclerks, and so, despite tidings, Einstein’s papers attracted little notice.

    solved several of t mysteries of tein applied for a jobas a university lecturer and ed, and teacedt back to  of course t even come close to finis.

    Paul Valéry once asked Einstein if  a notebook to record ein looked at  genuine surprise. “O’s not necessary,” he replied.

    “It’s so seldom I  out t  tended to begood. Einstein’s next idea est t anyone est, according to Boorse, Motz, and eaver in tful ory of atomic science.

    4o be t is sometery, but David Bodanis suggests itprobably came from tin celeritas, meaning sness. t volume of tionary, compiled a decade before Einsteins to cricket, but makes no mention of it as a symbol for ligness.

    “As tion of a single mind,” te, “it is undoubtedly t intellectualac of y,” .

    In 1907, or so it imes been ten, Albert Einstein sao t gravity. Alas, like many good stories to beapocrypo Einstein ting in a cy occurred to him.

    Actually, o Einstein ion toty, since it  to set t one ty.   t itdealt ially unimpeded state. But acle sucy? It ion t of t decade and lead to tion in early1917 of a paper entitled “Cosmological Considerations on tivity.”

    tivity of 1905 ant piece of  as C. P. Snoein  t of it ing to  toget it,” e Sno is likely t ing for today.”

    itrified ein oo splendida figure to remain permanently obscure, and in 1919, t at once ivity developed a reputation for beingimpossible for an ordinary person to grasp. Matters  sout in imes decided to do a story, and—forreasons t can never fail to excite  t, oneo conduct terview.

    Crouc of  nearly everyting errors in  ion t Einstein o publis only t tion stuck anyway.

    Soon tivity ion—and tific establis, it must be said, did little to disturb th.

    asked tisronomer Sir Arton if it rue t and Einstein’s relativity ton considered deeply for a moment and replied: “I am trying to t, tivity  t it involved a lot of differentialequations, Lorentz transformations, and oted matics (t did—evenEinstein needed ), but t it  so tuitive.

    In essence ivity says is t space and time are not absolute, but relative to boto ter one moves ts become. e can never accelerate ourselves to t, and try (and faster orted ive to an outside observer.

    Almost at once popularizers of science tried to come up o make tsaccessible to a general audience. One of ttempts—commercially atleast—ivity by tician and prand Russell. Init, Russell employed an image t imes since. oenvision a train one  60 percent of t. tosomeone standing on a platform c pass, train o be only eig  too slos rain o be running at only four-fiftheir normal speed.

    rain ions. to train e normal. It form o do, you see, ion relative to t.

    t actually ime you move. Fly across ted States, and youep from tbely alter your oime and space. It ed t a baseball t a s o e. So ts of relativityare real and  sucoo small tomake tiniest detectable difference to us. But for ot,gravity, tself—tters of consequence.

    So if tivity seem  is only because  experience ts ofinteractions in normal life. o turn to Bodanis again, erotivity—for instance o sound. If you are in a park and someoneis playing annoying music, you kno if you move to a more distant spot ter. t’s not because ter, of course, but simply t your positionrelative to it o sometoo small or sluggiso duplicate t a boom box could seem to to produce tvolumes of music simultaneously might seem incredible.

    t cuitive of all ts in tivityis t time is part of space. Our instinct is to regard time as eternal, absolute,immutable—noturb its steady tick. In fact, according to Einstein, time is variableand ever c even  is bound up—“inextricably interconnected,” inStepime.

    Spacetime is usually explained by asking you to imagine somet but pliant—amattress, say, or a s of stretcing a , suc of terial on ting to stretcly. to t t a massive object sucime (terial): it stretc. No, it tries to go in a straigon’slaion, but as it nears t and t rollsdoably drao t. ty—a product of time.

    Every object t es a little depression in t it, is “timate sagging mattress.” Gravity on tcome—“not a ‘force’ but a byproduct of time,” in t Micy does not exist; s and stars is tortion of space andtime.”

    Of course ttress analogy can take us only so far because it doesn’tincorporate t of time. But take us only so far because it is sonearly impossible to envision a dimension comprising ts space to one part time, allinter all events, I t t for a young man staring out tent office in tal of Szerland.

    Among mucein’s general tivity suggested t tbe eitracting. But Einstein  a cosmologist, and ed t ternal. More or less reflexively, o ions sometant, erbalanced ts of gravity, serving as a kind of matical pause button. Bookson tory of science alein t it ually a fairlyappalling piece of science and .  “t blunder of my life.”

    Coincidentally, at about time t Einstein ant to  tory in Arizona, an astronomer ergalacticname of Vesto Slip from Indiana) aking spectrograpant stars and discovering t to be moving a static. tars Slip sakable signs of a Doppler s5—t distinctive stretc yee-yummm sound cars make as t on a racetrack. to lig is knoorum; approac ss to blue).

    Slip to notice t  and to realize its potential importancefor understanding tions of tunately no one muciced ory, as you  of an oddity to Percival Loian canals, post ofastronomical endeavor. Slipein’s tivity, and t.

    Glory instead o a large mass of ego named Eder Einstein, in a small Missouri toon, Illinois, a suburb of Cive, so life able, and Eds, too. rong and gifted ate, c, and immensely good-looking—“ to a fault,” in tion of illiam ian Doppler, an Austrian p, iced t in 1842. Briefly,  approacationary one its sound  as you  of anyt is beingpuso. tener as a kind of pinced sound (t and lengtco drop abruptly (the yummm).

    Adonis” in to s, ofit into ant acts of valor—rescuing droy across ttlefields of France, embarrassing s. It all seemed too good to be true. It was.

    For all s, erate liar.

    ttle odd, for inction t  times almost ludicrously golden. At a single rack meetin 1906, , s put, discus, anding eam—t is seven first places in onemeet—and came in t a state record for the highjump in Illinois.

    As a sc, and rouble gaining admission to studypronomy at ty of Cally, tment  Miced to be one of t R Oxford. tly turned urned toon in 1913 alking und accent—not quite Britis not quite not—t h him for life.

    ter claimed to  of tury practicinglaucky, in fact eacball coacedly attaining orate and passing briefly tice and almost certainly never  fired in anger.)In 1919, noy, o California and took up a position at tilson Observatory near Los Angeles. Sly, and more ttle unexpectedly,  outstanding astronomer of tietury.

    It is  to consider just tle  time. Astronomers today believe the visible universe.

    t’s a  o suppose. Ifgalaxies  orium—tonGarden, say, or t rop named Bruce Gregory uallycomputed t put o t o us ly one: tto be eit of tself or one of many distant, peripheral puffs of gas.

    rated  belief was.

    Over t decade, ackled t fundamental questions of t, and o ans is necessary to knoain galaxies are and  t is knoy). t gives t doesn’t tell us o begin  you need andard candles”—stars ed and used asbenco measure tness (and ive distance) of otars.

    o come along soon after an ingenious a St  a o do so. Leavitt  tory asa computer, as ters spent tudying pograpes ofstars and making computations— tle more t it  to real astronomy at tymucem, ain unexpectedbenefits: it meant t  minds available ed to  tracted little reflective attention, and it ensured t ion of tructure of t often eluded terparts.

    One er, Annie Jump Cannon, used itive acquaintance ars to devise a system of stellar classifications so practical t it is still in use today.

    Leavitt’s contribution  a type of star knoellation Cep first ified) pulsated ellar beat. Cepe rare, but at least one of to most of us. Polaris, tar, is a Cepheid.

    e no Cepars t  tronomers, and become redgiants. try of red giants is a little ion for ties of singly ionized oms, among quite a lot else), but putsimply it means t t produces a very rening and dimming. Leavitt’s genius o realize t by comparing tive magnitudes of Cep different points in t o eacandard candles”—a term sill in universal use. tive distances, not absolute distances,but even so it  time t anyone o measure thelarge-scale universe.

    (Just to put ts into perspective, it is pering t at time Leavittand Cannon al properties of tograpes, tronomer illiam o a first-class telescope as often as ed, cing insects.)Combining Leavitt’s cosmic yardstick o Slips, Eded points in space  a puffof distant gossamer in tellation kno a gas cloud at allbut a blaze of stars, a galaxy in its oleast nine -years aer—vastly vaster—tin for “clouds,” ed not just of t of lots of independent galaxies—“islanduniverses”—many of tant.

    tation, but urned to tion of  just er triking discovery. o measure tra of distant galaxies—tSlip ilson’s ne all t for our oer) are moving aance lyproportional: ter it was moving.

    truly startling. tly and evenly in all directions. Itdidn’t take a  of imagination to read back it musttarted from some central point. Far from being table, fixed, eternal voidt everyone   migherefore also have an end.

    teped, is t no one  on tatic universe, as so Neronomer since, self. t if stars ely in a static universe tolerably —certainly mucoo  for t a stroke.

    ter observer t immediately appreciate tions of  ofEinstein’s General tivity. te remarkable because, for one tein and  Micill one of t alert and esteemed scientists—accepted a position at Mount ilson to measure ty of ligrustyinterferometer, and must surely  least mentioned to y of Einstein’sto his own findings.

    At all events, o make tical ead, it to a Belgian priest-sc) named Georges Lema?tre tobring togetrands in ed t trical point, a “primeval atom,” o glory and  ever since. It  very neatly anticipated tion of t ime t Lema?tre seldom gets moretence or t ent discovery of cosmic background radiation by Penzias and ilsonat tenna in Neo move frominteresting idea to establisheory.

    Neitein  big story. t at time, bot as muco do.

    In 1936 tering style s.  last ed ein’s to a point any of about two hundred.

    attack in 1953. One last small oddity aed ery, o  sury later ts of tury’s greatest astronomer remainunkno look to telescope,launched in 1990 and named in his honor.

 9 THE MIGHTY ATOM

    EIN AND ively unraveling tructure oftruggling to understand someto  in its as remote: tiny and ever- mysterious atom.

    t Caltec Ric if you o reducescientific ory to one important statement it oms.” titute every t is all atoms. Not just tables and sofas, but t you really cannot conceive.

    t of atoms is tin for “little mass”).

    A molecule is simply toms ogetablearrangement: add toms of o one of oxygen and you er.

    Cs tend to terms of molecules rats in mucers tend to terms of  letters, so it is molecules t, and to say t. At sea level, at a temperature of 32 degrees Fa, onecubic centimeter of air (t is, a space about tain 45 billionbillion molecules. And timeter you see around you. timeters tside your ake to fill t vie ake to build a universe.

    Atoms, in s, are very abundant.

    tastically durable. Because toms really get around.

    Every atom you possess  certainly passed tars and been part ofmillions of organisms on its o becoming you. e are eacomically numerous andso vigorously recycled at deat a significant number of our atoms—up to a billion foreac ed—probably once belonged to Sorical figureyou care to name. (to be orical, apparently, as it takes tomssome decades to become tributed; , you arenot yet one ions—t-lived ones. oms o find neoms, ically forever. Nobody actually kno according to Martin Rees it is probably about 1035years—a numberso big t even I am o express it in notation.

    Above all, atoms are tiny—very tiny indeed. osom is essentiallyimpossible to imagine, but ry.

    Start er, o athe scale of microorganisms.

    A typical paramecium, for instance, is about ters, o see er, you il it y feet across.

    ed to see toms in to make teen miles across.

    Atoms, in ot on a scale of minuteness of anotogeto getdoo toms, you o take eac into ten t’s tom: one ten-millionter. It is a degree of slenderness y of our imaginations, but youcan get some idea of tions if you bear in mind t one atom is to ter line as t of paper is to t of tateBuilding.

    It is of course treme durability of atoms t makes tininess t makes to detect and understand. tion t atomsare tically indestructible—and t all t occurred not to Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, as you mig, or evento  rato a spare and liged Englison, ered in ter on cry.

    Dalton rict near Cockermouto a family ofpoor but devout Quaker er t illiam ords Cockermoutionally brigudent—so very brig at t Dalton’s precocity, but per:  about time on’s Principia in tin and oture. At fifteen, stillscering, ook a job in toer t o Mancer, scarcely stirring from ty years of er ellectual eorology to grammar. Color blindness, a condition from onism because of udies. But it em of C establisation.

    t cer of just five pages (out of t encountered atoms in sometion. Dalton’s simple insig at t of all matter are exceedingly tiny,irreducible particles. “e migtempt to introduce a ne into tem or annie one already in existence, as to create or destroy a particle of hydrogen,”

    e.

    Neitoms nor term itself ly ne Greeks. Dalton’s contribution o consider tive sizes and cers oftoms and  togetance, t estelement, so  an atomic er consisted of sevenparts of oxygen to one of omic  tive erribly accurate—oxygen’s atomic een, not seven—but try and muc ofmodern science.

    ton famous—albeit in a lo P .J. Pelletier traveled to Mancer to meet tomic ierexpected to find taco some grand institution, so ounded to discover eacary aritic to boys in a small screet. According to tific orian E. J. ier, upon be man,stammered:

    “Est-ce que j’ai l’on?” for  t of European fame, teac four rules. “Yes,” said tter-of-fact Quaker. “ilt t do t about ic?”

    Alton tried to avoid all ed to ty against  pension. y tege stretcionary of National Biograp, rivaled inlengteentury men of science.

    For a century after Dalton made  remained entirely ical, and a fe scientists—notably t Ernst Maced tence of atoms at all. “Atoms cannot be perceived by the senses . .

    . t,” e. tence of atoms fully icular t it o  in t tical p, and atomic ent, Ludzmann in 1906.

    It ein rovertible evidence of atoms’ existence ion in 1905, but ttracted little attention and in any caseEinstein o become consumed ivity. So t realomic age, if not t personage on t Rutherford.

    Ruto parents land to raise a little flax and a lot of co parapeveneinberg). Groe part of a remote country,  as far from tream of science as it o be, but in 1895  took o tory at Cambridge University, o become ttestplace in to do physics.

    Ps are notoriously scornful of scientists from ot Austrian p olfgang Pauli left , aggered aken a bullfigood,” o afriend. “But a c . . .”

    It ood. “All science is eitampcollecting,”  imes since. tainengaging irony t physics.

    Ruto be a genius, but even luckier to live at a time ing and so compatible (imentsnotanding). Never again e so comfortably overlap.

    For all  an especially brilliant man and ually prettyterrible at matics. Often during lectures  so lost in ions tell tudents to  out for themselves.

    According to ime colleague James Cron, even particularly clever at experimentation. enacious and open-minded. Forbrilliance ituted sing out toiers, as far as  deal furt oted ractable problem, o  it  people and to be more receptive tounortions. est breakto spendimmensely tedious ting at a screen counting alpicle scintillations, as t of  o see—possibly t—t t in tom could, if o “make this old world vanish in smoke.”

    P made timid sold t Rut to make a radio broadcast across tlantic, a colleague drilyasked: “ of good-natured confidence. o  o be at t of a  I?” C. P. Snoy.”

    But botc theCavendish.

    1It ful period in science. In tgen discovered X rays at ty of ürzburg in Germany,and t year ivity. And tself  to embark on a long period of greatness. In 1897, J. J. tron t. R. ilson  particle detectortron there.

    Furtill in ture, James atson and Francis Crick ructure ofDNA at the Cavendish in 1953.

    In tinction—o transmit a crisp signal more t for time—but gave it up le future.

    On t t ter took a post at McGill University in Montreal, and teady rise to greatness. By time igations into tegration of ts, and try of radioactivesubstances,” according to tation) o Mancer University,and it , t  important ermining tructure and nature of tom.

    1ted matician and steel baron in Victoriar England. In 1870, y ￡6,300 to build an experimental lab.

    By tietury it  atoms s—tron ablis—but it  kno toget sook. Some ps t t atomsmigogetly  any edspace. t an atom  bun or aplum pudding: a dense, solid object t carried a positive c t udded ively crons, like ts in a currant bun.

    In 1910, Ruted by udent er invent tion detector t bears oms, or alpicles, at as of gold foil.

    2to Rutonis, some of ticles bounced back. It  rebounded into his lap.

    t not supposed to er considerable reflection ion: ticles t bounced back riking somet t of tom, om, Rutly empty space,  ter.

    t gratifying discovery, but it presented one immediate problem. By all tional poms s t.

    Let us pause for a moment and consider tructure of tom as  noom is made from tary particles: protons, rical crons, rical crons, rons are packed into trons spin aroundoutside. tons is om its city. An atom on is an atom of ons is ons is litime you add a proton you get a ne. (Because tons in an atom is alrons, you imes see it ten t it is trons t defines an element; it comes tot o me is t protons give an atom its identity,electrons its personality.)Neutrons don’t influence an atom’s identity, but to its mass. trons is generally about tons, but tly. Add a neutron or t an isotope. terms you odating teco isotopes—carbon-14, for instance, ons and eigrons (teen being two).

    Neutrons and protons occupy tom’s nucleus. tom is tiny—only onemilliontom—but fantastically dense, since itcontains virtually all tom’s mass. As Cropper  it, if an atom o t t a fly manytimes  ed roominess—t ching his head in 1910.

    It is still a fairly astounding notion to consider t atoms are mostly empty space, and tty s come togeter become a loyal Nazi, unatingly betraying Jewish colleagues, including many whohad helped him.

    real  often used for illustration—t actually strike eacimotively c for trical ct in a c actually sitting tlevitating above it at a  of one angstrom (a imeter), yourelectrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy.

    ture t nearly everybody om is of an electron or ts orbiting a sun. ted in 1904, based on littlemore t named aro Nagaoka. It iscompletely  durable just to note, it inspiredgenerations of science fiction ers to create stories of omsbecome tiny ined solar systems or our solar system turns out to be merely a mote in somemucion for Nuclear Researcs e. In fact, as ps o realize, electronsare not like orbiting planets at all, but more like to fillevery bit of space in ts simultaneously (but  to be everyrons are ).

    Needless to say, very little of tood in 1910 or for many years afterward.

    Ruted some large and immediate problems, not least t no electronso orbit a nucleus  crasional electrodynamic t a flying electron s of energy—in only an instant orso—and spiral into trous consequences for botons ive coget blo of tom apart. Clearly  governed by t applied in tations reside.

    As ps began to delve into tomic realm, t it  merelydifferent from anyt different from anytomic be isvery difficult to get used to and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone, boto to t.”  comment, ps ury to adjust to trangeness of atomic be must  to Rut was all brand new.

    One of tructure of tom, Boing t poned o e  see anytom, to try to  its structurefrom  beo it, as Ruticles at foil. Sometimes, not surprisingly, ts of ts were puzzling.

    One puzzle t ime o do rum readings of tterns s oms emittedenergy at certain  not ot  turning up at particular locations but raveling betand whis should be.

    It ion and dasitutions of Atoms and Molecules,” trons could keep from falling into ting t tain s. According to tron moving bets antaneously in anot visiting tum leap”—is of course utterly strange, but itoo good not to be true. It not only kept electrons from spiraling catastropo t also explained rons only appearedin certain orbits because ted in certain orbits. It ein received his.

    Mean Cambridge as J. J. tory, came up  explained  be offset by some type of neutralizing particles,  not easy to prove. Rute, James Ced eleven intensive years to ing for neutrons beforefinally succeeding in 1932. oo,  out in tory of t, tery of tron ial to t of tomic bomb. (Because neutrons  repelled by trical fields att of an atom and tiny torpedoes into an atomic nucleus, settingoff tructive process knoed in te, it is “very likely tomic bomb edly by the Germans.”

    As it rying to understand trange beron. t tron sometimes beicle and sometimes like a y drove ps nearly mad. Fort decade all across Europe t and scribbled and offered competingor de Broglie, tcertain anomalies in trons disappeared whem as waves.

    tion excited ttention of trian Ers and devised a em called  time t erner ing trixmecically complex t ood it,including  even knorix is ,” o a friend at one point), but it did seem to solve certain problems t Sco explain. t is t ping premises,t produced ts. It uation.

    Finally, in 1926, ed compromise, producing a ne came to be knoum mec t of it y Principle, es t tron is a particle but a particle t can bedescribed in terms of ainty around  ron takes as it moves t is at agiven instant, but  knoh.

    3Any attempt to measure one tle uncertainty about tainty in regard to ero es t several -ranslators, but t none quite equates to tainty.

    Frayn suggests t indeterminacy ter erminability terstill.

    disturb t a matter of simply needing more precise instruments; it is animmutable property of the universe.

    tice is t you can never predict  anygiven moment. You can only list its probability of being t it, an electron doesn’t exist until it is observed. Or, put sligly, until it isobserved an electron must be regarded as being “at once everywhere and nowhere.”

    If take some comfort in kno it ops, too. Overbye notes: “Boed t a person raged onfirst  quantum t understand  try.”

    So tom turned out to be quite unlike t most people ed. tron doesn’t fly around t around its sun, but instead takes on t of a cloud. tom isn’t some rations sometimes encourage us to suppose, but simply termost of tron clouds. tself is essentially just a zone of statistical probability marking tron only very seldom strays. tom, if you could see it,ennis ball tallic sp not mucer all, dealing  from the one we see around us).

    It seemed as if trangeness. For t time, as James trefil  it,scientists ered “an area of t our brains just aren’t ounderstand.” Or as Feynman expressed it, “ts delved deeper, tonly could electrons jump from one orbit to anot traveling across any interveningspace, but matter could pop into existence from not all—“provided,” in tman of MIt, “it disappears again  e.”

    Per arresting of quantum improbabilities is t tomic particles in certain pairs, even  considerable distances, can eacantly “knoicles y knoo quantum tyou determine ticle, its sister particle, no matter ant aely begin spinning in te direction and at te.

    It is as if, in ter Laical poolballs, one in Oant you sent one spinning tely spin in a contrary direction at precisely ts at ty of Geneva sent ponsseven miles in opposite directions and demonstrated t interfering antaneous response in ther.

    tc at one conference Bo tion   rate tuitive nature of tum in  om of a radioactive substanceattaco a vial of icle degraded  riggera mec . If not, t   kno to regard t as 100 percent alive and 100 percent dead at time. tepoucandable excitement, t one cannot “predictfuture events exactly if one cannot even measure t state of the universe precisely!”

    Because of its oddities, many ps disliked quantum t least certain aspectsof it, and none more so tein. ttle ironic since it imes like ion at t of tum tely, but  like it. “God doesn’t play dice,” he said.

    4Einstein couldn’t bear tion t God could create a universe in  a distance—t one particle couldinstantaneously influence anotrillions of miles aark violation of tivity. t notrace t andyet s insisting t, some tomic level, information could.

    (No one, incidentally, icles ac. Scientists  o t Yakir A tit.”)Above all, t quantum produced a level of untidiness t previously existed. Suddenly you needed ts of lao explain tum tivity for ty of relativity t at explaining ed suns or o cluster, but turned out to  all at ticle level. to explain  atoms togetrong nuclear force and rong forcebinds atoms toget’s ons to bed doogetasks, mostly to do rolling tes of certainsorts of radioactive decay.

    te its name, is ten billion billion billion times stronger ty, and trong nuclear force is more poill—vastly so, in fact—but tends to only tiniest distances. trong force reac only toabout 1/100,000 of ter of an atom. t’s edand dense and end to be so unstable: trong forcejust can’t o all tons.

    t of all t p large—leading quite separate lives. Einstein dislikedt, too. ed t of o searco tie up time to time  , butit alle pitied. Almost  exception, e Snoill t ed the second half of his life.”

    4Or at least t is  is nearly alual quote  seems o sneak a look atGod’s cards. But t elepat I cannot believe for asingle moment.”

    Elses  om at an extremely profound level—as too effectively demonstrated in August 1945 by exploding a pair of atomic bombs over Japan.

    By t ps could be excused for t t about conqueredtom. In fact, everyticle p to get a ed. But before ake up t sliging story,  bring anotrao date by considering an important and salutary tale of avarice, deceit,bad science, several needless deatermination of th.

 10 GETTING THE LEAD OUT

    IN tE 1940s, a graduate student at ty of Cterson(anding, an Ioope measurement to try to get a definitive age for t last. Unfortunatelyall aminated—usually  contained somet ed to occur. Many years terson realized t ttable Oornamed thomas Midgley, Jr.

    Midgley raining, and t ayed so. Instead, erest in trial applications ofcry. In 1921, on,Oigated a compound called tetraetetraet it significantly reduced tion known asengine knock.

    Even to be dangerous, by tietury it could be found in all manner of consumer products. Food came in cans sealed er en stored in lead-lined tanks. It o fruit as a pesticidein te. It even came as part of toote tubes.  existed t didn’t bring a little lead into consumers’ lives. a greater and more lasting intimacy ts addition to gasoline.

    Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too muc and you can irreparably damage tral nervous system. Among toms associated s mostacute form it produces abrupt and terrifying ions, disturbing to victims andonlookers alike,   toget too muco your system.

    On to extract and  embarrassingly profitableto produce industrially—and tetraetably stop engines from knocking. So in1923 t corporations, General Motors, Du Pont, and Standard Oil ofNe enterprise called tion (later senedto simply Etion) o making as mucetraeto buy, and t proved to be a very great deal. tive “ethyl”

    because it sounded friendlier and less toxic troduced it for publicconsumption (in more  people realized) on February 1, 1923.

    Almost at once production o ex taggered gait and confusedfaculties t mark tly poisoned. Also almost at once, tionembarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial t  rial cry,Promet one plant developed irreversible delusions, aspokesman blandly informed reporters: “t insane because too oget least fifteen ion ofleaded gasoline, and untold numbers of oten violently so; tnumbers are unknoo  times,  notably in 1924 ion y-five more urned into permanent staggering  a single ill-ventilated facility.

    As rumors circulated about t, et inventor,to ration for reporters to allay tted a tment to safety, etraet to y seconds, claiming all t  t , Midgley kneoo   near tuff if .

    Buoyed by turned to anotecors in ten appallingly risky because t sometimes leaked. One leak from a refrigerator at a al inCleveland, O out to create a gast able, nonflammable, noncorrosive, and safe to breatinct for ttable t  uncanny, ed chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.

    Seldom rial product been more sly or unfortunately embraced. CFCs into production in tions in everytioners to deodorant sprays before it iced, ury later, t tratosp a good thing.

    Ozone is a form of oxygen in ead oft is a bit of a cy in t at ground level it is a pollutant, osp is beneficial, since it soaks up dangerous ultraviolet radiation. Beneficial ozoneis not terribly abundant,  ributed evenly t tratosp one eig is urbed,and  take long to become critical.

    C very abundant—titute only about one part perbillion of tmosp travagantly destructive. One pound ofCFCs can capture and annie seventy tmospime—about a century on average—wreaking he while.

    t  sponges. A single CFC molecule is about ten times moreefficient at exacerbating greens tself as a green, cimately prove to be just about t invention of tietury.

    Midgley never kneructiveCFCs er becoming crippled ed a contraption involving a series of motorized pulleys t automaticallyraised or turned angled in tinto action and rangled.

    If you erested in finding out ty of Co be. illard Libby ing radiocarbon dating,alloists to get an accurate reading of to do before. Up to time, t reliable dates back no furt Dynasty in Egypt from about 3000B.C. No one couldconfidently say, for instance, ed or at ime in tted the caves of Lascaux in France.

    Libby’s idea   in 1960. It ion t all living tope of carbon calledcarbon-14,  a measurable rate tant t is, time it takes for o disappear1—of about 5,600 years,so by   a goodfix on t—to a point. After eigive carbon remains, tle to make a reliable measurement, soradiocarbon dating s up to forty thousand or so years old.

    Curiously, just as tecain fla becameapparent. to begin   one of ts of Libby’sformula, knoant,  3 percent. By time, s aken t tate everyone, scientists decided to keep te constant. “tim Flannery notes, “everyrae you read today is given as too young by around 3 percent.” t quite stop t  carbon-14 samples can beeasily contaminated iny scrap of vegetable matter, forinstance, t ed  noticed. For younger samples—ty t contamination does not alter somuc for older samples it can be a serious problem because so feoms arebeing counted. In t instance, to borro is like miscounting by a dollaro a t is more like miscounting by a dollar o count.

    Libby’s metion t t of carbon-14 in tmospe at t ory. In fact it  been. e no tmosp Eartism is deflecting cosmic rays,and t t can vary significantly over time. t some carbon-14 dates are more1If you oms determine  session, t t a statistical convenience-a kind ofactuarial table for elemental terial  isntt every atom in t for exactly 30 seconds or 60 seconds or 90 seconds or some otidilyordained period. Eacom  survive for an entirely random lengtime t o do iples of 30; it mig until t mige auries to come. No one can say. But  for te ofdisappearance s an average rate, in ot to any large sampling. Someone once , for instance, t dimes  30 years.

    dubious ticularly so es just around time t people firstcame to tter is so perennially in dispute.

    Finally, and pertle unexpectedly, readings can be t by seeminglyunrelated external factors—sucs of tested. Onerecent case involved te over s in  monks in amonastery graveyard  tial conclusion t t into doubt by tion t ten alot of fiso be older t t  got to tantalizinglyunresolved.

    Because of ted scomings of carbon-14, scientists devised oting ancient materials, among trons trappedin clays, and electron spin resonance, ic ions of trons. But even t oft date anyt 200,000 years, and t date inorganicmaterials like rocks at all, ermine t.

    ting rocks  one point almost everyone in t not been for a determined Englis migo abeyance altogether.

    acles s he achieved.

    By t offasement of ticularly in Britain, its spiritual birt Dury, ire geology department. Often o borrocoget inorder to pursue ric dating of rocks. At one point, ions ivelyed for ty to provide o drop out of academic life altogeto earn enougosupport ime le upon tyne—and sometimes even afford ty.

    tecically straiglyfrom t observed by Ernest Rutoms decayfrom one element into anot a rate predictable enoug you can use t takes for potassium-40 to become argon-40, and you measure ts of eac erial is. ributiono measure te of uranium into lead to calculate th.

    But tecies to overcome.  leasted gadgetry of a sort t could make veryfine measurements from tiny samples, and as  asimple adding mac e an ac  t least tunately,  yet anot to acceptance: tiveness of ists. Alto praise ained t  t merely terials fromwh had been formed.

    It  at time t y of Cing lead isotopes in igneous rocks ( edting, as opposed to ts). Realizing t tedious,  to young Clair Patterson as ation project.

    Famously terson t determining t, it ake years.

    Patterson began  in 1948. Compared ributions to tterson’s discovery of touciclimactic. For seven years, first at ty of Ctitute of tecerile lab,making very precise measurements of tios in carefully selected samples ofold rock.

    t you needed rocks t remely ancient, containing lead- and uranium-bearing crystals t  as old as t itself—anytes—but really ancient rocks are only rarely found on Earte 1940s no onealtogetood o t for e tectonics, o.) Patterson,meantime,  to try to make sense of ted materials. Eventually, andingeniously, it occurred to   tage by using rocksfrom beyond Earturned to meteorites.

    tion  correct as it turned out— manymeteorites are essentially leftover building materials from tem,and to preserve a more or less pristine interior cry. Measure th.

    As alraigionmakes it sound. Meteorites are not abundant and meteoritic samples not especially easy to get tecreme andneeded muc. Above all, t Patterson’s samples inuously and unaccountably contaminated mospo air. It  eventually led o create a sterile laboratory—t, according to at least one account.

    It took Patterson seven years of patient  to assemble suitable samples for finaltesting. In traveled to tional Laboratory in Illinois,ime on a late-model mass spectrograpectingand measuring te quantities of uranium and lead locked up in ancient crystals.  last s, Patterson ed t raigo o a al because   attack.

    Soon after a meeting in isconsin, Patterson announced a definitive age for t standsuncer,” as McGrayne admiringly notes. After th finally had an age.

    terson nourned tention to tion of all tlead in tmospounded to find t tle  tsof lead on  invariably  surprisingly, y years every study of lead’s effects urers of lead additives.

    In one sucudy, a doctor o breated quantities. tested. Unfortunately, as torappears not to  excreted as a e product. Rat accumulates int’s  so dangerous—and neitested. In consequence, lead was given a clean bill of h.

    Patterson quickly establis mospill do, in fact,since lead never goes a about 90 percent of it appeared to come fromautomobile ex pipes, but  prove it.  o comparelead levels in tmosp existed before 1923, raetroduced. It occurred to  ice cores could provide the answer.

    It  snoes into discrete annual layers(because seasonal temperature differences produce sligion from er tosummer). By counting back t of lead in eac global lead concentrations at any time for ion became tion of ice core studies, on wological work is based.

    Patterson found  before 1923 t no lead in tmosp since t time its level eadily and dangerously.   to get lead taken out of gasoline. to t end, ant and often vocalcritic of try and its interests.

    It o be a ion s directors  Justice Le Grosvenor of tional Geograpy.) Patterson suddenly foundresearc to acquire. troleum Institutecanceled a researcract ed States Public ral government institution.

    As Patterson increasingly became a liability to itution, trustees edly pressed by lead industry officials to s  o JamieLincoln Kitman, ing in tion in 2000, Etives allegedly offered to endoecterson  packing.” Absurdly, ional Researced to investigate tmospionably t on atmospheric lead.

    to  credit, Patterson never ually s led to troduction of t of 1970 and finally to ted States in 1986. Almost immediately lead levels in t. But because lead is forever, today 625 times more lead in our blood tury ago. t of lead in tmospinues to groe legally, by about a ric tons ayear, mostly from mining, smelting, and industrial activities. ted States also bannedlead in indoor paint, “forty-four years after most of Europe,” as McGrayne notes.

    Remarkably, considering its startling toxicity, lead solder  removed from Americanfood containers until 1993.

    As for tion, it’s still going strong, tandard Oil, and Du Pontno longer akes in t to a company called Albemarle Paper in1962.) According to McGrayne, as late as February 2001 Etinued to contend “tresearco s leaded gasoline poses a t to .” On its e, a ory of tion of lead—or indeedof t simply refers to t as containing “a certaincombination of chemicals.”

    Eto its 2001 company accounts,tetraetEL as it calls it) still accounted for $25.1 million in sales in 2000 (out ofoverall sales of $795 million), up from $24.1 million in 1999, but dos report tated its determination to “maximize ted bytEL as its usage continues to ps tEL t ed Octel of England.

    As for t to us by ted States, but tenacious little devils and any t youloosed into tmosps or ance)  certainly be around and devouring ozone long after you ill introducing s of CFCs into tmospoayne Biddle, 60 million pounds of tuff, ill finds its o t every year. So  is to say, many of our largecorporations are still making it at ts overseas. It  be banned in tries until 2010.

    Clair Patterson died in 1995.  ention from ury ofconsistent and increasingly selfless ac. A good case could be made t  influential geologist of tietury. Yet wterson?

    Most geology textbooks don’t mention  popular books on tory of ting of Eartually manage to misspell ure made tional, ratounding error of tterson was a woman.

    At all events, to tterson by 1953 t last  contained it.

 11 MUSTER MARK’S QUARKS

    IN 1911, A Britisist named C. t. R. ilson udying cloud formations bytramping regularly to t of Ben Nevis, a famously damp Scottisain, o  t be an easier o study clouds. Back in t an artificial cloud cen ting a reasonable model of a cloud in laboratory conditions.

    t  ional, unexpected benefit. ed an alpicle to seed  left avisible trail—like trails of a passing airliner.  invented ticle detector.

    It provided convincing evidence t subatomic particles did indeed exist.

    Eventually tists invented a more poon-beam device, Berkeley produced ron, or atom smasingly knoraptions ill o accelerate a proton or oticle to an extremely rack(sometimes circular, sometimes linear), t into anoticle and see ’s  science at its subtlest, but it ive.

    As ps built bigger and more ambitious maco find or postulateparticles or particle families seemingly  number: muons, pions, ermediate vector bosons, baryons, tacs beganto grotle uncomfortable. “Young man,” Enrico Fermi replied  asked icular particle, “if I could remember ticles, I .”

    today accelerators  sound like somettle: ton Syncron, tron-Positron Collider, tivistic s of energy (some operateonly at nig people in neigo o ness ts fadingicles into sucate of liveliness t asingle electron can do forty-seven tunnel in a second. Fears in tists migently create a black range quarks,” eract omic particles and propagate uncontrollably. If you are reading t happened.

    Finding particles takes a certain amount of concentration. t just tiny and sbut also often tantalizingly evanescent. Particles can come into being and be gone again in aslittle as 0.000000000000000000000001 second (10-24). Even t sluggisableparticles han 0.0000001 second (10-7).

    Some particles are almost ludicrously slippery. Every second ted by 10,000trillion trillion tiny, all but massless neutrinos (mostly s out by tually all of t t and everyt is on it,including you and me, as if it  to trap just a feists need tankso 12.5 million gallons of er (t is, er ive abundance ofdeuterium in it) in underground c be interferedypes of radiation.

    Very occasionally, a passing neutrino o one of tomic nuclei in terand produce a little puff of energy. Scientists count take us verysligo understanding tal properties of ted t neutrinos do  not a great deal—about one ten-milliont of an electron.

    it really takes to find particles ts of it. tionsininess of t and ties required to do tion for NuclearResearctle city. Straddling tzerland, it employste t is measured in square miles. CERN boasts astring of magnets t unnel oversixteen miles around.

    Breaking up atoms, as James trefil ed, is easy; you do it eacime you sc ligomic nuclei, e a lot of money and agenerous supply of electricity. Getting doo ticles t make upparticles—requires still more: trillions of volts of electricity and t of a small CentralAmerican nation. CERN’s neions in 2005,rillion volts of energy and cost sometoconstruct.

    1But t could  upon, t and nounately never-to-be Superconducting Supercollider, ed near axaexas, in ts oed States Congress. tention of tolet scientists probe “timate nature of matter,” as it is al, by re-creating as nearlyas possible tions in ts first ten ths of a second.

    to fling particles tunnel fifty-taggering ninety-nine trillion volts of energy. It o build (a figure t eventually rose to $10 billion) and o run.

    In per example in ory of pouring money into a  $2 billion on t, t in 1993 after fourteen miles oftunnel exas nos t expensive eis, I am told by my friend Jeff Guinn of t ortar-telegram, “essentially a vast,cleared field dotted along ted small towns.”

    1tical side effects to all tly effort. t. It ed by a CERN scientist, tim Berners-Lee, in 1989.

    Since ticle ps  ts a little loeven comparatively modest projects can be quite breatly rino observatory at take Mine in Lead,Souta,  $500 million to build—t is already dug—beforeyou even look at ts. ts.” A particle accelerator at Fermilab in Illinois, meano refit.

    Particle p, is a erprise—but it is a productive one.

    today ticle count is ed, butunfortunately, in t is very difficult to understand tionsicles, and ure s t tionsare from one to anotably eacime o unlock a box,  ticles called tacravel faster t. Oto find gravitons—t of gravity. At om is not easy to say. Carl Sagan in Cosmos raised ty t if you traveled doo an electron, you mig it contained auniverse of its oion stories of ties. “it,organized into t of galaxies and smaller structures, are an immense numberof otinier elementary particles,  leveland so on forever—an infinite dohin universes, endlessly.

    And upward as well.”

    For most of us it is a  surpasses understanding. to read even an elementary guideto particle p nos sucipion decay respectively into a muon plus antineutrino and anantimuon plus neutrino ime of 2.603 x 10-8seconds, tral piondecays into time of about 0.8 x 10-16seconds, and timuon decay respectively into . . .” And so it runs on—and t lucid of interpreters, Steven einberg.

    In ttempt to bring just a little simplicity to matters, tecMurray Gell-Mann invented a neicles, essentially, in teveneinberg, “to restore some economy to titude of ive term used byps for protons, neutrons, and oticles governed by trong nuclear force.

    Gell-Mann’s t all ill smaller, even morefundamental particles. ed to call ticles partons, as in Dolly, but ead they became known as quarks.

    Gell-Mann took terMark!” (Discriminating ps rorks, not larks, even tter is almost certainly tion Joyce al simplicity ofquarks  long lived. As tter understood it o introducesubdivisions. Altoo small to aste or any oteristics o six categories—up, dorange, cop, and bottom—o as to ts t it  altogetal t terms  applied in California during tually out of all t is called tandard Model,  of parts kit for tomic andard Model consists of six quarks, sixleptons, five knoulated sixttisist, Peter rong and romagnetism.

    t essentially is t among tter are quarks;togeticles called gluons; and togetons and neutrons, tuff of tom’s nucleus. Leptons are trons andneutrinos. Quarks and leptons toget S. N. Bose) are particles t produce and carry forces, and include pons andgluons. t actually exist; it ed simply as a icles h mass.

    It is all, as you can see, just a little un it is t model t can explainall t icles. Most particle ps feel, as Leon Ledermanremarked in a 1985 PBS documentary, t tandard Model lacks elegance and simplicity.

    “It is too complicated. It oo many arbitrary parameters,” Lederman said. “e don’t reallysee tor ty knobs to set ty parameters to create t.” Pimate simplicity, but so far all  it: “t ture is not beautiful.”

    tandard Model is not only ungainly but incomplete. For one t  allto say about gravity. Searcandard Model as you  findanyto explain able it doesn’t float up to t noted, can it explain mass. In order to give particles any mass at all roduce tional  actually exists is a matter for ty-first-century puck  kno it is a little  leastincomplete.”

    In an attempt to draogets ring tulates t all ttle tons t icles are actually “strings”—vibrating strands of energy toscillate in eleven dimensions, consisting of time and sevenot are, o us. trings are very tiny—tiny enougopass for point particles.

    By introducing extra dimensions, superstring ts to pull togetum laational ones into one comparatively tidy package, but it also meanst anytists say about to sound  ofts t o you by a stranger on a park bench.

    Micructure of tring perspective: “terotic string consists of a closed string t ypes ofvibrations, clockerclocked differently. tions live in a ten-dimensional space. terclocky-six-dimensional space, of  inKaluza’s original five-dimensional, tified by being o a circle.)” And so it goes, for some 350 pages.

    String tessurfaces knoo top on t of us must get off.

    ence from times, explaining to a generalaudience: “tic process begins far in te past  emptybranes sitting parallel to eacum fluctuation in tant past and ted apart.” No arguing . No understanding it eitic, incidentally, comes from tion.”

    Matters in pc, as Paul Davies noted in Nature, it is“almost impossible for tist to discriminate betimately rig.” tion came interestingly to a iousdensity involving sucs as “imaginary time” and tincondition,” and purporting to describe t  o be unkno predated ts properties).

    Almost at once ted debate among ps as to ’s clearly more or less completenonsense,” Columbia University p Peter oit told times, “but t doesn’t mucinguis from a lot of t of terature.”

    Karl Popper,  t be an ultimate t, ration may require a furtion, producing “an infinite cal principles.” A rival possibility is t sucunately,” es einberg in Dreams of a Final tseem to be coming to tellectual resources.”

    Almost certainly t s of t, and almostcertainly ts  of us.

    s in tietury o tronomers ing an incompletenessof understanding in t large.

    met Ed nearly all t tance of treat are neatlyproportional: ter it is moving.  tion, ant, v is ty of a flying galaxy, andd its distance a and ted t t tle ae 1920s it  many t least Eartself—. Refining tion of cosmology.

    Almost tant about tant  ofdisagreement over o give it. In 1956, astronomers discovered t Cep; ties, not one. to reions and come up o 20 billion years—not terribly precise, but at least old enoug last, to embrace tion of th.

    In t folloed a long-running dispute bet ilson, and Gérard de Vaucouleurs, a Frencronomer based atty of texas. Sandage, after years of careful calculations, arrived at a value for tant of 50, giving tain t tant was 100.

    2t t Sandage believed—ten billion years. Matters took a furto uncertainty ories in California,using measures from telescope, suggested t ttleas eigarseam from NASA and tCenter in Maryland, using a neellite called tropy Probe, announced  take a ters rest, at least fort.

    ty in making final determinations is t ten acres of room forinterpretation. Imagine standing in a field at nigrying to decide ant electric ligraigools of astronomy you can easilyenougermine t tness and t one is, say, 50 percent moredistant t  be certain of is  ussay, a 58-t bulb t is 122 feet at lig is 119 feet, 8 incop of t you must make alloortions caused by variations in tmospergalactic dust, contaminating ligars, and many otors. t is t your computations are necessarily based on a series of nestedassumptions, any of ion. taccess to telescopes is al a premium and orically measuring red ss ably costly in telescope time. It could take all nigo get a single exposure. Inconsequence, astronomers imes been compelled (or o base conclusionson notably scanty evidence. In cosmology, as t Geoffrey Carr ed,  on a molein Rees  it:

    “Our present satisfaction [ate of understanding] may reflect ty of taratheory.”

    tainty applies, incidentally, to relatively nearby to tantedges of tes,  t-years a do not often stress to t it is someitled to  exactly by quot;a constant of 50quot; or quot;a constant of 100.quot; tronomical units of measure. Except conversationally, astronomers dont use ligance called traction of parallax and second), based on a universal measure called tellar parallax and equivalent to 3.26 ligant is expressed in terms of kilometers per second per megaparsec.

    tronomers refer to a ant of 50, ;50 kilometers per second permegaparsec.quot; For most of us t is of course an utterly meaningless measure, but tronomicalmeasures most distances are so o be utterly meaningless.

    quite t large, matters are naturally magnified. Bearing allt in mind, t bets to be fixed on a range ofabout 12 billion to 13.5 billion years, but y.

    One interesting recently suggested t t nearly as big as , t ance some of tions, g images created by rebounded light.

    t is, t deal, even at quite a fundamental level, t  knoleast ists calculate t of matter needed toogetely s. It appears t at least 90 percentof t, is composed of Fritz Zter”—stuff t is by its nature invisible to us. It is sligo t , for t part,  even see, but t least ts are entertaining: to be eiteracting Massive Particles, ter left over from t s—really just anotars).

    Particle ps ended to favor ticle explanation of IMPs, astropstellar explanation of MACime MAC not nearlyenougiment so  no IMP eracting, t) very o detect. Cosmic rays oo mucerference. Soscientists must go deep underground. One kilometer underground cosmic bombardments t even ill missing from t,” as one commentator it. For t ectable Objects Somewhere).

    Recent evidence suggests t not only are t t t a rate t is accelerating. ter to all expectations. Itappears t t only be filled ter, but h dark energy.

    Scientists sometimes also call it vacuum energy or, more exotically, quintessence. ever itis, it seems to be driving an expansion t no one can altoget for. t empty space isn’t so empty at all—t ticles of matter and antimatterpopping into existence and popping out again—and t t an accelerating rate. Improbably enoug resolves all tein’s cosmological constant—ttle piece of mato tivity to stop t blunder of mylife.” It no ten t after all.

    t of all t e compute,surrounded by stars  altogetter identify, operating in conformance ies  trulyunderstand.

    And on t rattling note, let’s return to Planet Eartand—t be surprised to  understand it completely and and ood for long.

 12 THE EARTH MOVES

    IN ONE OF  professional acts before  Einstein e a sbut gloo a book by a geologist named Citled Earting Crust: A Key to Some Basic Problems of Earteady demolition of t continents ion. In a tone t all but invited to join olerant c a fe correspondence in sain continents.” It  Sout be fitted toget is evenclaimed t rock formations on opposite sides of tlantic match.”

    Mr. ions, noting t ts K. E. Casterand J. C. Mendes ensive fieldlantic and ablision t no sucies existed. Goodness knocropsMessrs. Caster and Mendes , beacuse in fact many of tions onbotlanticare t just very similar but the same.

    t an idea t fles of o  propounded in 1908 by an amateur Americangeologist named Frank Bursley taylor. taylor came from a raints to pursue unconventional lines of inquiry. ruck by ty in slines of Africa andSoution  tinents ed—presciently as it turned out—t togetinents could  up tain co producemucoo crackpot to merit seriousattention.

    In Germany, aylor’s idea ively appropriated, by at named Alfred egener, a meteorologist at ty of Marburg. egenerinvestigated t and fossil anomalies t did not fit comfortably into tandardmodel of Eartory and realized t very little of it made sense if conventionallyinterpreted. Animal fossils repeatedly turned up on opposite sides of oceans t oo o so Australia?

    ical snails turn up in Scandinavia and Ne,did one account for coal seams and otropical remnants in frigid spots likeSpitsbergen, four  someed therefrom warmer climes?

    egener developed t tinents ogeto mingle, before tinents  apart and floated off to t positions. All t togetsteinente und Ozeane, or tinents andOceans, break of torld ar in time—in Engliser.

    Because of t attract mucice at first, but by 1920,  quickly became a subject of discussion.

    Everyone agreed t continents moved—but up and do sideical movement, knoasy, ion of geological beliefs for generations,to  extbooks o my o before turn of tury. ted t as tenEart ing oceanbasins and mountain ranges. Never mind t James ton  anysucatic arrangement ually result in a featureless sps. trated by Rutury, t Earts —mucoomuco allo of cooling and sed. And any tains sributed across tently t, and of more or less t by t  t some ranges, like time unately, Alfred egener  t geologists .

    For a start, ions questioned tions of tive o generate , but egener eorologist, for goodness sake. A remediable deficiencies.

    And so geologists took every pain to dismiss tleions. to get around tributions, ted ancient “landbridges” ime, a land bridge lantic.   ancient tapirs ed simultaneously in Sout Asia a land bridge oo. Soon maps of preoricseas  solid o Europe, fromBrazil to Africa, from Sout Asia to Australia, from Australia to Antarctica. tive tendrils  only conveniently appeared o move aliving organism from one landmass to anot t leaving atrace of tence. None of ted by so mucual evidence—not it ury.

    Even land bridges couldn’t explain some trilobite t o  only on one side. Noone could persuasively explain  o cross tileocean but to find its rilobite found in Europe and t but noe as 1964  ical difficulties.”

    to be sure, egener made mistakes. ed t Greenland is drifting  by about amile a year, o believe in o accept t massive continents some, like a plo motored ts.

    It  ermine ted a possible ist to understand tradioactive ion currents o slide continents around on tial textbook Principles of P publisa continental drift t s fundamentals t prevails today. It ill a radical proposition for time and icized, particularly in ted States,o drift lasted longer tted,  anyevident sense of irony, t ed s so clearly and compellingly tstudents migually come to believe trike&gt;ｈtｔ<a href="p://&lt;/strike&gt;" target="_blank">p://&lt;/strike&gt;</a>

    Elseious support. In 1950, a vote at ting of tision for t of Science s about noinental drift. (er citedtragically misled Britiss imes inental drift; in mygeological bones, so to speak, I feel tastic one.”

    Continental drift  entirely  support in ted States. Reginald Daly of, but ed t t, and ended to be considered interesting, even a toucoo exuberant for serious consideration. And so most American academicsstuck to t tinents  positions forever and ttures could be attributed to someteral motions.

    Interestingly, oil company geologists  if you ed to find oil youo allo of surface movements t e tectonics.

    But oil geologists didn’t e academic papers; t found oil.

    t no one o resolving. t ion of . Every yearEarterial—500 million tons of calcium, forinstance—to tiplied te of deposition by t  produced a disturbing figure: t ts on ttoms—or, put anottoms sops. Scientists dealt  possible way.

    t. But eventually t w no longer.

    In ton University mineralogist named in ctack transport ser, ate ins  it could equally ificpurposes and never sc off, even  sea, even in t of battle. irely unexpected. If t, as everyone assumed, ted s, like ttom of a river or lake. But t t silts. It ed s t s after an earlier Princeton geologist named ArnoldGuyot. All t o take part in, and put sucs to theback of his mind.

    After turned to Princeton and tions of teac teries of tinued to occupy a space in s. Meaned surveys of tiest and mostextensive mountain range on Eartly—underer. It traced a continuous patitc Iceland, youcould follo doer of tlantic Ocean, around ttom of Africa, and acrosstralia; t angled across ting up t coast of ted States to Alaska.

    Occasionally its er as an island or arclantic, ance—but mostly it y sea, unknoed. s brancogetended to 46,600 miles.

    A very little of time. People laying ocean-floor cables in teentury  tainous intrusion in tlantic from t tinuous nature and overall scale of tunning surprise. Moreover, it contained p couldn’t be explained.

    Dolantic ridge —up to a dozen miles s entire 12,000-mile lengto suggest t tting apart att bursting out of its s ion, but t be denied.

    t te young at tlanticridge but gre to t or . ter and realized t t ral rift, t as necame along belantic floor ively ts, one carryingcrust to tohe process becameknown as seafloor spreading.

    reacs journey at tinents, it plungedback into tion. t explained . It urned to t also explained o be older t175 million years, al rocks en billions of yearsold. No took to travel tos iful t explained a great deal. ed ant paper, imes t isn’t readyfor a good idea.

    Meanartling findingsby dra of Eartory t had been discovered several decades earlier.

    In 1906, a Frenc named Bernard Brun t’s magnetic fieldreverses itself from time to time, and t tly fixed incertain rocks at time of tiny grains of iron ore  to  time of tion, taypointing in t direction as t tic poles  time of tion. For years ttle more ty, but in trick Blackett of ty of London and S. K. Runcorn ofty of Nele studied t magnetic patterns frozen in Britisartled, to say t, to find ting t at some time in tant pastBritain s axis and traveled some distance to t s moorings. Moreover, t if you placed a map ofEurope’s magnetic patterns alongside an American one from t togetly as tter. It was uncanny.

    too.

    It finally fell to ty, a geop named DrummondMatte student of o drarands togetic studies of tlantic Ocean floor, trated conclusively tted and t tinents ion too. An unlucky Canadian geologist named La time, but couldn’t find anyone to publish his paper.

    In oldions make interesting talk at cocktail parties, but it is not t of t ougo be publisific aegis.” One geologist later described it as“probably t significant paper in to be denied publication.”

    At all events, mobile crust ant figures in ty in 1964, and suddenly, it seemed, everyone . ting agreed, erconnected segments ely jostlingsaccounted for muc’s surface behavior.

    tinental drift” ly discarded  t ion and not just tinents, but it took a tle on a namefor ts. At first people called tal blocks” or sometimes “pavingstones.” Not until late 1968, ion of an article by ts in ts receive tes. ticle called tetectonics.

    Old ideas die  everyone ruso embrace ting neot popular and influential geological textbooks, trenuously insisted t plate tectonics  as it  edition  ion and seafloor spreading. And in Basin and Range, publised t even t in eigill didn’t believe in plate tectonics.

    today  Eart to tes (depending ony or so smaller ones, and t directionsand at different speeds. Some plates are large and comparatively inactive, otenergetic. tal relationso t sit upon te, for instance, is mucinent  isassociated. It rougraces tline of tinent’s ern coast (ive, because of te boundary), butignores tern seaboard altogetead extends lantic to t do tectonically  of te event is no plates.

    tions bet o beinfinitely more complex tan, it turns out, taco Noraten Island, but only a corner, isEuropean. So is part of Nes beacsnearest kin tisantially American. Some of ton Range of Antarctica, it is t, may onceo tern U.S. Rocks, in s, get around.

    tant turmoil keeps tes from fusing into a single immobile plate. Assumingtinue muc present, tlantic Ocean il eventually it is muc off and become a kind of Madagascar ofto Europe, squeezing terranean out ofexistence and ting up a cains of y running from Paris toCalcutta. Australia o its nort by some isto Asia. ture outcomes, but not future events. ts are  inents are adrift, like leaves on a pond. to Global PositioningSystems  Europe and Norting at about to  long enougo San Francisco. It is only ty oflifetimes t keeps us from appreciating t a globe and inents as t one-tentof tory.

    Earts in ectonics, and ery. It is not simply a matter of size or density—Venus is nearly a ts and yet ectonic activity. It is t—t is really not—t tectonics is an important part of t’s organic  and er James trefil  it, “It  tinuousmovement of tectonic plates  on t of life on eartst tectonics—ce, for instance—ant spur to t of intelligence. Otings of tinents may  least some of tinction events. InNovember of 2002, tony Dickson of Cambridge University in England produced a report,publisrongly suggesting t tionsory of rocks and tory of life.  Dickson establis tion of tered abruptly and vigorously tt  ten correlate ant events inbiological ory—tburst of tiny organisms t created t, t causes try to cically from time to time, but tting of ocean ridges .

    At all events, plate tectonics not only explained t  from France to Florida, for example—but also many of its internalactions. Eartion of island cions ofmountains, tself—tter t directly influenced by ts, as McPed,found tion t “th suddenly made sense.”

    But only up to a point. tribution of continents in former times is muclyresolved t people outside geopextbooks give confident-looking representations of ancient landmasses imes based on conclusions t don’t altogetory of Life, species of plants andanimals from t ly o be w.

    tline of Gond connecting Australia, Africa,Antarctica, and Sout on tribution of a genus ofancient tongue fern called Glossopteris, eris s of t ion to Gondroubling discrepancy inues to be—mostlyignored. Similarly a triassic reptile called Lystrosaurus arctica allto Asia, supporting tion betinents, but iturned up in Soutralia, inent at time.

    tures t tectonics can’t explain. take Denver. It is, aseveryone kno rise is comparatively recent.  of an ocean bottom, many t lo ts are not fractured or deformed in tes, and anyoo far from te edges to besusceptible to tions. It oraise a ruck at te end. Mysteriously and over millions of years, it appears tDenver oo, ion ofit a t any knoed tectonic activity. Australia, meaning and sinking. Over t100 million years as it ed nortos leading edge . It appears t Indonesia is very sloralia do. Notectonics can explain any of this.

    Alfred egener never lived to see ed. On an expedition to Greenland in1930,  out alone, on ieto c a supply drop. urned.

    er, frozen to deat and liest, but about a yard closer to Northe day he died.

    Einstein also failed to live long enougo see t , Princeton, Nealdrift theories was even published.

    tectonics tPrinceton at time, and  of udents  way.

    As for geology itself, its cataclysms  begun, and it art the process.

    PARt IV  DANGEROUS PLANEttory of any one part of tsof long periods of boredom ands periods of terror.

    -Britis Derek V. Ager

 13 BANG!

    PEOPLE KNE FOR a long time t t toer supply reported bringing up alot of strangely deformed rock—“crystalline clast breccia  matrix” and “overturnedejecta flap,” as it er described in an official report. ter oo. It  as soft as rainer. Naturally occurring soft er had never been found in Iowabefore.

    trange rocks and silken ers ters of curiosity, forty-oneyears eam from ty of Io around to making a trip to ty, to t part of tate. In 1953, after sinking a series of experimental bores, university geologists agreed tte tributed to some ancient, unspecifiedvolcanic action. t it  as.

    trauma to Manson’s geology  from  from at least 100million miles beyond. Sometime in t past,  a mile and a en billion tons and traveling atpermospo t ant a y miles across.

    tone t elseerated andreplaced by t rocks t so puzzled ter driller in 1912.

    t  t edStates. Of any type. Ever. ter it left be if you stood on oneedge you  be able to see t  and trifling. Unfortunately for lovers of spectacle, 2.5 million years ofpassing ice ss filled ter rigo top ill, tsmoot today t Manson, and for miles around, is as flat as a tabletop.

    er.

    At ted to sion of neiclesand a box of core samples from a 1991–92 drilling program—indeed, tively bustle toproduce t you o ask to see t is on display, andnoorical marker.

    to most people in Manson t to ornado t rolled upMain Street in 1979, tearing apart trict. One of tages of all tsurrounding flatness is t you can see danger from a long ually tourned out at one end of Main Street and cornado came to ly scampered . Four of t move quite fast enougcalled Crater Days,  un doesn’t really o do er. Nobody’s figured out a o capitalize on an impact site t isn’t visible.

    “Very occasionally  people coming in and asking er and ell t to see,” says Anna Scoed.”  people,including most Ios it barelyrates a footnote. But for one brief period in t geologicallyexciting place on Earth.

    tory begins in t young geologist named EugeneS to Meteor Crater in Arizona. today Meteor Crater is t famousimpact site on Eartourist attraction. In t didn’t receivemany visitors and ill often referred to as Barringer Crater, after a aked a claim on it in 1903. Barringer believedt ter en-million-ton meteor, ed  ation t une digging it out.

    Una teor and everyt une, and t ty-six years, cutting tunnels t yielded nothing.

    By tandards of today, crater researcrifle unsopicated, tosay t. tigator, G. K. Gilbert of Columbia University, modeledts of impacts by flinging marbles into pans of oatmeal. (For reasons I cannot supply,Gilbert conducted ts not in a laboratory at Columbia but in a el room.)Some concluded t ters s—in itself quite a radical notion for time—but t t. Mostscientists refused to go even t far. to ters volcanoes and noters t remained evident on Eart tributed to otreated as fluky rarities.

    By time S Meteor Crater eam explosion. S undergroundsteam explosions—: t exist—but  blast zones. Oneof  jobs out of college o study explosion rings at ts nuclear test sitein Nevada.  t MeteorCrater to suggest volcanic activity, but t tributions of otuff—anomalous fine silicas and magnetites principally—t suggested an impact from space.

    Intrigued, o study t in ime.

    orking first er e David Levy, Sematic survey of tem. t one ory in California looking for objects,asteroids primarily, ories carried t.

    “At time arted, only sligire course of astronomical observation,” Ser in a television intervieronomers in tietury essentially abandonedtem,” tention urned to tars, the galaxies.”

    S t tdeal more—than anyone had ever imagined.

    Asteroids, as most people knos orbiting in loose formation in a beltbeter. In illustrations ting in a jumble, butin fact tem is quite a roomy place and teroid actually a million miles from its nearest neigely eroids tumbling t t to be probably not lessto be planets t never quite made it, oo ttling gravitational pull of Jupiter, hem from coalescing.

    eroids  detected in t day of tury by a Sicilian named Giuseppi Piazzi—t to be planets, andt t took some inspired deductions by tronomer illiam o  t t sized but muceroids—Latin for “starlike”—unate ast like stars at all. Sometimes noely called planetoids.

    Finding asteroids became a popular activity in turyabout a t no one ematically recordingt en become impossible to knopopped into vie ed earlier and t track of. Bytime, too, astrop feronomers ed to devoteto anytoids. Only a feronomers, notablyGerard Kuiper, tcronomer for s is named,took any interest in tem at all. to  toryin texas, folloer by  t Center in Cincinnati andtc in Arizona, a long list of lost asteroids led doil by tietury only one knoeroid ed for—anobject called 719 Albert. Last seen in October 1911, it racked doerbeing missing for eighty-nine years.

    So from t of vieeroid researcietury ially just along exercise in bookkeeping. It is really only in t fe astronomers o count and keep an eye on t of teroid community. As of July 2001,ty-six teroids ified— to a billion to identify, t obviously has barely begun.

    In a sense it ters. Identifying an asteroid doesn’t make it safe. Even if everyasteroid in tem , no one could say urbationsmigling to forecast rock disturbances on our o t in space and  do is beyond guessing. Any asteroid outt  is very likely to her.

    t as a kind of freeepping off t least 90 percent of trians are quite unknoo us. e don’t kno of en t atsome point, at uncertain intervals, trundle across tsixty-six teven Ostro of t Propulsion Laboratory  it,“Suppose t tton you could pus up all teroids larger t ten meters, ts in t, you  a couple of tant tars, but millionsupon millions upon millions of nearer, randomly moving objects—“all of  courses t different rates. It  ist can’t see it.

    Altoget is t—t is really only a guess, based on extrapolating fromcratering rates on t some teroids big enougo imperilcivilized existence regularly cross our orbit. But even a small asteroid—troy a city. tive tiddlers in Earts isalmost certainly in to track.

    t one  spotted until 1991, and t er it  iced as it sailed past us at a distance of 106,000 miles—in cosmic termst of a bullet passing t toucer, anot larger asteroid missed us by just 90,000 miles—t pass yetrecorded. It, too,  seen until it  warning.

    According to timoting in times a iced.

    An object a  be picked up by any Eartelescope untilit  a fe is only if a telescope o be trained on it,. ting analogy t is al tively searceroids is feaff of a typical McDonald’srestaurant. (It is actually some mucrying to get people galvanized about tential dangers oftem, anot——lyunfolding in Italy  from t Doy Laboratory atColumbia University. In ter Alvarez taccione Gorge, near to divided t layers of limestone—onefrom taceous period, tertiary. t knoo geology ast boundary,1and it marks time, sixty-five million years ago, wly vanishe fossil record.

    Alvarez   a ter of an inc could account for sucic moment in Eartory.

    At time tional  tinction  ury earlier—namely t t overmillions of years. But ted t in Umbria, if1It is Kt rat because C ed for Cambrian. Depending on a or German Kreide. Botly mean “c Cretaceous means.

    noely in tests existed for determining  migaken to accumulate.

    In t certainly  t, but luckily ion to someone outside  nuclear p;tac to rocks, but trigued  occurred to  t lie in dust from space.

    Every year tes some ty tric tons of “cosmicsp in plainer language— if you s it intoone pile, but is infinitesimal ingare exotic elements not normally muc iridium, in space t (because, it ist, most of to t was young).

    Alvarez kne a colleague of  tory in California,Frank Asaro, ecion of clays using a process called neutron activation analysis. trons in a small nuclear reactor and carefully counting t ted; it remely finicky tery, but Alvarez reasoned t if tof one of tic elements in  s annual rateof deposition, t aken to form. On an Octoberafternoon in 1977, Luis and alter Alvarez dropped in on Asaro and asked ests for them.

    It e a presumptuous request. to devote montomaking t painstaking measurements of geological samples merely to confirm irely self-evident to begin  ts ted. Certainly no one expected o yield any dramaticbreakthroughs.

    “ell, terview in 2002.

    “And it seemed an interesting co try. Unfortunately, I  of ot o it.” ed es from t 1:45 p.m.,  a sample in tector. It ran for 224minutes and ting interesting results, so opped it and had alook.”

    ts ed, in fact, t tists at first t tobe  of iridium in timesnormal levels—far beyond anyt ed. Over to ty  a stretcarted you couldn’t stop,” Asaro explained) analyzing samples, als.

    tests on otarctica—s t ly elevated every, and probablycataclysmic, ing spike.

    After muc, t t plausible explanation—plausible to t any rate— truck by an asteroid or comet.

    t t be subjected to devastating impacts from time to time quite as ne is noimes presented. As far back as 1942, a NorternUniversity astrop named Ralped sucy in anarticle in Popular Astronomy magazine. (icle to run it.) And at least tists, tronomerErnst ?pik and t and Nobel laureate  for tion at various times. Even among paleontologists it  unkno Oregon State University, M. . de Laubenfels, ing in tology, ually anticipated ting t t adeat from space, and in 1970 t of tological Society, De ty t an extraterrestrial impact may  knoinction.

    As if to underline just ime, in 1979 audio actually produced a movie called Meteor (“It’s five miles ’scoming at 30,000 m.p.o arring alieood, Karl Malden, and a very large rock.

    So  a meeting of tion for t of Science, t tinction taken place over millions of years as part of some slosuddenly in a single explosive event, it s have come as a shock.

    But it did. It icularly in tological community,as an outrageous heresy.

    “ell, you o remember,” Asaro recalls, “t eurs in ter specializing in paleomagnetism, Luis ologists t ’s not terribly surprising t t embrace itimmediately.” As Luis Alvarez joked: “e  alicense.”

    But tally ab in tt terrestrial processes ural orysince time of Lyell. By tastrop of fas iterally unt geologists tating impact  tific religion.”

    Nor did it  Luis Alvarez emptuous of paleontologists and tributions to scientific kno very good scientists. tamp collectors,” e in times in an article t stings yet.

    Opponents of ternative explanations for ts—for instance, t ted by prolonged volcanic eruptions inIndia called traps—and above all insisted t t tly from t t vigorous opponents ed t ted by volcanic action even  ual evidence of it. As late as 1988 more tologists contacted in a survey continued to believe t tinction of ted to an asteroid or cometary impact.

    t  obviously support t  site. Enter Eugene Sion—er-in-laaug ty of Ioo urned to Iowa.

    Geology is a profession t varies from place to place. In Ioate t is flat andstratigrapful, it tends to be comparatively serene. t deposits of oil or precious metals, not a  of a pyroclastic flow.

    If you are a geologist employed by tate of Io of toevaluate Manure Management Plans, e’s “animal confinement operators”—o t of us—are required to file periodically. teen million  of manure to manage. I’m not mocking t all—it’s vital and enlig keeps Ioer clean—but  ’s not exactly dodginglava bombs on Mount Pinatubo or scrabbling over crevasses on t insearc life-bearing quartzes. So ter of excitement ts tment of Natural Resources ion focused on Manson and its crater.

    trourn-of-tury pile of red brick t y of Ioment and——ts of tment of Natural Resources. No one noee geologists y, but you get t t very accessible.  to be taken outonto a roof ledge and hrough a window.

    Ray Anderson and Brian itzke spend ts, and y specimen stones. (Geologists are never at a lossfor paper to find anytra celepo move stacks of documents around.

    “Suddenly  ter of told me, gleaming at t,  ime.”

    I asked t Gene So have been universally revered.

    “ a great guy,” itzke replied  ation. “If it  been for ten off t, it took to get it up and running. Drilling’s an expensive business—about ty-five dollars a footback to go do.”

    “Sometimes more t,” Anderson added.

    “Sometimes more t,” itzke agreed. “And at several locations. So you’re talking alot of money. Certainly more t would allow.”

    So  a  collaboration  he U.S.

    Geological Survey.

    “At least  it ion,” said Anderson, producing a small painedsmile.

    “It zke  on. “tually quite a lot of badscience going on t ts t didn’t aland up to scrutiny.” One of ts came at ting of tt and C. L. Pillmore of t ter  age to inction. tion attracted a good deal of press attention but unately premature. A more careful examination of ta revealed t Manson  only too small, but also nine million years too early.

    t Anderson or itzke learned of tback to t a conference in Souta and found people coming up to tic looksand saying: “e  your crater.” It  t Izett and tists  announced refined figures revealing t Manson couldn’t after allinction crater.

    “It ty stunning,” recalls Anderson. “I mean, ant and t  anymore. But even iont t ing  boto sheirnew findings.”

    “?”

    ty good insigo tractivescience can get ain level.”

    ty of Arizona, met a reporter from ton Co kno a large, unexplained ring formation, 120 miles án Peninsula at Cy of Progreso, about 600 miles due soution ally, t Gene S visited Meteor Crater in Arizona—but ts  it he day.

    raveled to te and decided fairly sly t ter. By early1991 it abliso nearly everyone’s satisfaction t Csite.

    Still, many people didn’t quite grasp  could do. As Steprong initial doubts about t . . . [] only six miles across er of eighousand miles?”

    Conveniently a natural test of t Ser. For t time,o ness a cosmic collision—and ness it very o telescope. Most astronomers, according to Curtis Peebles, expected little,particularly as t  a co sp a string of ty-one fragments. “Mysense,” e one, “is t Jupiter s up  so much as a burp.”

    One , Nature ran an article, “tingt t itute noteor shower.

    ts began on July 16, 1994,  on for a ion of Gene Sed. One fragment, knoruck  six million megatons—seventy-five times moretence. Nucleus G  tain, but it created  ics of theory.

    Luis Alvarez never kneer or of t, as , ralian outback, o searc sites. On a dirt track in tanami Desert—normally one oftiest places on Eart rise just as anotantly,  of  totor spacecraft. t tered around MeteorCrater.

    Anderson and itzke no longer er t killed t ill  and most perfectly preserved impact crater in ted States,”

    Anderson said. (A little verbal dexterity is required to keep Manson’s superlative status. Oters are larger—notably, C site in1994—but to ters of limestone and mostly offs difficult to study,” Anderson on, “’s because it is buried t it is actuallycomparatively pristine.”

    I asked tooday.

    “O  be visible to tilit   il it  tmosp onesecond before it  talking about sometens of timesfaster test bullet. Unless it elescope, and t’sby no means a certainty, it ake us completely by surprise.”

    or s depends on a lot of variables—angle of entry, velocity andtrajectory, ing object, among mucer t. But ists can do—and Anderson and itzke  site and calculate t of energy released. From t tplausible scenarios of  must happened now.

    An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities er tmospsuc t couldn’t get out of tly, and temperature belo o some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times temperature of tant of its arrival in our atmospeor’s patories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in aflame.

    One second after entering tmospeorite o t before been going about their business.

    teorite itself antly, but t  a ters of rock, earted gases. Every living t been killed by t of entry . Radiating outalmost t ial s.

    For tside te devastation, t inkling of catastrop—test ever seen by ant to aminute or ter by an apocalyptic sigo tire field of vieraveling atts approac since it all building in Omao look in t direction urmoil folloantaneous oblivion.

    ites, over an area stretco Detroit and encompassing y, ties—t, ins—nearly every standing ttened or on fire, and nearly every living to a t and slicedor clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles. Beyond a tation fromt would gradually diminish.

    But t’s just tial s teddamage  it  certainly set off a cating earto rumble and spesunamis ingly for distant s, and burning rock and oting doing muc ablaze. It imatedt at least a billion and a  day. turbances to t communications systems everyurn. It er. As one commentator  it, fleeing ing a slooll tle affected by any plausible relocation effort, sinceEarty to support life would be universally diminished.”

    t of soot and floating as and follo out tainly for monting groitute of tecopes from sediments left from ter Kt impact and concluded t it affected Earte for about ten thousand years.

    tually used as evidence to support tion t tinction of dinosaurs  and empic—and so it erms. e can only guess y .

    And in all likeli  of a clear sky.

    But let’s assume  coming.   to smit, as Joes, our missiles are not designed for space  to escape Earty and, even if toguide tens of millions of miles of space. Still less could  po t could,Saturn 5, ired years ago and urn launcroyed as part of aNASA housecleaning exercise.

    Even if  a eroid and blasted it to pieces,t urn it into a string of rocks t o us oneafter t Ser—but  noensely radioactive. tom Geeroid er at ty of Arizona, t even a year’s  totake appropriate action. ter likeli  see any object—even a comet—until it  six montoo late.

    Sing Jupiter in a fairly conspicuous manner since 1929, but ittook over ury before anyone noticed.

    Interestingly, because t to compute and must incorporate suc margin of error, even if  il nearly t couple of weeks anyway—wain.

    For most of time of t’s approac in a kind of cone of uncertainty.

    It ainly be t interesting feory of ty if it passed safely.

    “So en does somet zke before leaving.

    “O once every million years on average,” said itzke.

    “And remember,” added Anderson, “tively minor event. Do you knoions ed ?”

    “No idea,” I replied.

    “None,” range air of satisfaction. “Not one.”

    Of course, itzke and Anderson added ily and more or less in unison, terrible devastation across muc described, and completeanniion for  life is  none permanentlyperished.

    t appears, is t it takes an a to extinguis ted on. orse still, it isn’t actually necessary tolook to space for petrifying danger. As  to see, Earty of dangerof its own.

 14 THE FIRE BELOW

    IN t named Mike Vooring around onsome grassy farmland in eastern Nebraska, not far from ttle toed a curious glint in to  ly preserved skull ofa young r by recent heavy rains.

    A fe turned out,  extraordinary fossil beds everdiscovered in Norter  ooturtles. All erious cataclysm just under time knoogeology as tood on a vast,  plain very like ti of Africa today. to tenfeet deep. t  t, and never had been, any volcanoes inNebraska.

    today, te of Voorate Park, and it ylisors’ center and museum, ful displays on tory of ter incorporates a lab ors can cologists cleaning bones. orking alone in t ary in wured.

    t get a ors to Asate Park—it’s sligo sook me to t atop a ty-foot ravine where he had made his find.

    “It o look for bones,”  I  looking for bones. Iern Nebraska at time, and really just kindof poking around. If I  gone up t just  skull,I’d ed a roofedenclosure nearby, e. Some ther in a jumble.

    I asked   o  for bones. “ell, if you’re looking forbones, you really need exposed rock. t’s ology is done in , dry places.

    It’s not t t’s just t you ting them.

    In a setting like ture across t and unvarying prairie—“you  kno stuff out tto so start looking.”

    At first t tated as mucional Geograpicle in 1981. “ticle called te a ‘Pompeii of preoricanimals,’ ” old me, “e because just after t died suddenly at all. tropeodystrop you  if you  of abrasive as  of it because tt and crumbled itinto my   sligty. “Nasty stuff to o breat on,“because it’s very fine but also quite so tering urned ter into an undrinkablegray sludge. It couldn’t  all.”

    tary ed t tence of so muc, Nebraska’s s  for a long time. Foralmost a century to make  andAjax. But curiously no one  to wonder whe ash came from.

    “I’m a little embarrassed to tell you,” Voor t I tabout it  tional Geograpo confess t I didn’t know. Nobody knew.”

    Voor samples to colleagues all over tern United States asking if t it t ter a geologist named BillBonnic in toucold  tc from a place called Bruneau-Jarbidge in sout Ida tkilled t big enougo leave an asen feet deep almost a tern Nebraska. It turned out t under tern United States t spot, aclysmically every600,000 years or so. t sucion  over 600,000 years ago. t spot isstill t Yelloone National Park.

    e knotle about  is fairly remarkable tot Ford  t tinents moveabout on tion.

    “Strange as it may seem,” e Ricand tribution of matterin terior of tter tand terior of th.”

    tance from to ter is 3,959 miles, w so very far.

    It ed t if you sunk a o ter and dropped a brick into it, it ake only forty-five minutes for it to  ttom (t t point it  rat).

    Our otempts to penetrate to indeed. One or to a dept most mines on Eart a quarter of a mile beneat  yet even come close.

    Until sligury ago, -informed scientific minds kneEarterior  muc a coal miner kne you could digdoance and t rock and t  it. t named R. D. Oldemala, noticed t certain srated to a point deep an angle, as if tered some kind ofbarrier. From t ter a Croatianseismologist named Andrija Moudying grapiced a similar odd deflection, but at a s and tely belole; tinuity, or Mo.

    e o get a vague idea of terior—t really  until 1936 did a Danisist named Inge Leudyingseismograp t o be solid and an outer one (t Oldected) tis t to be liquid and t of magnetism.

    At just about time t Leanding of terior by studying ts at Calteco make comparisons bet. ter and Beno Gutenberg, t o do  at once as Ric o do ereit fello al“tude Scale.”)ter scale ood by nonscientists, ttle less so nos early days o Ricen asked to seeed scale, t rary measure of tremblings based on surfacemeasurements. It rises exponentially, so t a 7.3 quake is fifty times more poimes more pohquake.

    At least tically, t for an earto t, a lo. t says not damage. A magnitude 7quake le—say, four  cause no surfacedamage at all, ation. Mucoo, depends on ture of tion, ty of aftersting of ted area. All t t fearsome quakes are not necessarily tforceful, ts for a lot.

    t eartion ered on Prince illiam Sound in Alaska in Marcer scale, or one in t of Cially logged at 8.6 magnitude but later revised upies(including ted States Geological Survey) to a truly grand-scale 9.5. As you  al science, particularly ing readings from remote locations. At all events, bot only caused al Sout also set offa giant tsunami t rolled six to more victims as far ahe Philippines.

    For pure, focused, devastation,  intense eartory  struck—and essentially so pieces—Lisbon, Portugal, on All SaintsDay (November 1), 1755. Just before ten in ty ed at magnitude 9.0 and ses.

    t t ter rus of ty’s urnedin a y feet o truction.  last tion ceased, survivorsenjoyed just tes of calm before a second sly less severe t. A t t all, sixty tually every building for miles reduced to rubble. timated 7.8 on ter scale andlasted less ty seconds.

    Eartude 2.0 or greater—t’s enougo give anyone nearby a pretty good jolt.

    Altend to cluster in certain places—notably around t anyates, only Florida, eastern texas, and t seem—so far—to be almost entirely immune. Neude 6.0 or greater in t tensive local damage and (I can attest) knocking pictures from walls and childrenfrom beds as far away as New hampshire.

    t common types of eartes meet, as in Californiaalong t. As tes pus eacilone or terval beter t-up pressure and ter t. ticular okyo,  University College London, describesas “ty ing to die” (not a motto you ourism leaflets). tokyo standson tectonic plates in a country already s seismicinstability. In 1995, as you y of Kobe, to t,ruck by a magnitude 7.2 quake, edat $99 billion. But t ively little—compared may a tokyo.

    tokyo  devastating eartimes. OnSeptember 1, 1923, just before noon, ty  Kantoquake—an event more ten times more poime, tokyo , so trainbeneaty years. Eventually it is bound to snap. In 1923,tokyo ion of about today it is approacy million. Nobodycares to guess  die, but tential economic cost  asrillion.

    Even more unnerving, because tood and capable of occurringanyime, are type of sraplate quakes. te boundaries, er deptend to propagate over muc notorious suco  ted States er of 1811–12. ture started just after midnig by tiveness of animals before quakes is not an old ale, but is in fact ablis at all understood) and ty rupturing noise from deep o t  deep. A strong smell of sulfur filled ted for four minutes ating effects to property. Among tnesses ist Joo be in ted out it knocked do least one account, “s in East Coast harbors and .

    . . even collapsed scaffolding erected around tol Building in ason, D.C.” OnJanuary 23 and February 4 furtude follo not surprisingly, since suconing. tone could be under Co guess. And raplate rupturings? Somet know.

    By tists ly frustrated by tle tood ofterior t to try to do somet it. Specifically, t to drill tinental crust oo to tinuity and to extract a piece of tle for examination at leisure. t if tand ture of tbegin to understand eracted, and to predict earts.

    t became kno inevitably, as t ty rous. to lo of Pacific Ocean er off t of Mexico and drill some 17,000 feet tively tal rock. Drilling froma sers is, in trying to drill a op tate Building using a strand of spagti.”

    Every attempt ended in failure. t trated  600 feet. ted s and noresults, Congress killed t.

    Four years later, Soviet scientists decided to try t onRussia’s Kola Peninsula, near t to oa depteen kilometers. ted, but ts ent.  last teen years later, to adepters, or about 7.6 miles. Bearing in mind t t of ts only about 0.3 percent of t’s volume and t t cuteven one-t, we can o erior.

    Interestingly, even t, nearly everyt it was surprising.

    Seismic udies ists to predict, and pretty confidently, t ter sedimentary rock to a depters, folloe for t 2,300meters and basalt from t, tary layer deeper ted and tic layer  all. Moreover, ted, emperature at 10,000 meters of 180degrees centigrade, nearly ted level. Most surprising of all  t t depturated er—somet  been t possible.

    Because  see into to use otecly involvereading ravel terior. e also knotle bit about tlefrom e pipes,  fires, in effect, a cannonball of magma to t supersonic speeds. It is a totally random event. A kimberlite pipe could explode inyour backyard as you read to 120 milesdoe pipes bring up all kinds of t normally found on or near tite, crystals of olivine, and—just occasionally, in about one pipein a s of carbon comes up e ejecta, but most isvaporized or turns to grape. Only occasionally does a  s up at just tspeed and cool doness to become a diamond. It ive diamond mining city in t t  kno. Geologists kno someern Indiana t may be trulycolossal. Diamonds up to ty carats or more  scattered sites tt no one es, it may be buriedunder glacially deposited soil, like ter in Io Lakes.

    So  tle. Scientists aregenerally agreed t ter crust, amantle of , viscous rock, a liquid outer core, and a solid inner core.

    1e kno ted by silicates, for t’s overall density. t be uff inside. e kno togenerate our magnetic field some be a concentrated belt ofmetallic elements in a liquid state. t muc everyt—eract, o bet any time in ture—is a matter of at least some uncertainty, and generallyquite a lot of uncertainty.

    Even t of it , is a matter of some fairly strident debate.

    Nearly all geology texts tell you t continental crust is to six miles t ty-five miles tinents, and forty to sixty miles tain c ties ions. t beneatains, for instance, is only aboutnineteen to ty-five miles to quicksand. (Some people tailed picture of terior, o 40 km (25 mi) is t. From 40 to 400 km (25 to 250 mi) is tle. From 400 to 650 km (250 to 400 mi) is a transition zone betle.

    From 650 to 2,700 km (400 to 1,700 mi) is tle. From 2,700 to 2,890 km (1,700 to 1,900 mi) is t;Dquot; layer. From 2,890 to 5,150 km (1,900 to 3,200 mi) is ter core, and from 5,150 to 6,378 km (3,200 to3,967 mi) is the inner core.

    its crust are questions t divide geologists into t ly early in tory and t er. Strengtters. Ricrong of Yale proposed an early-burst t t of ing t agree  slybefore  at ics in a polemic in an Australian eart cuating myto a report inEarth magazine in 1998.

    “ter man,” reported a colleague.

    t and part of ter mantle togetone”), s on top of a layer of softer rock called t strengt sucerms are neverentirely satisfactory. to say t ts on top of ts adegree of easy buoyancy t isn’t quite rig is misleading to terials flo only in t glass is. It may not look it, but all tless drag of gravity. Remove a pane of really old glassfrom t iceably t ttom t top. t is t of “floalking about. t ten times faster tle.

    ts occur not just laterally as tes move across t upand doion.

    Convection as a process  deduced by tric Count von Rumford at teentury. Sixty years later an Englislysuggested t terior migents to move about,but t idea took a very long time to gain support.

    In about 1970,  urmoil  came as a considerable s it in t ists  decades figuring out tmospropospratosp about wind.”

    ion process goes ter of controversy ever since. Somesay it begins four refil  “ts of data, from t disciplines,t cannot be reconciled.” Geocs say t certain elements on Eartle, but must h.

    terials in tle must at least occasionally mix.

    Seismologists insist t to support suchesis.

    So all t can be said is t at some sligerminate point as er of Earto pure mantle. Considering t itaccounts for 82 percent of t of its mass, tle doesn’tattract a great deal of attention, largely because t interest Eartists andgeneral readers alike ism) or nearer t to a dept a le consistspredominantly of a type of rock knoite, but ain. According to a Nature report, it seems not to be peridotite. More t know.

    Beneatle are ter one. Needless tosay, our understanding of ture of t, but scientists can make somereasonable assumptions. t t ter of tly imes t to turn anyrock tory (among ot t retaining its . Alt is little more t is t t inover four billion years temperature at tly  t estimates range from someto 13,000°F—about as  as the Sun.

    ter core is in many ood, tt it is fluid and t it is t of magnetism. t forward by E. C.

    Bullard of Cambridge University in 1949 t t of t makes it, in effect, an electrical motor, creating tic field. tion is t ting fluids in t somes in wires.

    Exactly  it is felt pretty certain t it is connected s being liquid. Bodies t don’t ance—don’t ism.

    e kno Eartic field cime to time: during t o times as strong as no it reverses itselfevery 500,000 years or so on average, t average ability. t reversal  750,000 years ago. Sometimes it stays put formillions of years—37 million years appears to be t stretc otimes it er as little as 20,000 years. Altoget 100 million years it self about t  est unansion in the geological sciences.”

    e may be going tic field  in t century alone. Any diminution in magnetism is likelyto be bad neism, apart from es to refrigerators and keeping ourcompasses pointing t al role in keeping us alive. Space is full ofdangerous cosmic rays t in tic protection ear tatters. ic field is o ts. teract icles in tmospo createtc knohe auroras.

    A big part of terestingly enoug traditionally ttle effort to coordinate ’s going oninside. According to Ss and geops rarely go to tings or collaborate on the same problems.”

    Perter demonstrates our inadequate grasp of terior t out s up, and it ary reminder of tations of our understanding tion ofMount St. on in 1980.

    At t time, ty-eiged States  seen a volcanic eruption for oversixty-five years. t volcanologists called in to monitor and forecast St.

    ion, and t turnedout,  t all.

    St. arted its ominous rumblings on Marc ingmagma, albeit in modest amounts, up to a imes a day, and being constantly sed to o be a safe distance of eigain’s rumblings gre. ourist attraction for the world.

    Nes on t places to get a vieelevision creedlyfleo t, and people ain. Onone day, more ty copters and lig circled t. But as to develop into anytic, people greless, andt t going to bloer all.

    On April 19 tain began to bulge conspicuously. Remarkably,no one in a position of responsibility sa trongly signaled a lateral blast. ts resolutely based t blo side t somet  a community college in tacoma. ed out t St.  , as o be released dramatically and probablycatastrop part of team and ionsattracted little notice.

    e all kno 8:32 A.M. on a Sunday morning, May 18, t and rock rusain slope at 150 miles an   landslide in ory andcarried enougerial to bury ttan to a dept. Aminute later, its flank severely . omic bombs, sing out a murderous  cloud at up to 650 miles anoo fast, clearly, for anyone nearby to outrace. Many people obe in safe areas, often far out of sigaken. Fifty-seven people y-toll  it een miles away.

    t person on t day e student named ion post 5.7 miles from tain, but interviee tion. aken by David Joon. Joon  to report ts later emporary.

    Eleven years later y-tists and journalists fatally caugpouring of supered asen rock—icflo Mount Unzen in Japan astrophically misread.

    Volcanologists may or may not be t scientists in t making predictions,but t question t in t realizing ions are.

    Less ter tastropcanley illiams of ty of Arizona, descended into tive volcanocalled Galeras in Colombia. Despite t years, only teenmembers of illiams’s party y s or otective gear. ted, killing six of tists, along ourists whers, including illiams himself.

    In an extraordinarily unself-critical book called Surviving Galeras, illiams said er ed t ant seismic signalsand be is to snipe after t, to apply to ts of 1993,” e. y of notiming  to do. I  I ake responsibility. But I do not feel guilty about t. tion.”

    But to return to ason. Mount St.  teen  of peak, and 230square miles of forest ated. Enougrees to build 150,000 s)  $2.7 billion. A giant column ofsmoke and aso a  of sixty t in less ten minutes. An airlinersome ty miles aed being pelted h rocks.

    Ninety  minutes  after  t, aso rain doy of fifty t eig, turned day to nig into everytors, generators, and electricalsc, crians, blocking filtration systems, and generally bringingto a . t s doy were closed.

    All te, just do  Yakima y’semergency broadcast system, o action during a crisis, did notgo on taff did not knoe t.”

    For t off from ts airport closed, itsapproacogety received just five-eiger tion of Mount St.  in mind, please, as one blast would do.

 15 DANGEROUS BEAUTY

    IN tudying tory of Yelloone National Park, BobCiansen of ted States Geological Survey became puzzled about somet,oddly,  troubled anyone before:  find t ime t Yelloone ure—t’s ed for all itsgeysers and oteamy features—and t volcanoes is t tty conspicuous. But Ciansen couldn’t find tone volcanoanyructure known as a caldera.

    Most of us, es in a symmetrical mound.

    t Parícutin in Mexico, a farmer artled tosee smoke rising from a patc  opped out at almost fourteen  andogeten trusivelyvisible volcanoes on Eart a fe. But ted type of volcano t doesn’t involve mountain building. t t open in a single migure, leaving be subsided pit,tin one obviously ype,but Ciansen couldn’t find the caldera anywhere.

    By coincidence just at time NASA decided to test some neude cameras bytaking pograpone, copies of o ties on tion t t make a nice bloors’ centers. As soon as Ciansen saos o spottually ta crater more ty miles across—mucoo o be perceived from any some time in t Yelloone must o humans.

    Yelloone, it turns out, is a supervolcano. It sits on top of an enormous  spot, areservoir of molten rock t rises from at least 125 miles do fromt spot is one’s vents, geysers,  springs, and popping mudpots. Beneat is about forty-five miles across—roug eig its t point. Imagine apile of tNt about t miles into to about t of t cirrus clouds, and you  visitors to Yellooneare sop of. t sucs on tabove ed Yelloone and about territory about1,700 feet  bleaclysm is pretty o Professor Bill McGuire of University College London, “you be able to get ers of it” ing. t followed would be even worse.

    Superplumes of type on s are ratini glasses—t spreading out as to create vast boable magma.

    Some of to 1,200 miles across. According to tal explosively but sometimes burst fort, continuous outpouring—aflood—of molten rock, sucraps in India sixty-five million years ago.

    (trap in text comes from a Sributed to tainly didn’t gassings. Superplumesmay also be responsible for ts t cause continents to break up.

    Suc all t rare. t ty active ones on t t, and t-knole Pitcairn int apart from Yelloone test idea one’s ended up beneatinental plate. Only tain: t t at Yelloone is t t is . But  spot or  is t is tter of ed (as it e. tinentalnature of t makes a o its eruptions. end to bubble aeadily and in a comparatively benign fasone blo doesn’t en, but  to stand well back.

    Since its first knoion 16.5 million years ago, it  a imes, but t recent tions are t get ten about. t eruptionimes greater t of Mount St.  imesbigger, and t nobody knoly   least ty-five imes greater t.  per timesmore monstrous.

    e ely noto compare it to. t blast in recent times  ofKrakatau in Indonesia in August 1883, ed around ter slos if you imagineted material from Krakatau as being about t of tone blasts  about  St. han a pea.

    tone eruption of t out enougo bury Neate to a depty-seven feet or California to a depty. tmade Mike Voorern Nebraska. t blast occurred in  a rate of about one inc raveled over it, so t today it is directly under nort yoming. (t spot itselfstays in one place, like an acetylene torc a ceiling.) In its  leaves t ofric are ideal for groatoes, as Idas like to joke, Yelloone eppingaround geysers.

    t Yelloone eruption covered all or parts of nineteen ernstates (plus parts of Canada and Mexico)—nearly ted States  of t of America, an area t produces roug is  like a big sno  in ted to grooput all t took t monto clear 1.8 billion tons of debrisfrom teen acres of trade Center site in Ne ake to clear Kansas.

    And t’s not even to consider tic consequences. t supervolcano eruptionon Eart toba, in nortra, seventy-four te   it obablast  least six years of “volcanic er” and goodness kno. t, it is t, may  to tinction, reducing tion to no more t means t all modern ion base,y. At all events, tosuggest t for t ty total number of people on Eart any time. t is, needless to say, a long time to recover from asingle volcanic blast.

    All tically interesting until 1973, ous: er in Yelloone Lake, in t of to run overt t te end of ter mysteriously flos did a y survey and discovered t a largearea of ting up one end of ter to run out at ted one side of a cral region of t   formallysurveyed. tral part of t incnoo be swelling again.

    ts realized t only one tless magma chamber.

    Yelloone  te of an ancient supervolcano; it e of an active one. It  about time t to  t tone’seruptions averaged one massive blo one, interestingly enougone, it appears, is due.

    “It may not feel like it, but you’re standing on t active volcano in tone National Park geologist, told me soon after climbing off an enormousorcycle and s at ters atMammot Springs early on a lovely morning in June. A native of Indiana, Doss is anamiable, soft-spoken, extremely tful man ail. A smallsappud graces one ear. A sligrains against his crisp Park Service uniform.

    employee. In fact,   t place into do it,”  off in a bouncy, battered four-o let me accompany  doing  is a park geologist does. t assignment today is to give anintroductory talk to a neour guides.

    Yelloone, I  out, is sensationally beautiful, atelymountains, bison-specked meadoumbling streams, a sky-blue lake, ing. “It really doesn’t get any better t,” Doss says. “You’vegot rocks up at Beartoot are nearly ters of to Eart mineral springs s at t springs from s title—“—or prettier.”

    “So you like it?” I say.

    “O,” y. “I mean I really love it ers are toug too , but ’s just—”

    errupted o point out a distant gap in a range of mountains to t, o vieains, old me, ins.

    “t gap is sixty or maybe seventy miles across. For a long time nobody could understandiansen realized t it o be because tains  bloy miles of mountains just obliterated,you knoty potent. It took Ciansen six years to figureit all out.”

    I asked  caused Yelloone to blow w did.

    “Don’t knorange t understandt all. Vesuvius, in Italy, ive for til an eruption in 1944and t just stopped. It’s been silent ever since. Some volcanologists t it isrectle . But nobody knows.”

    “And  if Yelloone o go?”

    time it bleand possibly some cterns of beeam vents, butnobody really knows.”

    “So it could just blo warning?”

    fully. trouble,  nearly all t itute  in some measure at Yelloone. “Eartions, but ts of eart year. Most of too small to be felt, but theless.”

    A ctern of geyser eruptions migaken as a clue,  too vary unpredictably. Once t famous geyser in tused to erupt regularly and spectacularly to s of t, but in 1888 it juststopped. t erupted again, to a  of eig. SteamboatGeyser is t geyser in t bloer four  intot tervals bets eruptions tle as four days to almostfifty years. “If it bleoday and again next   tell us anyt all about miger or ty years from now,” Doss says.

    “tile t it’s essentially impossible to draanyt happens.”

    Evacuating Yelloone s some tors ayear, mostly in tively fe intentionally narroly to sloraffic, partly to preserve an air ofpicturesqueness, and partly because of topograpraints. At t of summer, itcan easily take o cross to get anyop, bison jams. e get wolf jams.”

    In tumn of 2000, representatives from tional ParkService, along  and formed sometoneVolcanic Observatory. Four sucence already—in on—but oddly none in t volcanic zone in t actually a t more an idea—an agreement to coordinate efforts at studying andanalyzing t tasks, Doss told me, o draion in t of a crisis.

    “t one already?” I said.

    “No. Afraid not. But there will be soon.”

    “Isn’t t just a little tardy?”

    ’s just say t it’s not any too soon.”

    Once it is in place, t tiansen in Menlo Park, California,Professor Robert B. Smit ty of Utaential cataclysm and advise tendent. tendent ake to evacuate tone o blo tes.

    Of course it may be tens of t day comes. Doss t come at all. “Just because ttern in t doesn’t mean t it stillrue,” o suggest t ttern may be a series ofcatastrop. e may be in t no most of tallizing. It is releasing itsvolatiles; you need to trap volatiles for an explosive eruption.”

    In time ty of otone, as atingly evident on t of August 17, 1959, at a place called outside t ty minutes to midnig date, astrop ude 7.5, not vast as eart so abrupt and collapsed an entire mountainside. It  of tunately not so many people  to Yelloone in tymillion tons of rock, moving at more t fell off tain, traveling um t t up a mountain on ts pat of ty-eigeen of toodeep ever to be found again. tation  but breakingly fickle. tent, s, sleeping in anotent besidet away and never seen again.

    “A big eartime,” Doss told me. “You cancount on t. t zone for earthquakes.”

    Despite tone didn’t getpermanent seismometers until the 1970s.

    If you needed a o appreciate ture of geologic processes,you could do o consider tetons, tuously jagged range t stands justto tone National Park. Nine million years ago, tetons didn’t exist.

    t a  ty-mile-long faultopened  once every nine etonsexperience a really big earto jerk t  is ted jerks over eons t o t majestic s of sevent.

    t nine  misleading one. According toRobert B. Smito tory of t major teton quake  five and seven tetons, in s, are about t overdue eart.

    risk. time, pretty muc any predictability. “You knoors intotold me after o see. Did you kno springs at Yelloone t of the world combined?”

    “I didn’t kno.”

    en t migo a place called Duck Lake, a body of er a couple of  lookscompletely innocuous,” ’s just a big pond. But t used to be here.

    At some time in t fifteen tens of millions of tons of earted er blo at it  at Old Faitors’ centers.” he made an unhappy face.

    “ould there be any warning?”

    “Probably not. t significant explosion in t a place called Pork C left a crater about five meters across—not  bigenougo be standing t time. Fortunately, nobody  t   past t ell you  standing t does.”

    Big rockfalls are also a danger. t Gardiner Canyon in 1999, but againfortunately no one e in ternoon, Doss and I stopped at a place  any time,” Doss said tfully.

    “You’re kidding,” I said. t a moment , all filled  literal sense, happy campers.

    “O’s not likely,”  saying it could. Equally it could stay like t fordecades. t no telling. People o accept t t’sall to it.”

    As o o o Mammot Springs, Doss added: “Butt of time bad t  fall. Eartoccur. Nes don’t suddenly open up. For all tability, it’s mostly remarkably andamazingly tranquil.”

    “Like Eartself,” I remarked.

    “Precisely,” he agreed.

    t Yelloone apply to park employees as muco visitors. Doss got a in  e one nig activity knoting”—s publicize it, not all tone are dangerously . Some are extremely agreeable to lie in, and it  of some of to e at nig  to do so. Fooliso take a flas, o a scalding vent beloo tream t to leap over earlier. t of took a running jump. In fact, it tream at all. It  three survived.

    I t about t morning as I made a brief call, on my  of t aplace called Emerald Pool, in t ime to take me t I t I oug least to  it, for Emerald Pool is a oricsite.

    In 1965, a eam of biologists named tudy trip,  rimmed t for life. to tually t extremop could live in er t o bemucoo  or acid or co bear life. Emerald Pool, remarkably,  at least types of living ticus as t congenial. It  notemperatures of 50°C (122°F), but ers nearly t .

    For almost ty years, one of teria, ticus,remained a laboratory curiosity until a scientist in California named Kary B. Mullis realizedt -resistant enzymes  could be used to create a bit of cion, s to generate lots of DNA from verysmall amounts—as little as a single molecule in ideal conditions. It’s a kind of geneticpocopying, and it became t genetic science, from academicstudies to police forensic  ry in 1993.

    Means  ures of 80°C (176°F) or more. torganism found so far, according to Frances As in Life at tremes, is Pyrolobusfumarii, ure can reac for life is t to be about 120°C (248°F), tually kno all events, tely cion of tist Jay Bergstral it: “o  ile possible environments for life—as long as ter and some source of chemical energy we find life.”

    Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.

    t to see,  doesn’t altogeto  us here.

    PARt V   LIFE ItSELFtudy tails of its arcecture,t t haveknown we were coming.

    -Freeman Dyson

 16 LONELY PLANET

    It ISN’t EASY being an organism. In t knopost of t ain you,and even it can be pretty grudging.

    From ttom of t ocean trenco top of t mountain, t covers nearly t muc against t large.

    For  is even o tion of living t took t venturesome decision 400 million years ago to cra of t of table space by volume, according to one estimate, is fundamentally—in practicalterms completely—off-limits to us.

    It isn’t simply t  breater, but t  bear the pressures.

    Because er is about 1,300 times ly as you descend—by t of one atmospen meters (ty-t) of depto top of a five- eminence—Cologne CatonMonument, say—t as to be indiscernible. At ter, o te dimensions of a Coke can. Amazingly, people do voluntarily dive to suc breatus, for t in a sport knoly ternal organs rudely deformed is t exing (tpresumably as exing as urn to to reac be dragged doe briskly,by ance, t anyone o talk about itafteralian named Umberto Pelizzari, ,lingered for a nanosecond, and t back to terrestrial terms, 236 feet isjust sligy block. So even in our most exuberantstunts ers of the abyss.

    Oto deal  depte ery. t point in trenco over sixteen to send o t depturdy divingvessel, yet it is o colonies of ampype of crustacean similar to stransparent, ection at all. Most oceans are of course muc even at to being squasack of fourteen loaded cement trucks.

    Nearly everyone, including t t,t to be ter ourselves, and er is“virtually incompressible,” in t of Oxford University, “t ter, and is not crus dept is ticularly in t cause trouble. t  tal is not knoil quite recently it  t anyone diving to one ers or so  tedly proved otappears, according to As, t “ed.”

    Plenty else can go  t ed to times experienced a dreadedpo a catastrop. t  too literally, sucked up into t and hosepipe.

    o t is left in t are his bones and some rags of flesh,”

    t J. B. S. e in 1947, adding for t of doubters, “this hashappened.”

    (Incidentally, t, designed in 1823 by an Englisended not for diving but for fire-fig  being made of metal it o enter burning structures in any form of attire, butmost especially not in somet ed up like a kettle and made to ttempt to save ment, Deane tried it underer and found it error of t so muc, t nitrogen. Put t nitrogen istransformed into tiny bubbles t migrate into tissues. If too rapidly—as oo-quick ascent by a diver—trapped o fizz in exactly ttle of ciny blood vessels, depriving cells of oxygen, and causing pain so excruciating tsufferers are prone to bend double in agony—he bends.”

    tional imeimmemorial but didn’t attract muctention in tern il teentury, and t   at all (or at least not very  andnot generally muc on riverbeds to facilitate truction of bridge piers. ten ended period ofificial pressure toms like tingling or itc an unpredictable fe more insistent pain in ts and occasionally collapsedin agony, sometimes never to get up again.

    It  puzzling. Sometimes o bed feeling fine, but imes t  all. As relates a story concerning tors of a neunnel under tory banquet as tunnelneared completion. to ternation to fizz o tantly to fizziness, memorably enlivening tive process.

    Apart from avoiding s altogetrategies are reliablysuccessful against t is to suffer only a very s exposure to t is o dept  ill effect. t stay under long enougrogen in tem todissolve into tissues. tion is to ascend by careful stages. ttle bubbles of nitrogen to dissipate harmlessly.

    A great deal of  surviving at extremes is oo traordinaryfateam of Jot and J. B. S. andards ofBritisellectuals, tstandingly eccentric. to an aristocratic Scottis  spent mostof ive modesty as a professor of p Oxford. -minded. Once after  airs to cy o return and ime. ion o travel to Corno study  grandson of t. ime, parodied oucist Edantamount in t Counter Point .

    to diving o  t intervals necessary to manage an ascentfrom t getting t erests ranged across tudying altitude sickness in climbers to tstroke in desertregions. icular interest in ts of toxic gases on tounderstand more exactly aking and measuring  only ion level —a level, as trevor Norton notes in ertaining ory of diving, Stars Beneationally removed from nearly certain lety.

    o posterity as J.B.S., erest in  from infancy. At t is it oxyhaemoglobin or carboxyhaemoglobin?”

    t s. By time eenager, ten tested gases and gas masks togetaking turns to see  took to pass out.

    took a degree in science (udied classics at Oxford),  scientist in , mostly in Cambridge. t PeterMedaion of  of Brave New orld.

    Among many ots, ral role in marrying Darion to tic o produce ogeneticists as thesis.

    Perted t unity of killing people.”

    er te ty-tific papers). ill tructive, t alo find. ic Marxist. It ed, not altoget t of apurely contrarian instinct, and t if  Union e monarc. At all events, most of icles first appeared in t Daily orker.

    erests concerned miners and poisoning, tconsequences of ty funding  .” tal cylinder into imecould be sealed and subjected to tests of various types, all painful and nearly all dangerous.

    Volunteers migo sit in ice er mosped to rapid cion. In one experiment, ed adangerously y ascent to see alfillings in eet every experiment,” Norton es, “ended ing.” tually soundproof, sots to signal unress o tap insistently on to es to a small window.

    On anoted levels of oxygen,  so severe t ebrae. Collapsed lungs ine hazard.

    Perforated eardrums e common, but, as ed in one of , altdeaf, one can bloobacco smoke out of tion, w.”

    raordinary about t t o subject osuc in t of science, but t rouble talkingcolleagues and loved ones into climbing into too. Sent on a simulated descent, t lasted teen minutes.  last sopped bouncing acrossto  and sent o cook dinner. o be around, including on one memorable occasion a former primeminister of Spain, Juan Negrín. Dr. Negrín complained afteringling and “acurious velvety sensation on t oto  ion left feeling in tocks and lower spine for six years.

    Among ions rogen intoxication. For reasons tare still poorly understood, beneat a  nitrogen becomes apooxicant. Under its influence divers o offer topassing fiso try to  also produced est, ed, t “alternated betion, at onemoment begging to be decompressed because  ‘bloody a minutelaugtempting to interfere erity test.” In order to measurete of deterioration in t, a scientist o go into teer to conduct simple matical tests. But after a fees, as errecalled, “tester oxicated as testee, and often forgot to press topco take proper notes.” tion is even noery. It is t t it may be t causes alcooxication, but as noone knoain   all events,  test care, it is easy to get in trouble once you leave the surface world.

    o our earlier observation t Eart tplace to be an organism, even if it is tion of t’ssurface t is dry enougo stand on, a surprisingly large amount is too  or cold or dry orsteep or lofty to be of muco us. Partly, it must be conceded, t. In terms ofadaptability, ty amazingly useless. Like most animals,  muc places, but because  so freely and easily stroke,  circumstances—on foot  er in a  desert—most peopleo rise again, in no more tgenerating  but—because  keeping it. Even in quitemild o keep your body er ties to a large extent by employing cloter, but even so tions of Earto live are modest indeed: just 12 percentof total land area, and only 4 percent of the seas.

    Yet tle of our planet but t  t  of. You o look at our oem—or, come to t, Eart certainperiods in its oo appreciate t most places are muco life tery globe.

    So far space scientists  seventy planets outside tem, outof ten billion trillion or so t are t to be out tospeak y on tter, but it appears t if you able forlife, you o be just aobe. Various observers ified about ticularly  till to theyare:

    Excellent location.e are, to an almost uncanny degree, t distance from t sortof star, one t is big enougo radiate lots of energy, but not so big as to burn itself outsly. It is a curiosity of p tar t burns. en times as massive, it self after ten million years instead of tenbillion and  be unate to orbit woo muchingwould have frozen.

    In 1978, an astrop named Mic made some calculations and concluded tEartable  been just 1 percent fartcloser to t’s not muc it  enougtle more generous—5 percent nearer and 15 percent fartto be more accurate assessments for our zone of ability—but t is still a narro.

    1to appreciate just o look at Venus. Venus is only ty-fivemillion miles closer to t just tesbefore it toucion, Venus is very like Eart tal distance made all to  turned out. It appears tduring tem Venus ra  t Venus could not o its surface er, rous consequences for its climate. As its er evaporated,toms escaped into space, and toms combined o forma dense atmospifling. Altime ropical verdure,  it is mucoofierce an environment for any kind of life t s surfacetemperature is a roasting 470 degrees centigrade (roug),  lead, and tmosp ty times t ofEartand. e lack teco make suitsor even spaces o visit. Our knoant radar imagery and some startled squa probe t ioned for barely an ly sting down.

    So t’s o travel fart and t  but cold, as Mars frigidly attests. It, too,  retain a usable atmospurned into a frozene.

    But just being t distance from t be tory, for oted and fair, ly it is not. For t you need to have:

    t kind of planet.I don’t imagine even many geops, t en interior, but it’s a pretty nearcertainty t  all t magma s be here now.

    Apart from mucerior created tgassing t o build anatmospic field t sion. Italso gave us plate tectonics, ly smoot o a depters.

    t be life in t lonesome ocean, but tainly  be baseball.

    In addition to erior, s in tproportions. In t literal  stuff. to our o discuss it more fully in a minute, but first o considertors, beginning  is often overlooked:

    1tremops of Yelloone and similar organisms found elses realize t actually life of a type could range muc-even, pero.  alking about ions t ures.

    e’re a t.Not many of us normally t,but t is in effect  is. Most moons are tiny in relation to ter planet. tian satellites of Pance, are only about ten kilometers indiameter. Our Moon, er ter of t in tem o itself (exceptPluto,  because Pluto is itself so small), and makes to us.

    it teadying influence, top,  consequences for climate and eady gravitationalinfluence keeps t t speed and angle to provide t of stabilitynecessary for t of life. t go on forever. t a rate of about 1.5 inc   keep us steady and ion, but in time you s as muc apleasant feature in t sky.

    For a long time, astronomers assumed t toget tured t drifted by. e no about 4.5 billion years ago a Mars-sized object slammed into Eart enougerial to create t especially so as it ime ago. If it  ednesday clearly  be nearly so pleased about it. oour fourt crucial consideration:

    timing.tful place, and our existence is a s stretc played out in a particular manner at particular times—if, to take justone obvious instance, t been  by a meteor his in a burrow.

    e don’t really knoenceto, but it seems evident t if you ely advanced, ty,you need to be at t end of a very long ccomes involving reasonable periodsof stability interspersed  t amount of stress and cobe especially otal absence of real cataclysm. As o us, o find ourselves in t position.

    And on t note, let us nourn briefly to ts t made us.

    ty-turally occurring elements on Earty or so ted in labs, but some of tely put to one side—as, in fact,cs tend to do. Not a fetleknoatine, for instance, is practically unstudied. It able (next door to Marie Curie’s polonium), but almost not scientific indifference, but rarity. t isn’t mucatine out telusive element of all, o be francium,  is t tour entire planet may contain, at any given moment, fey francium atoms.

    Altoget ty of turally occurring elements are ral importance to life.

    As you mig, oxygen is our most abundant element, accounting for just under 50percent of t, but after t tive abundances are often surprising. ance, t silicon is t common element on Earttitanium is tenttle to do y or utility to us. Many of ts are actually more common tter-kno or nitrogen. tinbarely makes it into top fifty, eclipsed by sucive obscurities as praseodymium,samarium, gadolinium, and dysprosium.

    Abundance also tle to do ection. Aluminum is tcommon element on Earting for nearly a tent’s underneat, but its existence  even suspected until it eenturyby ime after t it reated as rare and precious. Congressnearly put a sop ton Monument to s aclassy and prosperous nation e silver dinner service and replaced it ting edge even if t.

    Nor does abundance necessarily relate to importance. Carbon is only teentcommon element, accounting for a very modest 0.048 percent of Eart, but   it.  sets tom apart is t it is s isty animal of tomic co many otoms (including itself) andigy robustness—trick of naturenecessary to build proteins and DNA. As Paul Davies ten: “If it  for carbon, lifeas   of life carbon is not all t plentiful even in ally depend on it. Of every 200atoms in your body, 126 are  19 are carbon.

    2Ots are critical not for creating life but for sustaining it. e need iron tomanufacture  it  is necessary for tion ofvitamin B12. Potassium and a very little sodium are literally good for your nerves.

    Molybdenum, manganese, and vanadium o keep your enzymes purring. Zinc—bless it—oxidizes alcohol.

    e o utilize or tolerate t even tance. Selenium is vital to all of us, buttake in just a little too muc  to e certain elements is a relic of tion. Stleno actually  mineral requirements. Modern cattleneed quite a lot of copper because ts of Europe and Africa olerance for elements is directly proportionate to trogen and tom is divided among all ts.

    abundance in t. e o expect, and in some cases actually need,tiny amounts of rare elements t accumulate in t . But step uptiny amount, and ly understood. No one kno ofarsenic is necessary for our . Some auties say it is; some not. All t iscertain is t too muc will kill you.

    ties of ts can become more curious still whey are combined.

    Oxygen and ance, are t combustion-friendly elements around,but put togetible er.

    3Odder still in combination aresodium, one of t unstable of all elements, and c toxic. Drop asmall lump of pure sodium into ordinary er and it o kill.

    Coriously rations forkilling microorganisms (it’s c is lethal.

    C of c orld ar. And,as many a sore-eyed stest, even in exceedingly dilute form t appreciate it. Yet put ty elements toget do you get? Sodiumcable salt.

    By and large, if an element doesn’t naturally find its o our systems—if it isn’tsoluble in er, say—end to be intolerant of it. Lead poisons us because o it until o fas into food vessels and pipes for plumbing. (Notincidentally, lead’s symbol is Pb, for tin plumbum, t of t to be. As o mention mercury, cadmium, and all trial pollutants inely dose ourselves) does not leave us a great deal of room for smirking. sdon’t occur naturally on Eartolerance for tend to beextremely toxic to us, as onium. Our tolerance for plutonium is zero: t  going to make you  to lie down.

    I  you a long o make a small point: a big part of t Earting is t o suit its conditions.   is not t it is suitable to life but t it is suitable to our life—and  may be t many of t make it so splendid to us—ioned Sun, doting Moon, sociable carbon, more magma tick at,and all t—seem splendid simply because t o count on. Noone can altogether say.

    Otingclouds of ammonia. ted t t doesn’t ssgrinding plates or spe rats in apermanent nontectonic tranquility. Any visitors to Eart certainly, att, be bemused to find us living in an atmosprogen, a gassulkily disinclined to react ial to combustion t place fire stations t our cities to protect ourselves from its livelier effects.

    But even if our visitors self is not combustible; it merely facilitates tion of ot as ible, eacime you lit a matco flame. remely corn bustible, as trated on May 6, 193 inLake, Neo flame, killing ty-six people.

    action movies, it is unlikely t t even give tain traces of manganese, selenium, zinc, and otalparticles at least some of o t not seem a all.

    t Rico make a joke about a posteriori conclusions, as t amazing to me tonige AR 357. Can you imagine? Of all tes in tate,  I  particular one tonight?

    Amazing!” , of course,  it is easy to make any banal situation seemextraordinary if you treat it as fateful.

    So it is possible t ts and conditions t led to tquite as extraordinary as o till, traordinary enougain: to do until ter.

 17 INTO THE TROPOSPHERE

    tmosp keeps us  it, Eartemperature of minus 60 degrees Fa. In addition,tmosps incoming sraviolet rays, and togetmospto a fifteen-foot tective concrete, and  it tors fromspace iny daggers. Even raindrops  for tmosphere’s slowing drag.

    t striking t our atmosp t very muc. It extendsup 120 miles, eous andard desktop globe it  ts of varnish.

    For scientific convenience, tmospo four unequal layers: tropospratospen called troposp t’s dear to us. It alone contains enougo alloo function, t sly becomes uncongenial to life as you climb up t.

    From ground level to its  point, tropospurning sp ten milest tor and no more temperate latitudes mospually all ter, and tually all tained mucween you and oblivion.

    Beyond tropospratospop of a storm cloudflattening out into t tropospratospropopause and . Pause int mean to stop momentarily but to cease altoget’s from t as menopause. Even at its greatest extent, tropopause is not very distant. A fastelevator of t used in modern skyscrapers could get you t ty minutes,t to make trip. Suc pressurization  t, result in severe cerebral and pulmonary edemas, adangerous excess of fluids in tissues.  tform, anyone inside  certainly be dead or dying. Even a more measuredascent  deal of discomfort. temperature six miles up canbe -70 degrees Fa, and you  least very muce,supplementary oxygen.

    After you  tropospemperature soon o about 40degrees Fa, to tive effects of ozone (sometdiscovered on ). It to as loing to 2,700 degrees Fa or more in tly namedbut very erratic temperatures can vary by a to nig must be said t “temperature” at suc becomes a someional concept. temperature is really just a measure of tivity of molecules. At sealevel, air molecules are so t one molecule can move only tiniest distance—aboutto be precise—before banging into anotrillions ofmolecules are constantly colliding, a lot of  gets exc at t of t fifty miles or more, t any t and act. So alteractions bettle  transference. tellitesand spaces  any man-made objectorbiting at t level  into flame.

    Even so, spaceso take care in ter atmospicularly on return trips toEarttle Columbia demonstrated all too tragically in February 2003.

    Altmosp comes in at too steep an angle—more t 6 degrees—or too sly it can strike enougo generate drag of anexceedingly combustible nature. Conversely, if an incoming ve ttoo s could o space, like a pebble skipped across er.

    But you needn’t venture to tmospo be reminded of ime in a lofty city  o rise too many t from sea level before your body begins toprotest. Even experienced mountaineers, s of fitness, training, and bottledoxygen, quickly become vulnerable at  to confusion, nausea, exion, frostbite,ite, and a great many otumbling dysfunctions. In aic s o it  designed to operateso far above sea level.

    “Even under t favorable circumstances,” ter ten ofconditions atop Everest, “every step at t altitude demands a colossal effort of  force yourself to make every movement, reacuallytened by a leaden, deadly fatigue.” In t, tisaineerand filmmaker Matt Dickinson records isionup Everest, “found o deater a piece of infected fles Somervell managed to cougruction. It turned out to be “tire mucus lining of his larynx.”

    Bodily distress is notorious above 25,000 feet—to climbers as t many people become severely debilitated, even dangerously ill, at s of nomore t or so. Susceptibility tle to do ness. Grannies sometimescaper about in lofty situations o il conveyed to loitudes.

    te limit of olerance for continuous living appears to be about 5,500meters, or 18,000 feet, but even people conditioned to living at altitude could not tolerate sucs for long. Frances As, in Life at tremes, notes t t 5,800 meters, but t to descend 460 meters eacinuously at t elevation. People  altitude en spent tionatelylarge cs and lungs, increasing ty of oxygen-bearing red blood cells by almost ats to and. Moreover, above 5,500 meters even t ed  provide agrous o bring it to its full term.

    In to make experimental balloon ascents in Europe,somet surprised t got as temperature drops about3 degrees Fa  you climb. Logic o indicate tt to a source of , t of tion ist you are not really getting nearer ty-to move a couple of t closer to it is like taking one stepcloser to a busralia o smell smoke.

    takes us back to tion of ty of molecules in tmosphere.

    Sunligoms. It increases te at e to one anot. ’s really excited atoms you feel. them.

    Air is deceptive stuff. Even at sea level, end to t  y of bulk, and t bulk often exerts itself. As a marinescientist named yville te more tury ago: “e sometimes find er, t nearly on ly piled upon us during t, but ion and buoyancy, since it requires a little less exertion to move our bodies in t feel crus extra on of pressure is t be crus is made mostly ofincompressible fluids, w.

    But get air in motion, as iff breeze, and you  it oget 5,200 million milliontons of air around us—25 million tons for every square mile of t—a notinconsequential volume.  millions of tons of atmosp at ty orforty miles an ’s  limbs snap and roof tiles go flying. As Antes, a typical  may consist of 750 million tons of cold air pinnedbeneatons of  is at timesmeteorologically exciting.

    Certainly tage of energy in torm, ited, can contain an amount of energy equivalent to four days’ use ofelectricity for ted States. In t conditions, storm clouds can rise to sof six to ten miles and contain updrafts and dos of one en side by side,   to fly ternalturmoil particles rical c entirelyunderstood ter particles tend to become positively co be ed by aircurrents to top of ticles linger at ting negativecively cicles o ruso tivelyco anyt gets in t of ligravels at270,000 miles an  t to a decidedly crisp 50,000 degreesFa, several times ter t any one moment 1,800torms are in progress around t across t every second about a ning bolts  the sky is a lively place.

    Muc goes on up t. Jet streams, usuallylocated about 30,000 to 35,000 feet up, can bo up to 180 miles an lyinfluence ems over s, yet tence  suspected untilpilots began to fly into t deal ofatmospood. A form of ion popularly knourbulence occasionally enlivens airplane flig ty sucs a yearare serious enougo need reporting. t associated ructures oranyt can be detected visually or by radar. t pockets of startlingturbulence in tranquil skies. In a typical incident, a plane en route fromSingapore to Sydney ral Australia in calm conditions —enougo fling unsecured people against twelve peoplewere injured, one seriously. No one knows w causes sucive cells of air.

    t moves air around in tmosp drives ternal engine of t, namely convection. Moist, orial regionsrises until it s tropopause and spreads out. As it travels aor and cools, it sinks.  s bottom, some of to fill and or, completing t.

    At tor tion process is generally stable and tably fair,but in temperate zones tterns are far more seasonal, localized, and random, tle betems of ems are created by rising air, o tually rain. arm air can ure tropical andsummer storms tend to be t. tend to be associated , itoften becomes manifest in tance, stratus clouds—tureless spra give us our overcast skies—ure-bearing updraftslack to break table air above, and instead spread out, likesmoke ting a ceiling. Indeed, if you cime, you can get a very goodidea of cte in a still room. Atfirst, it goes straigo impress anyone), and t spreads out in a diffused, est supercomputer in takingmeasurements in t carefully controlled environment, cannot tell you ake, so you can imagine ties t confront meteorologists o predict sucions in a spinning, windy, large-scale world.

    because  from tributed, differences inair pressure arise on t. Air can’t abide t rusrying to equalizetrying to keep to areas of lo; tank—and tently tpressured air s to get someplace else), and ter ter the wind blows.

    Incidentally,  t accumulate, groially, so a  ten times stronger tty miles an  a imes stronger—and  mucructive.

    Introduce several million tons of air to tor effect and t can be exceedinglyenergetic. A tropical y-four ion like Britain or France uses in a year.

    tmospo seek equilibrium  suspected by Edmonded upon in teentury by on George  rising and falling columns of air tended toproduce “cells” (kno in ter all, Englised a linkbetions of air t give us our trade tecave-Gaspard de Coriolis, ails of teractions in 1835, andt t. (Coriolis’s otinction at to introduceercoolers, ly.) t a brisk1,041 miles an  tor, toe slopes offconsiderably, to about 600 miles an ance. t . If you are on tor tocarry you quite a distance—about 40,000 kilometers—to get you back to t. If youstand beside travel only a fe to complete arevolution, yet in bot takes ty-four o get you back to where you began.

    t follo t to tor ter you must be spinning.

    t explains o tance, seem to curve to t in to t in t. tandard o envision to imagine yourself at ter of a large carousel and tossing a ball tosomeone positioned on time ts to ter, target personive, it looks as if it  is t, and it is ems tops. t is also  to left or rigeen miles e by about a o the sea.

    Considering tical and psycance of to nearly everyone,it’s surprising t meteorology didn’t really get going as a science until sly before turn of teentury (term meteorology itself  . Granger in a book of logic).

    Part of t successful meteorology requires t oftemperatures, and ters for a long time proved more difficult to make texpect. An accurate reading  on getting a very even bore in a glass tube, andt  easy to do. t person to crack t, aDutcruments, er in 1717. ed trument in a  put freezing at 32 degrees andboiling at 212 degrees. From tset tricity botronomer, came up ing scale. In proof of tion t inventors seldom get matters entirely rig zeroand freezing point 100 on  t was soon reversed.

    t frequently identified as teorology  teentury. ypes their names in 1803.

    Altive and respected member of ty and employedLinnaean principles in y as to announce em of classification. (ty,you may just recall from an earlier cer, ed to trous oxide, so ed ation tention it deserved. It is a point on ratus for tin), and cirrus (meaning “curled”) for tions t generally presage colder o tlyadded a fourterm, nimbus (from tin for “cloud”), for a rain cloud. ty ofem  ts could be freely recombined to describe everysratocumulus, cirrostratus, cumulocongestus, and so on. Ite , and not just in England. t Joaken em t ed four poems to howard.

    em o over t ttle read International Cloud Atlas runs to t interestingly virtually all t-ypes—mammatus, pileus, nebulosis, spissatus, floccus, and mediocris area sampling— on side meteorology and not terribly mucold. Incidentally, t, mucion of t atlas, produced in 1896,divided clouds into ten basic types, of  cushiony-looking wasnumber nine, cumulonimbus.

    1t seems to o be oncloud nine.”

    For all t and fury of torm cloud, tually a benign and surprisingly insubstantial to a side may contain no more ty-five or ty gallons of er—“about enougo fill a batrefil ed. You can get some sense of terial quality of clouds by strolling ter all, not lacks to fly. to quote trefil again: “If you ypicalfog, you o contact  er—not enougogive you a decent drink.” In consequence, clouds are not great reservoirs of er. Only about0.035 percent of ter is floating around above us at any moment.

    Depending on er molecule varies  lands infertile soil it s or reevaporated directly finds its o ter,  may not see sunlig gets really deep.  a lake, you are looking at acollection of molecules t  a decade. In time is t to be more like a oget 60 percent of1If you ruck by ifully crisp and end to be, in a cumulus cloud t interior of t. Any er molecule t strays beyond tely zapped by to keep its fine edge. Muc soclearly delineated, o be blurry at the edges.

    er molecules in a rainfall are returned to tmosped, the skybefore falling again as rain.

    Evaporation is a s process, as you can easily gauge by te of a puddle on asummer’s day. Even someterranean  in a t  continually replenis occurred a little under six millionyears ago and provoked o science as ty Crisis.  continental movement closed trait of Gibraltar. As terraneandried, its evaporated contents fell as freser rain into oting tiness—indeed, making t dilute enougo freeze over larger areas than normal.

    t and puso an iceage. So at least theory goes.

    is certainly true, as far as ell, is t a little c, as le furted us.

    Oceans are t’s surface beeorologistsincreasingly treat oceans and atmospem, tle of our attention er is marvelous at ransporting . Every day,tream carries an amount of  to Europe equivalent to tput of coalfor ten years, h Canadaand Russia.

    But er also est days. For t reason tends to be a lag in tronomical start of aseason and tual feeling t t season arted. So spring may officially start in t it doesn’t feel like it in most places until April at t.

    t one uniform mass of er. temperature, salinity,depty, and so on s on  around, s climate. tlantic, for instance, is saltier too. tier er is t is, and dense er sinks. it its extra burden of salt, tlantic currents o tic,  deprivingEurope of all t kindly  of  transfer on Eart is knoion, s far belo detected by tist-adventurer Count von Rumford in 1797.

    2  surface ers, as t to ty of Europe, groo greatdeptrip back to tarctica,t up in tarctic Circumpolar Current,  can take 1,500 years for er to travel from term means a number of to different people, it appears. In November 2002, Carl unscpublis in Science, quot; Is tion?,quot; in  to signify at least seven different pion at tion driven by differences in density or buoyancy, quot;meridional overturning circulation of mass,quot; and soon)-to do ions and transfer of , tiously vague and embracingsense in w here.

    Nortlantic to t t and er te is enormous.

    (As for tion of   takes a drop ofer to get from one ocean to anot scientists can measure compoundsin ter like c  in t of measurements from different deptions t ter’s movement.)tion not only moves  around, but also o stir up nutrients asts rise and fall, making greater volumes of table for fisures. Unfortunately, it appears tion may also be very sensitive toco computer simulations, even a modest dilution of tcontent—from increased melting of t, for instance—could disrupt trously.

    t favor for us. tremendous volumes of carbon andprovide a means for it to be safely locked aies of our solar system is tt 25 percent more brigem was young.

    ted in a muc AubreyManning  it, “tely catastropon t it appears t our world ed.”

    So able and cool?

    Life does. trillions upon trillions of tiny marine organisms t most of us ure atmosp falls as rain and use it (in combination o make tiny s frombeing reevaporated into tmosp iny foraminiferans and coccolito ttomof to limestone. It is remarkable, ural feature like te Cliffs of Dover in England, to reflect t it ismade up of not tiny deceased marine organisms, but even more remarkable er. A six-incain ers of compressed carbon dioxide t  all. Altoget ty times as mucmospually muc limestone urn to tmospo term carbon cycle. takes a verylong time—about ypical carbon atom—but in turbance it  keeping te stable.

    Unfortunately, ion for disrupting tting lots of extra carbon into tmosp ornot. Since 1850, it imated,  a ons of extracarbon into total t increases by about seven billion tons eac’snot actually all t mucure—mostly ts—sends about 200 billion tons of carbon dioxide into tmospy times as mucories. But you o look att ies to see ribution makes.

    e kno tural” level of carbon dioxide in tmosp is, before arted inflating it rial activity—is about 280 partsper million. By 1958, arted to pay attention to it, it o 315parts per million. today it is over 360 parts per million and rising by rouger of 1percent a year. By ty-first century it is forecast to rise to about 560 partsper million.

    So far, ts ( as Peter Cox of tiseorological Office puts it:

    “tical tural biospops buffering us from ts ofour emissions and actually starts to amplify t to adapt, many trees and ots ores of carbon and adding to tant past even  a ribution. t evenure is quite  is almost certain t eventually t itself and return to a situation of stability and  time t took a mere sixty thousand years.

 18 THE BOUNDING MAIN

    IMAGINE tRYING tO live in a ed by di aste or smell and is so variable in its properties t it is generally benign but at otimes sly lets state, it can scald you or freeze you. In tain organic molecules it can form carbonic acids so nasty t trip trees and eat tatuary. In bulk, ed, it can strike no and. Even for to live , it is anoften murderous substance. e call it er.

    ater is everyo is 80 percent er, a co, a bacterium 75percent. A tomato, at 95 percent, is little but er. Even  er,making us more liquid t to one. ater is strange stuff. It isformless and transparent, and yet o be beside it. It aste and yet aste of it. e ravel great distances and pay small fortunes to see it in suns is dangerous and droens of t  to frolic in it.

    Because er is so ubiquitous end to overlook raordinary substance it is.

    Almost not it can be used to make reliable predictions about ties of oter and based your assumptions on t co it—ably—you  it to boil at minus 135 degrees Fa and to be a gas at roomtemperature.

    Most liquids  by about 10 percent. ater does too, but only doo apoint. Once it is ance of freezing, it begins—perversely, beguilingly,extremely improbably—to expand. By time it is solid, it is almost a tent  expands, ice floats on er—“an utterly bizarreproperty,” according to Jo lacked ttom up. it surface ice to  in,ter’s e a even cing yet more ice.

    Soon even t certainly stay t ime,probably forever—ions to nurture life. ter seemsunary or laws of physics.

    Everyone kno er’s c it consists of onelargisom taco it. tomscling fiercely to t, but also make casual bonds er molecules.

    ture of a er molecule means t it engages in a kind of dance ermolecules, briefly pairing and tners in a quadrille,to use Robert Kunzig’s nice per may not appear terribly lively, but everymolecule in it is cners billions of times a second. t’s ick togeto form bodies like puddles and lakes, but not so tig t be easilyseparated as o a pool of t any given moment only 15percent of tually touching.

    In one sense trong—it is s on a car ermination to beadners. It is also  ttracted more poo to tes a sort of membrane strong enougo support insects andskipping stones. It is ing to a belly flop.

    I  out t   it. Deprived of er, t. itated, to s lengtracts around to prevent blinking.”

    ater is so vital to us t it is easy to overlook t all but t fraction of teron Earto us—deadly poisonous—because of ts .

    e need salt to live, but only in very small amounts, and seaer contains  seventy times more—salt tabolize. A typical liter of seaer ain only about 2.5 teaspoons of common salt—t mucs of ots, compounds, and otively knos. tions of ts and minerals in our tissues isuncannily similar to seaer— and cry seaer, as Margulis and Sagan it—but curiously  tolerate t. take a lot of salt into your body andyour metabolism very quickly goes into crisis. From every cell, er molecules ruseer firemen to try to dilute and carry off take of salt. t of ter to carry out tions. ted. In extreme situations, deion o seizures,unconsciousness, and brain damage. Meanotually become over functioningkidneys you die. t is er.

    ter on Eart is all o get.

    tem is closed: practically speaking, notracted. ter youdrink s job since t least more or less) ac volumes.

    ter realm is kno is over of all ter on Earter part of it in t and is bigger t togetoget over er (51.6 percent to be precise); tlantic  and t, leaving just 3.6 percent to be accounted forby all t a t deeper tlantic and Indian Oceans. Altoget oft’s surface is ocean more tes, ter callour planet not Eart ater.

    Of t of Earter t is fres exists as ice ss. Only tiniestamount—0.036 percent—is found in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs, and an even smaller part—just 0.001 percent—exists in clouds or as vapor. Nearly 90 percent of t’s ice is inAntarctica, and most of t is in Greenland. Go to tanding on nearly t t fifteen feet of it. Antarctica aloneo raise t of t all melted. But if all ter in tmospheoceans would deepen by only an inch.

    Sea level, incidentally, is an almost entirely notional concept. Seas are not level at all.

    tides, s alter er levels considerably from oneocean to anot a foot and a s ern edge—a consequence of trifugal force created by t aser ter tends to flooant tocome er up against ternmargins.

    Considering tance of to us, it is striking  took to take a scientific interest in til o teentury most of  t  ten e and supposition tisuralist Edtlantic and Mediterranean and declared t t all in t. It seemed a reasonable assumption. t at t deptlife, and ter at suco be extreme. So it came assomet transatlantic telegrap o be ted ritus.

    t really organized investigation of t come until 1872, ion betisy, and tis setfortsmouters, netting fiss. It ly dreary  of a complement of 240 scientists and cre mad—“driven to distraction by tine of years of dredging” in torian Samantt 70,000 nautical miles of sea, collected over 4,700 neion to create a fifty-volume report (een years to put togetific discipline:

    oceanograps, t tobe submerged mountains in tlantic, prompting some excited observers to speculatet t continent of Atlantis.

    Because titutional ly ignored t fell to devoted—and veryoccasional—amateurs to tell us er exploration beginsis Barton in 1930. Altners, tten attention. Born in 1877 into a o-do family in Ney, Beebe studied zoology at Columbia University, took ajob as a birdkeeper at ty. tiring of t, o adoptturer and for t quarter century traveled extensively ttractive female assistants ec” or “assistant in fised titles like Edge of table books on hology.

    In trip to ts ofdangling,” as eron, ure. Alts t, it  Barton  of itsconstruction. It iny and necessarily robust c iron 1.5 incaining quartz blocks t only if to become extremely ed. Even by tandards of tecicated. ty—it simply  primitive breatem: to neutralize t out open cans of soda lime, and to absorb moisture tub of calcium cimes o encouragecions.

    But ttle bat ended to do. On t dive, inJune 1930 in ton and Beebe set a o 600 feet. By1934, to 3,028 feet, ay until after ton to a dept, train on every bolt andrivet   any dept  3,000 feet, ttle ported to nineteen tons of pressure persquare inc sucantaneous, as Beebe never failed toobserve in icles, and radio broadcasts. t training to o a metal ball and tons of steel cable,o t, nothem.

    ts didn’t produce  deal of hwhile science.

    Altered many creatures t  been seen before, ts ofvisibility and t t neitrepid aquanauts rained oceanograpten  able to describe tail t real scientistscraved. t carry an external ligt bulb to t ter beloically impenetrable anyo it tz, so anyto vieerested in t. About all t, inconsequence,  t of strange tartled to spy a giant serpent “more ty feet long and very passed too sly to be more tever it  s were generally ignored byacademics.

    After t of 1934, Beebe lost interest in diving and moved on tootures, but Barton persevered. to , Beebe alold anyone on erprise, but Barton seemed unable to step fromtoo, e ts of ter adventures and even starredin a itans of turing a batingand largely fictionalized encounters  squid and tised Camel cigarettes (“t give me jittery nerves”). In 1948 , o 4,500 feet in ttermined to overlook itans of tually t tar of ton is lucky to get a mention.

    At all events,  to be compreeam fromSzerland, Auguste and Jacques Piccard, ”). Cened trieste, after talian city in , tly, t did little more t go up anddos first dives, in early 1954, it descended to belo, nearly times Barton’s record-breaking dive of six years earlier. But deep-sea dives required a greatdeal of costly support, and the Piccards were gradually going broke.

    In 1958, t left trol. No  ttle more than peepholes.

    But it rong enougo and truly enormous pressures, and in January 1960Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Don also ttom of t canyon, trencern Pacific(and discovered, not incidentally, by er). It took just under fouro fall 35,820 feet, or almost seven miles. Alt t depticed  turbed a bottom-dfis as toucies for taking pograp.

    After just ty minutes at t point, turned to t he only occasion on which human beings have gone so deep.

    Forty years later, tion t naturally occurs is: obegin emperament, forceful vie pertinently, control of tmental c underer exploration a e of resources and pointedout t t a researcitute. tion, moreover,  to becomefully preoccupied ravel and t to send a man to tigations seem unimportant and rat tion  trieste descent didn’t actually acer: “e didn’t learn a  from it, ot .

    again?” It o go to find a flatfisoo.

    Repeating today, it imated,  at least $100 million.

    er researc tention of pursuing apromised exploration program, tcry. Partly to placate its critics, to be operated by titution of Massacts. Called Alvin, in someracted   go anye. t one problem: t find anyone o build it. According to illiam J. Broad in ted to take on a project disparaged by botronage.” Eventually, not to say improbably, Alvin ructed byGeneral Mills, t a factory o producebreakfast cereals.

    As for tle idea. ell into t maps available to oceanograptle detail fromscattered surveys going back to 1929 grafted onto, essentially an ocean of guess cs o guide submarines ts, but it didn’t o fall into Soviet  kept its knoo make do ciquated surveys or relyon oday our knoion. If you look at tandard backyard telescope you antial craters—Fracastorious, Blancanus, Zaco anylunar scientist—t termaps of Mars than we do of our own seabeds.

    At tigative tecrifle ad y-four t overboard from a Korean cargo sorm in to Vietnam, o trace currents more accurately they ever had before.

    today Alvin is nearly forty years old, but it still remains America’s premier research vessel.

    till no submersibles t can go any’s surface. A typical submersible costsabout $25,000 a day to operate, so to ter on a  to sea in t tumble on someterest. It’s ratractors after dark. According to Robert Kunzig, inized“perhe sea’s darkness. Maybe less. Maybe much less.”

    But oceanograp industrious, and tantdiscoveries ed resources—including, in 1977, one of t important andstartling biological discoveries of tietury. In t year Alvin found teemingcolonies of large organisms living on and around deep-sea vents off tube en feet long, clams a foot i ence to vast colonies of bacteria tenance from oxic to surface creatures—t eadily from ts. It  of sunliged em based not on posynt on c tbiologists  it.

    s of  and energy flos. togetation, and temperatures around temperature at t of outfloer may be only three degrees above freezing.

    A type of emperature 140 degrees  its  its tail. Before t  tno complex organisms could survive in er  130 degrees, and  emperatures t and extreme cold to boot. transformed our understanding of ts for life.

    It also ans puzzles of oceanograp many of usdidn’t realize ier ime. At tating t of salt in to bury every bit of land on t to a dept five . Millions of gallons of freser evaporate fromts be to groy t. Sometakes an amount of salt out of terequivalent to t being put in. For t time, no one could figure out his.

    Alvin’s discovery of ts provided ts realized t ts ing mucers in a fisank. As er is taken doo t,salts are stripped from it, and eventually clean er is blo again tacks. t s—it can take up to ten million years to clean an ocean—but itis marvelously efficient as long as you are not in a hurry.

    Pereness from t ternational Geopo study “tivees.” t a secret assignment, you understand, but a proud public boast. In fact,t  mucive es ain appalling vigor, for over a decade. Since 1946, ted Statesy-five-gallon drums of radioactive gunk out to ty miles off t near San Francisco, hemoverboard.

    It e extraordinarily sloppy. Most of tly t you seerusting beations or standing outside factories, ective linings of anytype. o sink, olet er in (and, of course, plutonium, uranium, and strontium out). Before it ed States o aboutfifty ocean sites—almost fifty t tic dumpers were Russia, Cions of Europe.

    And  migtle, ually oundingly, sumptuously, radiantly ignorant of lifebeneat substantial ocean creatures are often remarkably little knoo us—including t mig blue  (to quote David Attenborougs “tongue s  is ts blood vessels are so  you coulds is t gargantuan beast t Eart produced, bigger event cumbrous dinosaurs. Yet tery to us.

    Mucime ance, ores to get t little  entirely fromeavesdropping on t even tery. Blue  up again at t six monter. Sometimes trike up which each already knows.

    remotely understood. And t must routinely cometo to breathe.

    For animals t need never surface, obscurity can be even more tantalizing. Consider t squid. t is a decidedly substantialanimal, railing tentacles t can reacyfeet. It  invertebrate. If you dumped one in a normal be muc no scientist—no person as far as s edcareers to trying to capture, or just glimpse, living giant squid and ly from being  exist in large numbers because tral part of t, and sperm  of feeding.

    1According to one estimate, ty million species of animalsliving in t still undiscovered. t  of  life is in t come until as recently as tion of t captures organisms not just on and near t also buried ints beneatrainental s a deptunder a mile, oods  ted over25,000 creatures—arfising 365 species.

    Even at a deptures representing almost 200species of organism. But ture t oo sloupid toget out of te 1960s a marine biologist named Jo tolo attaco it, and found still more, in particular dense sive eel-like creature, as ing shoals of grenadier fish.

    ance, tom—as many as 390 species of marine creature .

    Interestingly, many of tures o s up to a tant. types as mussels and clams, ravelers. It is no t tain organisms may drift ter until, by some unkno t t a foodopportunity and fall onto it.

    So ax to begin  uniformly bounteous. Altogetenturally productive. Most aquatic species like to be in sers ter to prime tance, constitute  of t are o about 25percent of its fish.

    Elseralia. itline and almost nine million square miles of territorial ers, it ssry, yet, as tim Flannery notes, it doesn’t even make it into topfifty among fisions. Indeed, Australia is a large net importer of seafood. tralia’s ers are, like mucralia itself, essentially desert. (Anotable exception is t Barrier Reef off Queensland,  produces little in trient-rich runoff.

    Even en extremely sensitive to disturbance. In tralia and, to a lesser extent, Nele-kno inental sible parts of giant squid, in particular te in sperm ance kno time you spray on Co reflect t you are dousing yourself in distillate of unseen sea monster.

    rouged in ime at all, fissric tons of rougs madesome alarming discoveries. Rougremely long lived and slouring. Some maybe 150 years old; any rougen may yle because ters ters, some fis once in a lifetime. Clearly tions t cannot stand a great deal of disturbance. Unfortunately, by time tocks ed. Even  it ions recover, if they ever do.

    Elseent.

    Many fis is, slice to terto die. In 1998, s for over $250 a pound. A bookyo for $100. timated in 1994 t tween 40 million and 70 million.

    As of 1995, some 37,000 industrial-sized fis a million smaller boats,aking ty-five yearsearlier. traimes noter planes to locate she air.

    It is estimated t about a quarter of every fis ains “by-catc can’t be landed because too small or of type or caugold t: “e’re still in t drop a netdoy-tric tons of suced fisly in ted, about four pounds of fisures aredestroyed.

    Large areas of traimes a year, a degree of disturbance t no ecosystem can and. At least timates, are being overfislantic tter.  once abounded in suc individual boatscould land ty t in a day. No extinct off t coast of North America.

    Note of cod. In te fifteentury, t found cod in incredible numbers on tern banks of Norter popular tom-feeding fis.

    Georges Banks off Massacts is bigger tate it abuts. till and for centuries to be inexible. Of course t.

    By 1960, tlantic o an estimated 1.6million metric tons. By 1990 to 22,000 metric tons. In commercial terms, tinct. “Fise Mark Kurlansky in ing ory, Cod, “ t tern Atlantic forever. In 1992, cod fisopped altoget as of last autumn, according to a report inNature, stocks  staged a comeback. Kurlansky notes t ts and fisicks  tely byPacific pollock. tes drily, “fisever is left.”

    Muc ine to ers y pounds. Sometimes ty pounds. Left unmolested, lobsters can live for decades—as mucyyears, it is t—and top groers ure. “Biologists,” according to times, “estimate t 90percent of lobsters are cauger t aboutage six.” Despite declining catcinue to receive state andfederal tax incentives t encourage t compel to acquirebigger boats and to  tensively. today fists arereduced to fis market in t, buteven their numbers are now falling.

    e are remarkably ignorant of t rule life in t ougo be in areas t urally impoverisers t to be. tarcticaproduce only about 3 percent of toplankton—far too little, it osupport a complex ecosystem, and yet it does. Crab-eater seals are not a species of animal tmost of us  tually be t numerous large species ofanimal on Earter een million of tarctica. t least op  some works. Remarkably no one knows how.

    All t  t tle about Eart system. But to us, once you start talkingabout life, t deal  kno least  got going in t place.

 19 THE RISE OF LIFE

    IN 1953, StANLEY Miller, a graduate student at ty of Cook taining a little er to represent a primeval ocean, ture of meto represent Eartmosped tubes, and introduced some electrical sparks as astand-in for liger a feer in turned green and yelloty acids, sugars, and ot do it ted supervisor, te .”

    Press reports of time made it sound as if about all t o give t. As time  nearly so simple. Despite ury of furtudy, osyntoday thinking we can.

    Scientists are noty certain t tmosp as Miller and Urey’s gaseous ste rative blend ofnitrogen and carbon dioxide. Repeating Miller’s experiments s ive amino acid. At all events, creating aminoacids is not really teins.

    Proteins are  oget of them.

    No one really kno types of protein in ttle miracle. By all ty proteins s exist.

    to make a protein you need to assemble amino acids (ion torefer to icular order, in mucyou assemble letters in a particular order to spell a   are often exceedingly long. to spell collagen, type of protein, you need to arrange eigters in t order. But to make collagen, youneed to arrange 1,055 amino acids in precisely t sequence. But—and  crucial point—you don’t make it. It makes itself, spontaneously, direction, and the unlikelihoods come in.

    taneously self-assembling are,frankly, nil. It just isn’t going to o grasp s existence is, visualize astandard Las Vegas slot mac broadened greatly—to about ninety feet, to be precise—to accommodate 1,055 spinning ysymbols on each wheel (one for each common amino acid).

    1opull t order? Effectively forever. Evenif you reduced to typical number of amino acids for a protein, t all ty-turally occurring amino acids kno discovery,but only ty of to produce us and most oty-second, calledpyrrolysine, e University and is found only in a single type ofarc tle furtory) called Methanosarcina barkeri.

    prescribed sequence are 1 in 10260(t is a 1 follo in itself is a largernumber toms in the universe.

    Proteins, in s, are complex entities.  byprotein standards, yet even it offers 10190possible amino acid combinations, y c Max Perutz ty-to unravel it. For random events to produce even a single protein unning improbability—like a ronomer Fred hoyle.

    Yet alking about several ypes of protein, peral to tenance of a sound and  goes on from tein to be of use must not only assemble amino acids in tsequence, but t engage in a kind of cself into a veryspecific sructural complexity, a protein is no good to you ifit can’t reproduce itself, and proteins can’t. For treplicating—it can make a copy of itself in seconds—but can do virtually notuation. Proteins can’t exist  DNA, and DNA  proteins. Are o assume t taneously ing eacher? If so: wow.

    And till. DNA, proteins, and ts of life couldn’t prosper some sort of membrane to contain tom or molecule ly. Pluck any atom from your body, and it is no more alive than is a grain of sand.

    It is only uring refuge of a cell t terials can take part in t  teresting c  the cell has no purpose.

    As t Paul Davies puts it, “If everyty of molecules ever arise in t place?” It is rats inyour kitc togeto a cake—but a cake t couldmoreover divide  is little   t is also little  and it.

    So s for all ty? ell, one possibility is t perisn’t quite—not quite—so  first it seems. take teins. t t ein c assemble all at once?  if, in t slot macion, some of t  if, in oteins didn’t suddenly burst intobeing, but evolved .

    Imagine if you took all ts t make up a  tainer er, gave it a vigorous stir, andout stepped a completed person. t ’s essentially ionists) argue  proteinsspontaneously formed all at once. t—t c ive selection processt alloo assemble in cer a time bumped into some oterand in so doing “discovered” some additional improvement.

    Cions  of  t  associated ually somet may be beyond us to cook tanley Miller and  t readily enougs of molecules in nature get togeto formlong cantly assemble to form starcals can do anumber of lifelike te, respond to environmental stimuli, take on a patternedcomplexity. tself, of course, but trate repeatedly tcomplexity is a natural, spontaneous, entirely commonplace event. t be agreat deal of life in t large, but tage of ordered self-assembly, ineverytransfixing symmetry of snoo turn.

    So poural impulse to assemble t many scientists no lifemay be more inevitable t it is, in t andNobel laureate Cian de Duve, “an obligatory manifestation of matter, bound to arisee.” De Duve t it likely t sucions ered perimes in every galaxy.

    Certainly terribly exotic in t animate us. If you e anot, s of a fe togetions to form some sugars, acids, and ot lives. As Daes: “t tances from hing else.”

    ttom line is t life is amazing and gratifying, per edly attest  existences. to be sure, many of tails of life’s beginnings remain pretty imponderable. Every scenario you ions necessary for life involves er—from ttle pond”

    s t are no popularcandidates for life’s beginnings—but all t t to turn monomers intopolymers (o begin to create proteins) involves o biology as“deion linkages.” As one leading biology text puts it,  a tiny  ofdiscomfort, “Researc sucions  icallyfavorable in tive sea, or indeed in any aqueous medium, because of tionla is a little like putting sugar in a glass of er and  become a cube. Its  someure it does. tual cry of all ttlearcane for our purposes  it is enougo kno if you make monomers  t turn into polymers—except   ot unansions.

    One of t surprises in t decades  ory life arose. ell into t  t life urous souls felt t maybe it back 2.5 billion years. But t date of 3.85 billion years is stunningly early. Eart become solid until about 3.9 billion years ago.

    “e can only infer from ty t it is not ‘difficult’ for life of bacterial grade toevolve on planets e conditions,” Stepimes in 1996. Or as  it else “life, arising assoon as it could, o be.”

    Life emerged so sly, in fact, t some auties t must  eart inguisory. t Lord Kelvin y as long ago as 1871 at a meeting of tision for t ofScience  “t  to teorite.” But it remained little more tion until one Sunday inSeptember 1969 ralians artled by a series of sonicbooms and t of a fireball streaking from east to  across trange crackling sound as it passed and left be some likened to metedspirits and ot awful.

    tounately, no one eorite ype knooiming could ter. Less tronauts urned to Eart traterrestrial origin.

    teorite o be 4.5 billion years old, and it udded y-four types in all, eigion of earteins. In late 2001, more ty years after it craseam at ter in California announced t tained complex strings ofsugars called polyols, h before.

    A fees rayed into Eart landednear tagiss of Nort tually ric, it is no, is about 25 percent organic molecules. Getenougo a suitable place—Eartance—and you s you need for life.

    tions of panspermia, as extraterrestrial theories are known.

    t is t it doesn’t ansions about  merely movesresponsibility for it elseimes excites even trespectable ads to levels of speculation t can be safely called imprudent. FrancisCrick, codiscoverer of tructure of DNA, and edt Eartely seeded elligent aliens,” an idea t Gribbin calls“at tific respectability”—or, put anotion t ic if not voiced by a Nobel laureate. Fred ing t outerspace broug only life but also many diseases suc o insert areminder   scientific minds of tietury—alsoonce suggested, as mentioned earlier, t our noses evolved rils underneato ted down from space.

    ever prompted life to begin, it  once. t is t extraordinary factin biology, per extraordinary fact  or animal, dates its beginnings from tc some point in anunimaginably distant past some little bag of ced to life. It absorbed somenutrients, gently pulsed, ence. times. But tral packet did sometional and extraordinary: it cleaveditself and produced an iny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity toanotopped moving since. It  of creation for us all.

    Biologists sometimes call it th.

    “ever animal, plant, bug, or blob you look at, if it isalive, it ionary and knotRidley. e are all t of a single genetic trick ion togeneration nearly four billion years, to sucent t you can take a fragment of ic instruction, patc into a faulty yeast cell, and t cell  it to s o is its own.

    t—sits on a sope geoc named Victoria Bennett in tralianNational University in Canberra. An American, Ms. Bennett came to tract in 1989 and ed e 2001, sly y ernating stripesof z and a gray-green material called clinopyroxene. t rocks  t marine sediments ever found.

    “e can’t be certain t  to find out,” Bennett told me. “But it comes from ted, so it probably .” Nor ualfossilized microbes,  turned ocean mud to stone. Instead  t beopes and a type of pe called apatite, rong evidence t tained colonies of living t t t said. “It  as basic as life can get—but it  lived. It propagated.”

    And eventually it led to us.

    If you are into very old rocks, and Bennett indubitably is, to be. to ty of a man named Bill Compston,  in t t Sensitive ion Ion MicroProbe—or S is more affectionately knos initial letters. t measures te of uranium in tiny minerals called zircons. Zirconsappear in most rocks apart from basalts and are extremely durable, surviving every naturalprocess but subduction. Most of t o t somepoint, but just occasionally—in estern Australia and Greenland, for example—geologistscrops of rocks t  ton’s maco be dated otype Sand macment’s os on a budget, but it . On its first formal test, in1982, it dated t ternAustralia.

    “It caused quite a stir at time,” Bennett told me, “to find sometant soquickly echnology.”

    Sook me doo see t model, S eel apparatus, per long and five feet  asa deep-sea probe. At a console in front of it, keeping an eye on ever-crings offigures on a screen, erbury University in Ney-four many rocks to date. It  after 9A.M. and Bob ill noon. Ask a pair ofgeocs art talking about isotopicabundances and ionization levels  is more endearing thomable.

    t of it,  treams of coms, is able to detect subtle differences in ts of lead anduranium in tely adduced.

    Bob told me t it takes about seventeen minutes to read one zircon and it is necessary toread dozens from eaco make ta reliable. In practice, toinvolve about ttered activity, and about as mucimulation, as a trip to alaundromat. Bob seemed very  then people from New Zealand verygenerally do.

    tion of t offices, part labs,part maco build everytt said. “e even  ired. But ill ime rock crus mylook of mild surprise. “e get t of rocks. And to be very carefullyprepared. You o make sure tamination from previous samples—no dustor anyt’s quite a meticulous process.” Sine, tly gone for coffee. Besidetaining rocks of all st of rocks at the ANU.

    Back in Bennett’s office after our tour, I noticed er giving anartist’s colorfully imaginative interpretation of Eart mig  period knoo earter sive volcanoes, and asteamy, copper-colored sea beneatromatolites, a kind of bacterial rock,filled t didn’t look like a very promising place to create andnurture life. I asked ing e.

    “ell, one sc says it ually cool ter learned t biologists, aurant problem”—because mospraviolet rays from tended to break apart anyincipient bonds made by molecules. And yet rigapped tromatolites—“you at t’s a puzzle.”

    “So  knohen?”

    “Mmmm,” sfully.

    “Eit doesn’t seem very conducive to life.”

    S t  suited life. Ot be here.”

    It certainly  ed us. If you o step from a time maco tancient Arcly scamper back inside, for to breatoday. It  ter skin. Nor  as depicted in ter inVictoria Bennett’s office. te mosptle sunligo reac little you could see   anEart recognize as our own.

    Anniversaries erial organisms  t sicular inclination to move on to anotence. At some point in t billion years of life, cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae,learned to tap into a freely available resource—t exists in spectacularabundance in er. ter molecules, supped on te, and in so doing invented posynte,posyntedly t important single metabolic innovation in toryof life on t”—and it ed not by plants but by bacteria.

    As cyanobacteria proliferated to fill o ternation of t found it poisonous—ually useoxygen to kill invading bacteria. t oxygen is fundamentally toxic often comes as a surpriseto t so convivial to our  t is only because  it. to ot is a terror. It is urns butter rancid and makes ironrust. Even olerate it only up to a point. t atentmosphere.

    tages. Oxygen  oproduce energy, and it vanquisitor organisms. Some retreated into ttoms. Ot ter (mucer)migrated to tive tracts of beings like you and me. Quite a number of tities are alive inside your body rigo digest your food, but abiniest  of O2. Untold numbers of oto adapt and died.

    teria  first, tra oxygen taccumulate in tmosp combined o form ferric oxides, tom of primitive seas. For millions of years, terally rusted—a ps t provide so mucoday. For many tens of millions of years not a great deal more t back to t early Proterozoic  find many signs of promise forEarture life. Perered pools you’d encounter a film of livingscum or a coating of glossy greens and broherwise life remainedinvisible.

    But about 3.5 billion years ago sometic became apparent. ructures began to appear. As t tines, teria became very sligacky, and t tackiness trappedmicroparticles of dust and sand, o form slig solidstructures—tromatolites t ured in ter on VictoriaBennett’s office romatolites came in various simes times like fluffy mattresses (stromatolite comes from ttress”), sometimes tens of metersabove ter—sometimes as ers. In all tations, ted tcooperative venture, ies of primitive organism living just at t underneataking advantage of conditions created by ts first ecosystem.

    For many years, scientists kne stromatolites from fossil formations, but in 1961t a real surprise y of living stromatolites at Se nort coast of Australia. t unexpected—so unexpected,in fact, t it ists realized quite oday,ourist attraction—or at least as mucourist attraction as a place all can ever be.

    Board into t visitors can stroll over ter to get agood look at tromatolites, quietly respiring just beneaterlessand gray and look, as I recorded in an earlier book, like very large cos. But it is acuriously giddying moment to find yourself staring at living remnants of Eart : “truly time traveling, and if ttuned to its real  he pyramids of Giza.”

    Alt, timated (imated) three billion individual organisms on every square yard of rock.

    Sometimes rings of bubbles rising to tions raised tmospo 20 percent, preparing t, more complex cer inlife’s ory.

    It ed t teria at S-evolvingorganisms on Eartainly no.  of existence nearly every at Sers are too saline for tures t  on took so long to gro to  until ted tmosply. “Animals could not summonup to ey  it. It took about tory, for oxygen levels to reacration in tmosp once tage , and apparently quite suddenly, anentirely neype of cell arose—one tle bodies collectively calledorganelles (from a Greek tle tools”). t to artederium eitured by someoterium and it turned out t ted tive bacterium became, itis t, a mitococic event, asbiologists like to term it) made complex life possible. (In plants a similar invasion producedcs, o posyntoce oxygen in a  liberates energy from foodstuffs. ittily facilitating trick, life on Eartoday ociny—you could pack a billion into t also very  every nutriment you absorb goesto feeding them.

    e couldn’t live for tes  t even after a billion years mitoc not  betain their own DNA.

    t a different time from t cell. teria, divide likebacteria, and sometimes respond to antibiotics in teria do. In s, t even speak tic language as they live.

    It is like ranger in your  one where for a billion years.

    type of cell is knoe (meaning “truly nucleated”), as contrastedype, ed”), and it seems to  eukaryotes yet knos in Mic once, andthen no more are known for 500 million years.

    Compared es tes tle more t Stepes uallyas mucen times bigger—times more DNA. Gradually a system evolved in ypes of form—organisms t expel oxygen (like plants) and t take it in (you andme).

    Single-celled eukaryotes ozoa (“pre-animals”), but t term isincreasingly disdained. today term for tists . Compared eria t ists ion.

    t one cell big and  any ambitions but to exist, contains 400million bits of genetic information in its DNA—enouged, to fill eightybooks of five hundred pages.

    Eventually tes learned an even more singular trick. It took a long time—abillion years or so—but it . to formtogeto complex multicellular beings. to tion, big, complicated,visible entities like us  Earto move on to its next ambitiousphase.

    But before  too excited about t, it is  t to see, still belongs to the very small.

 20 SMALL WORLD

    It’S PROBABLY NOt a good idea to take too personal an interest in your microbes. LouisPasteur, t Frenc and bacteriologist, became so preoccupied  ook to peering critically at every dis tpresumably did not ations to dinner.

    In fact, t in trying to eria, for t conceive. If you are in good  about one trillion bacteria grazing on your fles a imeter of skin. to dineoff ten billion or so flakes of skin you sasty oils and fortifyingminerals t seep out from every pore and fissure. You are for timate food court,ant mobility they giveyou B.O.

    And t teria t in your skin. trillions more tucked a and nasal passages, clinging to your eetive system alone is to more trillion microbes, of at least four ypes. Some deal arctack oteria. A surprising number, like tous intestinal spiroces, ectable function at all. t seem to like tobe s of about 10 quadrillion cells, but about 100quadrillion bacterial cells. t, a big part of us. From teria’s point ofvie of them.

    Because ilize antibiotics anddisinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves t o tence. Don’t you believe it. Bacteria may not build cities or eresting social lives,but t, and  onlybecause to be.

    Bacteria, never forget, got along for billions of years  us. e couldn’t survive a day tes and make t tmunc. ter and keep our soils productive. Bacteriasyntamins in our gut, convert t into useful sugars andpolysacco  slip do.

    e depend totally on bacteria to pluck nitrogen from t it into usefulnucleotides and amino acids for us. It is a prodigious and gratifying feat. As Margulis andSagan note, to do trially (as urers must terials to 500 degrees centigrade and squeeze to timesnormal pressures. Bacteria do it all time  fuss, and t trogen tinue toprovide us o keep tmospable. Microbes, including teria, supply ter part of t’s breathable oxygen.

    Algae and otiny organisms bubbling a about 150 billion kilos oftuff every year.

    And tic among tionin less ten minutes; Clostridium perfringens, ttle organism t causesgangrene, can reproduce in nine minutes. At suce, a single bacterium could ticallyproduce more offspring in tons in tesupply of nutrients, a single bacterial cell can generate 280,000 billion individuals in a singleday,” according to t and Nobel laureate Cian de Duve. In t about manage a single division.

    About once every million divisions, tant. Usually tant—c just occasionally terium isendoal advantage, sucy to elude or stack ofantibiotics. ity to evolve rapidly goes anotage. Bacteriasion. Any bacterium can take pieces of genetic coding from any other.

    Essentially, as Margulis and Sagan put it, all bacteria sive c occurs in one area of terial universe can spread to any ot’srato an insect to get tic coding to sprout  means t from a genetic point of vieeria iny, dispersed, but invincible.

    t anyt givettle moisture—as ed from not als in . Scientists in Australia found microbes knoivorans t livedin—indeed, could not live —concentrations of sulfuric acid strong enougo dissolvemetal. A species called Micrococcus radiope tanksof nuclear reactors, gorging itself on plutonium and eriabreak do at all.

    ts and lakes of caustic soda, deep insiderocks, at ttom of ter in tarctica, and seven miles doimes greater t t to being squasyjumbo jets. Some of to be practically indestructible. Deinococcus radiodurans is,according to t , “almost immune to radioactivity.” Blast its DNA ion,and tely reform “like ttling limbs of an undead creature from ahorror movie.”

    Per extraordinary survival yet found  of a Streptococcus bacteriumt  ood on two years.

    In s, ts in  prepared to live. “t s so  t tually startto melt, teria even toria Bennett told me.

    In tists at ty of Cin and Frank Greer,announced t ted from oil rains of bacteria t dept. tion ally preposterous—to live on at t—and for fifty years it  taminated  t ofmicrobes living deep  all to do  rocks or, ratuff t’s in rocks—iron, sulfur, manganese,and so on. And too—iron, c, even uranium. Sucrumental in concentrating gold, copper, and otals, andpossibly deposits of oil and natural gas. It ed t tireless nibblingscreated t.

    Some scientists no trillion tons of bacteria livingbeneat in otropems—SLiME for s. timated t if you took all teria out ofterior and dumped it on t  to a dept. If timates are correct, top of it.

    At deptremely sluggis of tury, some no more than perhaps once in five hundred years.

    As t  it: “to long life, it seems, is not to do too mucougeria are prepared to s doems and  for bettertimes. In 1997 scientists successfully activated some ant  foreigrondback to life after being released from a 118-year-old can of meat and a 166-year-old bottle ofbeer. In 1996, scientists at to eriafrozen in Siberian permafrost for t ty so faris one made by Russell Vreeland and colleagues at est Cer University in Pennsylvaniain 2000, ated 250-million-year-old bacteria calledBacillus permians t rapped in salt deposits t underground inCarlsbad, Neinents.

    t met andable dubiousness. Many biocs maintained tover sucs self from time to time. erium did stir occasionallyternal source of energy t could ed so long. tful scientists suggested t taminated, if not during itsretrieval till buried. In 2001, a team from tel Aviv University argued tB. permians  identical to a strain of modern bacteria, Bacillus marismortui, foundin ts genetic sequences differed, and tly.

    “Are o believe,” te, “t in 250 million years B. permiansed t of genetic differences t could be ac 3–7days in tory?” In reply, Vreeland suggested t “bacteria evolve faster in the wild.”

    Maybe.

    It is a remarkable fact t o t scextbooks divided to just tegories—plant and animal. Microorganisms ured.

    Amoebas and similar single-celled organisms reated as proto-animals and algae asproto-plants. Bacteria s, too, even t belong te nineteentury turalistErnst ed t bacteria deserved to be placed in a separate kingdom,  begin to catcs until te t my trusty American age desk dictionaryfrom 1969 doesn’t recognize term.)Many organisms in traditional division.

    Fungi, t includes muss, and puffballs, reated as botanical objects, t almost not tc world.

    Structurally t tin,a material t gives tinctive texture. tance is used to make ts and t isn’t nearly so tasty in a stag beetle as ina Portobello muss, fungi don’t posynt green. Instead tly on t anyt te ter betoes—t  tlike quality t t.

    Even less comfortably susceptible to categorization es but more commonly knoo do y. An appellation t sounded a little more dynamic—“ambulant self-activating protoplasm,” say—and less like tuff you find  certainly raordinary entities amore immediate stention take,among t interesting organisms in nature. imes are good, t as one-celled individuals, muc ougo acentral gat miraculously, a slug. t a ty and it doesn’t go terribly far—usually just from ttom of a pile of leaf litter to top,  for millions of years tiest trick in the universe.

    And it doesn’t stop tself up to a more favorable locale, transforms itself yet again, taking on t. By some curious orderlyprocess tiny marco make a stalk atopof ing body are millions ofspores t, at te moment, are released to to blo can start the process again.

    For years slime molds ozoa by zoologists and as fungi by mycologists,t people could see t really belong anyestingarrived, people in lab coats o find t slime molds inctive andpeculiar t t directly related to anyture, and sometimes not evento eacher.

    In 1969, in an attempt to bring some order to tion, anecologist from Cornell University named R. taker unveiled in to divide life into five principal brancae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera. Protista, ion of an earlierterm, Protoctista, ury earlier by a Scottis namedJo to describe any organisms t  nor animal.

    ttaker’s ne, Protista remained ill defined.

    Some taxonomists reserved it for large unicellular organisms—tes—but otreated it as tting into it anyt didn’t fitany you consulted) slime molds, amoebas,and even sea contained as many as 200,000different species of organism all told. t’s a lot of odd socks.

    Ironically, just as taker’s five-kingdom classification o find its o textbooks, a retiring academic at ty of Illinois   o do so—lystudying genetic sequences in bacteria. In takingprocess. ork on a single bacterium could easily consume a year. At t time, according tooese, only about 500 species of bacteria  ten times t, t is stillfar s of tedorganisms whe annals of biology.

    It isn’t simple indifference t keeps total loeria can be exasperatingly difficultto isolate and study. Only about 1 percent ure. Considering able ture, it is an odd fact t t to ri dis  liet to bloom. Any bacterium t tion exceptional, and yet t exclusively, tudied bymicrobiologists. It  animals from visiting zoos.”

    Genes, o approac tal divisions in ted. A lot of little organisms t looked like bacteria and beeria ually sometoget eria a long time ago. oese called teria, later sened toarchaea.

    It  ttributes t distinguiseria are not t t a biologist. tly differences in tidoglycan. But in practice t from bacteria ted division of life, so fundamentalt it stood above t tree of Life, as it isratially known.

    In 1976, artled t least ttle bit of it t tention—byredraree of life to incorporate not five main divisions, but ty-tegories—Bacteria, Arcimesspelled Eucarya)—which he called domains.

    oese’s ne take torm. Some dismissed too ed to ignored to Frances As, “felt bitterly disappointed.” But slocs. Botanists and zoologists s virtues.

    It’s not o see edto a feermost brancounicellular beings.

    “t up to classify in terms of gross morpies anddifferences,” oese told an intervieerms of molecularsequence is a bit o s see a difference like it. And so ted raditional five-kingdom division—an arrangement t oese called “not very useful” in s and “positively misleading” muc of time. “Biology, like p,” oese e, “o a level erest and teractions often cannot be perceived t observation.”

    In 1998 t and ancient  Ernst Mayr ( time of my ing is nearing one ill going strong) stirredt furt t two prime divisions of life—“empires”

    ional Academy of Sciences,Mayr said t oese’s findings eresting but ultimately misguided, noting t“oese  trained as a biologist and quite naturally does not ensivefamiliarity ion,”  can come to saying of anot  kno.

    ticisms are too teco need extensive airing ic sexuality, ion, and controversial interpretationsof terium trop else—butessentially  oese’s arrangement unbalances tree of life. terialrealm, Mayr notes, consists of no more to be found—“but .” By contrast, tic realm—t is, ted organisms ed cells, like us—numbers already in terial organisms in a single category,Prokaryota,  anothe living world.”

    tinction beteriaand gram-positive bacteria clearly ter of moment for most of us, but it is eac from its neigs. Ifoese’s ne teac is t life really is various and t most oft variety is small, unicellular, and unfamiliar. It is a natural o tion as a long cs, of a never-ending advance toy—in a oter ourselves. Most of ty inevolution  flukes—an interesting side brancy-ts, animals, and fungi—are largeenougo be seen by tain species t are microscopic.

    Indeed, according to oese, if you totaled up all t—every livingts included—microbes  for at least 80 percent of all to t ime.

    So  some point in your life, do microbes so often  to us?  possible satisfaction could to a microbe in , after all, is oprovide long-term ality.

    to begin  is  most microorganisms are neutral or evenbeneficial to  rampantly infectious organism on Earterium called olbac   all—or, come to t, any otebrates—but if you are a s fly, it can make you  one microbe in a to National Geograp some of t t is quite enougly benign, microbes are still tern ence.

    Making a  uns for toms of an illnessoften o spread ting, sneezing, and diarr metting out of one  and into position for anot effective strategy of all is toenlist ty. Infectious organisms love mosquitoes because to’s sting delivers tly to a bloodstream raigo im’s defense mec is, and a ed but often rapacious maladies—begin o bite. It is afortunate fluke for us t , isn’t among t least not yet. Any o sucks up on its travels is dissolved by to’s oabolism.  tates its rouble.

    It is a mistake, o consider tter too carefully from tion of logicbecause microorganisms clearly are not calculating entities. t care oyou any more t distress you cause . time your continuing o a pat kills you too e you before t t sometimes ory,Jared Diamond notes, is full of diseases t “once caused terrifying epidemics and teriously as tes t but mercifully transientEnglising sickness, ens of t, before burning itself out. too muc a good tiousorganism.

    A great deal of sickness arises not because of o you but rying to do to ts quest to rid tem sometimes destroys cells or damages critical tissues, so often  t your oting sick is a sensible response to infection. Sick people retire to t to ty. Resting also frees more of toattend to tion.

    Because t tential to  you, your body s of different varieties of defensive en million types in all, eaco identify and destroy a particular sort of invader. It to maintain ten million separate standing armies, so eacy of s on active duty. ious agent—igen—invades,relevant scouts identify ttacker and put out a call for reinforcements of t type.

    uring to feel c ofrecovery begins o action.

    e cells are merciless and  patoavoid extinction, attackers al strategies. Eitrike quicklyand move on to a neious illnesses like flu, or t te cells fail to spot t iced in to action.

    One of ts of infection is t microbes t normally do no  allsometimes get into ts of the words of Dr.

    Bryan Marsious diseases specialist at Dartmoutcer inLebanon, Nes  are normally benign in t get into ots of tream, for instance—and cause terrible havoc.”

    t, most out-of-control bacterial disorder of t is a disease callednecrotizing fasciitis in ially eat tim from t, devouringinternal tissue and leaving beients often come in ively mild complaints—a skin rasypically—but ticallydeteriorate.  is often found t they are simply being consumed.

    treatment is ting out every bit ofinfected area. Seventy percent of victims die; many of t are left terribly disfigured. tion is a mundane family of bacteria called Group A Streptococcus, . Very occasionally, for reasons unknoeria get t and into t devastating ely resistant to antibiotics. About ated States, and no one can say t it  get worse.

    Precisely tis. At least 10 percent of young adults, andper of teenagers, carry terium, but it lives quite. Just occasionally—in about one young person in a  gets into tream and makes t cases,deat and dead by evening,” says Marsh.

    e  so profligate  tibiotics. Remarkably, by one estimate some 70 percent of tibiotics used in to farm animals, often routinely in stockfeed, simply to promote gro infection. Sucions givebacteria every opportunity to evolve a resistance to t is an opportunity t tically seized.

    In 1952, penicillin ive against all strains of staperia, to sucent t by te, felt confidentenougo declare: “time o close tious diseases. e  infection in ted States.” Even as  of trains y to penicillin. Soon one oftrains, called Metant Stapo sals. Only one type of antibiotic, vancomycin, remained effective against it, but in 1997a al in tokyo reported train t could resist even t. it o six otals. All over, toals alone, some fourteen tions ted, given a cibiotics t people ake every day for tidepressants tpeople ake every day forever, drug companies not surprisingly opt for tter.

    Altibiotics oug, tical industry given us an entirely neibiotic since the 1970s.

    Our carelessness is all t many ots maybe bacterial in origin. torin Pertern Australia, found t many stomac stomacerium called er pylori. Even tested,tion  more ted. America’s National Institutes of ance, didn’t officially endorse til 1994. “  old a reporter from Forbes in 1999.

    Since t terial component inall kinds of ot disease, astis, multiple sclerosis, several typesof mental disorders, many cancers, even, it ed (inScience no less), obesity.

    t be far off ive antibiotic and got one to call on.

    It may come as a slig to kno bacteria can t sick. times infected by bacteriopype of virus. A virus is a strangeand unlovely entity—“a piece of nucleic acid surrounded by bad nee Peter Medaeria, viruses aren’ttion t and  introduce to a suitable and t into busyness—into life. About five types of virus are kno us o t are most invidious to he source of AIDS.

    Viruses prosper by ic material of a living cell and using it to producemore virus. tical manner, t out in searcoinvade. Not being living organisms to be very simple. Many,including en genes or feeria require severaltiny, mucoo small to be seen ional microscope.

    It  until 1943 and tion of tron microscope t science got its first lookat t tietury alone killed anestimated 300 million people.

    ty to burst upon tartlingform and to vaniso come dorange sleeping sickness, ims o sleep and not  great difficulty to take food or go to tory, and ionssensibly—tic.

    tted to rest, t once back intodeepest slumber and remain in t state for as long as t. Some  on in t notted in a state of profound apatinct volcanoes,” intor. In ten years tly  a didn’t get mucing attention because in time an even  in ory—s across the world.

    It is sometimes called t Simes t Spanis in eit y-one million people infour years; ss first four mont 80 percent of Americancasualties in t orld ar came not from enemy fire, but from flu. In some units tality rate was as .

    S some mutated into sometims suffered only mild symptoms, but t became gravely ill and often died.

    Some succumbed hers held on for a few days.

    In ted States, t deaton in late August1918, but to all parts of try. Scertainments tle good. Betumn of 1918 and spring of toll in Britain h similar numbers dead in France and Germany.

    No one knooll, as records in ten poor, but it less timates  total as high as 100 million.

    In an attempt to devise a vaccine, medical auties conducted tests on volunteers at amilitary prison on Deer Island in Boston tery of tests. tests o say t. First ts ed ed lung tissue taken from tious aerosols. If till failed to succumb, ts saken from to sitopen-moutim heir faces.

    Out of—someeered, tors cy-tests. None contracted t one. tor, ion for t teers, all of ation, ural immunity.

    Muc tood poorly or not at all. One mystery is  eruptedsuddenly, all over, in places separated by oceans, mountain ranges, and ots. A virus can survive for no more tside a  body, so  appear in Madrid, Bombay, and Phe same week?

    t it ed and spread by people oms or none at all. Even in normal outbreaks, about 10 percent of people  are una because ts. And because tion tend to be t spreaders of the disease.

    t  for tbreak’s ribution, but it still doesn’texplain  managed to lay loing so explosively at moreor less time all over. Even more mysterious is t it ating topeople in t on infants and t in tbreak deaties and ties. Olderpeople may ed from resistance gained from an earlier exposure to train,but  mystery of all is . e still have no idea.

    From time to time certain strains of virus return. A disagreeable Russian virus kno againin t  in time eacime is uncertain. One suggestion is tviruses  unnoticed in populations of rying t a neion of  ty t t Swine Flu epidemicmigs head.

    And if it doesn’t, ot. New and frigime.

    Ebola, Lassa, and Marburg fevers all ended to flare up and die do no onecan say t t quietly mutating aopportunity to burst fortastrop is no t AIDS ed. Researc terRoyal Infirmary in England discovered t a sailor reatablecauses in 1959 in fact  for  for anoty years.

    t ot gone rampant. Lassa fever,  detected until 1969, in est Africa, is extremely virulent and little understood. In 1969, adoctor at a Yale University lab in Ne, . , more alarmingly, a tec exposure, also contracted the disease and died.

    break stopped t  count on sucune alyles invite epidemics. Air travel makes it possible to spread infectious agents across t  inNe medical autiesincreasingly need to be acquainted ty muc exists every. In 1990, a Nigerian living in Co Lassa fever on avisit to  didn’t develop symptoms until urned to ted States.

    al  diagnosis and  anyone taking any specialprecautions in treating   letious diseaseson t. Miraculously, no one else ed. e may not be so lucky next time.

    And on t sobering note, it’s time to return to the visibly living.

 21 LIFE GOES ON

    It ISN’t EASY to become a fossil. te of nearly all living organisms—over 99.9percent of to compost doo noto be put to use in some otem. t’s just t is. Even if you make it into t, t don’t get devoured, the chances of being fossilized are very small.

    In order to become a fossil, several t , you must die in tplace. Only about 15 percent of rocks can preserve fossils, so it’s no good keeling over on afuture site of granite. In practical terms t become buried in sediment,  mud, or decompose  exposure to oxygen,permitting ts bones and s (and very occasionally softer parts) to bereplaced by dissolved minerals, creating a petrified copy of ts in  someain an identifiable s aboveall, after tens of millions or per must befound and recognized as someth keeping.

    Only about one bone in a billion, it is t, ever becomes fossilized. If t is so, itmeans t te fossil legacy of all today—t’s 270 millionpeople  fifty bones, one quarter of a completeskeleton. t’s not to say of course t any of tually be found. Bearing inmind t tly over 3.6 million squaremiles, little of  of  imated t less tent into t in itself is a stunningly infinitesimalproportion.  timate t ture in its time and Ricatement (intinction ) t ture in treduces tion to just one in 120,000. Eit sampling of all t Earth has spawned.

    Moreover, t land animals, of course, don’tdie in sediments. ten or left to rot or onotly is almost absurdly biased in favor of marine creatures.

    About 95 percent of all t once lived under er,mostly in shallow seas.

    I mention all to explain o tural oryMuseum in London to meet a cologist namedRicey.

    Fortey kno about an a.  of animate creation.

    But  love is a type of marine creature called trilobites t once teemed in Ordovicianseas but  existed for a long time except in fossilized form. All ss, or lobes—ail, tey found  . David’s Bay in ales. he was hookedfor life.

    ook me to a gallery of tall metal cupboards. Eacony trilobites—ty thousand specimens in all.

    “It seems like a big number,”  you o remember t millions uponmillions of trilobites lived for millions upon millions of years in ancient seas, so tyt a  of tial specimens. Finding acomplete trilobite fossil is still a big moment for a paleontologist.”

    trilobites first appeared—fully formed, seemingly from noart of t outburst of complex life popularly kno deal else, in t and still mysteriousPermian extinction 300,000 or so centuries later. As inct creatures, tural temptation to regard t in fact t successfulanimals ever to live. tory’s great survivors. ey points out,  as long.

    itime at trilobites proliferated prodigiously. Most remainedsmall, about tles, but some greo be as big as platters. Altoget least five ty turn upall time. Fortey ly been at a conference in Souty in Argentina. “S eresting trilobites t  deal else. Sies to studyto look for more. s of till unexplored.”

    “In terms of trilobites?”

    “No, in terms of everything.”

    t teentury, trilobites  t reason ed and studied. teryabout tey says, it can be startling to go tot formation of rocks and to  all, and taspis or Elenellus as big as a crab o your ing ures ems, probingantennae, “a brain of sorts,” in Fortey’s rangest eyes ever seen. Made ofcalcite rods, tuff t forms limestone, tituted t visual systemskno trilobites didn’t consist of just one venturesome speciesbut dozens, and didn’t appear in one or tions but all over. Many teentury saation of Darionary ideals. If evolution proceeded slo fortures? t is, .

    And so matters seemed destined to remain forever until one day in 1909, tietion of Darologist named Ctle alcott made an extraordinary find in the CanadianRockies.

    alcott ica, Ne means,ill t . As a boy alcott discovered t icularlytrilobites, and built up a collection of sufficient distinction t it  $70,000 in today’s money.

    Altion and augtbecame a leading auty on trilobites and  person to establis trilobites includes modern insects and crustaceans.

    In 1879 ook a job as a field researced States GeologicalSurvey and served inction t een years o be its ed secretary of titution, ive obligations, inued to do fieldoe prolifically. “o Fortey. Not incidentally, or of tional Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, ional Aeronautics and Space Agency, or NASA, and tly be considered the space age.

    But e but lucky find in Britistle toe summer of 1909. tomary version of toryis t alcott, accompanied by ain trail beneat called tones. Dismountingto assist t discovered t turned a slab of s contained fossilcrustaceans of an especially ancient and unusual type. Snoer comes earlyto t linger, but t year at t opportunityalcott returned to t. tracing te of t to near tain’s summit. t above sea level, crop, about ty block, containing an unrivaled array of fossils from soonafter t t , tology. tcrop becameknoime it provided “our sole vista upon tionof modern life in all its fullness,” as te Stephen Jay Gould recorded in his popular bookonderful Life .

    Gould, ever scrupulous, discovered from reading alcott’s diaries t tory of to  embroidered—alcott makes nomention of a slipping  ting t it raordinary find.

    It is almost impossible for us ed to a breezy feoappreciate e in time from us tburst o t at te of one year per second, it ake you about o reacime of C, and a little over to get back to the beginnings of human life.

    But it ake you ty years to reac remely long time ago, and t place.

    For one t  attop of a mountain but at t of one. Specifically it tom of a steep cliff. t time teemed  normally t norecord because t-bodied and decayed upon dying. But at Burgess tures beloombed in a mudslide, ures preserved in ail.

    In annual summer trips from 1910 to 1925 (by t excavated tens of t cional Georgrap back toason for furtudy. In boty tion . Some ing of 140 species by one count. “ty in anatomical designs never again equaled, and notmatcoday by all tures in te.

    Unfortunately, according to Gould, alcott failed to discern t c from tory,” Gould e in anotLittle Piggies, “alcott to misinterpret t fossils in tpossible ral to today’s o appreciate tinctness. “Under sucerpretation,” Gould sigy and moved inexorably,predictably ono more and better.”

    alcott died in 1927 and tten. For nearly ury tayed s aural ory inason, seldom consulted and never questioned. te student fromCambridge University named Simon Con to tion. onis  tted in ings. In taxonomy tegory t describes ter draies—all amazingly and unaccountably unrecognized by them.

    ittington, and felloe student Derek Briggs, Con t several years making a systematic revision of tire collection, andcranking out one exciting monograper anotures employed body plans t  simply unlike anyt . One, Opabinia,  oia, looked almost comically like apineapple slice. A tly tottered about on roilt-like legs, and  t y in tiont at one point upon opening a neter,“O another phylum.”

    team’s revisions s time of unparalleledinnovation and experimentation in body designs. For almost four billion years life  any detectable ambitions in tion of complexity, and t five or ten million years, it ed all till in use today. Name a creature, from a nematode o Cameron Diaz, and tecture first created in ty.

    surprising,  t o make t, so to speak, and left no descendants. Altogeto Gould, atleast fifteen and pery of to no recognizedps to as many as one ists ever actually claimed.) “tory of life,” e Gould,“is a story of massive removal folloiation ocks, nottional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity.”

    Evolutionary success, it appeared, tery.

    One creature tdid manage to slip to ive spinal column, making it t knoorof all later vertebrates, including us.Pikaia  among to extinction. Gould, in a famousquotation, leaves no doubt t unate fluke: “ind back tape of life to t it play again from an identical startingpoint, and t anytelligence he replay.”

    Gould’s book ical acclaim and  commercialsuccess.   generally kno many scientists didn’t agree  all, and t it o get very ugly. In text of to do empers t ps.

    In fact, ed at least a  sooner. Nearly forty years after alcottmade  in Australia, a young geologistnamed Reginald Sprigg found somets  as remarkable.

    In 1946 Sprigg ant government geologist for tate of Soutraliao make a survey of abandoned mines in tback some to see if t migably reec studying surface rocks at all, still less fossils. But one day o put itmildly—to see t te fossils, rated t the dawn of visible life.

    Sprigg submitted a paper to Nature , but it urned doead at tannual meeting of tralian and Neion for t ofScience, but it failed to find favor ion’s s uitous inorganic markings”—patterns made by ides, but not living beings.  yet entirely crusraveled to London andpresented o ternational Geological Congress, but failed to exciteeiterest or belief. Finally, for  of a better outlet, ransactions of ty of Soutralia. t  job andtook up oil exploration.

    Nine  years  later,  in  1957,  a  sc in trange fossil in it, similar toa modern sea pen and exactly like some of trying totell everyone about ever since. turned it in to a paleontologist at tyof Leicester,  at once as Precambrian. Young Mason got ure in treated as a precocious ill is in many books. the specimen wasnamed in his honor Chamia masoni.

    today some of Sprigg’s original Ediacaran specimens, along een  t time, canbe seen in a glass case in an upstairs room of tout and lovely Soutralian Museumin Adelaide, but t attract a great deal of attention. tely etcterns arerat and not terribly arresting to trained eye. tly small and disc-srailing ribbons. Fortey -bodiedoddities.”

    till very little agreement about old, no mouto take in and discivematerials, and no internal organs o process teysays, “most of t, like soft,structureless and inanimate flatfis t, tures ic, meaning t from tissue. ition of jellyfisoday are triploblastic.

    Some experts t animals at all, but more like plants or fungi. tinctions bet and animal are not als life fixed to a single spot and ing , and yet is ananimal. “o ts and animalsey. “t any rule t says you o bedemonstrably one or ther.”

    Nor is it agreed t tral to anytoday (except possibly some jellyfisies see t, a stab at complexity t didn’t take, possibly because tcompeted by ticated animals of theCambrian period.

    “today,” Fortey ten. “t tointerpret as any kind of ancestors of o follow.”

    t ultimately t terribly important to t of lifeon Earties believe t termination at t all tures (except tain jellyfiso move on to t parted ’s  in any case.

    As for t at once people began to questionterpretations and, in particular, Gould’s interpretation of terpretations. “From t tists  t Steve Gould ed, s delivery,” Fortey e in Life. tis putting it mildly.

    “If only Stepes!” barked telegrap tdoerarytour-de-force,” but accused Gould of engaging in a “grandiloquent and near-disingenuous”

    misrepresentation of ts by suggesting t tunned tological community. “t tacking—t evolution marcoward a pinnacle suc been believed for 50 years,” Dawkinsfumed.

    And yet t ly to which many general reviewers were drawn.

    One, ing in times Book Revie as a result ofGould’s book scientists “ some preconceptions t texamined for generations. tantly or entically, accepting t of nature as a product of orderly development.”

    But t directed at Gould arose from t many of aken or carelessly inflated. riting in tion, DatackedGould’s assertions t “evolution in t kind of process fromtoday” and expressed exasperation at Gould’s repeated suggestions t “tionary ‘experiment,’ evolutionary ‘trial and error,’ evolutionary ‘false starts.’ .

    . . It ile time al body plans’ ed.

    Noion just tinkers  new species!”

    Noting en t there are no new body plans—is picked up, Dawkins says:

    “It is as t an oak tree and remarked,  it stranget no major neo be at twig level.’ ”

    “It range time,” Fortey says no t somet  feelings really did runquite  I felt as if I ougo put a safety  on beforeing about t it did actually feel a bit like t.”

    Strangest of all artled many in tological community by rounding abruptly on Gouldin a book of ion. treated Gould “empt, evenloatey’s e later. “tion, unaory,  to (if not actuallysh) Gould’s.”

    ey about it,  range, quite srayal of tering. I could only assume t Simon , and I suppose tedbeing so irremediably associated  oget stuff about ‘o ted being famous for t.”

    to undergo a period of criticalreappraisal. Fortey and Derek Briggs—one of tics to compare terms, cladisticsconsists of organizing organisms on tures. Fortey gives as an examplet. If you considered t’s large size andstriking trunk you mig it could tle in common iny, sniffings if you compared bot t ands built to muc Fortey is saying is tGould sa as strange and various as t first sigen nostranger trilobites,” Fortey says no is just t o getused to trilobites. Familiarity, you knoy.”

    t, I se, because of sloppiness or inattention. Interpreting tions animals on ten distorted and fragmentary evidence isclearly a tricky business. Ed if you took selected species ofmodern insects and presented tyle fossils nobody  t are trumental in es, one in Greenland and onein Ctered finds, ional and oftenbetter specimens.

    t is t to be not so different after all.

    turned out, ructed upside dos stilt-like legs ually spikes along its back. Peytoia, ture t looked like a pineapple slice,o be not a distinct creature but merely part of a larger animal called Anomalocaris.

    Many of to living p  t place.  to be related toOnycerpillar-like animals. Ot, says Fortey, “tively feare urn out to be just interesting elaborations of ablise in range as a present daybarnacle, nor as grotesque as a queen termite.”

    So t so spectacular after all. teyten, “no less interesting, or odd, just more explicable.” t a kind of youtionary equivalent, as it uds. Eventually ttled into a staid and stable middle age.

    But t still left tion of w of nowhere.

    Alas, it turns out t e so explosive as all t.

    t is no,   toosmall to see. Once again it rilobites t provided ticular t seeminglymystifying appearance of different types of trilobite in tered locations around t more or less time.

    On t, ts of fully formed but varied creatures o enburst, but in fact it did te.

    It is one to ure like a trilobite burst fortion—treally is a  to inct but clearly related, turning upsimultaneously in t as Cs t  of tory. tronger evidencet to  started t.

    And t found t is no, is t too tiny to be preserved. Says Fortey: “It isn’t necessary to be big to be a perfectlyfunctioning, complex organism. tiny artoday t  nofossil record.” es ttle copepod, ers in so turn vast areas of t our totalknos ancestry is a single specimen found in t fossilized fish.

    “t’s t, probably ypes,” Fortey says. “And it could esly, so in t sense I suppose it  just as mammalsbided time for a il t fort, so too perriploblastsed in semimicroscopic anonymity for t Ediacaran organisms to ey: “e kno mammals increased in size quite dramatically after t—te abruptly I of course mean it in a geological sense.

    e’re still talking millions of years.”

    Incidentally, Reginald Sprigg did eventually get a measure of overdue credit. One of ter time, ing days er leaving geology ually retired to an estate in ed a wildlife reserve. he died in 1994 a rich man.

 22 GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT

    from a ive, and clearly it  forus to do ot couldn’t  to get going, but ttengoing, it seemed in very little o move on.

    Consider t about t visible organisms on Eartamong t ambitious. t ticularly ts ops and arctic es,  rock and rain and cold, and almostno competition. In areas of Antarctica  expanses of licypes of tedly to every wind-whipped rock.

    For a long time, people couldn’t understand . Because lic evident nouris or tion of seeds, many people—educatedpeople—believed tones caugs. “Spontaneously,inorganic stone becomes living plant!” rejoiced one observer, a Dr. homschuch, in 1819.

    Closer inspection s liceresting ta partnerse acids t dissolve t t into food sufficient to sustain bot is not avery exciting arrangement, but it is a conspicuously successful one. ty thousand species of lichens.

    Like most t ts, lic may take alicury to attain t button. tes, es David Attenborougo be t ence. “t,” Attenborougestifying to t t life even at its simplest leveloccurs, apparently, just for its own sake.”

    It is easy to overlook t t life just is. As o feel t lifemust . e ions and desires. e  to take constantadvantage of all toxicating existence  o alic its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours—arguably even stronger.

    If I old t I o spend decades being a furry groually all living t, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in s, justs to be. But—and eresting point—for t part it doesn’t  to bemuch.

    ttle odd because life y of time to develop ambitions. If youimagine tory compressed into a normal eart 4A.M.,  simple, single-celledorganisms, but t sixteen  until almost 8:30 into s arestless skin of microbes. t sea plants appear, folloy minuteslater by t jellyfisic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg inAustralia. At 9:04P.M. trilobites so tely bytures of t before 10P.M. plants begin to pop up on ter,  land creatures follow.

    to ten minutes or so of balmy carboniferous forests s areevident. Dinosaurs plod onto t before 11P.M. and  ters of an  ty-one minutes to midnige and seventeen seconds before midnigory, on timebarely an instant. t tly speeded-up day continents slide about and bangtoget a clip t seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt a t timesevery minute, some marking t ofa Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It’s a  anyt all can survive insuctled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.

    Perive reme recentness as a part of ture is to stretco t extent and imagine tire ory of to Joance from tips of one o t of ther is Precambrian.

    All of complex life is in one roke e ory.”

    Fortunately, t moment   t it erject a note of gloom just at t, but t is t tremely pertinent quality about life on Eart goes extinct. Quite regularly. For all trouble take to assemble and preserve tinely. And t, to go extinct.  terribly ambitious.

    So anytime life does somet is quite an event, and feful to t stage in our narrative and came out of the sea.

    Land : , dry, batense ultraviolet radiation,lacking t makes movement in er comparatively effortless. to live onland, creatures o undergo s backbone too o support it. to survive out of er, marinecreatures needed to come up ernal arcecture—not t ofadjustment t . Above all and most obviously, any land creature o take its oxygen directly from ter it from er.

    t trivial co overcome. On tive to leave ter: it ting dangerous doinents into a single landmass, Pangaea, meant tline tal at. So competition tling neype of predator on tly designed forattack t it s emergence: tious time to find an alternative environment to er.

    Plants began tion about 450 million years ago, accompanied ofnecessity by tiny mites and ot to break doter on took a little longer to emerge, but by about 400million years ago turing out of ter, too. Popular illustrations o envision t venturesome land dious fiso puddle duringdroug, t visible mobile residents ondry land tle bugs (crustaceans, in fact) t are commonly toconfusion wurn a rock or log.

    For t learned to breatimes errestrial life first bloomed, o nearer 20 percent noo grow remarkablylarge remarkably quickly.

    And ists kno ingenious fieldknoope geocry. tiny plankton t iny protective son created tmosp s (carbon especially) to form durable compounds suce. It’s trick t goes on in (and is discussed elseo) term carbon cycle—a process t doesn’t make for terribly exciting narrative butis vital for creating a livable planet.

    Eventually in tiny organisms die and drift to ttom of to limestone. Among tiny atomic structures ton take to table isotopes—oxygen-16 and oxygen-18.

    (If you ten ope is, it doesn’t matter, t’s an atomrons.) ts come in, for topes accumulate at different rates depending on mosp time of tion. By comparing t ratios, ts can cunningly read conditions in t emperatures, tent and timing of ice ages, and mucopefindings ists can, e entire landscapes t no human eye ever saw.

    to build up so robustly t terrestrial life  muced by giant treeferns and vast sed tead of completely rotting doative matteraccumulated in ric sediments, o t coal bedst sustain mucivity even now.

    tsized groion of asurface animal yet found is a track left 350 million years ago by a millipede-like creature on arock in Scotland. It  long. Before t some millipedes wouldreac.

    itures on t is per surprising t insects in trick t could keep t of tongue s: to fly. Some tookto tion y t t cecime since. t up to ty-fivemiles an antly stop,  far more proportionately tator ten, “ tunnels to see , and despaired.” too, gorged on ts dragonflies grerees and otation liketained outsized proportions. ails and tree ferns greo s of fifty feet, clubmosses to a y.

    t terrestrial vertebrates— land animals from ly because of a sage of relevantfossils, but partly also because of an idiosyncratic Sations and secretive manner ion for almost ury. Jarvik  of a team of Scandinavian sc to Greenland in ticular t lobe-finned fisypet presumably ral to us and all otures, knoetrapods.

    Most animals are tetrapods, and all living tetrapods  end in a maximum of five fingers or toes. Dinosaurs, rapods, or. to tor, it  400 millionyears ago. Before t time noter t time lots of team found just sucure, a t-long animal called an Icega. to Jarvik,  at it for tforty-eigunately, Jarvik refused to let anyone study etrapod. tologists o be content cerim papers in ture s ancestral importance.

    Jarvik died in 1998. After ologists eagerly examined t Jarvik ed toes—tually eigo observe t t possibly ructure of t it  do a great deal to advance our understanding of t land animals. todaytetrapods are kno knoe wherewe came from.

    But come  state of eminence  of course alraig ed of four megadynasties, as times called. t consisted of primitive, plodding but sometimes fairly yampiles. t-knorodon, a sail-backed creature t is commonly confused e, in a picturecaption in t). trodon  a synapsid. So, onceupon a time, ilian life,to tion of small o be found in temples; diapsids wo; euryapsids had a single hole higher up.

    Over time, eac into furtered. Anapsids gave rise to turtles, e as t’s most advanced and deadlyspecies, before an evolutionary lurc ttle for durability rato four streams, only one of whe Permian.

    ream o, and it evolved into a family of protomammalsknoy 2.

    Unfortunately for tively evolving,in to dinosaurs (among otoo muco compete o ures, to small,furry, burro bided time for a very long  of t, and most han mice.

    Eventually, tion, but to  nearly 150 millionyears for Megadynasty 3, to come to an abrupt end and make room forMegadynasty 4 and our own Age of Mammals.

    Eacransformations, as  on t paradoxically important motor of progress: extinction. It is a curiousfact t on Eart literal sense, a y billion is a commonly citedfigure, but t as ever tual total, 99.99percent of all species t o a first approximation,” asDavid Raup of ty of Co say, “all species are extinct.” For complexorganisms, t four million years—rougwhere we are now.

    Extinction is alims, of course, but it appears to be a good t. “ternative to extinction is stagnation,” says Ian tattersall of tural ory, “and stagnation is seldom a good thing in any realm.”

    (I se t ion as a natural, long-term process.

    Extinction broug by ter altogetory are invariably associated ic leaps afterive outburst of tinction of 440 million years ago cleared t of immobile filterfeeders and, someed conditions t favored darting fis aquatic reptiles.

    turn ion to send colonists onto dry land e Devonian period gave life anot  scatteredintervals tory. If most of ts   as t ainly  be here now.

    Eartinction episodes in its time—triassic, and Cretaceous, in t order—and many smaller ones. t about 80 to 85 percent ofspecies. triassic (210 million years ago) and Cretaceous (65 million years) eac 70 to 75 percent of species. But tinction of about 245million years ago, least 95 percent of animals kno, never to return. Evenabout a t species —t en masse. It isas close as otal obliteration.

    “It ruly, a mass extinction, a carnage of a magnitude t roubled tey. t icularly devastating to sea creatures.

    trilobites vanisoget. Virtually all otaggered. Altogeter, it is t t Eart 52percent of its families—t’s t of t cer)—and per of all its species. Itime—as mucy million years by one reckoning—before speciestotals recovered.

    ts need to be kept in mind. First, t informed guesses. Estimates fort toas  knoion t perisalking about t individuals. For individuals toll could be mucically total. t survived to t ptery almost certainlyoence to a few scarred and limping survivors.

    In betinctionepisodes—t so devastating to total species numbers, but often critically  certainpopulations. Grazing animals, including  in t about five million years ago. o a single species,  t for a time it teetered on tory   grazing animals.

    In nearly every case, for botinctions and more modest ones, le idea of er stripping out t notions till more t caused tinction events ts. At leasttential culprits ified as causes or prime contributors: globalionkno leaks of meteor and cometimpacts, runarophic solar flares.

    t is a particularly intriguing possibility. Nobody knoy engine and its storms are commensurately enormous. A typical solar flare—somet even notice on Eart of a billiono space a ons or so of murderous icles. tospmosp tospace or steer to it is t t an unusually big blast, say a imes typical flare, couldover certainly kill a very ion of all t basked in its gloo Bruce tsurutani of t Propulsion Laboratory, “it race in ory.”

    all t it, is “tons of conjecture and verylittle evidence.” Cooling seems to be associated  least tinctionevents—t beyond t little is agreed, includingists can’t agree, for instance,inction—t t ebrates movingonto thousands of years or in one lively day.

    One of t is so o produce convincing explanations for extinctions is t itis so very o exterminate life on a grand scale. As ill stage a full, if presumably somes Eart event sosingularly devastating? ell, first itively enormous. It struck ons. Sucburst is not easily imagined, but as James La, if you exploded one odayyou ill be about a billion bombs s of t impact. But even talone may not o  70 percent of Earth’s life, dinosaurs included.

    t meteor ional advantage—advantage if you are a mammal, t is—t it landed in a s ten meters deep, probably at just t angle, at a time and so tible. Above all t landed was made of rock rich in sulfur.

    t  t turned an area of seafloor to aerosols ofsulfuric acid. For montered to rains acid enougo burn skin.

    In a sense, an even greater question t of  70 percent of t ing at time is  survive? so irremediably devastating to every single dinosaur t existed, ell no species of toad,ne extinct in Norte creatures er?” asks timFlannery in ing preory of America, Eternal Frontier.

    In t es vanis tiloids, on, some species ically —92 percent of foraminiferans, for instance—o a similar plan and living alongside, ively unscathed.

    t inconsistencies. As Ricey observes: “Some does notseem satisfying just to call t at t.” If, as seems entirely likely,t survivors become difficult to account for. “Some insects, like beetles,” Fortey notes, “couldlive on   t navigate bysunlig so easy.”

    Above all, to survive and algae require sunligogeteady minimum temperatures. Mucy  feo corals dying from cemperature of only a degree or so. If t vulnerable to small c er?

    to-explain regional variations. Extinctions seem to icular appears to  no burroures. Evenits vegetation ion else devastation  a great deal  know.

    Some animals absolutely prospered—including, a little surprisingly, turtles once again.

    As Flannery notes, tely after tinction could urtles. Sixteen species survived in Nortoexistence soon after.

    Clearly it o be at er. t impact  almost 90 percent ofland-based species but only 10 percent of ter. ater obviously offeredprotection against  and flame, but also presumably provided more sustenance in t follo survived  of retreating to asafer environment during times of danger—into er or underground—eiter against t. Animals tscavenged for a living o teria in rotting carcasses. Indeed, often tively drao it,and for a long rid carcasses about.

    It is often ated t only small animals survived t event. In fact, among t just large but times larger today.

    But on t is true, most of tive. Indeed, ile, it  time to be small, urnal, flexible indiet, and cautious by nature—ties t distinguished our mammalian forebears.

    ion been more advanced, ead,mammals found to hing alive.

    as if mammals so fill every nicion mayabe t Steven M. Stanley, “but it often takes a long timeto fill it.” For peren million years mammals remained cautiously small. Intertiary, if you  you could be king.

    But once t going, mammals expanded prodigiously—sometimes to an almostpreposterous degree. For a time, tory ory cen literally) to fill it. Early members of ted to Souto creatures ty of bears. Birds, too,prospered disproportionately. For millions of years, a gigantic, fligitanis  ferocious creature in Nortainly it  daunting bird t ever lived. It stood ten feet   could tear tty muc irked it. Its familysurvived in formidable fasy million years, yet until a skeleton  ed.

    o anotainty about extinctions: triness oftouc of bones becomingfossilized, but tually  think. Consider dinosaurs.

    Museums give t  Diplodocus t dominates trance ural ory Museum in London and ed and informedgenerations of visitors is made of plaster—built in 1903 in Pittsburged to trance ural oryin Need by an even grander tableau: a skeleton of a large Barosaurusdefending tack by a darting and toot is a y feet to alsoentirely fake. Every one of t. Visit almost anylarge natural ory museum in t, Buenos Aires,Mexico City—and  you are antique models, not ancient bones.

    t is,  really kno deal about tified (almost  a quarter of times as long as mammalsive of species or ibly apt cliché).

    For millions of years t a single fossil  been found.

    Even for te Cretaceous—t studied preoric period to our long interest in dinosaurs and tinction—some ters of allspecies t lived may yet be undiscovered. Animals bulkier tyrannosaurus may . Until very recently everyt t ting just sixteen species. tiness ofto t dinosaurs  already  occurred.

    In te 1980s a paleontologist from ter So conduct an experiment. Using t also ionin Montana. Sifting meticulously, teers collected every last tootebra andc ook t tripled total of dinosaurfossils from te Cretaceous. tablis dinosaurs remained numerousrigo time of t impact. “to believe t t gradually during t taceous,” Sed.

    e are so used to tion of our oability as life’s dominant species t it iso grasp t raterrestrial bangs and ot for nearly fourbillion years our ancestors o slip timeo. Step succinctly in a icular line never fractured—never once at any of ts t could ory.”

    e started ter s: Life s to be; life doesn’t al to bemucime to time goes extinct. to ten, as  are decidedly amazing.

 23 THE RICHNESS OF BEING

    ural ory Museum in London, built into recesses along t corridors or standing betricuryor so of otive clutter, are secret doors—at least secret in t t to attract tor’s notice. Occasionally you migracted manner and interestingly en doo disappear ttlefurt tively rare event. For t part tay s, giving no t beyond ts anotural ory Museum as vast as, and inmany he public knows and adores.

    tural ory Museum contains some seventy million objects from every realm oflife and every corner of t, o tion eac it is really only be you get a sense of reasure s and long rooms full of close-packed s tens of ttles, millions of insects pinned to squaresof card, dras. It is a little like room alone een miles of saining jar upon jar of animals preserved inmeted spirit.

    Back ed by Josepralia, Alexander von in Amazonia, Dar is eitorically important or boto get tually standing ornition fromtate of a devoted collector named Riczztendee of t daily to take notes for tion of his books and monographs.

    es arrived, tors excitedly jimmied to see  and o put it mildly, to discover t a very large number of specimensbore tz turned out, otions for years. It also explained  of  even duringher.

    A feer a cment—“quite a distinguisleman,” I old—he hollow legs of hisZimmer frame.

    “I don’t suppose t somebody some,”

    Ricey said ful air as our of t ist of tments large tables doing intent, investigative tic endeavor t could never be completed and mustn’t beruss report on tion, anIndian Ocean survey, forty-four years after tion  tiny lift Fortey and I sey cted genially and familiarly as  about te t sediments are laid down.

    ed, Fortey said to me: “t y-tudying one species of plant, St. Jo. ired in 1989,but ill comes in every week.”

    “y-t?” I asked.

    “It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” Fortey agreed.  for a moment. “ly.” t door opened to reveal a bricked-over opening. Fortey lookedconfounded. “t’s very strange,”  used to be Botany back tton for anot lengto Botany by means of backstaircases and discreet trespass t more departments ors toiledlovingly over once-living objects. And so it  I roduced to Len Ellis and t o t of us.

    ically noted t mosses favor trees (“t bark, ar ury mosses and lic distinguisrue mosses aren’t actuallyfussy about , mosses aren’tactually muc group of plants e  a touco Knos, publisill to be found on manylibrary s ttempt to popularize t.

    tes is a busy realm, en tained ately Moss Flora of Britain and Ireland by A. J. E. Smito seven ain and Ireland are by no means outstandingly mossy places. “tropics are old me. A quiet, spare man,  tural oryMuseum for ty-seven years and curator of tment since 1990. “You can go outinto a place like ts of Malaysia and find neies ive ease. I didt myself not long ago. I looked do had never beenrecorded.”

    “So  knoo be discovered?”

    “Oh, no. No idea.”

    You mig t many people in to devotelifetimes to tudy of somet in fact moss people number introngly about t. “Oold me, “tings can get very lively at times.”

    I asked roversy.

    “ell, ed on us by one of your countrymen,” ly, andopened a y reference aining illustrations of mosses ableceristic to tructed eye y one to anot,” apping a moss, “used to be one genus, Drepanocladus. No’s been reorganized intotorfia, and acoulis.”

    “And did t lead to blows?” I asked perouch hopefully.

    “ell, it made sense. It made perfect sense. But it meant a lot of reordering of collectionsand it put all t of date for a time, so t of, you know, grumbling.”

    Mosses offer mysteries as o moss peopleanyiring type called anfordensis, y in California and later also found gro tip of England, but ered anyo exist in tions is anybody’s guess. “It’snoher revision.”

    e nodded tfully.

    must be compared o make sure t it been recorded already. tion must be ten and illustrationsprepared and t publisable journal. takesless tietury  a great age for moss taxonomy. Mucury’s ed to untangling tions left beeentury.

    t ing. (You may recall t C moss man.) One aptly named Englis, ed Britis ributed to tinction of several species. But it is to sucs t Len Ellis’s collection is one of t compreo large folded ss of orian script. Some, for all  Victorian botanist, unveiler of Broion and tany department for its first ty-oneyears until  in lustrous old mas sostrikingly fine t I remarked upon them.

    “Oifying a recent purc to s tfully, as if for t time in a longw know hem in bryology,” he added.

    test botanist, and t is tain Cook ced transit of Venusand claimed Australia for t else—est botanicalexpedition in ory. Banks paid ￡10,000, about $1 million in today’s money, to bringy of nine oturalist, a secretary, tists, and four servants—on ture around t tain Cookmade of sucy and pampered assemblage, but o  but admire alents in botany—a feeling serity.

    Never before or since anical party enjoyed greater triumply it ook in so many netle-knoierra del Fuego, tai, Neralia, Ne mostly it e andinventive collector. Even ine,ed t for tock and made new discoveries.

    Not seems, escaped ice. Altoget back ty tspecimens, including fourteen  seen before—enougo increase by about aquarter ts in the world.

    But Banks’s grand cac of total   absurdlyacquisitive age. Plant collecting in teentury became a kind of internationalmania. Glory and ed tanists andadventurers  to t incredible lengto satisfy ticulturalnovelty. ttall, teria after Caspar istar, came toAmerica as an uneducated printer but discovered a passion for plants and ing hings never seen before.

    Jo years in ting onbe and emerged at lengto find t Russia  o ract. Fraser took everyto Cers, and otica to a deligry.

    finds. Joeur botanist, spent t cleared almost $200,000 in today’smoney for s. Many,  did it for tany. Nuttall gave most ofanic Gardens. Eventually or of anic Garden and auts (e but also largely typeset).

    And t  plants. ts, mosquitoes, and ote, as Jonat noted in some famous lines:

    So, naturalists observe, a flea on ill to bite ’em;And so proceed ad infinitum.

    All tion needed to be filed, ordered, and compared  was known.

    te for a em of classification. Fortunately tood ready to provide it.

    er co tocraticvonLinné), but inized form Carolus Linnaeus.  in sout ambitious Lute, and  t ed faticed s, nearly apprenticed o a cobbler. Appalled at t of spending alifetime banging tacks into leated, and er inction. udied medicine inSill inies, o produce catalogues of t and animal species, using asystem of his own devising, and gradually his fame grew.

    Rarely able ness.  mucime penning long and flattering portraits of  ter botanist or zoologist,” and t em of classification estac in tly ed t one sion Princeps Botanicorum, “Prince of Botanists.” It o question s. t to find terthem.

    Linnaeus’s otriking quality  times, one migion icularly struck by ty betain bivalvesand to ts of one species of clam s by ture of tive organs andendoingly antions of floo “promiscuous intercourse,” “barren concubines,”

    and “te in one oft-quoted passage:

    Love comes even to ts. Males and females . . . ials . . .

    she flowers’

    leaves serve as a bridal bed,  scents t t te tials er solemnity. ime for to embrace o her.

    s Clitoria. Not surprisingly, many people t range.

    But em of classification ible. Before Linnaeus, plants  ive. toserratis. Linnaeus lopped it back to Pa, ill uses. t enciesof naming. A botanist could not be sure ifRosa sylvestris alba cum rubore, folio glabro  t otris inodora seu canina. Linnaeus solved t by calling it simply Rosa canina. to make toall required muc required an instinct—a genius, in fact—for spotting t qualities of a species.

    tem is so ablis ive, butbefore Linnaeus, systems of classification en  becategorized by ed, terrestrial or aquatic, large or small,even y to man. Anatomical considerations barely came into it. Linnaeusmade it o rectify t oits ptributes. taxonomy—ion—has neverlooked back.

    It all took time, of course. t edition of  Systema Naturae in 1735 fourteen pages long. But it greil by tion—t t Linnaeuso see—it extended to t and animal. Otoria Generalis Plantarum in England, completed a generationearlier, covered no fes alone—but oucency, order, simplicity, and timeliness. tes from t didn’t become il t in timeto make Linnaeus a kind of fato Britisuralists. Noer enty s Stockholm).

    Linnaeus  flarous humans”

    ive travelers. Amongt yet mastered tof speecus, “man ail.” But t , analtoget Josepook a keen and believing interestin a series of reported sigtis at teentury. For t part,  by sound and oftenbrilliant taxonomy. Among ots,  rial animals in ter coMammalia), which no one had done before.

    In tended only to give eac a genus name and a number—Convolvulus 1, Convolvulus 2,and so on—but soon realized t t isfactory and on t t remains at t of tem to tention originally o use tem for everytever existed in nature. Not everyone embraced tem urbed by its tendency tos and animals ily vulgar. ts supposed diuretic properties, and ot, naked ladies, tcoions may untingly survive inEnglis. tance, does not refer to t all events, it  t tural sciences ain dismay indiscovering t ted Prince of Botany exts ions asClitoria, Fornicata, andVulva.

    Over tly dropped (t all: t still anso Crepidula fornicata) and many otsintroduced as tural sciences greicular temered by troduction of additional uralists for over a o use in the 1750s and 1760s.

    But p coined until 1876 (by t reated as intercil early in tietury. For a time zoologists usedfamily s placed order, to the occasional confusion of nearly everyone.

    1Linnaeus o six categories: mammals, reptiles, birds, fiss, and “vermes,” or  didn’t fit into t five. From tset it  t putting lobsters and so tegory as isfactory, and various neegories sucacea ed.

    Unfortunately tions  uniformly applied from nation to nation. Inan attempt to reestablisis of rules called tricklandian Code, but té Zoologiquecountered s oing code. Meano use tion of Systema Naturae as tsnaming, ration used else many American birdsspent teentury logged in different genera from their avian cousins in Europe.

    Not until 1902, at an early meeting of ternational Congress of Zoology, did naturalistsbegin at last to s of compromise and adopt a universal code.

    taxonomy is described sometimes as a science and sometimes as an art, but really it’s abattleground. Even today tem t people realize. taketegory of t describes the basic body plans of all organisms.

    A feaceans), and ces (us and all otobackbone), tly in tion of obscurity. Among tter omulida (marine tle “penis ,tal divisions. Yet ttle agreement on  to be. Most biologists fix total at about ty, but some opt for a numberin ties, s t asurprisingly robust eig depends on er,” as the biological world.

    At ties for disagreements are even greater.

    a, or Aegilopsovata may not be a matter t ir many nonbotanists to passion, but it can be a sourceof very lively  in t quarters. t to people  ty times, and tappears, t  been independently identified at least ted States devotes t pages to sorting out allto its inadvertent but quite commonduplications. And t is just for try.

    to deal s on tage, a body knoernationalAssociation for Plant taxonomy arbitrates on questions of priority and duplication. At1to illustrate, a, in tebrata, in tes, in tion, Im informed, is to italicize genus and species names, but not taxonomists employ furtribe, suborder, infraorder, parvorder, andmore.

    intervals it  Zausc inrock gardens) is to be knoenuissimum may no notters of tidying up tattract little notice, but imes do,srage inevitably folloe 1980s tly sound scientific principles) from ted to tively drab and undesirable hema.

    C, and tested to ttee on Spermatopa. (ttees forPteridopa, Bryopa, and Fungi, among oting to an executive called teur-Général; truly an institution to cureare supposed to be rigidly applied, botanists are not indifferent to sentiment, and in 1995 tions unias, euonymus, and a popularspecies of amaryllis from demotion, but not many species of geraniums, es are entertaininglysurveyed in Ct’s tting-Shed Papers.

    Disputes and reorderings of mucype can be found in all tally is not nearly as straigter as you mig is t  est idea—“noteven to t order of magnitude,” in t live on our planet. Estimates range from 3 million to 200 million. Moreextraordinary still, according to a report in t, as muc of t and animal species may still a discovery.

    Of t , more tcific name, a ion in scientific journals” is ate of our knoy of Life, imated types—plants, insects,microbes, algae, everyt 1.4 million, but added t t  a guess. Oties  tly  around 1.5 million to 1.8million, but tral registry of to c,tion   actually knouallyknow.

    In principle you ougo be able to go to experts in eacion, ask otals. Many people  done so.

    t seldom do any tc types of fungi at 70,000, ot 100,000—nearly  assertions t t assertions t ts, to 950,000 species. tand, supposedly ts, ted numbers range from 248,000 to 265,000. tmay not seem too vast a discrepancy, but it’s more ty times ts in th America.

    Putting t t of tasks. In tralian National University began a systematic survey of te. Oftentimes it turned out t times several times— any of t t o science. It took Groves four decades to untangleeveryt ively small group of easily distinguisroversial creatures. Goodness knos tempted asimilar exercise ’s estimated 20,000 types of licles.

    is certain is t t deal of life out tual quantities arenecessarily estimates based on extrapolations—sometimes exceedingly expansiveextrapolations. In a erry Eritution saturated a stand of nineteen rain forest trees in Panama icide fog,ted everyt fell into s from tuallyed t seasonally to make sure  migrant species)ypes of beetle. Based on tribution of beetles else, ts in ttypes, and so on up a long cimated a figure of 30 million species ofinsects for tire planet—a figure er said oo conservative. Ota  types, underlining t , sucably o least as muco supposition as to science.

    According to treet Journal, t 10,000 active taxonomists”—not a great number , t (about $2,000 per species) and paper fifteentypes are logged per year.

    “It’s not a biodiversity crisis, it’s a taxonomist crisis!” barks Koen Maes, Belgian-bornebrates at tional Museum in Nairobi,  to try in tumn of 2002. taxonomists in told me. “t, but I tired,”  takes eigo ten years to train a taxonomist, but none are coming along in Africa.

    “to be let go at ter seven years in Kenya, ract  being renewed. “No funds,” Maesexplained.

    riting in ture last year, tis G. ed t tige and resources” for taxonomists everyions, tempt to relate aneaxon2to existing species and classifications.” Moreover, mucaxonomists’ time istaken up not  simply ing out old ones. Many,according to Godfray, “spend most of trying to interpret teentury systematicists: deconstructing ten inadequate publisions orscouring type material t is often in very poor condition.” Godfrayparticularly stresses ttention being paid to tematizing possibilities ofternet. t is t taxonomy by and large is still quaintly o paper.

    2tegory, sucaxa.

    In an attempt to o terprise called tion  on a database. t of sucimated at anyime employees. If, as t,  to find, and if our rates ofdiscovery continue at t pace, otal for insects in a littleover fifteen t of take a little longer.

    So  to count, but he principal causes:

    Most living tical terms, t al not slumber quite so contentedly if you  your mattress iso peres, o sup onyour sebaceous oils and feast on all t you soss. Your pilloy to t one large oily bon-bon.) And don’t tosometes, tig ly about t imated t one-tents es and mite dung,” to quote the measuring, Dr.

    Joisomology Center. (But at least tes.

    t you snuggle up ime you climb into a motel bed.)3tes ime immemorial, but t discovered until 1965.

    If creatures as intimately associated es escaped our notice until television, it’s  most of t of to us. Go out into a  all—bend doeria, most of to science. Yoursample ain pers, some 200,000 tle fungiknoed rotifers, flatures knoivelyas cryptozoa. A large portion of these will also be unknown.

    t compreematicBacteriology, lists about 4,000 types of bacteria. In tists,Jostein Goks?yr and Vigdis torsvik, collected a gram of random soil from a beec nearts bacterial content. t tained bete bacterial species, more traveled to a coastal location a fe it contained 4,000 to 5,000 otypes exist in tefrom ties in Norats?” ell, according to one estimate, it could be as high as 400 million.

    3e are actually getting  some matters of  toemperature s o proliferate. As s it: quot;If you emperatures, all you get is cleaner lice.quot;e don’t look in t places. In ty of Life, ilson describes anist spent a feramping around ten ares of jungle in Borneo and discovered at—more ts  o find. It’s just t no one ional Museum told me t  to one cloud forest, asmountaintop forests are knoicularly dedicatedlooking” found four neing neree. “Big tree,”  to dance ner. Cloud forests are found on tops of plateaus and imes beenisolated for millions of years. “te for biology and tudied,” he said.

    Overall, tropical rain forests cover only about 6 percent of Eart s animal life and about ts flos, and most of to us because too fe incidentally,muce valuable. At least 99 percent of flos ested for ties. Because t flee from predators, plants o contrive cicularly enricriguing compounds. Evennoer of all prescribed medicines are derived from just forty plants,  coming from animals or microbes, so tare of forest felled of losing medically vital possibilities. Using a metorial cry, cs can generate forty t a time in labs,but ts are random and not uncommonly useless,  calls “timate screening programme: overtion.”

    Looking for t simply a matter of traveling to remote or distant places,ey notes  bacterium ry pub “ions”—a discovery t o involve rare amounts of luckand devotion andpossibly some oty not specified.

    t enougs.tock of to be found, examined, and recordedvery mucruns tists available to do it. take ttle-knoifers. t can survive almostanytions are tougo a compact scabolism, and  for better times. In tate, you can drop to boiling er orfreeze t to absolute zero—t is toms give up—and,  urned to a more pleasing environment, t 500 species ified(t nobody ely, oget all t  to ted amateur, a London clerical ime. t you could ifer expertsin to dinner and not o borroes from the neighbors.

    Even sometant and ubiquitous as fungi—and fungi are bottractscomparatively little notice. Fungi are everyo name but a sampling—and t in volumest most of us little suspect. Gatogetypical acre of meado marginal organisms. itfungi tato bligcce’s foot, but alsono yogurts or beers or coget 70,000 species of fungi ified,but it is t t of mycologists ry, making cs and t is o say ivelyinvolved in researc ake it t to be foundto find them.

    travel and otion into t t all t big, but at ground level, is actually enormous—enormous enougo be full ofsurprises. t living relative of to exist insubstantial numbers in ts of Zaire—total population is estimated at pery t its existence  even suspected until tietury. tless Neakainct for teamof Frencisists in tibet, orm in a remote valley,came across a breed of  oric cave draants oniso learn t ty in the wider world.

    Some  people  ter  surprises may a us. “A leading Britis,” e t in 1995, “t of giant ground slotand as nesses of the Amazon basin.”

    Perly, t  named; perly,not slotegorically sayt no sucil every jungly glade igated, and we are a longway from ac.

    But even if co tcorners of t  be effort enoug is. Life’sextraordinary fecundity is amazing, even gratifying, but also problematic. to survey it all, youurn over every rock, sift tter on every forest floor, sieveunimaginable quantities of sand and dirt, climb into every forest canopy, and devise muc o examine tems. Intered a deep cave in Romania t side  unknoy-ts andotures—spiders, centipedes, lice—all blind, colorless, and neo science.

    turn were feeding on springs.

    Our instinct may be to see ty of tracking everytrating,dispiriting, per it can just as  unbearablyexciting. e live on a planet t e capacity to surprise. reasoning person could possibly  it any other way?

    is nearly al arresting in any ramble ttered disciplines ofmodern science is realizing o devote lifetimes to t sumptuously esoteric lines of inquiry. In one of epes on spent fifty years, from 1906 to ly studying a genus of land snails in Polynesia called Partula. Over and over, yearafter year, Crampton measured to tiniest degree—to eigle curves of numberless Partula, compiling ts into fastidiously detailedtables. A single line of text in a Crampton table could represent  andcalculation.

    Only sliged, and certainly more unexpected,  before o speak, Kinsey omologist, and a dogged one att. In one expedition lasting tion of300,000 , alas, recorded.

    Somet ion of  be many institutions in trequire or are prepared to support specialists in barnacles or Pacific snails. As ed at tural ory Museum in London, I asked Ricey  ake his place.

    ily at my naiveté. “I’m afraid it’s not as if utessitting on ting to be called in to play.  retires or,even more unfortunately, dies, t can bring a stop to t field, sometimes for avery long while.”

    “And I suppose t’s udying asingle species of plant, even if it doesn’t produce anyterribly new?”

    “Precisely,” o mean it.

 24 CELLS

    It StARtS It cell splits to become ter just forty-seven doublings, you en trillion(10,000,000,000,000,000) cells in your body and are ready to spring forth as a human being.

    1And every one of tly o do to preserve and nurture you from t of conception to your last breath.

    You s from your cells. t you te genetic code—truction manual for your body—so itkno only o do its job but every oto remind a cell to keep an eye on its adenosine tripe levels or to find a place fortra squirt of folic acid t’s just unexpectedly turned up. It  for you, andmillions more things besides.

    Every cell in nature is a t are far beyond ts ofy. to build t basic yeast cell, for example, you urize about ts as are found in a Boeing 777 jetliner andfit to a sp five microns across; to persuade tspo reproduce.

    But yeast cells are as not just more variedand complicated, but vastly more fascinating because of teractions.

    Your cells are a country of ten trillion citizens, eaced in some intensivelyspecific o your overall  a t do for you. tyou feel pleasure and form ts. to stand and stretc, tract trients, distribute tes—all t in junior  to make you place and reer you forget to eat again. tlypurring. to your defense tantyou are tened. tatingly die for you—billions of t once in all your years  us take a moment nooregard tion they deserve.

    e understand a little of  ormanufacture insulin or engage in many of ts necessary to maintain a complicatedentity like yourself—but only a little. You  least 200,000 different types of protein1Actually, quite a lot of cells are lost in t, so t a guess. Depending on ude. ten trillion (or quadrillion) is from Margulis and Sagan, 1986.

    laboring aand  2 percent oft t more like 50 percent; it depends, apparently, on and.”)Surprises at turn up all time. In nature, nitric oxide is a formidabletoxin and a common component of air pollution. So scientists urally a little surpriseded manner ins purpose  first a mystery, but tists began to find it all over trolling ttacking cancers andoting ting in penile erections. It alsoexplained  pain kno is converted into nitric oxide in tream, relaxing to floance  from extraneous toxin to ubiquitous elixir.

    You  possess  “some  feypes of cell, according to t Cian de Duve, and ts can stretco several feet to tiny, disc-so tocells t o give us vision. tuously  t of conception, s an egg eigimes bigger t (ionof male conquest into perspective). On average,  tymicrons  is about to be seenbut roomy enougo ed structures like mitoc literal ’s a someion to reflect t every inc you are lugging around about five pounds of deadskin, of s are slougy stern very largely in old skin.

    Most living cells seldom last more t tableexceptions. Liver cells can survive for years, ts  as long as you do. You are issued a  birt is all you are ever going to get. It imated t you lose fiveo do t a momentto e. t ts of your brain cells are constantlyrene, as  of tually likely to be more ta mont ed t t a single bit of any of us—not somucray molecule—t  of us nine years ago. It may not feel like it, but at ters.

    t person to describe a cell   encounteredsquabbling on over credit for tion of ty-eigician anda dab  making ingenious and useful instruments—but not er admiration tions ofMiniature Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses, produced in 1665. It revealed to an encedpublic a universe of t ructuredto imagining.

    Among tures first identified by tle cst ed t aone-incain 1,259,712,000 of tiny cappearance of sucime ion or so, but   ecions of ty times, making t eentury optical technology.

    So it came as somet a decade later y began to receive dras from an unlettered linendraper in ions of up to 275 times. toni van Leeule formal education and no background inscience, ive and dedicated observer and a technical genius.

    to t is not knoions from simpletle more t iny bubble ofglass embedded in t most of us t really not mucrument for everyexperiment remely secretive about ecimes offer tips to tis improve tions.

    2Over a period of fifty years—beginning, remarkably enougforty— to ty, all ten in Locongue of ations, but simplyts of s on almosteveryt could be usefully examined—bread mold, a bee’s stinger, blood cells, teet, and semen (t ful apologies for ture)—nearly all of which had never been seen microscopically before.

    After ed finding “animalcules” in a sample of pepper er in 1676, ty spent a year  devices Englisectle animals” before finally getting tion rigLeeu tinybeings in a single drop of er—more teemed  no one ed.

    Inspired by Leeuic findings, oto peer into microscopes  times found t  in fact tedDutcsoecker, le beings “ime many people believed t allures—ly inflated versions of tiny but completeprecursor beings. Leeuhusiasms.

    In one of  successful experiments ried to study ties ofgunpo at close range; he process.

    2Leeuable, tist Jan Vermeer. In tent but not outstanding artist, suddenly developed tery of ligive for   ed t ing images onto a flat surface ted among Vermeers personal effects after  it  tor ofVermeers estate oni van Leeuive lens-maker of his day.

    In 1683 Leeu t  as far as progress could getfor t century and a ations of microscope tec until1831  see t tisanistRobert Bro frequent but alo tory of science. Bro nucleus from tin nucula, meaning little nut or kernel.

    Not until 1839,  all living matter is cellular. It , and it  only comparatively late, as scientificinsig not  first. It  until teur in France, t it  arisespontaneously but must come from preexisting cells. t is the basis of all modern biology.

    to many t James trefil) to “a vast, teeming metropolis” (t Guy Bro is like a refinery in t it is devoted to civityon a grand scale, and like a metropolis in t it is croeractions t seem confused and random but clearly em to t it is amucmarisy or factory t you o begin y doesn’t meaningfully apply at t an atom’s ivity every  feel terribly electrical, but you are. t and to electricity. t give eac is t it is alliny scale: a mere 0.1 volts traveling distances measured in nanometers.

    up and it ranslate as a jolt of ty million volts per meter, abouttorm.

    ever t to fundamentally the same plan:

    ter casing or membrane, a nucleus ion to keep you going, and a busy space betoplasm. t, as most of us imagine it, a durable, rubbery casing, somet you is made up of a type of fatty material knoency “of a ligo quoteS seems surprisingly insubstantial, bear in mind t at tly. to anyter becomesa kind of y gel, and a lipid is like iron.

    If you could visit a cell, you  like it. Bloo a scale at  tself oskeleton. it, millions upon millionsof objects—some tballs, ot likebullets. t be a place you could stand  being pummeled and rippedtimes every second from every direction. Even for its full-time occupants trand of DNA is on average attacked or damagedonce every 8.4 seconds—ten times in a day—by cs t, and eac be sly stitc to perish.

    teins are especially lively, spinning, pulsating, and flying into eaco abillion times a second. Enzymes, type of protein, daso a tasks a second. Like greatly speeded up s, to t one. Some monitorpassing proteins and mark  are irreparably damaged or flaed, teins proceed to a structure called a proteasome, s used to build neeins. Some types of protein existfor less t all lead existences t areinconceivably frenzied. As de Duve notes, “t necessarily remainentirely beyond tion oo t.”

    But sloo a speed at ions can be observed, and t seem quite so unnerving. You can see t a cell is just millions of objects—lysosomes,endosomes, ribosomes, ligands, peroxisomes, proteins of every size and somillions of ots and performing mundane tasks: extracting energy from nutrients,assembling structures, getting rid of e, ruders, sending and receivingmessages, making repairs. typically a cell ain some 20,000 different types of protein,and of t 2,000 types  least 50,000 molecules. “t even if  only t in amounts of moretotal is still a very minimum of 100 million protein molecules in eacaggering figure gives some idea of ty of biocivity hin us.”

    It is all an immensely demanding process. Your  must pump 75 gallons of blood an’s enougo fill four Olympic-sized so keep all ted. (And t’s at rest. Duringexercise te can increase as mucaken up by tocations, and t a typical cell, t a cell does and  requires.

    You may recall from an earlier cer t toc to edas captive bacteria and t tially as lodgers in our cells, preserving tic instructions, dividing to timetable, speaking t  tually all take into your body are delivered, after processing, to toced into a molecule called adenosine tripe, or AtP.

    You may not P, but it is P molecules areessentially little battery packs t move t t of it. At any given moment, a typical cell in your bodyP molecules in it, and in tes every one of taken tP equivalent to about . Feel t’s your AtP at work.

    can only be called great dignity. take doruts and buttresses t ogetly devour t parts. tosis or programmed cell deat and billions of otly—for instance,  mostly told to.

    Indeed, if not told to live—if not given some kind of active instruction from anotomatically kill t of reassurance.

    o expire in t rato divide and proliferate  cancer. Cancer cells are really justconfused cells. Cells make take fairly regularly, but temec. It is only very rarely t t of control. Onaverage, al malignancy for each 100 million billion cell divisions.

    Cancer is bad luck in every possible sense of term.

    t t t t t a stretcantly sending andmonitoring streams of messages—a cacophe body:

    instructions, queries, corrections, requests for assistance, updates, notices to divide or expire.

    Most of tities sucrogen, and testosterone t convey information from remote outpostslike till otelegrapers in a process called paracrine signaling. Finally, cells communicatedirectly o make sure tions are coordinated.

    is per remarkable is t it is all just random frantic action, a sequence ofendless encounters directed by notal rules of attraction and repulsion.

    tions of t all just edly and so reliably t seldom are , yet some just order  a perfect  across the organism.

    In  and, trillions upon trillions of reflexive cions add up to a mobile, to t, a rative but still incredibly organized dung beetle. Every living t, is aomic engineering.

    Indeed, some organisms t ive enjoy a level of cellular organizationt makes our orian. Disassemble tance), to a solution, and togeto a sponge again. You can do to to continue to be.

    And t’s because of a curious, determined, barely understood molecule t is itself notalive and for t part doesn’t do anyt all. e call it DNA, and to begin tounderstand its supreme importance to science and to us o go back 160 years or so toVictorian England and to t  C  idea t anyone  take a littleexplaining, locked it a fifteen years.

 25 DARWIN’S SINGULAR NOTION

    IN tE summer or early autumn of 1859, or of tedBritiserly Revie an advance copy of a neuralist Cerest and agreed t it , butfeared t t matter oo narroo attract a e a book about pigeons instead. “Everyone is interested in pigeons,” he observedhelpfully.

    EluralSelection, or tion of Favoured Races in truggle for Life  fifteen s edition of 1,250 copies sold out on t day. It  of print, and scarcely out of controversy, in all time since—not bad going for a man   for asingle impetuous decision to sail around try parson knoerest in earthworms.

    C Darto Midlands of England. , er of Josiatery fame.

    Darage of upbringing, but continually pained er academic performance. “You care for not sing, dogs, and rat-catco yourself and all your family,” e in a linet nearly al about ion o natural ory, for ried to study medicine at Edinburgy but couldn’t bear tnessing anoperation on an understandably distressed cics, ofcourse—left ly traumatized. ried laead, but found t insupportablydull and finally managed, more or less by default, to acquire a degree in divinity fromCambridge.

    A life in a rural vicarage seemed to a  of tempting offer. Dared to sail on tiallyas dinner company for tain, Robert FitzRoy, zRoy, okened depter,  FitzRoy’s first c got tzRoy’s preferred companion dropped out.

    From a ty-first-century perspective t striking joint feature e in ory: on tucky, Abraham Lincoln was born.

    extreme yout time of sailing, FitzRoy y-tty-two.

    FitzRoy’s formal assignment o c coastal ers, but o seek out evidence for a literal, biblical interpretation of creation. t Darrained for try ral to FitzRoy’s decision to  Darly proved to be not only liberal of vie less tedly devoted toCian fundamentals became a source of lasting friction bethem.

    Darime aboard o 1836, iveexperience of  also one of t trying. ain s zRoy  to fits of fury folloment. antly engaged in quarrels, some “bordering oninsanity,” as Darer recalled. Ocean voyages tended to become melancakings at t of times—tain of t a bullet t of lonely gloom—and FitzRoy came from a family inct.  Castlereag  tzRoy zRoy proved strangely unknowable.

    Darounded to learn upon t almost at onceFitzRoy married a young o  once ed at an attac or even mentioned her name.

    In every ot, riumpure enougo last a lifetime and accumulated a  to makeation and keep  trove of giant ancientfossils, including t Megato date; survived a letifully named Delpzroyi);conducted diligent and useful geological investigations t tion of coral atolls, coincidentally, t atolls could not form in less t  of anding attac to treme antiquity of earty-seven, urned er being awo days.  Englandagain.

    One t do on tion. For a start, evolution as a concept ribute to evolutionary principles in a poem of inspiredmediocrity called “temple of Nature” years before C  untiltion (ion gro to percolate t life is a perpetual struggle and t natural selection  Dar all organismscompeted for resources, and t e advantage  advantage to tinuously improve.

    It seems an a is an a it explained a great deal,and Daro devote o it. “upid of me not to  ofit!” t.  is a vie has beenechoed ever since.

    Interestingly, Dar use ttest” in any of ion for it). ter tion of On t Spencer in Principles of Biology in 1864.

    Nor did ion in print until tion of Origin (by s use oo o resist), preferring instead “descent ion.”

    Nor, above all, eresting diversity in tory asconventionally told (or at least as frequently remembered by many of us) is t Daro island, noticed t ted for exploiting local resources—t on one island beaks urdy ands and good for cracking nuts,  of crevices—and it  set o tper been created t ed themselves.

    In fact, ted t it  Dar. At timeof t of college and not yet an accomplisuralistand so failed to see t type. It alents. Unfortunately, in  noted oises.) It took years to sort t.

    Because of ts, and to sort tes and crates of ot  until 1842, six years after urn to England, t Daro sketc ts of o a 230-page“sketcer. And traordinary t es a decade and a ters. en ced nearly eigo ing an exive opus on barnacles (“I e a barnacle as noman ever did before,” andably, upon to strange disorders t left less, faint, and “flurried,” as  it. toms nearly alerrible nausea and generally also incorporatedpalpitations, migraines, exion, trembling, spots before tness of breat surprisingly, depression.

    tablis t romantic and pered possibilities is t ropical malady t e of a Bencion is t ion . Often y minutes at a stretcimes not t.

    Muc of ime ed to a series of increasingly desperate treatments—icy plunge batric c subjectedo small jolts of current. , seldom leaving , Dos upon moving to to erect a mirroroutside udy  ify, and if necessary avoid, callers.

    Dar o orm it es aiges of tural ory of Creationroused muco fury by suggesting t  es  tance of a divine creator. Anticipating tcry, taken careful steps to conceal ity,  from even  friends for t forty years. Some hor.

    Oted Prince Albert. In fact, ttis Cance to reveal icaldimension as ed from pulpits t Britain and far beyond, but also attracted a good dealof more sced nearly an entire issue—eigo pulling it to pieces. Even t. ion, attacked t thor was a friend.

    2Dar migill  for an alarmingblo arrived from t in tcontaining a friendly letter from a young naturalist named Alfred Russel allace and tof a paper, On tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from type,outlining a tural selection t o Dar jottings.

    Even some of triking coincidence,”

    Dared in dismay. “If allace  sketcten out in 1842,  ter s abstract.”

    allace didn’t drop into Dare as unexpectedly as is sometimes suggested.

    t  migerest. In tly   of species creation as erritory. “t note-book, ontion of  ies differ from eacten to allace some time earlier. “I am noion,”  really.

    In any case, allace failed to grasp rying to tell  ical to one t Darwo decades.

    Dar to preserve y,aking advantage of an innocent tip-off from a distant admirer. But if eppedaside, as gentlemanly conduct arguably required,  for a t ly propounded. allace’s t of aflas; Dar of years of careful, plodding, met. Itwas all crushingly unfair.

    to compound  son, also named Cracted scarletfever and ically ill. At t of te traction of ime to dasters to o step aside but noting t to do so  allever it may amount to, ing a summary of Darogettled on ing of ty, ime rugglingto find its o fas of scientific eminence. On July 1, 1858, Daro guess correctly. o be visiting Cion of Vestiges  appears t discuss it.

    and allace’s to t present. On ting, heir son.

    tation  evening—one of ty or so people in t tnessing tific  of tury, t. No discussionfollo attract mucice elseed tonly one person, a Professor on of Dublin, mentioned t and  all t  rue was old.”

    allace, still in tant East, learned of ter t, buto  all. oter as “Darytisrick Mattural selection—in fact, in t Darunately, Mattimberand Arboriculture,  by Dar by tire world.

    Mattter to Gardener’s C everyion, te for t no one neitly any oturalist, to a imberand Arboriculture.”

    allace continued for anoty years as a naturalist and t increasingly fell from scientific favor by taking up dubious interests sucualism and ty of life existing else, Darwin’s alone.

    Darormented by o  revealing t “like confessing a murder.” Apart from allelse,  deeply pained  to  onceexpanding  into a book-lengt An Abstract ofan Essay on ties tural Selection —a title so tepidand tentative t o issue just five once presented , and a sliging title, Murray reconsideredand increased tial print run to 1,250.

    On te commercial success, but raticalone. Dared tractable difficulties. It needed far more time to concede, and it ed by fossil evidence. ful critics, ransitional forms t inuously evolving, t to be lots ofintermediate forms scattered across t t.

    3In fact, t existed time after ofthe famous Cambrian explosion.

    3By coincidence, in 1861, at t of troversy, just sucurned up ure   it also eet  asingle discovery could hardly be considered conclusive.

    But noing t t  life and t   found it yet because, for  been preserved. It simply could not be otained. “t presentmust remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against tertained,”  candidly, but o entertain an alternative possibility.

    By ion ed—inventively but incorrectly—t peroo clear to lay dos and thus had preserved no fossils.

    Even Dar friends roubled by tions.

    Adam Sedgaken our ofales in 1831, said tas poor conjecture. Even Lyell concluded gloomily: “Daroo far.”

    t. ence on s of geological time because ationist,  evolutionary cgradually but suddenly. Saltationists (tin for “leap”) couldn’taccept t complicated organs could ever emerge in sloages.  good, after all, is one-tent, only made sense if tate.

    t as  closely recalled a veryconservative religious notion first put for from design. Paley contended t if you found a pocket cantly perceivet it elligent entity. So it scomplexity s design. tion eentury,and it gave Darrouble too. “to tter to a friend. In t it “seems, I freely confess,absurd in t possible degree” t natural selection could produce sucrumentin gradual steps.

    Even so, and to tion of ers, Dar only insisted tall c in nearly every edition of Origin epped up t of timeo alloion to progress, ually,” according to tist and orian Jeffrey Scz, “Darvirtually all t t still remained among tural orians andgeologists.”

    Ironically, considering t Dared a mec become stronger or better or faster—in a ter—but gave noindication of  migtised an important fla. Dar any beneficial trait t arose in one generation o subsequentgenerations, trengthe species.

    Jenkin pointed out t a favorable trait in one parent  become dominant insucceeding generations, but in fact ed to a tumbler of er, you don’t make tronger, you make it  dilute solution into anoter, it becomes ill. In trait introduced by one parent ered do matings until it ceased to be apparent at all. t a recipefor c for constancy. Lucky flukes migime to time, but to bring everyto a stable mediocrity. Ifnatural selection o ernative, unconsidered mechanism was required.

    Unknoo Dariring monk named Gregor Mendel ion.

    Mendel o a er of trianempire in rayed observant provincial monk  ofnoticing some interesting traits of inance  s in tery’s kitc, Mendel rained scientist—udied pics at tz Pitute and ty of Vienna—and  scientific discipline to all ery at Brno ution. It y tradition of careful scientific investigation.

    Before embarking on s, Mendel spent ties of pea, to make sure true. timeassistants, edly bred and crossbred y ts. It e o take t exacting pains to avoid accidental cross-fertilization and to note every sligion in tems, and flowers. Mendel knew w he was doing.

    coined until 1913, in an Englisionary—t terms dominant and recessive.  ablis every seed contained tors” or “elemente,” as  oneand a recessive one—and tors, terns ofinance.

    ts ed into precise matical formulae. Altogeteigs, ts s onflos. If anytoo scientific in ed  tings of tural orySociety of Brno in 1865, t forty listened politely but s ter of great practical interest to manyof the members.

    o t SanistKarl-il al for ts.

    Unfortunately, N?geli failed to perceive tance of  Mendel try breeding ly did as N?geli suggested,but quickly realized t e features for studying ability.

    It  to  N?geli  read t all. Frustrated,Mendel retired from investigating ability and spent t of standing vegetables and studying bees, mice, and sunspots, among mucually.

    Mendel’s findings  quite as imes suggested. udyreceived a glory in tannica —tific t ted repeatedly in an important paper by t irely sank beloerline of scientific t t them.

    toget realizing it, Darietury. Dar all living ted, tultimately trace try to a single, common source,” o  y of o Dar o  to get in touc is knoo udied Focke’s influential paper s repeated references to Mendel’s  didn’tconnect to udies.

    tured in Dar, t  feature at all except as one passing allusion. Even so, it took no great leap ofimagination to see tions for  in Darbecame an immediate talking point.

    turday, June 30, 1860, at a meeting of tisionfor t of Science in Oxford. o attend by RobertCiges of tural ory of Creation, till unao t contentious tome. Dar. tingo turned a someto to  oryremarks on “tellectual Development of Europe Considered o the Viewsof Mr. Darwin.”

    Finally, to speak. ilberforce  is generally assumed) by t anti-Dars t end in uproar,accounts vary ly transpired. In t popular version, ilberforce,o tac to tless intended as a quip, but it came across as an icy co , urned to o myain relish.

    Otrembling ion. At all events, o an ape to someone o be a serious scientificforum. Suce inence, as  to ilberforce’soffice, and tantly collapsed in tumult. A Lady Breer fainted. RobertFitzRoy, Dary-five years before, , sing, “t topresent a paper on storms in y as ed MeteorologicalDepartment.) Interestingly, eacero ed ther.

    Darually make  in tof Man in 1871. tedsucion. t time albones from Germany and a feain fragments of jaedauties refused to believe even in tiquity. t of Man ogetroversial book, but by time of its appearance tableand its arguments caused mucir.

    For t part,  ofially on questions of natural selection.  amazingly longperiods picking tinizing tents in an attempt to understandinents, and spent years more studying the behavior of worms.

    One of s o play to t to amuse t to study ts on tion.  to realize ally importanto soil fertility. “It may be doubted  a part in tory of te in er, tion of Vegetable Mould tion of orms (1881), rivances by isilised byInsects (1862), Expressions of tions in Man and Animals (1872), s first day, ts of Cross and Self Fertilization in tableKingdom (1876)—a subject t came improbably close to Mendel’s oattaining anyts—and  book, t inPlants. Finally, but not least, ed muc to studying tter of private interest to ed t certain pal frailties among y in ree.

    Daren ime, but never for On tof Man. y besto  evolutionary ty o  embracing ions. ed, tminster Abbey—next to Neer.

    Dar really gain ance until tain eur, tion  came someists ely in Europe rediscovered Mendel’s aneously. It c to claim Mendel’sinsig a rival made it noisily clear t t really lay tenmonk.

    t ready, but not quite, to begin to understand   is fairly amazing to reflect t at tietury, and for some years beyond, t scientific minds in t actuallytell you where babies came from.

    And t science  an end.

 26 THE STUFF OF LIFE

    IF YOUR tO parents  bonded just o t be s  bonded in a preciselytimely manner, you  be s  done likes before tely, you  be here.

    Pusime and tral debts begin to add up. Go back just eigions to about time t Cimely couplings your existence depends.

    Continue furto time of Sors earnestly excic material in a  ually and miraculously, result in you.

    At ty generations ago, ting on your beo1,048,576. Five generations before t, and ted couplings your existence depends. By ty generations ago, yourtotal number of forebears—remember, t cousins and aunts and otalrelatives, but only parents and parents of parents in a line leading ineluctably to you—is overone billion (1,073,741,824, to be precise). If you go back sixty-four generations, to time oftive efforts your eventual existencedepends o approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, otal number of people who have ever lived.

    Clearly somet may interest you tolearn, is t your line is not pure. You couldn’t be  a little incest—actually quitea lot of incest—albeit at a genetically discreet remove. itors inyour background, tive from your moted ant cousin from your fat, if you are in a partnersry, t t you are at some level related. Indeed, if you look around you on abus or in a park or café or any cro of tives. s to you t  once: “Me, too!” In t literal andfundamental sense we are all family.

    e are also uncannily alike. Compare your genes  99.9 percent t is inydifferences in t remaining 0.1 percent—“rougide base in every thousand,”

    to quote tisicist and recent Nobel laureate Joon—are y. Muc years of t, t. Otical. It is tions of ourgenomes—eacical, but not quite—t make us h as individualsand as a species.

    But ly is t, come to t, are genes?

    ell, start y-six little bundles of complexity, of y-ty-tions, every cell in yourbody—99.999 percent of t of cions are red blood cells, some immune system cells, and egg and sperm cells,  carry tic package.) Citutete set of instructions necessary to make and maintain you and are made of longstrands of ttle raordinary molecule on Eart has been called.

    DNA exists for just one reason—to create more DNA—and you  of it inside you:

    about six feet of it squeezed into almost every cell. Eacters of coding, enougo provide 103,480,000,000possible combinations, “guaranteed tobe unique against all conceivable odds,” in tian de Duve. t’s a lot ofpossibility—a one follo ake more t to print t figure,” notes de Duve. Look at yourself in t upon t t you are been trillion cells, and talmost every one of ted DNA, and you begin toappreciate just uff you carry around o a single fine strand, t to stretco t once or t again and again. Altogeto onecalculation, you may y million kilometers of DNA bundled up insideyou.

    Your body, in s, loves to make DNA and  it you couldn’t live. Yet DNA is notitself alive. No molecule is, but DNA is, as it  is “among tnonreactive, c molecules in ticistRicin. t is cigations and coaxed from t Neandertals. It also explainsook scientists so long to  ance so mystifyingly lo t of life itself.

    As a knoity, DNA  t   tyof tübingen in Germany. ance  recognize and called it nuclein (because itresided in t time, Miesctle more te its existence, butnuclein clearly remained on y-ter in a letter to y t sucs bey. traordinary insig one so far in advance of tific requirements t itattracted no attention at all.

    For most of t ury tion  terial—no a subsidiary role in matters of y. Itoo simple. It  four basic components, called nucleotides,  four letters. e tory of life ary alp? (t you do it in muc you create complexmessages s and dasdo anyt all, as far as anyone could tell. It just sat ty on command or fulfilling someotrivial task t no one  t of. ty, it ,o exist in proteins in the nucleus.

    t, t:

    teemed it in some important op of t kept turning up, like t in a murder mystery, in experiments. In tudies in particular, one involving terium and anoteriop infect bacteria), DNA betrayed an importance t could only beexplained if its role ral t alloed t DNA al to life,yet it  proteins side t ing their assembly.

    No one could understand ting messages to teins. ts as an interpreter bet is a notable oddity of biology t DNA and proteins don’t speak t four billion years t double act, andyet to mutually incompatible codes, as if one spoke Spanisher hindi.

    to communicate tor in translates information from a cell’s DNA into terms proteinscan understand and act upon.

    ory, ill a very long anding t, or indeed almost anyto do y.

    Clearly tation, and itude to undertake it.  Morgan, and in 1904, just four years after timely rediscovery of Mendel’sexperiments s and still almost a decade before gene ed th chromosomes.

    Co see under turn of tietury it rongly suspected t traits,but no one knew his.

    Morgan c of study a tiny, delicate fly formally called Drosoper, but more commonly kno fly (or vinegar fly, banana fly, orgarbage fly). Drosopo most of us as t frail, colorless insect t seems too droory specimens fruit flies ainvery attractive advantages: t almost noto tles,  from egg to productive parenten days or less, and  four c tly simple.

    orking out of a small lab ( Columbia University in Neiculous breeding and crossbreeding involving millions of flies (onebiograp is probably an exaggeration), eaco becaptured iny variations ininance. For six years tried to produce mutations by any means tion and X-rays, rearing t ligly in ovens, spinning trifuges—but notable mutation—a fly te eyes ratants o generate useful deformities, alloo track a trait tions. By suc tions beticular ceristics and individual cually proving to more or lesseveryone’s satisfaction t c t of inance.

    t level of biological intricacy: tic genesand t composed trickier to isolate and understand. Aslate as 1933,  convinced t genes even existed. As Morgan noted at time, to itious.” It may seemsurprising t scientists could struggle to accept ty of sometal to cellular activity, but as allace, King, and Sanders point out in Biology: t rarest text), oday al processes suc and memory. e kno  kno  time you could pluck one from your body and take it audy o many of Morgan’s peers as t scientists today migure a strayt and examine it under a microscope.

    ainly true  someted ingcell replication. Finally, in 1944, after fifteen years of effort, a team at titute in Mantan, led by a brilliant but diffident Canadian named Osricky experiment in eria ly infectious by crossing it  DNA  certainly ive agent in y. trian-born bioc Ered quite seriously t Avery’s discovery wo Nobel Prizes.

    Unfortunately, Avery itute, a strong-ein ent named Alfred Mirsky,  Avery’s  ies at titute in Stock to give Avery a Nobel Prize. Avery by time y-six years old and tired. Unable to deal ress and controversy, ion and never  near a lab again. But ots elseructure of DNA.

    ting person in t certainly ec, to crack tructure of DNA.

    Pauling ermining tecture of molecules and allograpec o peering into t of DNA. In an exceedingly distinguis  tructureriple  a double one, and never quite got on t track. Instead, victory fellto an unlikely quartet of scientists in England eam, often  onspeaking terms, and  part novices in the field.

    Of t to a conventional boffin omic bomb. tis—Crick of type t bloype t produce coal.

    t unconventional of tson, an American prodigy  least part of tion for some of tered ty of C fifteen. y-ttaco tory in Cambridge. In1951, y-trikingly lively  appearsin pograpo be straining to attacself to some po just out of frame.

    Crick, till  a doctorate, son’s account ed as blustery, nosy, cative, impatient o sion, and constantly in danger ofbeing asked to go elsewrained in biocry.

    tion  if you could determine to see—correctly, as it turned out— did  did. to ac tle  tely necessary. As atson coucobiograp  be solved my learning any cry.” t actually assigned to one point o stop it. atson ensibly mastering t of crystallograpo be completing a tion of large molecules.

    Altson enjoy nearly all t in popular accounts for solving tery of DNA, t on experimental itors, ts of uitously,” in tactful orian Lisa Jardine. Far a least at tKing’s College in London, ilkins and Franklin.

    tiring figure, almost to t of invisibility. A1998 PBS documentary on tructure of DNA—a feat for o overlook irely.

    t enigmatic cer of all tering portrait,atson in ted Franklin as a o irritate  tractive and mige stunning aken even a mild interest in clot in ted all expectations. Seven use lipstick, ed in s.”

    1 images in existence of tructure of DNA,acallograpeced by Linus Pauling.

    Crystallograpo map atoms in crystals (allograp DNA molecules o get good results from t to ilkins’s perennial exasperationso share her findings.

    If Franklin   be altoget King’s in treated dazzles modern sensibilities (actually any sensibilities).  alloo t instead o take tilitarian c even atson conceded opof tantly pressed—at times actively o ss rio of men o get a peek at tcies, like respect. “I’m afraid o adopt—let’s say a patronizing attitudetoing institution and t s s s locked away.

    t ilkins and Franklin did not get along  t atson and Crick seem to ed to t. Altson respassing raterritory, it   altogeto act in a decidedly queer ss DNA definitely o all t it . toilkins’s presumed dismay and embarrassment, in ted a mocknotice around tment t said: “It is  regret t  is  Dr. M.h.F.

    ilkins e helix.”

    tcome of all t in January 1953, ilkins sson Franklin’simages, “apparently  .” It atement to callit a significant er atson conceded t it “ . . . it mobilizedus.” Armed antelements of its dimensions, atson and Crick redoubled ts. Everyto go t one point Pauling e to a conference in England at o correct tions t   tained at Idle in Need,on t oo liberal of temperament to be alloo travel abroad. Crickand atson also  good fortune t Pauling’s son tly kept t of any nes and setbacks athome.

    Still facing ty of being trumped at any moment, atson and Crick appliedto t  DNA y Press canceled publication of ter Crick and ilkinscomplained about its cerizations, uitouslyful.quot; tions quoted above are after atson softened s.

    components—called adenine, guanine, cytosine, and t ticular  into tsonand Crick o   toget famous in modern science—consisting of metal plates boltedtogeted ilkins, Franklin, and t of to have a look.

    Any informed person could see at once t t question a brilliant piece of detective  t of Franklin’s picture.

    tion of Nature carried a 900-icle by atson and Crick titled“A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.” Accompanying it e articles byilkins and Franklin. It ful time in t about toclamber to top of Everest o be cro of life ly overlooked. It received a smallmention in the News Chronicle and was ignored elsewhere.

    Rosalind Franklin did not s t ty-seven in 1958, four years before ted. Nobel Prizes are nota certainly arose as a result of co X-rays t ed t Franklin rarely en steppedcarelessly in front of a beam. Oserity, t least isfaction of living just longenougo see ed. he died in 1955.

    atson and Crick’s discovery  actually confirmed until t took over ty-five years for our model of DNA to go from being onlyrato being very plausible . . . and from to being virtually certainlycorrect.”

    Even so, ructure of DNA understood progress in genetics , and by 1968ticle titled “t as t as,”

    suggesting—it  it is so—t tics  anend.

    In fact, of course, it  beginning. Even no deal about DNA tand, not least  actually seem to do anything.

    Ninety-seven percent of your DNA consists of not long stretcs prefer to put it. Only rand do you find sections t control and organize vital functions. thecurious and long-elusive genes.

    Genes are notructions to make proteins. tain dull fidelity. In te and notrifle monotonous. But combine te ce variety.

    Put all togeto continue tap sympence knohe human genome.

    An alternative and more common o regard tructionmanual for ters and tructions for making proteins. tructions are ten are called codons, and tters are knoters of tic alp—consist of tides mentioned a page or two back:

    adenine, tosine. Despite tance of ances are not made of anytic. Guanine, for instance, is tuff tabounds in, and gives its name to, guano.

    taircase orted rope ladder: ts of tructure are made of a typeof sugar called deoxyribose, and teps) are formed by tosine and tters appear as youmove up or doitutes t .

    Noicular brilliance of DNA lies in its manner of replication.  is time toproduce a nerands part do, and eaco form a nenerside along astrand pairs up ide, eacrand serves as a template for tion of a necrand. If you possessed just one strand of your o tc tnerships:

    if topmost rung on one strand  topmost rung on tcrand must be cytosine. ork your ide pairings, and eventually you   t nature does it really quickly—inonly a matter of seconds, .

    Most of time our DNA replicates iful accuracy, but just occasionally—aboutone time in a million—a letter gets into tidepolymorpo biocs as a “Snip.” Generally tretcectable consequence for the body.

    But occasionally t leave you predisposed to some disease,but equally t confer some sligage—more protective pigmentation, forinstance, or increased production of red blood cells for someone living at altitude. Over time,t modifications accumulate in botions, contributing totinctiveness of both.

    tion is a fine one. too many errors andt function, but too fe sacrifices adaptability. A similar balance mustexist betability in an organism and innovation. An increase in red blood cells can  ions to move and breat additional red cells also too many,and “it’s like pumping oil,” in temple University ant Cz.

    t’s . to live at itude get increased breat pay for it s. By sucuralselection look after us. It also o explain  let you become too different—not  becoming a new species anyway.

    t difference beted for by our Snips.

    Nocorrespondence, but t part, be in different places. Add morepeople to t yet more Snips in yet more places. For every one ofyour 3.2 billion bases, some coding in t position. So not only is it o refer to “t in a sense  even  t equally, in t David Cox, “you could sayall  , too.”

    But o explain  DNA  startsto get a little unnerving, but it does really seem t to perpetuate DNA.

    t of our DNA commonly called junk is largely made up of clumps of letterst, in Ridley’s  for t t gettingted.”

    2Most of your DNA, in ot devoted to you but toitself: you are a mac, not it for you. Life, you  s tobe, and DNA is  so.

    Even ions for making genes—ists put it—it is not necessarily ioning of the organism in mind.

    One of t genes ranscriptase, does do is make itpossible for retroviruses, suco slip unnoticed into tem.

    In ote considerable energies to producing a protein t doesnot is beneficial and sometimes clobbers us. Our bodies  to do sobecause t. e are vessels for toget  proportion yet found in any organism—don’t do anyt all, as far asell, except reproduce themselves.

    All organisms are in some sense slaves to t’s ures more or less beyond counting are prepared to die in ting. to breed, to disperse one’s genes, is t poure.

    As S it: “Empires fall, ids explode, great sympten,and be is a single instinct t demands satisfaction.” From an evolutionary pointof vie a reo pass on our genetic material.

    Scientists  most of our DNA doesn’t doanyted findings began to turn up. First in Germany and tzerland researcs t produced curiouslyunbizarre outcomes. In one took t controlled t of a mouse’seye and inserted it into t fly. t  it migerestingly grotesque. In fact, t only made a viable eye int fly, it made a fly’s eye. ures t  sor for 500 million years, yet could sic material as if ters.

    tory  to certain cells of flies, and t it as if it heir own.

    2Junk DNA does  is tion employed in DNA fingerprinting. Its practicality for tally by Alec Jeffreys, a scientist at ty of Leicester in England. In 1986Jeffreys udying DNA sequences for genetic markers associated able diseases  to to ly for solving criminal cases-and so it proved. A young baker cenced to terms in prison for the murders.

    Over 60 percent of  turns out, are fundamentally t flies. At least 90 percent correlate at some level to tail, if only tcer field,researc ode udying essentially t appeared,  of blueprints.

    Furtence of a clutcer control genes, eacingt of a section of tic (from a Greek icalDNA, knoo do—t tretc of ting is t instruct t for all organisms in muche same way.

    Interestingly, t of genetic material and  is organized doesn’t necessarily, oreven generally, reflect tication of ture t contains it. e y-six c some ferns  evolved of all complex animals, y times as muc is more genetically splendorous tor of five.

    Clearly it is not t aken a big  lately. Until recently it t  least 100,000 genes, possibly a good many more, but tnumber ically reduced by t results of t,  t came as botment.

    It  tention t genes ed in anynumber of ies. Exultant scientists  various times declared toy, scy, criminality,violence, alcoing and erminism udy publisending tically inferior at matics. In fact,  notyou is so accommodatingly simple.

    ty in one important sense, for if you  determined or propensity to diabetes or to baldness or any otinguisrait, t ively easy anyo isolate and tinker unately, ty-five tioning independently is not nearly enougo produce ty t makes a satisfactory cooperate. A feon’s disease, andcystic fibrosis, for example—are caused by lone dysfunctional genes, but as a rule disruptivegenes are  by natural selection long before tlytroublesome to a species or population. For t part our fate and comfort—and even oureye color—are determined not by individual genes but by complexes of genes ’s   all fits toget beproducing designer babies anytime soon.

    In fact, t years ted matters endedto become. Even t turns out, affects t a man’s beardgroance, is partly a function of  sex (because t sex produces a testosterone surge). In tists made an even moreprofound discovery al genes fromembryonic mice, and t only often born  sometimes uallyfitter ters ampered ain importantgenes royed, it turned out, otepping in to fill t ne not so good for our understanding of  introduced an extra layer of complexity to somet and anyway.

    It is largely because of ting factors t cracking t at once as only a beginning. t  it, is likea parts list for t tells us  says not ’s needed noing manual—instructions for o make it go.

    e are not close to t point yet.

    So no is to crack teome—a concept so novel t termproteome didn’t even exist a decade ago. teome is tion tcreates proteins. “Unfortunately,” observed Scientific American in teome is muced the genome.”

    t’s putting it mildly. Proteins, you ems; as many as a  any moment. t’sa lot of activity to try to figure out. orse, proteins’ beions are based notsimply on try, as  also on to function, a protein mustnot only s, properly assembled, but t also befolded into an extremely specific serm t’s used, but it’s amisleading one as it suggests a geometrical tidiness t doesn’t in fact apply. Proteins loopand coil and crinkle into s are at once extravagant and complex. t owels.

    Moreover, proteins are (if I may be permitted to use a abolic circumstance, to be ped, glycosylated, acetylated, ubiquitinated, farneysylated,sulfated, and linked to glycopidylinositol anc else. Often ittakes relatively little to get t appears. Drink a glass of ificAmerican notes, and you materially alter types of proteins at large in yoursystem. t feature for drinkers, but not nearly so icists o understand w is going on.

    It can all begin to seem impossibly complicated, and in some is impossiblycomplicated. But ty in all too, oo an equallyelemental underlying unity in tiny, deft canimate cells—tive efforts of nucleotides, transcription of DNA into RNA—evolved just once and ayed pretty ure. Aste Frencicist Jacques Monod put it, only : “Anyt is true of E.

    coli must be true of eleps, except more so.”

    Every living tion on a single original plan. As s—eacy arcments, adaptations, modifications, andprovidential tinkerings stretceclosely related to fruit and vegetables. About ions t take place in abanana are fundamentally tions t take place in you.

    It cannot be said too often: all life is one. t is, and I suspect o be, t profound true statement there is.

    PARt  VItO USDescended from t us  it is not true, but if it is,let us pray t it  becomegenerally known.

    -Remark attributed to ter afterDarion o her

 27 ICE TIME

    I all a dream.

    t sun inguisarsDid wander . . .

    —Byron, “Darkness”

    IN 1815 on t mountainnamed tambora exploded spectacularly, killing a s blast andassociated tsunamis. It  volcanic explosion in ten timest St.  to sixty tom bombs.

    Ne travel terribly fast in times ran a small story—actually a letter from a merc—seven monter t. But by time tambora’seffects . ty-six cubic miles of smoky as, and grit mospo cool.

    Sunsets  blearily colorful, an effect memorably captured by tist J. M.

    . turner, ly ted under anoppressive, dusky pall. It  inspired the Byron lines above.

    Spring never came and summer never summer. Crops everyed typy-five teen o Deats continued until June andalmost no planted seed ock died or o be prematurelyslaug  certainly t for farmers inmodern times. Yet globally temperature fell by only about 1.5 degrees Fa. Eartural tat, as scientists e instrument.

    teentury le Ice Age, as it ted all kinds of ry events—frost fairs on ting races along Dutc are mostly impossible no y ury geologists for beingsloo realize t t balmy compared  muc fair.

    t t. tteredic reindeer in tranded in improbable places—and ten came up ive but not terriblyplausible explanations. One Frencuralist named de Luc, trying to explain eboulders o rest one flanks of tains, suggestedt per t of apopgun. term for a displaced boulder is an erratic, but in teentury to apply more often to to the rocks.

    t Britis Arted t if James ton, ted Szerland,  once triations, telltale strand lines  point to passing ice ss. Unfortunately, ton  a traveler.

    But even ter at s, ton rejected out of  up mountainsides byfloods—all ter in t make a boulder float, ed out—and becameone of t to argue for ion. Unfortunately ice, andfor anotury most naturalists continued to insist t ttributed to passing carts or even ts.

    Local  peasants,  uncontaminated  by  scientific ortter, uralist Jean de Cier told tory of rylane ter o talking about tter matter-of-factly told  te some distance a tones ion,  ation: ‘transported t glacier extended in t as far as town of Bern.’ ”

    Cier  scientific gat  friends uralist, Louis Agassiz, ial skepticism came to embrace,and eventually all but appropriate, theory.

    Agassiz udied under Cuvier in Paris and nouralory at tel in Szerland. Anotanistnamed Karl Scually t to coin term ice age (in German Eiszeit ), in1837, and to propose t to s ice  just t over muc ion.  Agassiz es—to regret it as Agassizincreasingly got t for imacy, was heory.

    Cier liketer enemy of , yetanot least partly in mind ages in scientific discovery: first, people deny t it is true; t it isimportant; finally t the wrong person.

    At all events, Agassiz made t to understand tion,  everyo ts of t Alpine peaks, often apparently una eam  to climbtered an unyielding reluctance to accept heories.

    urged o return to ise, fossil fis Agassiz was a man possessed by an idea.

    Agassiz’s t in Britain, uralists en couldn’t grasp t ice in bulk exerts. “Could scratc be due to ice ?” asked Roderick Murcone at one meeting,evidently imagining t and glassy rime. to  incredulity at ts  for so mucy, endorsed t tion t ice could transportboulders presented “sucies” as to make it uny’s attention.

    Undaunted, Agassiz traveled tirelessly to promote o ameeting of tision for t of Science in Glasgo  Cy ofEdinburgion conceding t t be some general merit in t t certainly none of it applied to Scotland.

    Lyell did eventually come round.  of epip amoraine, or line of rocks, near ate in Scotland, ood if one accepted t a glacier ed, Lyell t  of t rating time for Agassiz. ly accusing  of ier  speak to est living geologist offered support of only t tepid and vacillating kind.

    In 1846, Agassiz traveled to America to give a series of lectures and t last found teem  -rate museum, tive Zoology. Doubtless it  tled in Neain sympaterminable periods ofcold. It also  six years after  scientific expedition to Greenlandreported t nearly t semicontinent  like t one imagined in Agassiz’s t long last, o find a realfolloral defect of Agassiz’s t assistance  to come from an unlikely quarter.

    In tions in Britain began to receive papers onatics, electricity, and otific subjects from a James Croll of Anderson’sUniversity in Glasgoions in Eart migated ice ages,  standard. So t a touc, urned out t Croll  an academic at ty, but a janitor.

    Born in 1821, Croll greed only to teen.  a variety of jobs—as a carpenter, insurance salesman, keeper of atemperance el—before taking a position as a janitor at Anderson’s (noy ofStrato do muco pass many quiet evenings in ty library teacronomy, atics, and to produce a string of papers, icular empions ofEart on climate.

    Croll  to suggest t cyclical c, fromelliptical (o elliptical again, mig and retreat of ice ages. No one  before to consider an astronomicalexplanation for variations in Eart entirely to Croll’s persuasivetain began to become more responsive to tion t at some formertime parts of ty and aptitude  tland and widely honored:

    y in London and of ty of St. Andrews, among much else.

    Unfortunately, just as Agassiz’s t last beginning to find converts in Europe, aking it into ever more exotic territory in America. o find evidence forglaciers practically everyually  ice inguised. None of ted supported suced country ature greil ly beloy.  it necessary to appoint to take hisplace.

    Yet, as sometimes ly out of faser e t ts may noed ation.”

    Part of t Croll’s computations suggested t t recent ice ageoccurred eigedt Eart of dramatic perturbation mucly t.

    it a plausible explanation for  migime except t in tin Milankovitcial motionsat all—raining—developed an unexpected interest in tter. Milankovitc t t it  but t it oo simple.

    As Eart is subject not just to variations in ts orbit, but also to rs in its angle of orientation to ts tilt and pitcing tensity of sunligcicular it is subject to tion, knos obliquity,precession, and eccentricity, over long periods of time. Milankovitcbe a relationsy  t lengtely 20,000,40,000, and 100,000 years, but varying in eaco a fe t determining ts of intersection over long spans of time involved a nearlyendless amount of devoted computation. Essentially Milankovitco  tion of incoming solar radiation at every latitude on Earted for three ever-changing variables.

    of repetitive toil t suited Milankovitcemperament. For t ty years, even ables of  noed ina day or ter. tions all o be made in ime, but in1914 Milankovitc a great deal of t o ion as a reservist in t most of tfour years under loose  in Budapest, required only to report to t of ime   prisoner of war in ory.

    tual  outcome  of   scribblings icalClimatology and tronomical tic Cc ttionsary  people  it  led to t eorologist, ladimir K?ppen—fatectonic friend Alfred egener—le, and rat.

    to be found in cool summers, not brutal ers.

    If summers are too cool to melt all t falls on a given area, more incoming sunligive surface, exacerbating t and encouraging yetmore snoo fall. tend to be self-perpetuating. As snoedinto an ice s, ting more ice to accumulate. As t G is not necessarily t of sno causes icess but t t snole, lasts.” It is t t an ice age could startfrom a single unseasonal summer. tover snos  and exacerbates t. “toppable, and once tmoves,” says McPhee. You have advancing glaciers and an ice age.

    In t dating tecists o correlateMilankovitc cycles es of ice ages as tcions increasingly fell out of favor. o prove t . By time, e Joo find a geologist or meteorologist y.” Not until t of a potassium-argon meting ancient seafloor sediments were ed.

    tc enougo explain cycles of ice ages. Many otors are involved—not least tion of tinents, in particular t tly understood. It ed,  if you  t and inescapable ice ages. e are very lucky, itappears, to get any good  all. Even less ood are tive balminess erglacials. It is mildly unnerving toreflect t tory—t of farming, tionof toics and ing and science and all t—aken placeypical patcerglacials ed as little as eigs ten th anniversary.

    t is, ill very muc’s just a some of t period of glaciation, aroundty t 30 percent of tenpercent still is—and a furt is in a state of permafrost. ters of all ter on Eart botuation t may be unique in Eartory. t ters t glaciers even in temperate places suce natural, but in fact it is a most unusual situation for t.

    For most of its ory until fairly recent times ttern for Earto be  ice anyed about fortymillion years ago, and o not bad at all. Ice ages tend to evidence of earlier ice ages, so tcuregro it appears t  seventeen severe glacial episodes in t 2.5million years or so—t coincides us in Africafolloed culprits for t epocion of t disrupting air flos. India, once an island, ers into t forty-five million years, raising not only t alsot tibetan plateau be tonly cooler, but diverted  made to more susceptible to long-term c five millionyears ago, Panama rose from ting ts betlantic, and cterns of precipitation across at least  ofAfrica,  of trees and go looking for a nehe emerging savannas.

    At all events, inents arranged as t appears t iceerm part of our future. According to Jo fifty more glacialepisodes can be expected, eacing a haw.

    Before fifty million years ago, Eart o be colossal. A massive freezing occurred about 2.2 billion years ago, follo—so large t some scientists are noo t occurred as tion is more popularly knoh.

    “Snoions. tbecause of a fall in solar radiation of about 6 percent and a dropoff in tion (orretention) of greenially lost its ability to o its . Itbecame a kind of all-over Antarctica. temperatures plunged by as muc. tire surface of t may o  itudes and tens of yards tropics.

    t tes iceevery asfirmly t t er someosynt t, but as youo peer t, ice quickly becomes opaque and after onlya feies ed. One is t alittle ocean er did remain exposed (pera  spot); t maybe t it remained translucent—a condition t does sometimes ure.

    If Eart question of  ever got  s so muc t it ay frozen forever. It appearst rescue may en interior. Once again, ed totectonics for alloo be  s of  and gases t melted tmosperestingly, tburst—time event of life’s ory. In fact, it may not ranquil as all t. As Eart probably   o raise o ts of skyscrapersand rainfalls of indescribable intensity.

    t all tubeo deep oceanvents undoubtedly  on as if not all ot ever o c entirely. It ime ago and at tage  don’t know.

    Compared burst, t times seem pretty smallscale, but of course tandards of anyto be found onEartoday. t,  a rate of about four  a year.

    a t must o be ts could benearly anding at t high.

    Be more ice, allest mountain summits poking tinents sagged under t of so mucertill rising back into place. ts didn’t just dribble outboulders and long lines of gravelly moraines, but dumped entire landmasses—Long Islandand Cape Cod and Nantucket, among ot along. It’s little  geologists before Agassiz rouble grasping tal capacity to reworklandscapes.

    If ice ss advanced again,  t Prince illiam Sound in Alaska, one of t glacial fields in Nort by trongest eartinent. It measured 9.2 on ter scale. Along t line, ty feet. t, in fact, t it made er slos of pools in texas. And  did tburst  all. tsoaked it up and kept on moving.

    For a long time it  t o and out of ice ages gradually, over  t  been toice cores from Greenland e for somet is found t comforting. It s for most of its recentory Eartable and tranquil place t civilization  ratly betal chill.

    to big glaciation, some toe rapidly, but tly plunged back into bitter cold for a t knoo science as ticplant t to recolonize land after an ice s  it  so s t average temperatures leapt again, by as mucy years,erribly dramatic but is equivalent to exce ofScandinavia for t of terranean in just tures teen degrees in ten years, drastically altering rainfall patterns and groions. t tling enouged planet. today tty well unimaginable.

    is most alarming is t ural ply rattle Earter. As Elizabet, ing in ternal force, or even any t emperature back and fortly, and as often, as to be to be, s and terrible feedback loop,”

    probably involving tions of tterns of ocean circulation, butall tood.

    One t ter to t tiness (and ty) of nortream to so trying to avoid a collision. Deprived of tream’s itudes returned to cions. But t begin toexplain veer as before. Instead, ranquility knoime in which we live now.

    to suppose t tretcic stability s much longer.

    In fact, some auties believe t   before. It isnatural to suppose t global  as a useful counterendency to plunge back into glacial conditions.  ed out, uating and unpredictable climate “t t todo is conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it.” It ed, y t first seem evident, t an ice age migually be induced by arise in temperatures. t a sligion rates andincrease cloud cover, leading in titudes to more persistent accumulations of snow.

    In fact, global o pohern Europe.

    Climate is t of so many variables—rising and falling carbon dioxide levels, ts of continents, solar activity, tately c it is asdifficult to compres of t as it is to predict ture. Mucake Antarctica. For at least ty million years after it settled over tarctica remained covered in plants and free of ice. t simply s havebeen possible.

    No less intriguing are te dinosaurs. tisStepes t forests itude of togreat beasts, including tyrannosaurus rex. “t is bizarre,” es, “for sucitude is continually dark for t titudes suffered severe ers. Oxygen isotope studies suggest t te around Fairbanks, Alaska,  te Cretaceous period as it isnoyrannosaurus doing t migrated seasonally over enormousdistances or it spent mucs in tralia—time s orientation—a retreat to  possible. o survive in sucions can only be guessed.

    One t to bear in mind is t if ts did start to form again for  more er for to draime. t Lakes, less lakes of Canada—t to fuel t ice age. tedby it.

    On t pory could see us melting a lot of ice rat. If all ts melted, sea levels of a ty-story building—and every coastal city in ted. Morelikely, at least in t term, is t Antarctic ice s. In t fiftyyears ters around it igrade, and collapses ically. Because of tty quickly—by beteen and ty feet on average.

    traordinary fact is t  knoeamy . Only one tain: we live on a knife edge.

    In tally, ice ages are by no means bad ne. tuous ric freser lakest provide abundant nutritive possibilities for  as aspur to migration and keep t dynamic. As tim Flannery ion you need ask of a continent in order to determine te of its people: ‘Did you in mind, it’s time to look at a species of ape t trulydid.

 28 THE MYSTERIOUS BIPED

    JUSt BEFORE CMAS 1887, a young Dutcor cra, in tc Indies, ention of finding t h.

    1Several traordinary about to begin   o t ally, and noted t e tomake tentional. omist by training ology. Nor o suppose t t Indies ed t if ancient people o be found at all, it ed landmass, not in tive fastness of an archipelago.

    Dubois o t Indies on notronger ty ofemployment, and t Sumatra  in ant  is most extraordinary in allt  he was looking for.

    At time Dubois conceived o searced of very little: five incomplete Neandertal skeletons, one partial jaainprovenance, and a ly found by rail acliff called Cro-Magnon near Les Eyzies, France. Of tal specimens, tpreserved ting unremarked on a s ingrock from a quarry in Gibraltar in 1848, so its preservation  unfortunatelyno one yet appreciated  er being briefly described at a meeting of tarScientific Society, it  to terian Museum in London, urbed but for an occasional liging for over ury. t formaldescription of it  ten until 1907, and t named illiam Sollas“ency in anatomy.”

    So instead t for t early  to t unfittingly, as it  anoto alocal sceacerest in all tural. to  credit teact, sa ype of e ers of dispute for some time.

    Many people refused to accept t tal bones  at all. August Mayer,a professor at ty of Bonn and a man of influence, insisted t tco of Belgium.

    merely ting inGermany in 1814 and o to die. .   tally  up a cliff, divested s, sealed t of soil. Anot, puzzlingover tal’s ed t it  of long-term froo reject ties en o embrace t singular possibilities. At about time t Dubois ting out for Sumatra, a skeleton found in Périgueux lydeclared to be t of an Eskimo. Quite  Eskimo France ably explained. It ually an early Cro-Magnon.)It  t Dubois began   instead used fifty convicts lent by tcies. For a yeartra, transferred to Java. And team, for Dubois ed tes—found a section of ancient rinil skullcap. t of a skull, it s tinctly nonures but a mucAntus (later ceco Pitus) anddeclared it today  as us.

    t year Dubois’s ually complete t lookedsurprisingly modern. In fact, many ants tis modern, and o do is an erectus bone, it is unlike any oto deduce—correctly, as it turned out—t Pit.  a scrap of cranium and one toote skull, we.

    In 1895, Dubois returned to Europe, expecting a triumpion. In fact,  nearlyte reaction. Most scientists disliked bot manner in of an ape, probably a gibbon, andnot of any early o bolster edanatomist from ty of Strasbourg, Gustav Sco make a cast of the skullcap.

    to Dubois’s dismay, Sc received far moresympatic attention tten and folloure tour inered, Dubois o an undistinguision as a professor of geology at ty of Amsterdam and for t to let anyone examine hisprecious fossils again. he died in 1940 an unhappy man.

    Mean, tralian-born omy at ty of tersrand in Jo a small butremarkably complete skull of a cact face, a lo—a natural cast of tone quarry on t at a dusty spot called taung. Dart could see at once t taung skull  of aus like Dubois’s Java Man, but from an earlier, more apelike creature. s age at t Australopit to Nature, Dart called taung remains “amazingly ed tirely nee the find.

    ties o Dart to Dubois.

    Nearly everyt  Dart, it appears—annoyed t ably presumptuous by conducting ts in Europe. Even ralopition, combining as it didGreek and Latin roots. Above all, ed wisdom.

    at least fifteen million years ago in Asia. If  oday o announce t ral bones of just didn’t fit  was known.

    Dart’s sole supporter of note  Broom, a Scottisologist of considerable intellect and cric nature. It ance, to do en.

    ing dubious anatomical experiments on ractable patients. ients died, o dig up for study later.

    Broom , and since  in Souto examine taung skull at first  once t it ant as Dart supposed and spoke out vigorously on Dart’s be to no effect. Fort fifty years t taung c textbooks didn’t even mention it. Dart spent five years o publis. Eventually  to publisogetinue ing for fossils). For years, today recognized as one oftreasures of ant as a paper on a colleague’s desk.

    At time Dart made  in 1924, only four categories of ancient als, and Dubois’s JavaMan—but all t  to change in a very big way.

    First, in Ced Canadian amateur named Davidson Black began to poke around ata place, Dragon Bone  was locally famous as a ing ground for old bones.

    Unfortunately, ratudy, tomake medicines. e can only guess us bones ended up as asort of C of bicarbonate of soda. te ime Black arrived, but  alone quitebrilliantly announced thropus pekinensis, which quickly became knownas Peking Man.

    At Black’s urging, more determined excavations aken and many otunately all  ter ttack on Pearl ingent of U.S. Marines, trying to spirit t of try, ercepted by t tes  bones, t t t  t hem.

    In time, back on Dubois’s old turf of Java, a team led by Ralpe of t Ngandong. Koenigs for a tactical error t oo late. en cents for every piece of o tically smaso small ones tomaximize their income.

    In tified tralopitransvaalensis, Parantype as ypes o comfortably overa o add to ten  by a succession of differentnames as paleoants refined, reions. SoloPeople us, and, finally, plainus .

    In an attempt to introduce some order, in 1960 F. Clark y ofCions of Ernst Mayr and otting to just tralopitionalizingmany of tus. For a time orderprevailed in the hominids.

    2It didn’t last.

    After about a decade of comparative calm, paleoant and prolific discovery, ed yet. t by some to be t by ot tobe a separate species at all. ter, ecessor, as  ofaustralopitillotogety types of erature today.

    Unfortunately, almost no ts recognize ty.

    Some continue to observe tralopite genus called Parantill ot praegens into Australopito a neion, iquus, but most don’t recognize praegens as a separatespecies at all. tral auty t rules on ted is by consensus, and ten very little of t.

    A big part of tage of evidence. Since time,several billion ributing a little geneticvariability to total ock. Out of t number, tandingof ory is based on ten exceedingly fragmentary, of per it all into truck if you didn’t mind2 in ts members, traditionally called ures(including extinct ones) t are more closely related to us to any surviving cogeties believe t cans sh humans and chimps in a subfamily called homininae.

    t is t tures traditionally called ,  on t designation.) he aue sunerfamily which includes us.

    attersall, tor ofant tural ory in Neal world archive of hominid and early human bones.

    tage  be so bad if tributed evenly time andspace, but of course t. ten in t tantalizing fashion.

    us ed territory from tlantic edge of Europe to t if you brougo life everyus individual wence we can vouc fill a school bus.

    s of even less: just tial skeletons and a number of isolated limbbones. Somet-lived as our oion  certainly not be kno all.

    “In Europe,” tattersall offers by ration, “you’ve got ed to about 1.7 million years ago, but t a million years beforet remains turn up in Spain, riginent, and tanot a erribly muc’s from tary pieces t you’re trying to  tories of entire species. It’s quite atall order. e really tle idea of tions species— deserve to beregarded as separate species at all.”

    It is tc makes eacinct fromall tens of tons distributed at regular intervals torical record, t emerge instantaneously, as t gradually out of otingspecies. to a point of divergence, ties are, so tit becomes exceedingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, to distinguise us from an early  is likely to be bots can often arise over questions of identification from fragmentary remains—deciding, for instance, s a female Australopithecus boiseior a male homo habilis.

    ittle to be certain about, scientists often o make assumptions based on ots found nearby, and ttle more t guesses. As Alan alker andPat Se tool discovery uremost often found nearby, you  early ools ly madeby antelopes.

    Perter typifies tary bundle of contradictionst  rates and in different directions—time, er apeness. Some auties don’t believeegory at all. tattersall and z dismiss it as amere “ebasket species”—one into ly s.”

    Even t species don’t agree on  never came to anything.

    Finally, but perure is a factor in all tists uraltendency to interpret finds in t most flatters tature. It is a rare paleontologistindeed  to getexcited about. Or as Joatedly observes in t isremarkable en t interpretations of nes discoverer.”

    All ts, of course, and nobody likes to argue more ts. “And of all ts per s Java Man —a book, it may be noted,t itself devotes long, o attacks on ticular thors’ former close colleague Donald Johanson. here is a smallsampling:

    In our years of collaboration at titute unate, reputation for unpredictable and s, sometimes accompanied by tossing around of books orly to hand.

    So, bearing in mind t ttle you can say about ory t  bedisputed by someone some certainly   whis:

    For t 99.99999 percent of our ory as organisms, ralline as cually not tory of c seven million years ago something major happened.

    A group of neropical forests of Africa and began to move abouton the open savanna.

    tralopit five million years t ral is from tin for “soution in text to Australia.) Australopities, someslender and gracile, like Raymond Dart’s taung curdy and robust, but all fe is  even t successful ories many times longer t achieved.

    t famous ralopit eam led by Donald Johanson.

    Formally knoy”) 288–1, ton became more familiarlyknoer tles song “Lucy in ted ance. “S ancestor, tween ape andhuman,” he has said.

    Lucy iny—just t tall. Sterof some dispute. Sly a good climber, too. Muc entirely missing, so little could be said  s suggested it  books describe Lucy’s skeleton as being 40percent complete, t it closer to ural ory describes Lucy as te. television seriesApe Man actually called it “a complete skeleton,” even  .

    A  many of ted. If you  femurfrom a specimen, you don’t need t to knos dimensions. Strip out all tbones, and total you are left  is called a on. Even by ting standard, and even counting test fragment as a full bone, Lucyconstituted only 28 percent of a on (and only about 20 percent of a full one).

    In ts . Jo ed t—more total, and a fairly important oo, one tribute  to deal  all events, rat Lucyt isn’t even actually kno sive size.

    ter Lucy’s discovery, at Laetoli in tanzania Mary Leakey found footprints leftby t is t—ts ralopition. ter  for a distance ofover ty-ters.

    tural ory in Ne of t depicts life-sized re-creations of a male and a female African plain. t  t suggest  striking feature oft t arm protectively around t is atender and affecting gesture, suggestive of close bonding.

    tableau is done ion t it is easy to overlook tion tvirtually everytprints is imaginary. Almost every external aspect of tional. e can’t even say t t ain t tralopito beaustralopites.

    I old t t because during t toppling over, but Ian tattersall insists  tory isuntrue. “Obviously  kno ride measurements t togeto be touc e an exposed area, so t’s o give tly worried expressions.”

    I asked roubled about t of license t aken in reconstructingt’s alions,”  believe o deciding details like   toli figures. e simply can’t knoails of  ure and make somereasonable assumptions about t to do again, I t sligures  humans.

    they were bipedal apes.”

    Until very recently it  olicreatures, but noies aren’t so sure. Altain pures (teetance) suggest a possible link bets of tralopitomy are more troubling. In tinct attersall and Scz point outt tion of t of t not of tralopit line bet ed an australopitoan ape femur  p. t,t not only  our ancestor, s even much of a walker.

    “Lucy and  locomote in anytstattersall. “Only ravel bets o do so by tomies.” Joaccept t of ten, “rees as it is for modern humans.”

    Matters greill in 2001 and 2002 ing family at Laketurkana in Kenya and called Kenyantyops (“Kenyan flat-face”), is from about time as Lucy and raises ty t it or and Lucy betugenensis, t to be 6 millionyears old, making it t  found—but only for a brief  of C  bones) found a  7 million years old,  it   an early ape andtures and quite primitivebut t, and t.

    Bipedalism is a demanding and risky strategy. It means refaso a fullload-bearing instrument. to preserve trengt becomparatively narro immediate consequences and one longer-term one. First, it means a lot of pain for any birtly increased dangerof fatality to moto get tig must be born ill small—and  care, wurn implies solid male–female bonding.

    All tic enougellectual master of t, but  t have been enormous.

    3Absolute brain size does not tell you everytimes even mucs and  rouble outting tract negotiations. It isrelative size t matters, a point t is often overlooked. As Gould notes, A. africanus imeters, smaller t of a gorilla. But a typical africanus male  at 600 pounds (Gould pp. 181-83).

    So  of ts? Probablyt ters fromto tlantic, diverting s aic and leading tot of an exceedingly situdes. In Africa, turning jungle into savanna. “It  somuc Lucy and  ts,” Joten, “but t tsleft them.”

    But stepping out onto t t ter, but could also be seen better. Even no preposterously vulnerable in to name is stronger, faster, and toottack, modern ages. e rategies, ands. e are turet can  a distance. e can to be physically vulnerable.

    All ts o ion of a potentbrain, and yet t seems not to ralopit all. t gro t tools.  is stranger still is t  forabout a million years tools, yet tralopitook advantage of tec hem.

    At one point bet appears types coexisting in Africa. Only one, ed to last: s beginning about teionsralopit ted for sometralopit andgracile alike, vaniseriously, and possibly abruptly, over a million years ago. No oneknot Ridley, “e them.”

    Conventionally, ture about erally “man tween, and depending on wer, us, and ecessor.

    o use tools, albeit very simple ones. It ive creature, muc its brain  50 percentlarger t of Lucy in gross terms and not mucionally, so it ein of its day. No persuasive reason o groime it  big brainsand uprigly related—t t out of ts necessitatedcunning nerategies t fed off of or promoted braininess—so it er ted discoveries of so many bipedal dullards, to realize t t connection bet all.

    “to explain attersall.  of t devour 20 percent of its energy. tively picky in , your brain  complainbecause it  toucuff. It s glucose instead, and lots of it, even if it means s-ces: “tant danger of beingdepleted by a greedy brain, but cannot afford to let t o death.” A big brain needs more food and more food means increased risk.

    tattersall tionary accident. ep if you replayed tape of life—even if you ran it backonly a relatively s o te unlikely” tmodern hem would be here now.

    “One of t ideas for o accept,”   tion of anytable about our being  is part of ourvanity as  end to tion as a process t, in effect, o produce us. Even ants tended to t up until tly as 1991, in textbook tages of Evolution, C.

    Loring Brace stuck doggedly to t, ackno one evolutionary deadend, t australopited a straigon of development so far, t on to a younger, fres seems certain t many of trails t didn’t come to anything.

    Luckily for us, one did—a group of tool users,  of no, it existed from about 1.8 million years ago to possibly as recently as ty thousandor so years ago.

    According to tus is tcame before er; everyt came after  to , t to use fire, t to fasools, t toleave evidence of campsites, t to look after tus remely smembers long-limbed and lean, very strong (mucronger telligence to spread successfully over o otus must errifyingly po, and gifted.

    Erectus or of its day,” according to Alan alker of Penn StateUniversity and one of ties. If you o look one in tmigo be  “you  connect. You’d be prey.”

    According to alker, it   the brain of a baby.

    Altus  for almost a century it tered fragments—not enougo come even close to making one full skeleton. So it until an extraordinary discovery in Africa in t its importance—or, at t, possible importance—as a precursor species for modern ed.

    te valley of Lake turkana (formerly Lake Rudolf) in Kenya is no productive sites for early  for a very long time no one  to look t  edover t  mig. A teamco investigate, but at first found note one afternoon KamoyaKimeu, Leakey’s most renoo yield muc t ofrespect for Kimeu’s instincts and to tonis found a nearly complete usskeleton. It  nine and tructure,” says tattersall, in a  precedent. turkana boy was “very empically one of us.”

    Also found at Lake turkana by Kimeu s t clue t us eresting and complext. t of an agonizing condition called aminosis A, old us first of all t us ing meat.

    Even more surprising  t of gro sign of tenderness inion.

    It  us skulls contained (or, in tained) a Broca’s area, a region of tal lobe of ted h speech.

    C ure. Alan alker t y to enable speec ted about as wellas modern cably Richey could speak.

    For a time, it appears, us   seems to y.

    taken literally, suggests t some members of t about time as, or even slig Africa. tists to suggest t per in Africa at all, but in Asia—o say miraculous, as no possible precursor species side Africa. to appear, as it aneously. And anyill o explain  to Africa so quickly.

    ternative explanations for us managedto turn up in Asia so soon after its first appearance in Africa. First, a lot of plus-or-minusinggoes into ting of early ual age of t timates or t ty of time for African erects to find to Asia. It is also entirely possible t oldererectus bones a discovery in Africa. In addition, tes could be ogether.

    Nos. Some auties don’t believe t turkana finds are us at all. t alturkana skeletons ensive, all otus fossils are inconclusively fragmentary. As tattersall and JeffreyScz note in Extinct  of turkana skeleton “couldn’t be compared ed to it because ts  knourkanaskeletons, tus and  temporaries. Some auties insist oncalling turkana specimens (and any oter.

    tattersall and Scz don’t believe t goes nearly far enoug er“or a reasonably close relative” t spread to Asia from Africa, evolved intous,and t.

    is certain is t sometime ivelymodern, uprig Africa and boldly spread out across muce rapidly, increasing ty-five miles a year onaverage, all s, and ots andadapting to differences in climate and food sources. A particular mystery is  side of ty no even drierin t. It is a curious irony t tions t prompted to leave Africa o do so. Yet someo find to the lands beyond.

    And t, I’m afraid, is ory of is a matter of long and rancorous debate, as we scer.

    But it is  all of tionary jostlingsover five million years, from distant, puzzled australopito fully modern ure t is still 98.4 percent genetically indistinguisures your distant ancestors left be out to take over the world.

 29 THE RESTLESS APESOME

    tIME ABOUt A million and a ten genius of ted took one stone and carefully used itto s eardrop-s it  piece of advanced technology.

    It o existing tools t soon otor’s lead andmaking ually ed t seemed to do littleelse. “tattersall. “terally can’t move  stepping on t’s strange because te intensive objects to make. It .”

    From a sattersall took do, perand a  inc its  point, and  to me. It epping-stone. As a fiberglass cast it anzania, y-five pounds. “Itely useless as a tool,” tattersall said. “It o lift itadequately, and even t o try to pound anyt.”

    “  used for then?”

    tattersall gave a genial s tery of it. “No idea. It must ance, but we can only guess w.”

    tools, after St. Ac examples eentury, and contrastools kno Olduvai Gorge intanzania. In older textbooks, Oldoools are usually s, rounded, ones. In fact, paleoants noend to believe t tool part of Oldoones, wting.

    Noarted to move out of Africa sometools ecools, too. t distances. Sometimes took unso make into tools later on. ted to technology.

    But altools  Africa, Europe, and ern andcentral Asia, t never been found in t. this is deeply puzzling.

    In tologist named ools from t. terly direction across Europe and t to ty of modern-dayCalcutta and Banglades Asia andinto Cools   far beyond t, so oneteco t and t abandon it?

    “t troubled me for a long time,” recalls Alan tralian NationalUniversity in Canberra. “t round t of Africa in t . Yet to accept t you must believe t so far ecever reason, gave it up. It o say t.”

    As it turned out, t deal else to be puzzled about, and one of tpuzzling findings of all  of tback ofAustralia. In 1968, a geologist named Jim Boed caugicking out of a crescent-sype knote ime, it  ralia for no more t Mungo was anyone doing in sucable place?

    ting,  tat, a dozen miles long, full of er and fis groves of casuarina trees. to everyone’s astonis, turnedout to be 23,000 years old. Oted to as much as 60,000 years.

    ted to t of seeming practically impossible. At no time since arose on Eartralia not been an island. Any  o start a breeding population, aftercrossing sixty miles or more of open er   aconvenient landfall aed tralia’s nort—t ofentry—o a report in tional Academy ofSciences, “t people may  arrived substantially earlier than 60,000 years ago.”

    tions t can’t be ansomost antexts, t people could even speak 60,000 years ago,mucs of cooperative efforts necessary to build ocean- andcolonize island continents.

    “t a  kno ts of people before recordedory,” Alan told me ury ants first got to Papua Neerior, in some of t inaccessible terrain on eartpotatoes. S potatoes are native to Sout to Papua Ne kno est idea. But ain is t people raditionally t, andalmost certainly sion.”

    ts of to term preservation of e goatee and an intent but friendly manner. “If it  for a feiveareas like  Africa le. And le. t oneancient  300,000 years ago. Betnam—t’s adistance of some 5,000 kilometers—t tal in Uzbekistan.” ’s not a o  ion t you’ve got a feive areas for Rift Valley in Africa and Mungo ralia, and very little in bet’s notsurprising t paleontologists rouble connecting ts.”

    traditional to explain s—and till accepted by ty of people in t  ed of us,  as soon astime, as ttledin different regions, ts furto distinctive types—into Java Manand Peking Man in Asia, and halensis inEurope.

    ter, liture—tors of every one of us alive today—arose on tingouto t predecessors. Quite ter of disputation. No signs of slaug autiesbelieve tcompeted tors may alsoributed. “Pers tattersall. “telling. tainty is t we are .”

    t modern  ourselves,curiously enoug almost any ot is odd indeed, as tattersallnotes, “t t recent major event in ion—t obscure of all.” Nobody can even quite agree  at about120,000 years ago in t t not everyone accepts t tattersall and Sczmaintain t “ our species still as definitiveclarification.”

    t undisputed appearance of ern Mediterranean, aroundmodern-day Israel,  even trinkaus and S-to-classify and poorlyknoals ablisype of tool kitknoerian, o borrow.

    No Neandertal remains  tool kits turn up allover t aken te. It is also kno Neandertals and modern ed in some fasens of t. “e don’t knoime-sually lived side by side,” tattersall says, but tinued o use Neandertal tools—y. No lesscuriously, Acools are found in t scarcely exist in Europe until just 300,000 years ago. Again, ake tools ery.

    For a long time, it  tals before tinent,eventually forcing to its ern margins,  tofall in tinct. In fact, it is no Cro-Magnons  ofEurope at about time t. “Europe tyempty place in tattersall says. “t ered eac often, even y of t it came at a time knoo paleoclimatology as tellier interval, o yet another long spell of punishing cold.

    ever it  dreo Europe, it  ther.

    In any case, t Neandertals crumpled in tition from nerains against t least a little. Neandertals  tougens of tions t no modern side a feists and explorers  of temperatures routinely fell to 50 degreesbelohern England.

    Neandertals naturally retreated from t of it, but even so t  least as bad as a modern Siberian er. to be sure—aNeandertal y  as a species tly resilient and practically indestructible. t least a , over an area stretcar to Uzbekistan,wty successful run for any species of being.

    Quite ters of disagreement anduncertainty. Rigil tietury ted antal  ooped, sessential caveman. It  t prodded scientists to reconsidertologistnamed Camille Arambourg took refuge from tairplane. As  tire burst from t, and tipped suddenly, striking er in Paris  for an X-ray of icedt ebrae ly like tooped and al.

    Eitive or Neandertal’s posture , it ter. Neandertal vertebrae  simian at all. It cterly als—but only some of time, it appears.

    It is still commonly  Neandertals lacked telligence or fiber to compete onequal terms inent’s slender and more cerebrally nimble ne from a recent book: “Modern ralized tage [tal’s considerably ier pter clotter firesand better ser; meanuck  requiredmore food to sustain.” In otors t o survivesuccessfully for a housand years suddenly became an insuperable handicap.

    Above all t is almost never addressed is t Neandertals  ly larger ters for Neandertals versus 1.4 formodern people, according to one calculation. t for alt. I believe I speak trut nowion is suc made.

    So out and adaptable andcerebrally  muced)ans pers of an alternativetiregional  ion inuous—t just as australopito ime  us is, on t a separate speciesbut just a transitional p usforebears in C European us, and so on.

    “Except t for me tus,” says t’s a term s usefulness. For me, us is simply an earlier part of us. I believe onlyone species of  Africa, and t species ishomo sapiens.”

    Opponents of tiregional t it, in t instance, on t itrequires an improbable amount of parallel evolution by  t distant islands of Indonesia, iregionalism encourages a racist vie antook a very longtime to rid itself of. In t named Carleton Coon of ty of Pennsylvania suggested t some modern races  sources oforigin, implying t some of us come from more superior stock tably to earlier beliefs t some modern races suche African “Bushmen”

    (properly tralian Aborigines ive thers.

    ever Coon may personally , tion for many people  someraces are inly more advanced, and t some ially constitutedifferent species. tinctively offensive noable places until fairly recent times. I ime-Life Publications in 1961 called ticles in Lifemagazine. In it you can find sucs as “Rly as25,000 years ago and may or of to t of ly descended fromcreatures t o homo sapiens.

    tically (and I believe sincerely) dismisses t  and accounts for ty of ion by suggesting t t of movement back and fortures and regions. “tosuppose t people only  in one direction,”  t certainly sic material terbreeding. Ne replace tions, tuation to e peoples for t time. “t meetings of different species, but of th some physical differences.”

    you actually see in ts, is a smootinuoustransition. “tralona in Greece, dating from about 300,000 yearsago, t ter of contention among traditionalists because it seems in some  in ot  t  to find in species t han being displaced.”

    One t ters erbreeding, but t isnot at all easy to prove, or disprove, from fossils. In 1999, arcs in Portugal found ton of a c four years old t died 24,500 years ago. ton  ain arcal, ceristics: unusually sturdy legbones, teetinctive “stern, and (t everyone agrees on it)an indentation at ture exclusive toNeandertals. Erik trinkaus of ason University in St. Louis, ty onNeandertals, announced to be a  modern alsinterbred. Otroubled t tal and modern features more blended. As one critic put it: “If you look at a mule, you don’t  endlooking like a donkey and the back end looking like a horse.”

    Ian tattersall declared it to be nots ttals and moderns, butdoesn’t believe it could ed in reproductively successful offspring.

    1“I don’t kno are t different and still in the samespecies,” he says.

    itists urned increasingly to genetic studies,in particular t knoococ by t ty of California at Berkeley  it ures t lend it a particular convenience as a kind of molecularclock: it is passed on only t doesn’t become scrambled ernal DNA ion, and it mutates about ty times faster t easier to detect and folloic patterns over time. By tracking tes of mutation t tic ory and relationships of whole groups ofpeople.

    In 1987, team, led by te Allan ilson, did an analysis of mitoc tomically modern  140,000 years and t “all present-day  population.” It o tiregionalists. But to look a little more closely at ta. One of t extraordinary points—almost too extraordinary to credit really— tudy ually African-Americans, o considerablemediation in t fe tesof mutations.

    By 1992, tudy ed. But tecic analysiscontinued to be refined, and in 1997 scientists from ty of Municoextract and analyze some DNA from tal man, and time tood up. tudy found t tal DNA rongly indicating t tic connection betals and modern o multiregionalism.

    1One possibility is t Neandertals and Cro-Magnons  numbers of ciont commonly arises  not quite identical conjoin. In te t an offspring ively useless number of c, a sterile mule.

    te 2000 Nature and otions reported on a Socy-ted t all modern  100,000 years and came from a breeding stock of no more teror of teitute/Massacts Institute of tecer for Genome Researcmodern Europeans, and per tly as 25,000 years ago.”

    As legenetic variability—“ty in one social group of fifty-five cire ion,” as one auty  it—and this would explain why.

    Because ly descended from a small founding population, t been timeenougo provide a source of great variability. It seemed a pretty severebloo multiregionalism. “After tate academic told ton Post,“people  be too concerned about tiregional ttleevidence.”

    But all of te capacity for surprise offered by t Mungo people of ern Ne tralian National University reported t t ofted at 62,000 years—and t to be“genetically distinct.”

    to tomically modern—just like you andme—but carried an extinct genetic lineage. oc s Africa in t past.

    “It turned everyt.

    to turn up. Rosalind iongeneticist at titute of Biological Antudying betaglobingenes in modern people, found ts t are common among Asians and tralia, but  in Africa. t genes, sain,arose more t in Africa, but in east Asia—long before modern o account for to say t ancestors ofpeople noingly,t gene—to speak—turns up in modern populations inOxfordshire.

    Confused, I  to see  titute, on spent udent days. ralian, from Brisbane originally,  at time.

    “Don’t kno s be t on moresomberly, “tic record supports t-of-Africa  ters, icists prefer not to talk about. ts ofinformation t o us if only and it, but  yet.

    e’ve barely begun.” So be dra on ence of Asian-origingenes in Oxfordsells us ot tuation is clearly complicated. “All  tage is t it is very untidy and  really know why.”

    At time of our meeting, in early 2002, anotist named Bryan Sykes  produced a popular book called ters of Eve in oco be able to trace nearly all living Europeans back to afounding population of just seven ers of Eve of title—ime knoo science as to eacailed personal ory. (“Ursula  carefully, as if not quitecertain  give  foro popularize a difficult subject,” sfully. “And te possibility t .” S on more intently:

    “Data from any single gene cannot really tell you anytive. If you follooc ake you to a certain place—to an Ursula or tara or if you take any ot of DNA, any gene at all, and traceit back, it akeyou someplace else altogether.”

    It tle, I gat of London and finding teventually it ends at Jos, and concluding from t anyone in London musttland. t  equally to  omap tes. “No single gene is ever going to tell you tory,” she said.

    So genetic studies aren’t to be trusted?

    “Orust tudies  trust are t people often attaco them.”

    S-of-Africa is “probably 95 percent correct,” but adds: “I t of a disservice to science by insisting t it must be one to turn out to be not so straigarting to suggest t tiple migrations and dispersals indifferent parts of tions and generally mixing up t’s never going to be easy to sort out.”

    Just at time, ts questioning ty of claimsconcerning t DNA. An academic ing in Nature ed ologist, asked by a colleague op and announced t it ed ture article, “largeamounts of modern ransferred to tuseless for future study. I asked  t  certainly aminated already,” s aminate it. Breataminate it. Most of ter in our labs aminate it. e are all so get a reliably clean specimen you o excavate it in sterileconditions and do tests on it at te. It is trickiest t tocontaminate a specimen.”

    So sreated dubiously? I asked.

    harding nodded solemnly. “Very,” she said.

    If you and at once   is to be found a little beyond to t of Nairobi. Drive out of ty on toUganda, and t of startling glory h a hang glider’s view of boundless, pale green African plain.

    t Rift Valley, ectonic rupture t is setting Africa adrift from Asia. y milesout of Nairobi, along t site called Olorgesailie,  lake. In 1919, long after tnamed J. . Gregory ing ts ctered ones t  sites of Acool manufacture t Iantattersall old me about.

    Unexpectedly in tumn of 2002 I found myself a visitor to traordinary site. Iogeting some projects run by ty CAREInternational, but my s, knoerest in  volume, ed a visit to Olorgesailie into the schedule.

    After its discovery by Gregory, Olorgesailie lay undisturbed for over team of Louis and Mary Leakey began an excavation t isn’tcompleted yet.  te stretco ten acres or so, o 200,000 years ago. today tool beds are sered from t of tsbeneatin lean-tos and fenced off o discourage opportunisticscavenging by visitors, but otools are left just hem.

    Jillani Ngalli, a keen young man from tional Museum  as guide, told me t tz and obsidian rocks from ones from t a pair of mountains in tance, in opposite directions fromte: Olorgesailie and Ol Esakut. Eac ten kilometers, or six miles, ao carry an armload of stone.

    to sucrouble only did ty stones considerable distances to t, pere. tions revealed t t axes were brougo be resharpened.

    Olorgesailie ory; one t stayed in business for a million years.

    Various replications  tricky and labor-intensive objects tomake—even ice, an axe ake o fas, curiously, t particularly good for cutting or casks to  ion t for a million years—far, farlonger tence, mucinuouscooperative efforts—early people came in considerable numbers to ticular site to makeextravagantly large numbers of tools t appear to less.

    And us because tes,  t. But to base a conclusion. Despite over sixty years of searcy of Olorgesailie. ime t t appears t elsewo die.

    “It’s all a mystery,” Jillani Ngalli told me, beaming happily.

    t 200,000 years ago arted to become t and c is today. Butby time t to get itsfirst real master race, he same again.

 30 GOOD-BYE

    IN t just about time t Edmond op tling do eventually in Isaac Ne four oneius, far out in t  coast of Madagascar.

    tten sailor or sailor’s pet  of tless bird rusting nature and lack of leggy zip made it a ratible target for bored young tars on sion prepared it for tic and deeply unnerving behavior of human beings.

    e don’t knoances, or even year, attending t moments of t dodo, so  kno contained a Principia or one t  t more or less time. You o find a better pairing of occurrences to illustrate ture of t is capable of unpickingt secrets of t time pounding into extinction, for nopurpose at all, a creature t never did us any  even remotely capable ofunderstanding o it as . Indeed, dodos acularlys on insig is reported, t if you y you o catc it to squao see wwas up.

    ties to t end quite ty years aftert dodo’s deator of t titution’s stuffed dodo ly musty and ordered it tossed on abonfire. t ime tence,stuffed or ot, tried to rescue t could save onlyits  of one limb.

    As a result of tures from common sense,  noirely sure people suppose—aions by “unscientific voyagers, tings, and a fetered osseous fragments,” in t aggrieved eenturynaturalist rickland. As Strickland fully observed, ers and lumbering saurapods t lived intomodern times and required noto survive except our absence.

    So  lived on Mauritius,  not tasty, and-ever member of te s rapolations from Strickland’s “osseousfragments” and t remains s it tle over tall and about tance from beak tip to backside. Being flig nested onts eggs and cragically easy prey for pigs, dogs, and monkeysbrougo tsiders. It inct by 1683 and  certainlygone by 1693. Beyond t  not of course t  see itslike again. e knos reproductive s and diet,  made in tranquility or alarm. e don’t possess a single dodo egg.

    From beginning to end our acquaintance e dodos lasted just seventy years. tis a breaty period—t must be said t by t in our ory er of irreversible eliminations.

    Nobody knoe ructive  it is a fact t over t fiftytended to vanisenastonishingly large numbers.

    In  America,  ty  genera  of  large  animals—some very large indeed—disappearedpractically at a stroke after tinent beten andty toget aboutters of ter arrived -ional capabilities. Europe and Asia, ures.

    Australia, for exactly te reasons, lost no less t.

    Because ter populations ively small and tionstruly monumental—as many as ten million mammot to lie frozen in tundra of norties t be otions,possibly involving climate cural ory put it: “terial benefit to ingdangerous animals more often to—teaksyou can eat.” Ot may  criminally easy to catcralia and tim Flannery, “t knowenougo run away.”

    Some of tures t  acular and ake a littlemanaging if till around. Imagine ground slot could look into an upstairsortoises nearly t, monitor lizards ty feet long baskingbeside desert ern Australia. Alas, t. today, across types of really y (a metric tonor more) land animals survive: eleps, r for tens of millionsof years ive and tame.

    tion t arises is  times are in effect part of a single extinction event— we may well be.

    According to ty of Cologist David Raup, te ofextinction on Eart biological ory  every four yearson average. According to one recent calculation, inction no level.

    In tralian naturalist tim Flannery, noruck by tle o kno manyextinctions, including relatively recent ones. “o be gapsin t recorded at all,” old me w him in Melbourne a year or so ago.

    Flannery recruited er Scen, an artist and felloralian, and togetly obsessive quest to scour tions to find out, , and  four yearspicking ty specimens, old draten descriptions—ings of every animal te, and Flannery e t raordinary bookcalled A Gap in Nature, constituting t complete—and, it must be said, moving—catalog of animal extinctions from t three hundred years.

    For some animals, records  nobody imes for years, sometimes forever. Steller’s sea coure related tot really big animals to go extinct. It ruly enormous—anadult could reacy feet and ons—but ed  only because in 1741 a Russian expedition o be sures still survived in any numbers, te and foggy Commander Islandsin the Bering Sea.

    ion uralist, Georg Steller, he animal.

    “ook t copious notes,” says Flannery. “er of itsals—to do ts texture. e  always so lucky.”

    teller couldn’t do self. Already ed to tinction, it ogety-seven years of Steller’s discovery ofit. Many ot be included because too little is kno them.

    tless crake,at least five types of large turtle, and many ot to us except as names.

    A great deal of extinction, Flannery and Scen discovered,  been cruel or on,but just kind of majestically foolis on a lonely rockcalled Stepempestuous strait bet kept bringing range little birds t it .

    tifully sent some specimens to ton. tor greed because tless less perc off at once for t by time t uffed museum species of tepless  no.

    At least en, it turns out,  mucter at looking afterspecies after t. take t. Emerald green,   striking andbeautiful bird ever to live in Norts don’t usually venture so far norticed—and at its peak it existed in vast numbers, exceeded only by t t  by farmers and easilyed because it flocked tig of flying up at t), but turning almost at once to check on fallen comrades.

    In ten in teentury, Cedly empties a sgun into a tree inw:

    At eac tion of to increase; for, after a fes around ted near me, looking doered companions symptoms of sympatirely disarmed me.

    By tietury, tlessly edt only a feivity. t one, named Inca, died in tiZoo in 1918 (not quite four years after t passenger pigeon died in tly stuffed. And  it.

    is bot intriguing and puzzling about tory above is t Peale  did not ate to kill tter reason t itinterested o do so. It is a truly astounding fact t for t time t intensely interested in t likely toextinguishem.

    No one represented tion on a larger scale (in every sense) terRot banking family, Rotrange and reclusive fello tring,in Buckingure of ually hree hundred pounds.

    ural ory and ed accumulator of objects. rained men—as many as four  a time—to every quarter of toclamber over mountains and  of neicularly t fleed or boxed up and sent back toRotate at tring, ants exively logged andanalyzed everyt came before tant stream of books, papers, andmonograpural ory factoryprocessed ure to tific archive.

    Remarkably, Roting efforts  extensive nor tgenerously funded of teentury. t title almost certainly belongs to a slig also very isor named ing objects t  a large oceangoing so sail time, picking up s, animalsof all types, and especially s  passed toDarudy.

    scientific collector of  regrettably leterested in temptingly vulnerable environment Eart produced. Millions of years of isolation o evolve 8,800 unique species of animals and plants. Of particular interest toRotinctive birds, often consisting of very smallpopulations ining extremely specific ranges.

    tragedy for many  t only distinctive, desirable, andrare—a dangerous combination in t of circumstances—but also often breakinglyeasy to take. ter koa fincrees, but if someone imitated its song it s coverat once and fly door er ts cousin t only one  forRotion. Altoget intensivecollecting, at least nine species of  it may have been more.

    Roto capture birds at more or less any cost.

    Ot or named AlansonBryan realized t  t tbird t ed t th“joy.”

    It  age to fatime ed ifit  bit intrusive. In 1890, Neate paid out over one ies for eastern mountain lions even t  turesinction. Rigil tates continued to paybounties for almost any kind of predatory creature. est Virginia gave out an annual collegesco  dead pests—and “pests” erpretedto mean almost anyt  gro as pets.

    Perrangeness of times te of ttle Bacive of ted States, ts unusually t its population numbers, never robust, graduallydil by toget unseen for many years.

    te birding ents, in edlocations, came across lone survivors just t. t t t was ever seen of Bachman’s warblers.

    to exterminate ralia, bountiesasmanian tiger (properly ture inctive“tiger” stripes across its back, until sly before t one died, forlorn and nameless, in aprivate  zoo in 1936. Go to tasmanian Museum today and ask to see t of to live into modern times—and all tograp surviving t rash.

    I mention all to make t t if you o look after lifein our lonely cosmos, to monitor w is going and keep a record of w  che job.

    But remely salient point: . As far as ell,  t’s an unnerving t t and its  niganeously.

    Because  looking after t,  ly, or may soon, or may never, and ed tivities  tinctions a . By to some six ’s extinctions of all types—plants, insects, and so on as  to ed Nations report of 1995, on t totalnumber of knoinctions in t four  sligly over 650 for plants— certainly anunderestimate,” particularly o tropical species. A feerpreters textinction figures are grossly inflated.

    t is,  kno  knoed doingmany of t knoions  ture.   t to do iton, and only one species of being capable of making a considered difference. Edward O.

    ilson expressed it y in ty of Life: “One planet, oneexperiment.”

    If t is t o be o attain any kind of life in to be quite anac. As  only tence but also ty to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of omake it better. It is a talent we o grasp.

    e  tion of eminence in a stunningly s time. Be is, people ivities—ed for only about 0.0001 percent of Eartory. But surviving foreven t little une.

    e really are at t all. trick, of course, is to make sure , almost certainly, han lucky breaks.