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ISSUE 45 NOVEMBER 2016

$6.95 (INCL. GST) NZ $7.90 (INCL. GST)

AUSTRALIA

WHAT REALLY GOES ON AT

KILLER WHALE SPECIAL!

WILD WEATHER FACTS!

How they RULE the

oceans (take that,
Mr Great White!)

The DEADLY physics

of this summer's
bushfires

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Humpback breaching off

Ben Boyd National Park

EXPERTS IN THIS ISSUE

PAUL NICKLEN
Photographer
Nicklen has been documenting the
plight of our planets polar
regions for more than 20 years.
He has also been following the
fascinating hunting behaviour
of killer whales.
PAGE

MARTIN
SCHEUERMANN
Test pilot
The former military
pilot has spent over
a year of his life high
above the clouds. He
knows better than
anyone what a plane
has to be able to
withstand to be
approved.

58

PAGE

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magine all the juicy morsels of knowledge mankind

could have missed out on had British computer scientist
Tim Berners-Lee not woken up one morning in the late80s and thought: Hmm. An internet. Now theres a thing.
Alas, we may never have had the chance to experience
360-degree views of the Mars surface on an object that
fits into our pocket. Or learnt that the static you see on
dead TV screens is leftover radiation from the Big Bang
(my personal greatest ever internet fact). Or discover that
cats were so scared of cucumbers.
The internet distils encyclopedias into your finger tips,
libraries into the palm of your hand. Some estimates put
the internets storage capability at 1 million exabytes
(just one exabyte = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes).
Mind officially boggled.

34
.NICK CARD
Excavation leader
Archaeologists have come
across traces of a forgotten
civilisation on the Orkney
Islands. So far, only 10% of
the site has been unearthed.
PAGE

40

And so its debatable how many of us would have heard

about a mysterious, top-secret American military base
called Area 51 in the absence of the internet. It was in
1989 that a researcher by the name of Bob Lazar walked
into a Las Vegas TV station, claiming hed worked on
reverse-engineering extraterrestrial space craft at the
Nevada site and created the DNA for a conspiracy
theory monster that would eventually run rampant over
YouTube and the murkier plains of the web.
Area 51 sure is an intriguing, heavily guarded place,
one that the CIA only owned up to in 2013. Something
beyond the normal IS going there. This month, we
attempt to discover exactly what
Vince Jackson, Editor
Follow me on Twitter: @vince_jackson1

ON THE
COVER

ON THE
COVER

Secret military
base? Or could the

&2163,5$&<

08

34

theories about
Area 51
be true?

20

Test pilots reveal how safe an

aeroplane really is

40

Killer whales as youve never

seen them before!

68

Loud, fast and unpredictable:

DWUJTGUare a constant menace...

but how devastating can they be?

Does a new discovery mean that

history needs to be rewritten?

ON THE
COVER

58
4

What power do mysterious

proteins really have?

CONTENTS
NOVEMBER 2016
Why does this

JDVJLDQW
threaten Earth?
NATURE
20 The Secret Laws Of Bush Fires
How a spark becomes an inferno

58 The Mysterious World Of Orcas

What makes killer whales the rulers of the ocean?

WORLD EVENTS
What Really Goes On At Area 51
Inside the US militarys top-secret base

66 AR-15: Americas Nightmare

What makes this assault rifle so popular with mass killers?

74 Game Of Drones
How these eyes in the sky are revolutionising Hollywood

HISTORY
40 The Original Stonehenge
What the Ring of Brodgar reveals about our civilisation

30

78 Psychopaths Of World History

How to recognise them and what makes them so dangerous

THE HUMAN BODY AND MIND

50 Help! Im Bleeding
Experts explain what to do when blood starts flowing

68 How Much Dark Matter Is In My Body?

The secret chemistry of proteins

TECHNOLOGY
34 What Can My Holiday Flight Withstand?
Test pilots: pushing planes beyond their limits

54 Is Dubais Wonder Of The World Broken Beyond

Repair?

The Palm Islands

in Dubai: the bigger
the project,
the more

352%/(06

54

there are!

How the Gulf emirate has frittered away $10 billion

SCIENCE
30 Planet Nine: How Could We Miss It?
The terrifying powers of Planet Nine revealed

REGULARS
3 Experts In This Issue
Professional people offering their insights this month

6 Amazing Photo
A fascinating photo and the story behind it

90 Questions And Answers

ON THE
COVER

Amazing facts from science, technology and everyday life

96 And Finally
Think youve got it tough? Try being a puffin

98 Letters
Your views and questions aired

Subscribe & get

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Napoleon, Kennedy, Putin:

how a brain anomaly turns
leaders into monsters

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details on our brilliant moneysaving subscription deals!

AMAZING PHOTO

ALIVE
AGAIN AFTER

MINUTES
This photo shouldnt really exist.
Toddler Gardell Martin was feared
drowned but then he was
brought back to life

PHOTO: Lynn Johnson/NGS

arly March: as usual, two-year-old Gardell Martin

is playing with his siblings next to the stream
bordering the familys property in Pennsylvania.
But meltwater has turned the babbling brook into
a raging torrent. Gardell accidentally slips into the ice-cold
water and is quickly swept away out of sight and out of
reach of his brothers and sisters. When a neighbour finds
the boy 200 metres downstream, 35 minutes have passed:
hes freezing, doesnt have a pulse and isnt breathing.
A paramedic arrives and tries to resuscitate him, but
theres little hope. After more than 30 minutes in the water,
the chance that the toddler is still alive is next to zero.
When Gardell finally arrives at the paediatric wing of
the Geisinger Medical Centre in Danville, USA, Dr Frank
Maffei declares him to have been clinically dead for an
hour. The toddler is in cardiac arrest: his brain still shows
signs of life, but the other organs are no longer being
supplied with oxygen. Normally, a person can survive in
this state for just five minutes. Gardell has already hovered
in this grey area between life and death for more than an
hour. But Dr Maffei didnt give up hope: although all of the
monitors and perceived medical wisdom indicated that
a resuscitation attempt was futile, he persevered. I never
felt hopeless, says Dr Maffei. I thought, weve still got a
shot to save him. After 100 minutes, Gardell was defying
logic and the laws of medical science.
Suddenly, theres a beep. A heartbeat! A sign of life! I
can feel a pulse in his femoral artery! says Dr Maffei. The
first miracle albeit only a tantalising flicker. Gardells
heart is pumping oxygen through his small, pale body. But
the doctors arent celebrating just yet. Its far too early to
tell the parents, the doctor continues. The brain, heart and
kidneys are extremely sensitive to long interruptions to
their oxygen supply. Its likely that Gardell will have severe
mental and physical disabilities. That said, who knows
what will happen next: the boy passed beyond the limits of
medical knowledge a long time ago.
Surprisingly, the extreme coldness of the water actually
helped. Hypothermia imparts a degree of protection
from the detrimental effects of low blood flow and low
oxygen, explains Dr Maffei. It set off the brains survival
mechanism: the low temperature forces the metabolism
to shut down, meaning the brain can survive on just 30%
of its normal oxygen supply. Thats how he survived for 35
minutes. The CPR and warming of the body then allowed
the circulation to be maintained until the doctors felt a
heartbeat and Gardell opened his eyes. In my 23 years I
have not seen an hour and 41 minutes come back to this
degree of neurological recovery, says Dr Maffei. Against
all the odds, Gardell is now a perfectly healthy kid.

WORLD EVENTS
WHAT REALLY
GOES ON AT

Some say its a military base where top-secret

weapons are tested; others are convinced
its where the US government works on alien
technology and UFOs. But whos got it right?
What is Area 51s real purpose?

CASE#1
Project OXCART

ARE TOPSECRET
AIRCRAFT
RESPONSIBLE
FOR UFO
SIGHTINGS?

n terms of pure geography, the Area 51 military

installation is the perfect site to test secret
technology away from prying eyes. Nestled
behind a series of rugged Nevada desert
mountains, its not visible from any public road.
The lakebed at Groom Lake, a natural salt flat
on the north side of the facility, is an ideal strip
from which aircraft can take off and land. Even
the airspace above is restricted.
It was here at Groom Lake in 1955, in the early
period of the Cold War, that the story of Area 51
began with the development of the Lockheed U-2 spy
plane, a then-revolutionary craft designed to fly at
high-altitude (21,000m) while covertly gathering
intelligence, primarily from the Soviet Union.
But it was the testing of another ground-breaking
reconnaissance aircraft, the Lockheed A-12 (known
by its codename OXCART) from 1959 to 1962 that
kickstarted the expansion of Area 51 in terms of
size, personnel and reputation and propelled it
into the realms of UFO mythology.
The shape of OXCART was unprecedented, with
its wide, disk-like fuselage designed to carry vast
quantities of fuel, says Annie Jacobson, author of
An Uncensored History Of Americas Top Secret
Military Base. Commercial pilots cruising over
Nevada at dusk would look up and see the bottom
of OXCART whiz by at 2,000-plus mph (3,200km/h).
The aircrafts titanium body, moving as fast as
a bullet, would reflect the suns rays in a way
that could make anyone think, UFO.
Thanks to the advances made at Area 51,
military aircraft that once flew at a maximum
altitude of 12,000 metres could suddenly reach
18,000 metres, a move that coincided with an
increase in UFO sightings.
All up, 2,850 OXCART test flights originated from
Area 51. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jacobson
describes how commercial pilots who reported
strange lights in the sky to the FAA would be met by
FBI agents whod make them sign nondisclosure
f
b
h dd
f
l k

AREA 51
FACT
SHEET
OFFICIAL NAME
Air Force Flight Test Center,
Detachment 3 (AFFTC Det 3.)
LOCATION
Southern Nevada, 134km
north-northwest of Las Vegas
ELEVATION
1,360 m
SIZE
1,489 square kilometres
OPERATOR
United States Air Force
ACQUIRED
1955. Acknowledge by CIA in 2013
AIRSPACE
CLASSIFICATION
Restricted Area 4808 North (R-4808N)
RESEARCH
CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented
Information (TS/SCI)
CURRENT USES
Aircraft/weapons testing, technology
development, extraterrestrial
research (unconfirmed)

THE GUARDS RUSHED

OUT WITH THEIR
WEAPONS AND FORCED
US ALL TO LAY FACE
DOWN AT GUNPOINT IN
THE TARMAC

HOW CLOSE CAN YOU GET TO

AREA 51 WITHOUT BEING KILLED?

he warning couldnt be any clearer.

At the end of Groom Lake Road
a featureless dirt track leading
from Highway 375 drivers are met
by an ominous sign at the start of Area
51: Warning restricted area. Use of
deadly force authorised.
Area 51s military bases are obscured
from the road by mountains. Theres
no official entrance to the military
installations as such; there are no gates
or fences. Instead, a series of discreet
orange posts mark the beginning of Area
51. Meanwhile, a pair of camouflaged

Road are detected by magnetic sensors,

says Peter Merlin, an aeronautical
historian whos been researching Area 51
for 30 years. Each one sends an
electronic signal to the guard house,
alerting them so they know where youre
coming from and how fast youre making
progress down the road.
While Merlin warns that crossing the
invisible line marking Area 51s boundary
will result in arrest, a former security
guard at the site, Fred Dunham, claims
that breaching the border could have
more serious consequences. If they

a lesser-known entrance track known as

Rachel Gate NT TR Boundary North.
UFO expert Darren Perks, who was part
of the crew, said: The guards rushed out
with their weapons and forced us all to
lay face down at gunpoint in the tarmac.
We were all searched, had our phones,
wallets and IDs taken and the film
equipment taken. For three hours we lay
face down until the Lincoln County
Sheriffs arrived on scene.
SURE SIGN
The warning at
the entrance
to Area 51.

11

IN RECENT YEARS,
SEVERAL FORMER AREA
51 EMPLOYEES FILED
LAWSUITS AGAINST
THE US GOVERNMENT

12

CASE#4
Project Have Doughnut

HOW DID AMERICA

SECRETLY
TEST RUSSIAN
AIRCRAFT?

f you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not
fear the result of a hundred battles. The words of
ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu would
resonate with anyone employed at Area 51 in the late-1960s.
It was then that the US military managed to get its hands on
one of its foes most prized possessions; a MiG fighter plane.
And in an ironic twist considering the current political
climate, they owe one of their greatest coups to an Iraqi.
Enter Iraqi Air Force pilot Captain Munir Redfa, whose
conscience gets the better of him moments before a
bombing mission on a series Iraqi Kurd villages. Instead
of peppering innocent citizens with deadly napalm, as
ordered, Redfa re-routes his plane to Israel who then
secretly ship it to their US allies for investigation.
Its the ultimate catch for the US; for almost a decade
theyve been losing the aerial war in Vietnam. For every
MiG the US shoot down, theyre sacrificing nine F-4 fighters.
They quickly begin testing the plane under the project
codename Have Doughnut. We pretty well tore it down and
looked at everything, says former Area 51 radar specialist
Thornton TD Barnes. The radios, the hydraulics, the
engineseverything about this plane, we examined it.
But the results expose a shocking truth about those
Vietnam War aerial defeats. We realised that it wasnt
necessarily the planes, adds Barnes. It was that our
people didnt know how to fight.
Thus from this moment onwards, Area 51 becomes
a secret testing ground for training US pilots how to
defeat Soviet MiGs in a dogfight. And the base itself
grows in size with five more hangers constructed at
the south end of the Groom Lake site. The area above
the range is permanently made restricted airspace.

TESTING TIMES
Thanks to
a defecting Iraqi
pilot the US military

CASE#5 Declassified files

WHY DID THE CIA NOT ADMIT

AREA 51S EXISTENCE UNTIL 2013?

hursday August 15th, 2013, will rank

as a bitter-sweet date for conspiracy
theorists. The sweet: it was the day
the United States Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) finally declassified Area 51,
for the first time by officially admitting its
existence. The bitter: there were no
mention of UFOs, extraterrestrial
technology or alien autopsies.
What the public were treated to was
a sprawling 355-page document based
around the history of the U2 spy plane
from 1954 to 1974, which the National
Security Archive at George Washington
University had requested under the
Freedom of Information Act.
Most significant was that Area 51 was
referred to in name on 12 pages. The file
also included a line-drawn map (see right)
which showed Area 51 and Groom Lakes
location in relation to the surrounding
Mojave Desert and the not-so-secret
Nevada Test Site.
All previous mentions to Area 51 in
official documents had been redacted (i.e.
obscured by black ink), and anyone who
wanted to keep their job with the US

government wouldnt dare utter its name.

This, then, was a landmark moment.
Jeff Richelson, a senior research fellow
at the National Security Archive, says that
the long period of CIA secrecy about Area
51 was intriguing because so many people
worldwide were already aware of the
bases existence. Richelson argues that
the CIA must have made a conscious
decision to acknowledge the base,
and that many of the US agencies and
non-US governments involved in the U2
program would have had a say in the
declassification process.
There is a general inclination towards
secrecy, he says. As far as I can tell,
this is the first time something must have
gone to a high enough level to discuss
whether or not to formally acknowledge
Area 51s existence.
Former US presidents Bill Clinton and
George W Bush had previously made a nod
towards the location near Groom Lake,
without mentioning it by name as the CIA
did on that fascinating day in 2013.
Whether more secrets are divulged over
the coming years remains to be seen.

ANYONE WHO WANTED

TO KEEP THEIR JOB WITH
THE US GOVERNMENT
WOULDNT DARE UTTER
AREA 51S NAME

OUT IN THE OPEN

The CIA acknowledged Area 51
for the first time on a map
publicly released in 2013.

CASE#6 The
anti-gravity reactor

DID AREA 51
STAFF WORK
ON ALIEN
TECHNOLOGY?

y anyones standards, its a pretty unusual first

day at work. In 1988, physicist Bob Lazar is
summoned by phone call to be at McCarren
Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. From there, a plane
transports him to the Groom Lake military installation.
Bob waits for a bus with blacked-out windows to ferry
him to an underground facility known as S4, about 22
kilometres south. There, surrounded by armed guards,
Bob claims hes shown more than 100 blue-coloured
files which deal with UFOs and extraterrestrials.
It was very exciting because it seemed so
cloak and dagger to me, remembers Bob of his
introduction to the goings on at Area 51. I was sure
what I was working on would be pretty fascinating.
What an understatement. On his second visit to the
S4 bunker, Lazar is escorted to a hanger containing
a disc-shaped craft. It was absolutely smooth, he
says. About 40 feet [14 metres] wide and appeared
to have been made in one piece. It was one of nine
UFOs Lazar would eventually witness.
Lazar insists he was employed by the US military
over the following months to reverse-engineer UFO
craft, researching in particular a propulsion system
that harnessed gravity dubbed an anti-gravity
reactor. To do this, the UFO used element number
115, unknown on Earth because its impossible to
synthesize an element that heavy here on Earththe
substance has to come from a place where superheavy elements could have been produced naturally.
Lazar estimates the US government had collected
around 230 kilos of the alien material.
Lazar famously went public with his accusations
in November 1989 on KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, as a
form of life insurance after being threatened by a
government agent. There are, however, no shortage
of scientists and/or investigators ready to rubbish
Lazars outlandish story. Lazer claims to have degrees
from the California Institute of Technology and
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but a 1993
Los Angeles Times expos failed to turn up any
records of his attendance at either place. No
professors could remember Lazar, and there
were no photos of him. Physicist Dr David L. Morgan
says Lazars story violates a whole handful of
currently accepted physical theories.
Either way, Bob Lazar will always be remembered as
the guy who made Area 51 a household name before
his revelations, few people had ever associated the
Nevada site with UFOs or conspiracy theories.

15

D
E
T
C
I
R
T
S
E
ESS R

FOUR MEN SHARED A

KITCHEN AND BATHROOM.
THERE WERE NO TVS AND
RADIOS. THEIR WINDOWS
WERE BLACKED OUT

EYE IN THE SKY

A high-altitude
satellite view of
the Area 51 site.

CASE#7 Working conditions

WHATS IT LIKE TO WORK AT AREA 51?

ancy working at a top-secret

military installation? For a start,
you wont see any job ads on seek.
com.au. According to former employees
at Area 51, youll either be approached
by the CIA directly or by a contractor
working out of the base.
An Area 51 worker remembers how
security concerns were the first thing
drilled into new starters as soon as they
arrived at the site in unmarked Boeing
737s. Security there was absolutely very
tight. Being informed on what you could
talk about and what you couldnt talk
about starts at the very beginning. You
dont talk about anything classified.
Anyone working out of Area 51, whether
civilian or military, must sign a lifetime
oath to keep everything they see, hear

16

or read a secret. Day-to-day work life

at Area 51 may be more exciting
than the humdrum of most peoples jobs,
but living conditions in the desert are
said to be harsher than those of a normal
modern existence. Or at least they were
in James Noces day.
Noce did security contract work at
Area 51 during the 1960s and 1970s. He
remembers living at the base in a spartan
one-storey cabin with four other men, all
sharing a kitchen and bathroom. There
were no TVs or radios. Their windows were
even blacked out so they werent privy to
what other employees were working on at
the base. He was paid decently though,
US$1,000 a month (about $7,200 in todays
money), and the food was exceptional.
They had these cooks come up from

Vegas, says Noce. They were like

regular chefs. Day or night, you could get
a steak, whatever you wanted.
Noce, clearly a man who takes no
notice of lifelong secrecy oaths, says
he was always paid in cash and put
a phoney name to the receipt. Other
employees received checks that appeared
to have come from other companies,
including Pan-Am Airways.
As for families and loved ones, wives
and children were kept in the dark about
the confidential work done at Area 51; it
wasnt uncommon for entire families to be
interviewed by the CIA to check they could
keep a secret. But at least wives didnt
have to worry about their husbands having
affairs sources say that they only ever
saw one woman on the base.

IN 60 SECONDS
T AREA 51 CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Is weather being made into a weapon?

Not all conspiracy theories are made equal. At the more moderate
end of the spectrum are claims that the US government is
experimenting with weather-manipulation weapons at Area 51.
Tampering with the weather is not a new phenomenon: according to a
National Science Foundation report, the American military explored ways
of modifying clouds and using rain as a weapon during the late-1940s
and early-1950s under the codename Project Cirrus. And from 1962 to
1983, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration attempted,
with little success, to seed clouds and slow cyclone winds.

Is there a 40-storey underground bunker?

Did extraterrestrials kill

employees at Area 51?
Talk about timing. Former Lockheed Martin engineer
Boyd Bushman (above) waited until he was on his
deathbed before sensationally producing evidence that
aliens have been held at Area 51. In August 2014, just before
dying aged 78, Bushman claimed in
a YouTube video that hed worked
on projects involving living
extraterrestrial beings, antigravity
and reverse-engineering UFO craft.
The aliens, he says, were roughly
140-centimetres tall, had three
backbones and were able to use
their own voice by telepathy to talk to you. Bushman also
claimed that 19 employees at the military installation died
defending themselves from the aliens, even though most were
friendly. Bushmans prime piece of evidence was a photo of one
of the beings, which some doubters pointed out was remarkably
similar to an alien doll sold at WalMart.

The aliens
use telepathy
to talk to you

On satellite images easily findable via a quick Google search

Area 51 looks like any other military base, with crisscrossing
runways and non-descript outbuildings. But one popular theory
(see Joel Levys The Little Book Of Conspiracies) is that most of the
real base is hidden from view in a vast, 40-storey-deep underground
bunker where the most classified projects are worked on. The
subterranean infrastructure is reportedly linked by underground railway
to other black sites in Los Alamos, White Sands and Los Angeles.
Some serious security measures supposedly protect the subterranean
infrastructure (presumably from staff without the necessary clearance),
including motion and scent sensors.

Were the Moon landings

in an Area 51 studio?
If the US government wanted to win
the space race by faking the Moon
landings, what better place to film the
charade than on a remote, super-secret
desert airbase which, in 1969, was virtually
unknown to the general public. Thats the
theory of former NASA rocket-builder Bill
Kaysing, who in 1974 published the book We
Never Went To The Moon: Americas Thirty
Billion Dollar Swindle. Kaysing claimed that
NASA did indeed send the Apollo astronauts
up in a rocketbut without the three
passengers (Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong
and Michael Collins). They and their lunar
capsule were transferred to a military cargo
plane, which eight days later dropped the
capsule into the Pacific Ocean. In the
meantime, NASA and the CIA filmed the
Moon landing at Area 51, brainwashing the
astronauts into cooperating.

WORDS: Vince Jackson PHOTOS: Getty Images (3); Alamy (5); PR (3)

filmed

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NATURE

TOWERING INFERNO
In 2015, over 51,000 bushfires ravaged some 11 million hectares of land in the
US an area twice the size of Tasmania. There are now six times as many fires
as there were 30 years ago and theyre getting bigger. We are witnessing an
increasing instance of these megafires, says Tom Swetnam, director of the
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona.

THE SECRET

LAWS OF

BUSH

FIRES
From Australia to California, theyre spreading faster than ever.
Experts now predict this summer could be one of the most
devastating bushfire seasons on record. We explain what makes these
blazes so powerful and how the bush can be protected against them

21

BRIGHT SPARK
This image of 2014s Etiwanda Fire in California was
taken by photographer Stuart Palley. Using a special
type of long exposure, he succeeded in making the
fascinating flight paths of burning ash particles visible.
Strong winds pushed the sparks close to the nearby
towns and triggered mass evacuations.

HOW FAR
CAN A
SPARK FLY?
Its only a tiny spark. Somewhat ironically
it was triggered by a machine clearing a
fireline to prevent the advancement of a
bushfire. However, the consequences are
devastating. In no time, the coastal area
around Santa Barbara in California is
transformed into an 8-km-wide fire,
laying waste to everything in its path.
More than 4,500 firefighters, supported by
14 firefighting planes and 15 helicopters,
battle against the sea of flames for a
week. The sparks final tally? 3,500
hectares of charred land, 77 houses
destroyed and 13 casualties not to
mention the 30,000 residents who were
evacuated. But the most shocking thing
about the damage? The wall of fire didnt
even need to get close to the houses to
wreak its havoc. Thats because a single
spark can travel several kilometres and
set houses alight without anyone noticing.
Many people think a bushfire creeps
right up to the house and then burns the
place down, says Steve Quarles from the
University of California. The reality is
much more terrifying. One of the secret
laws of fire is that most houses are
burned down by airborne sparks. As long
as the winds are favourable and the
temperature remains consistently high,
a single burning ember can travel more
than 24 kilometres. And it will still have
enough energy to set an entire house
alight afterwards. This invisible advance
party, the precursor to a fiery inferno,
usually sneaks virtually unnoticed
through an open window, or via tiny
cracks in the roof or walls. In fact,
a building doesnt usually catch fire
externally. The spark ignites from within,
engulfing curtains, carpets and furniture,
before transforming into a roaring blaze
that completely swallows the house.
In South Carolina, researchers have
carried out simulations to determine how
flying sparks cause fires and how houses
can be better protected against them. If
you live in a high risk area, theres only
one viable option for avoiding damage as
a result of flying sparks, says bushfire
researcher Richard Thornton. And thats
window shutters made of steel.

23

CAN A FIRE BE
PRECISELY PREDICTED?
For years, no weather model could
accurately predict how a bushfire
would spread. Thats because the fires
heat up the air so much that it moves
1,000 times faster than air currents
warmed by the sun. These movements
were too much for computers. But
now French researcher Jean-Baptiste
Filippi and his team have developed a
model using a supercomputer that will
be the first of its kind. The algorithms
will make it possible to simulate
exactly whats happening on the fire
frontline, as well as calculating which
plants will burn more quickly than
others and whether the fire is still
spreading or has been extinguished.

The crucial factor is the effect of the

fires on the weather. The heat of the
fire generates an extremely powerful
movement of air, with wind speeds of
50 metres per second, says Filippi.
As a result, large clouds form in the
atmosphere, which can even lead to
rain. On the other hand, cool air
currents can cause strong winds of
about 100km/h, which then further
exacerbate the fire. We can use the
model to estimate where the smoke
of a freshly ignited fire will waft and
where we can definitely not allow a
large fire to develop, explains Filippi.
That means we will know in advance
where we need to lay firebreaks.

JOB FROM HELL

North American
firefighters take
home around $30 an
hour. Their typical
working conditions
encompass two
weeks of 12-hour
shifts, during which
time theres a very
real risk of death.
Around 100 die
in the line of duty
every year in the USA
alone. Almost half
lose their lives not
from heat exposure,
but as a result of a
heart attack caused
by extreme stress.

25

UPHILL BATTLE
Fires like this one in Townsville, Queensland, can
burn at a rate of 16 kilometres an hour making
them even harder to fight. In fact, fire tends to move
faster uphill because the flames can more easily
reach unburnt fuel in front of the blaze.

FIREBREAK
the flames from grass fires can be up to several
metres high but, unlike wood, they produce hardly
any sparks that could trigger new blazes. Here,
firefighters carry heavy duty leaf blowers to create
a firebreak against the encroaching bushfire. The
break of just a few metres is enough to deprive
the fire of fuel, meaning the blaze dies out in a
matter of seconds.

AT WHAT
THICKNESS
IS A TREE
IMMUNE
TO FLAMES?
p
g
high, 1,500-year-old bush spreading
across the primeval landscape of the
northwestern United States. The giant
redwoods of Yosemite National Park
in California are some of the tallest
and oldest trees in the world even
though theyre rooted in one of the
most bushfire-prone regions on the
planet. The secret of their longevity
lies in their tough bark, which, at
50cm thick, offers a natural form of
fire protection. This means small fires
pose no risk to the giant sequoias. In
fact, the opposite is true: by getting
rid of pesky competitors and
delivering nutrient-rich ash to the
redwoods, bushfires actually have a
positive impact. Certain trees have
even adapted to the fire so their seed
pods only burst under extreme heat.
However, redwoods arent the only
fire retardant trees: bark with a
thickness of just five centimetres
can protect against flames, as the
60-metre-high yellow pines of New
Mexico have shown. These evergreen
pines stretch across the southern
tail of the Rocky Mountains and have
survived countless fires over the
years, escaping almost all of them
unscathed, although the undergrowth
has frequently not been so lucky. Even
some deciduous trees can stand up
to bushfires: Quercus suber, an oak
that grows in southwest Europe, has
fireproof armour made of cork. The
tree is the primary source of cork for
wine bottle stoppers.

27

CAN A FIRE
GO TO SLEEP?
Firefighters have a complex relationship
with rain. Obviously, it helps them fight
large blazes, but in some circumstances it
can actually encourage particularly tricky
fires to form. Take lightning strikes:
Lightning sensors can pinpoint lightning
strikes and provide initial attack crews
with accurate locations, explains Solal
Audibert, a firefighter in Canada. However,
there are way too many strikes to check
them all, and not every strike results in a
fire. Furthermore, lightning is often
followed by rain, which delays the fire until
it dries out enough for adjacent fuels to
catch. Its basically a time bomb: lightning

hits, the rain keeps it from burning right

away, and a week or two later, after the
fuel indices have gone down enough, a fire
appears seemingly out of thin air in the
same spot. These dormant fires can
even emerge from snow: The cold
temperatures and precipitation do a lot to
put out fires. But once again, because it
doesnt penetrate very much, there have
been cases where a fire just reappeared in
the same spot the year after we thought
the snow put it out, explains Audibert.
Downpours often lull people into a false
sense of security, then. Only a flood can
put out a fire once and for all.

PHOTOS: Reuters (2); DPA (2); Caters; Craig Parry; Getty Images

BUSH CLEANER
Once a fire is under
control, its time
for the emergency
services to begin
mopping up: every
area where the fire is
still smouldering has
to be extinguished.
Firefighters then
investigate any
suspicious warm
spots on the earth
so that a missed
root fire (a fire that
burns underground
along a trees root
system) isnt the
reason for their next
big call-out.

29

SCIENCE

(;,/('
Planet Nine was probably a
gas giant that was hurled to
the edge of the solar system
by nearby planets around 4.5
billion years ago. And it might
not be alone. Researchers
suspect that there are some
900 trans-Neptunian objects
with a diameter of more than
1,000km in our solar system.

287(5 /,0,76
Scientists have used computer
models to calculate the orbit of
Planet Nine. They estimate that it
circles our sun at a distance of up to
225 billion kilometres. If correct, it
means that the solar system is a lot
bigger than previously thought.

3 / $ 1 ( 7

+2:
&28/':(
0,66,7"
Its four times the size of Earth, only comes along once every
27 million years and yet it is part of our solar system. Planet Nine
may be a rare sight, but its an extremely powerful one: when it shows
up, it brings with it asteroids that wipe out all life on Earth

31

arth has experienced catastrophe

after catastrophe. For decades,
researchers have been tackling the
thorny issue of why, every 27
million years, a mass extinction
occurs on our planet. Its a strange
phenomenon, explains Professor
Daniel Whitmire of the University of
Louisiana at Lafayette. Newer
research shows evidence of such
events dating as far back as 500
million years. In research circles,
the finger of suspicion points to an
undiscovered, ninth planet in our
solar system: a phantom that turns
up to wreak havoc namely wiping
out life on Earth and then
disappears afterwards. But how
could we miss a rogue planet
during 5,000 years of astronomical
observation? And will Planet Nine
spell the end for the human race?

and orbit elliptically around the sun at

clues. If the hunt for who was
a distance of roughly 7.5 to 67 billion
responsible for these regular mass
kilometres. However, the fact that
extinctions was a court case,
they even exist undermines the
Planet Nine would have already
long-established laws of
been sentenced due to
physics, giving the hunters
overwhelming
:KHQWKH
of Planet Nine hope:
circumstantial
Theyre kind of in a
evidence.
VRODUV\VWHP
The trail leads
ZDVIRUPHGODUJH no mans land,
explains Scott
to the Kuiper
FHOHVWLDOERGLHV
Sheppard, an
belt: a ringZHUHIOXQJRXW
astronomer at the
shaped cloud
IURPWKHLQQHU
Carnegie Institution
of asteroids and
UHJLRQ
for Science in
dwarf planets, or
)ORULDQ)UHLVWHWWHU
Washington, D.C.
trans-Neptunian
$VWURQRPHU
These objects
objects (TNOs), that
couldnt get out there
previously marked the
with what we currently know.
edge of the solar system.
No one can explain how they retain
The 13 largest of these celestial
their orbits so far away from the sun
bodies are known as extreme
unless a huge phantom planet also
trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs)

3 / $ 1 ( 7

It hasnt been possible to detect a ninth planet in our solar system yet,
but scientists have found evidence of its existence
The orbital paths of trans-Neptunian objects
(purple) in the solar system only make sense
if theyre stabilised by a ninth planet (blue).

ORBIT OF NEPTUNE
(PREVIOUSLY THE
OUTERMOST
PLANET IN THE
SOLAR SYSTEM)

OBJECTS WITH
SUSPECT
ORBITS

HOW DO YOU FIND AN

INVISIBLE PLANET?
The reasons why Planet Nine has
wended its merry way for so long
without us noticing are simple:
Its a long way away, reflects little
sunlight and moves very slowly
around the sun, explains Austrian
astronomer Florian Freistetter. So
you cant really blame scientists
for not discovering it. Telescopes
around the world have scanned
the sky for decades, searching for
any abnormalities. And, even if the
phantom planet hasnt been
spotted yet, there are obvious

PLANET NINE

SUN

($57+

3/$1(71,1(

1(3781(

EARTH MASSES

10

17

ORBIT LENGTH
IN EARTH YEARS

27 million

164.8

:H DUH SUHWW\ VXUH

WKHUHV D QLQWK
SODQHW RXW WKHUH
MICHAEL BROWN,
Astronomer at the California Institute of Technology

:HUH
EHFRPLQJ
LQFUHDVLQJO\
FRQYLQFHGWKDW
LWGRHVH[LVW

a radius of 23,330 kilometres and a

temperature of -226C. Professor
Whitmire also created a computer
model of Planet Nine and found
that the renegade planet is 100
times further away from the sun
than the Earth. Its a crucial clue
because the model fits the mass
extinction culprits profile. Whitmire
suggests that it takes Planet Nine
exactly 27 million years to orbit the
sun, a timescale that coincides with
the mass extinctions on Earth. And
the sequence of events is clear:
every 27 million years, Planet Nine
ploughs its way through the Kuiper
belt, flinging asteroids towards
Earth and resetting life. But the
impacts arent the worst part:
according to researchers, the huge
cloud of dust they throw up
darkens the sky for years. An
encounter with Planet Nine would
therefore probably be the end of
the road for us. But Professor
Whitmires theories confirm that
weve still got a bit of time. The
next major mass extinction is not
expected to occur for another
16 million years at the earliest.

PHOTOS: Fotolia; Getty Images; NASA

dancing on stage and even the

drifts through the empty space
strings that move them and
behind the Kuiper belt, stabilising
assume there must be something
the 13 outcasts. The regularity of
controlling them, even if its hidden
their orbits, all of which are at the
away. But what does the puppeteer
same angle to the sun, is also
look like?
telling. Its another indication that
Planet Nine exists: normally, the
PLANETARY PROFILE
gravitational pull of planets such as
Saturn or Neptune would
To construct an
disrupt the ETNOs
astronomical profile of
route, but that
Planet Nine,
doesnt happen.
researchers from
In simple terms,
the University of
this means that,
Bern drew up a
if you take the
phantom image
sun and the eight
of the planet.
major planets of
Using
computer
.RQVWDQWLQ%DW\JLQ
the solar system
algorithms,
&DOLIRUQLD,QVWLWXWH
RI7HFKQRORJ\
and observe their
astrophysicists
influence on the 13
Esther Linder and
ETNOs, the calculations
Christoph Mordasini were
simply dont add up at least not
able to simulate the properties of
without an additional factor.
Planet Nine, without ever having
However, if you replace the missing
seen it. With our study, candidate
figures in the equation with a ninth
Planet Nine is now more than a
planet, orbiting the sun
simple point mass; it takes shape,
unobserved, the behaviour of the
having physical properties,
13 celestial bodies suddenly makes
explains Mordasini. According to
sense. Its like a puppet show: the
their calculations, its a gas giant
researchers can see the puppets
that weights about ten Earths, has

33

WHAT CAN
HOLIDAY FLIGHT

7(67,1*
7+(/,0,76

ith a top speed of nearly 950km/h and

a $470 million price tag, the 74-metre
A350 is the latest high-tech airliner from
Airbus. Its scheduled to enter service
next year, but for a long period of time the
440-passenger colossus could only be flown in a
simulator. Six men had to prove that none of the
engineers and mechanics had made a mistake during
its seven-year development period. The jet took to
the skies for the first time above Toulouse in France,
with a take-off weight of 221 tons. The plane was

IMMERSION TEST

+2: '2 <28

%5$.(,1$322/"
New aircraft models are subjected to at least
2,000 hours of terrifying manoeuvres before they
can carry their first passenger. This Airbus A350,
for instance, simulated landing on a runway
flooded with water to a depth of 23mm. The jet
sped through 50 cubic metres of the liquid at up
to 242 km/h and had to stay on track when
braking, despite aquaplaning. We also
demonstrated that no water splashed into the
turbines, explains test engineer Jean-Christophe
Bonjour. This element is just one part of an
extensive approval procedure. Our tests involve
forces many times higher than those that arise
during even the most severe turbulence,
describes test pilot Wolfgang Absmeier. If you
saw them, youd think that the plane wouldnt be
able to fly. But it can.

stripped to the bone to make room for 20 tons worth

of measuring equipment and masses of cables,
explains experimental test pilot Martin Scheuermann.
Four engineers in the cabin behind him monitored the
planes progress, sending gigabytes of data and
camera images from an aerial escort back to ground
control. Ballast tanks simulated a full load during the
four-hour flight over southern France, the start of a
four-month testing marathon. But what sorts of tests
is a passenger plane subjected to? Where do they
take place? And what exactly constitutes safe?

TECHNOLOGY

MY
WITHSTAND?
Exploding engines, emergency landings, flights through

the most inhospitable airspaces on the planet; we examine

the punishing paces all new planes are put through

35

EXTREME WEATHER TEST

:+< '2 7(67

$,5&5$)7*221
$:25/'7285"
The phrase take it easy doesnt apply to a test
plane: first, the A350 must prove in the US Air
Forces McKinley Climatic Laboratory that its
engines can run smoothly at -40C and that it
can therefore take off in Siberia without a
problem. Outside the laboratory, test pilots seek
out the planets extremes. Using the five existing
test aircraft, they subject them to 100km/h
crosswinds while landing in Iceland, snowstorms
combined with force 9 gales in northern Canada,
a 53C furnace in Dubai, 100% humidity in
Singapore and a take-off in the thin air at more
than 4,000 metres above sea level in Bolivia.
They even carry out a 14-hour non-stop trip to
the North Pole and back because keeping track
of your location at the planets axis of rotation is
more difficult than at the equator. The navigation
equipment has to be able to work there, says
test pilot Scheuermann. But, even then, a pilot
still hasnt reached the performance limit

AGEING TEST

+2: '2 <28

&5$0  <($56
,172  0217+6"
Take-off, manoeuvre, land, taxi 130 times per
day. Special fatigue tests feature 100 devices
repeatedly pushing or pulling the plane, helping
engineers to pack the wear and tear of a 16-hour
flight into 11 minutes. In 16 months, they simulate
47,500 flight hours, or two and a half times the
aircrafts expected lifespan of around 25 years.
The plane also has to withstand extreme pressure:
the 30-metre wings can bend up to 5.2 metres
without breaking. But its not just in the lab that
limits are exceeded: an A350 normally cruises at
around 966km/h, although it can go up to
1,095km/h. During testing, however, it reached
1,160km/h only 77km/h slower than the speed
of sound. These speeds, achieved during descent,
exert an enormous force on the plane, shaking
and tugging the wings and fuselage. And thats not
all: In so-called flight flutter testing, an engineer
sends a mechanical impulse onto the wings once
or twice a minute to see if they will sway in the
airflow, explains Scheuermann. Its one of the
most critical tests performed in the certification
process, and is so risky that we even have to wear
a parachute and helmet.

37

IMPACT TEST

+2: '2 7+5((

.,/2*5$06
%(&20( "
An average Canadian goose weighs 3.65kg:
theyre large, bulky birds with sturdy bones and
every aircraft has to survive an impact with one,
even if it occurs at 480km/h. Thats the maximum
speed during the take-off and landing phases,
when bird strikes usually occur. The huge forces
created by a feathery impact exceed the birds
bodyweight by a factor of 10,000. Luckily, the
nose cone of this Boeing 737 (right) was
well-equipped with shock-absorbing material.
The most vulnerable areas of the plane are the
cockpit windows and engines. To test their safety,
and whether they can work during an emergency,
compressed-air cannon known as chicken guns
fire blocks of gelatine or dead birds into the
turbines while theyre running at full power.

STRESS TEST

'2(6 /,*+71,1*
)5<7+(
)86(/$*("
Flying through a storm cloud for five and a half
hours, experiencing a lightning strike every three
and a half minutes its all in a days work for a
test pilot. Lightning strikes to aircraft can affect
structure at the entrance and exit points. In metal
structures, lightning damage usually shows as
pits, burn marks, or small circular holes. More
modern aircraft, made of non-conductive
composite materials, must include an extra metal
mesh to attract the lightning strikes, otherwise
the fuselage could melt.

EXPLOSION TEST

+2: '2 <28

6,08/$7( $1
$&&,'(17"

PHOTOS: Airbus (5); DLR; You Tube; Getty Images; PR

The high-tech Rolls-Royce Trent 900 turbofan

engine, which provides the thrust for the A350,
will set you back an eye-watering $19.6 million.
Starting one of the largest passenger jets in
the world is an extremely delicate procedure
as most of the circa 250 tons of aviation fuel
is located in the wings, just above the engines.
At full thrust, the visible rotor on the air intake
spins almost 50 times per second, helping the
tips of the engines 24 fan blades to reach 1.5
times the speed of sound. The force on each
15kg blade is so great its like having a
locomotive attached to them. Its vital,
therefore, that if one of the blades shears off,
it is contained within the Kevlar-strengthened
engine casing and away from the fuselage
of the plane. Here, test engineers at NASAs
John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi
simulate this catastrophic situation: in the
pictures above, the coloured fan blade is
deliberately broken off. In a worst-case
scenario, an A350 is capable of flying up to
seven hours on one engine, enough time for
the pilot to reach an airport, no matter where
in the world the engine failure occurred.
39

HISTORY

THE RING OF BRODGAR

THE ORIGINAL
Archaeologists have made a discovery that seems to
contradict the laws of civilisation: long ago, a mysterious people
lived on the wind-tossed Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland.
So does history need to be rewritten?

41

THE SECRET OF THE LOST TEMPLE

In 2003, archaeologists made a fascinating
discovery. Hidden between two ancient
henges in Orkney, the Ring of Brodgar and
the Standing Stones of Stenness, they
discovered a large temple dating back to
the Neolithic period. Consisting of several
stone buildings surrounded by a huge wall,
the Ness of Brodgar was the religious heart
of the Orkney Islands. This diagram shows

the site as it may have looked in

approximately 2800 BC. The temple was
in use between 3200 and 2300 BC, but it
wasnt always inhabited. Instead, it hosted
religious rituals at various times, which
were surprisingly well-attended. The site
was so famous outside the far-flung Orkney
Islands that pilgrims even travelled from
the distant south, or what is now England.

MARSHES
Sea levels rose at the end of the Ice Age,
forming vast bogs and swamps.

ENTRANCE
The way in to the temple
also marked a stage in the
religious procession.

42

NORTHERN PARA
DI
The Orkney Islands ha SE
ve very fertile soil an
da
relatively mild clima
te due to the Gulf St
ream.

MIDDEN MOUND
The midden pile (a dump
of domestic waste) was
the largest in Neolithic
Britain and may even have
been used for religious
ceremonies and rites.

HOUSE
In the Ness of Brodgar,
the houses werent
covered with straw but
with tiles. They were the
first houses in Europe to
be built this way.

STONE WALL
The walls were more than three
metres high and six metres
thick. No other prehistoric
wall in Britain was so large.

MENHIR
There is a special monolith in
the middle of the complex its
shadow marks the beginning
of spring and autumn.

THE WONDER OF SKARA BRAE

Eight kilometres northwest of the Ring of Brodgar is a bay
that contains the best preserved settlement from the
Neolithic period. Skara Brae was discovered in 1850 after
intense storms shifted sand dunes that had covered the
village for thousands of years. The sand had preserved eight
houses. Skara Brae was inhabited for more than 600 years,
between 3180 and 2500 BC, until the climate became so wet

and cold that the residents moved south. However, there is

also evidence that the people were forced to flee their
homes. Archaeologists suspect that the sea drew closer and
closer towards the settlement, before a storm finally drove
the villagers away. They left behind anything they couldnt
carry. For this reason, and because its so well preserved,
Skara Brae is nicknamed the Scottish Pompeii.

SHELF
This is where the Neolithic
people kept their food.

BEDROOM
Neolithic people lived a lot more
comfortably than youd think.
They had solid beds covered with
animal skins and vegetation.

STONEWORK
The houses were large and
constructing them required
considerable technical skill.

FIREPLACE
Every house had a fireplace
that provided the residents
with light and warmth.
45

IN SEARCH OF THE PAST

Thirteen years ago, this was still farmland.
Today, its one of the most important
archaeological digs in Europe and this is
just a fraction of it. Experts have already
uncovered 28 structures in the Ness of
Brodgar, but thats merely a tenth of what

they suspect lies underground. And even

that might just be a tiny section of the vast
ancient infrastructure on the Orkney
Islands. Turn over a rock around here
and youre likely to find a new site, says
archaeologist Julie Gibson.

re, in the far north of

urope, youre at the
ercy of the elements.
hen the sun shines,
here are no trees to
rovide shade. When the
ind howls over the long
rass, nothing gets in its
ay. And when the rain
elts down for more than
50 days a year, theres
nowhere to shelter. Yet for more than 5,000 years, the
monoliths here have defied the forces of nature. These

menhirs (an ancient Breton word meaning long stone)

make up the Ring of Brodgar. With a diameter of 104
metres, its not only bigger than Stonehenge but also
around 500 years older. And thats not all.
Archaeologists have now discovered that the Ring of
Brodgar is just one tiny part of a complex buried
structure and the proof that everything we know about
human development in Europe is wrong.

WHERE IS THE CRADLE OF

NORTHERN EUROPE?
When we imagine ancient civilisations, we think about
the Greek philosophers, Minoan frescoes and the

pyramids of Giza. We certainly dont picture the Orkney

Islands. The Scottish archipelago is rugged, wet and
wild most of its 70 islands are uninhabited. However,
more than 5,000 years ago, Neolithic people used
previously unknown methods to build huge structures
there: temples, houses and the henges. The Ring of
Brodgar on the Mainland of Orkney, is a Class II henge
with a ditch and two opposite entrances. Of the original
60 menhirs, 27 have survived the fierce battle with the
weather. Ranging in height from 2.1 metres to a
maximum of 4.7 metres, the monoliths rise up as if
growing from the soil. They stand in a ring of verdant
grass, while the centre circle of the henge is covered in

purple heather. The landscape is flat and deserted,

giving a sense of eternity a junction between the land
of the living and the realm of the dead. All these
monuments are inextricably linked in some grand theme
we can only guess at, says archaeologist Nick Card
from the University of the Highlands and Islands.
The Ring of Brodgar isnt the only henge on Mainland.
Around a mile away, the four remaining (of 12 original)
monoliths of a Class I henge (a ditch and an entrance)
shoot up from the ground: the Standing Stones of
Stenness might only have a diameter of 30 metres,
but theyre even older than the Ring of Brodgar.
Between the two henges, hidden among the dunes

>
47

THE OLDER, BIGGER STONEHENGE

The Ring of Brodgar is the youngest of all of the
Neolithic monuments on the Orkneys, but its still
500 years older than Stonehenge in Wiltshire.
The menhirs in the Ring of Brodgar came from
a quarry north of the Stone Age settlement at

Skara Brae 1.6km from the henge. However,

the rocks that make up Stonehenge came
from a quarry 225 kilometres away in Wales.
How exactly they were transported such
a large distance remains a mystery.

and grass, lies the temple complex of the Ness of

Brodgar. One of the largest ceremonial sites in the
world, the Ness is at least 5,200 years old, predating
even the pyramids at Giza. Archaeologists believe that
ritual ceremonies took place in this huge, six-acre site:
processions would start at the Standing Stones of
Stenness, continue through the Ness and then enter the
realm of the dead at the Ring of Brodgar. Archaeological
digs at the site are ongoing and have turned up some
interesting finds; the evidence suggests the area wasnt
permanently inhabited and was only used for rituals.
The experts had never seen anything like it, but it was
just the tip of the iceberg.

THE PATH OF CIVILISATION

The temple complex consisted of a cluster of stone
houses, surrounded by a wall three metres high and
six metres thick. It was the most substantial structure
in the UK until the Romans built Hadrians Wall a full
30 centuries later! This is almost on the scale of some
of the great classical sites in the Mediterranean, like the
Acropolis in Greece, except these structures are 2,500
years older, explains Card.
Along with the buildings, the archaeologists have found
shards of grooved ware, a type of pottery from the
Neolithic British Isles covered in intricate patterns. These
distinctive fragments have also been unearthed on

WAKING THE DEAD AFTER 5,000 YEARS

The Orkney islands are dotted with Neolithic structures:
on the island of South Ronaldsay is the Isbister
Chambered Cairn. Discovered by a farmer in 1958,
the chambered tomb houses 16,000 human bones.
The claws of sea eagles were also found there
hence its nickname, the Tomb of the Eagles.

nutrients ashore and keeps the winters relatively mild.

That said, why the Neolithic people abandoned their
homes remains a mystery. Nick Card has established
by examining bones that there must have been a huge
leaving do: the skeletons of 600 cattle slaughtered at
the same time were discovered in a grave a whole
civilisations livestock and enough to feed thousands.
So what happened? We dont know, says Card. But
the answer is buried here. Indeed, Card and his team
have only excavated 10% of the site, but it has already
yielded thousands of priceless artefacts including a
human figurine known as the Brodgar Boy. It seems
the Orkney Islands are slowly giving up their secrets.

PHOTOS: Jim Richardson/NGS (6); PR

ILLUSTRATION: NGS

excavation sites further south, in England and mainland

Europe. However, Card couldnt believe his eyes when
the pieces were carbon dated: the Orkney pottery is
older than any previously discovered. Received wisdom
has it that culture spread northwards from the south, yet
the pottery proves the opposite. A civilisation must have
existed on the Orkneys and brought knowledge
southwards. It would also explain why Stonehenge is
younger than the Ring of Brodgar its a copy.
So why did people live on this remote, storm-swept
archipelago? Simple: the land is fertile and the sea is
full of fish. The Orkney Islands are situated in the path
of the warm Gulf Stream, which continuously washes

49

HUMAN BODY

Nosebleeds
The time-honoured trick of squeezing the middle of
your nose can help, as can xylometazoline-based
nasal sprays such as Otrivine. These help stem the
bleeding because they cause blood vessels to
contract. Under no circumstances should you tilt
your head back, as swallowing blood will trigger
feelings of nausea. You can also try sliding a small
sanitary pad along the roof of your mouth to the
back but not all the way. If the nosebleed is very
heavy, you should see an ear, nose and throat
specialist. They will stem the flow using bipolar
forceps or a laser.

What should you do when you

start bleeding? Advice on how
best to deal with wounds

Cuts
Lacerations to the eyebrow are a common
feature of boxing. The rules stipulate that the
fight must be stopped when one of the boxers
starts bleeding. A cutman in the fighters
corner then tries to stop the bleeding and
only has a minute to do so. First, he dabs on
an ointment that mostly contains adrenaline.
This makes the blood vessels contract.
Then he reaches for an ice-cold piece of iron
from a cooler and presses it against the cut.
If that doesnt work, he can apply wound
superglue. If the boxer needs stitches,
the referee has to stop the fight.

ising
A haematoma occurs when an impact tears the smallest
blood vessels. Blood leaking into the tissue causes a bruise
to develop. The first action is to cool it down. Then,
depending on the size of the bruise, and how painful it is,
you may need to see a doctor especially if you are a
sportsperson. Extreme cases could see you having a heparin
injection, which thins the blood and shrinks the bruise. Prior
to seeing a doctor, general advice is to avoid putting weight
on the affected area if tendons or bones have been injured.

51

Grazes

It used to be thought that wounds healed best

when exposed to air, but that thinking has now
been turned on its head. Nowadays, a moist
environment is created so a scab doesnt form.
First, clean the injured area with physiological
saline solution or lukewarm water. After
disinfecting the wound, cover it with a dressing
such as a hydrocolloid plaster. Check the
patients vaccination history to see if theyre
protected against tetanus.

Bleeding gums

Gashes
A bandage with a sterile dressing will
usually suffice. If youre unable to stem
the bleeding, make a pressure bandage
using a handkerchief. If your child has a
deep gash on their head, take them to
hospital as soon as possible to rule out
concussion. As a painless alternative to
stitches, in some cases a special wound
superglue can be used.

52

ILLUSTRATION: Jan Bazing. PHOTO: Allianz

Bleeding gums is an inflammatory

response to bacterial plaque. If you
brush properly, your gums wont bleed.
Your dentist can tell you in which order
surfaces need to be brushed and what
technique or instruments you should
use. Gaps between the teeth can
be cleaned using floss or
interdental toothbrushes.

COMPLETE YOUR
WORLD OF
KNOWLEDGE
COLLECTION!

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out our back issues at magshop.com.au

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Is Dubais
The Palm Islands off the coast of Dubai are supposed to be
monuments for eternity but as builders the world over will
tell you: the bigger the job, the bigger the problems

BUILT ON SAND
With a desert right on your doorstep,
youd think it would be easy to pile up
the 100 million cubic metres of sand
needed to form the Palm Jumeirah. But
desert sand is completely unsuitable
the grains are too round, too fine and
dont stick together. So the sand had to
be either imported from Australia or
dug up from the seabed 11 kilometres
off the coast using special ships at
great expense. Today, erosion means it
has to be continually replaced.

DAILY TRAFFIC CHAOS

120,000 people have to share a single road
that connects the crown of the Palms fronds
to the mainland via a 300m bridge. Its no
wonder traffic jams are common. Things get
particularly bad whenever the Atlantis hotel
puts on one of its legendary concerts, which
pull in over 30,000 extra visitors.

TECHNOLOGY

broken beyond repair?

WHAT A STENCH

TOO MANY NEIGHBOURS

Originally the Palm Jumeirah offered space for 60,000
people and all the properties were sold in three days.
However, the distance between the houses was reduced
before construction started in order to double the
capacity. The result: some very annoyed homeowners
(who could console themselves with the fact that the
value of their properties had quadrupled.)

The outer ring of the sand island which

houses the famous 1,500-room Atlantis
resort was originally supposed to be a
breakwater. However, in practice, it prevents
water circulating around the Palms
individual fronds. The result: a build-up of
algae, murky water, mosquitoes and an
unholy smell. Various drainage channels
and canals have been subsequently added,
but to date havent solved the problem.

55

%,57+2)$0(*$&,7<
No other place in history has undergone a
more rapid transformation than Dubai. Up
until 50 years ago, no more than 40,000
people lived here. But in the 1960s
researchers discovered gigantic oilfields in
the area and Dubais sheikhs have invested

s ideas go,
it wasnt a
bad one:
more
beaches,
more sunseeking
holidaymakers! Dubais sheikhs had
this lightbulb moment and, in
2001, started work on an ambitious

billions of dollars in huge construction

projects ever since. Apart from the Palm
Islands, in the past ten years alone Dubai
has gained an indoor ski hall and the tallest
building in the world, the 828-metre Burj
Khalifa along with another 466 skyscrapers.

project: the Palm Islands, the

eighth wonder of the world. The
three artificial islands would extend
the citys shoreline by 400 kilometres
and entice tourists with 5,000 acres
of hotels, villas, apartments,
shopping centres and amusement
parks. The target: to triple the
number of visitors to the desert
emirate to 15 million per year.

However, 15 years later, the end

result is somewhat different
Just one of the dream islands
has become a reality: the Palm
Jumeirah opened in 2008 with a
celebration costing $26 million.
But, just weeks after the festivities,
the problems began disgruntled
homeowners, traffic chaos and
ongoing environmental damage.

RECORD TIME
The Palm Jumeirah took just
seven years to build. The
cost? A cool $13 billion.

ISLAND WORLDS

2005

2010

THE SMALL DESERT STATE ONCE

AGAIN HAS BIG PLANS
Right now, Dubai is light years
away from achieving its tourism
target. Not least because the state
construction firm Nakheel has
experienced dramatic financial
difficulties, meaning work on a
second, twice-as-large archipelago
called Palm Jebel Ali was

mothballed. Meanwhile, nobody

talks about the once-lauded third
Palm Island project any longer.
Instead, focus has shifted to The
World, a collection of islands in the
shape of a world map.
Plans are also in place for another
new mega structure one that will
even surpass the Great Pyramid at
Giza in Egypt, the last surviving

wonder of the ancient world. At

EXPO 2020, when the worlds gaze
will be fixed on the second-largest
state in the UAE, a new tallest
building will be unveiled.
That title currently belongs to
Dubais 828-metre Burj Khalifa, but
the Tower at Dubai Creek will soar
1,000 metres into the sky which
sounds like a fresh lot of trouble.

PHOTOS: PR; Johannes Heuckeroth;

Getty Images; Bauer Stock; Rex Features

2000

The Palm Jumeirah alone required

186.5 million cubic metres of sand
and ten million cubic metres of rock.
Another major project is currently
under construction: The World
(satellite images, left) consists
of 300 islands in the shape of a
world map and is supposed to be
completed by 2020.

57

NATURE

THE
MYSTERIOUS
WORLD OF

They can grow up to ten metres

in length and are one of the most
intelligent hunters on the planet: killer
whales are considered the secret
rulers of the ocean. However, orca
researchers have now discovered
something thats left even the most
experienced experts speechless

59

he steep fjords of Norway, the icy

bays of Antarctica, the sandy
beaches of Brazil: the habitat of
killer whales extends over millions
of square kilometres. The ten-metre
super predators hunt in all of the
worlds oceans, including the waters
off Scotlands west coast, and prey
on fish, sharks, seals, seabirds and other species of
whale. Even apex predators such as great white
sharks are occasionally on the menu. The nine-ton
whales use a wide range of hunting techniques: they
can dive hundreds of metres into the inky depths of
the Pacific, line up in precisely coordinated attack
formations and leap up to five metres out of the water.
But how is this possible? How can a single species
rule over such a large kingdom? And how have orcas
developed so many different, highly intelligent
strategies? The answers to these questions paint an
entirely new picture of killer whales. A picture so
different that researchers believe we should no longer
speak about orcas as if they are a single species

of transients. Even the biggest animal ever to have

lived on Earth, the blue whale, is on the hit list of
nomadic killer whales. Every year, the black-andwhite carnivores swim thousands of kilometres,
continuously adapting their hunting techniques to
their victims. Whats more, the wanderers no longer
use the most powerful weapon in their armoury,
making them even more unpredictable

WHAT MAKES ORCAS SO UNPREDICTABLE?

Its estimated that around 50,000 orcas patrol the
worlds seas. No other predator has adapted to so
many different habitats and spread so far across the
planet. However, experts are now convinced that
orcas, like humans, split into two tribes thousands
of years ago: the sedentary tribe (residents) and the
nomadic tribe (transients). Evolutionary biologist
Andrew Foote of the University of Bern, Switzerland,
even references two different, independent species,
which can in turn be split into dozens of clans and
thousands of families. These two tribes behave in
fundamentally different ways: while penguins and
sea lions have nothing to fear from resident orcas,
given that they prefer to hunt for fish at depths of
300 metres, no marine animal is safe from the jaws

New Zealand orcas

are true nomads. They
constantly change their
hunting territory to exploit
the element of surprise.
INGRID VISSER, BIOLOGIST

60

>

LONG-DISTANCE
SWIMMER
Orcas that belong to
a resident pod spend
the majority of their
lives in just one place.
Others are members of
transient pods that
travel vast distances:
up to 225km a day,
from the Antarctic to
the Brazilian coast.

Unlike transient orcas, resident whales hunt prey

using an advanced positioning system: from their
foreheads they project loud, high-frequency
soundwaves underwater. When these clicks hit an
obstacle, such as a fish, the sounds are thrown back
as an echo and provide the orca with a threedimensional sound image of its surroundings. The
system is also used to communicate and estimate
distances killer whales can even stun fish using the
extreme acoustic pressure of these sounds. But while
this weapon gives resident orcas a distinct
advantage, it poses a problem for transients when
they hunt. Thats because the sound also startles
other mammals, providing an early warning to
potential prey nearby. For this reason, transient orcas
have, over time, altered their tactics and learned how
to switch off their echolocation systems completely.
Instead, they use the technique of passive listening
to surprise their victims at the very moment they
think theyre safe. The hunters have also worked out
how to hold their breath underwater for twice as long
as their fish-eating relatives: up to eight minutes. For
whale researchers, its further proof that two different
strains of orcas exist

WHY AN ORCA NEVER FORGETS

But one thing does link residents and transients: they
hand down knowledge through the generations.
Mostly this is limited to their familial clan, which
normally has between five and 50 members. Experts
studying one of Norways fjords observed how a
resident orca family fled en masse when a boat
approached them. However, another family of killer

NAVIGATION SYSTEM
To track their prey, resident orcas use echolocation
a highly developed system that delivers a precise
auditory image of their surroundings. Members of
transient pods, on the other hand, have learned to
live without this capability. Why? So as not to warn
sea lions and other prey of their presence.

Each whale has a role.

Its like a ballet, so they
have to move in a very
coordinated way and
communicate and make
decisions about what to
do next.
TIU SIMILA, MARINE BIOLOGIST
whales didnt seem at all disturbed by the whir of the
motor. It was then discovered that the ancestors of
the former family had been hunted by fishermen
several decades before, while the calmer clan had
only arrived in the waters around the fjord a few years
ago to hunt for herring. The elders ensure the
survival of their clan by sharing their knowledge with
their family, explains biologist Lauren Brent from the
University of Exeter.
This social bond breaks down when killer whales
are kept in captivity. Cooped up in a confined space
with other orcas, often from a different family group,
the whales can transform into unpredictable killers,
sometimes even attacking their human keepers.
In the wild, on the other hand, there have been very
few documented cases of orcas attacking humans
and certainly no fatal encounters

63

THE HUNTING SECRETS OF ORCAS

All around the world, orcas use varied, prey-dependent hunting
strategies. Killer whales off the Norwegian coast have developed
one of the most refined techniques: carousel feeding.

ROUND-UP
The killer whales slowly drive the tightly packed
fish towards the surface, while constantly talking
to each other using clicks. By slapping the
surface of the water with their tails, the orcas
increase the panic amongst the school of herring.

SLAP OF THE TAIL FIN

AIR BUBBLES
ISOLATED GROUP

SCHOOL OF HERRING
MOBILE LARDER
Once a pod of killer whales has discovered
a school of herring, it isolates a part of the
group and herds the fish together.
SPEE

D: 3

.7KM

/H

KETTLE OF FISH
The orcas now begin to circle the
herring. They emit air bubbles that
act like a wall around the fish and
prevent them from escaping.

HOW DO YOU CONQUER ALL OF THE WORLDS OCEANS?

Thanks to their incredible ability to adapt, orcas have succeeded in taking
over more of the worlds oceans than almost any other predator: the
whales hunt herring off the coast of Norway, sea lions in the waters off
Argentina and penguins in the Antarctic Ocean.

MAKING WAVES
Even sitting on an ice floe cant save the orcas prey. Killer
whales living in the Antarctic band together in groups of up to
five and generate high waves at the command of their leader,
sweeping seals or penguins from the floe. On the other side,
another orca lies in wait, ready to capture the victim.

CORNERED
Orcas resident in Argentina have developed another trick: they cut off
their preys route by driving them into shallow waters. The sea lions
are slowed down by the water flowing back from the surf and the
whales can snap them up. This tactic isnt without risk: if the orca
ventures too far, it runs the risk of becoming beached.

CAPTURING FOOD
As soon as the orcas have the school under control,
the herring swimming on the edge of the group are
stunned with a slap of the tail fin. Now all the whales
have to do is start eating. Theres a clear feeding
hierarchy, with the elders having first dibs.

FALLING INTO THE TRAP

Some groups of orcas use a slightly
modified technique: they drive the fish
towards the shore and into shallow
waters, and pounce on them there.

STUNNED HERRING

TAIL SLAP

FEMALE
MALE
INSTRUCTOR
Older females teach their young
a variety of hunting techniques,
including how to stun herring
with a slap of the tail fin.
SOUND WAVES
Orcas locate their prey
using clicks carried by
the water. The sound
travels five times faster
than in the air.

PHOTOS: Getty Images; Jens Henneberg; Nicklen/NGS

ILLUSTRATION: NGS

DAILY RATION
To stay nourished and healthy,
killer whales need to eat around
100kg of fish a day.

WHALE CALF

PLAYING THE LONG GAME

Some prey, such as the tuna native to the Atlantic,
are too swift and agile for orcas to catch easily.
Instead, the whales use their incredible stamina to
chase the fish until they surrender, completely
exhausted, after half an hour.

65

This gun can fire up to 300 rounds a minute, has a range of 500 metres, weighs just 3kg
and is freely available just about everywhere. The AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle is
the most popular weapon in the US especially with gunmen intent on killing sprees
urora, Newtown, San
Bernardino and now
Orlando: names that
have been burned into
the collective memory
of a nation. More than 100 people
t their lives in mass shootings at
four places in America alone.
trators were both nonslamist extremists,
ults. They murdered
ools and had
ut one thing
of weapon.
ut their

killing sprees using an AR-15 assault

rifle. And its no coincidence why

You dont have to be a good

shot to use the AR-15. You
just pull the trigger. And fire.
And fire. And fire
It was boom, boom, and I thought it
was part of the song, recalls
eyewitness Christopher Hansen of the
dramatic moment gunman Omar
Mateen suddenly opened fire in an
Orlando nightclub. I dont think
anyone really knew what was going on
until they saw people on the ground

bleeding and heard people

screaming. The murder weapon, the
AR-15, can fire up to 300 rounds per
minute. Its magazine holds up to 30
bullets and even an inexperienced
shooter can empty it in ten seconds
flat, almost like a machine gun. And
thats exactly what Mateen did. In total,
he fired more than 200 bullets, killing
49 people and injuring 53 more until
police stormed the building and shot
the 29-year-old killer dead.
Its precisely this terrifying efficiency
and ease of use that makes the AR-15
the most popular weapon in the US

WORLD EVENTS

TERRORISTS ARE GOING TO PICK THE

WEAPON SYSTEM THAT ALLOWS
THEM TO SHOOT AS MANY TIMES
AS THEY CAN.

today. Its the reason seven out of ten

gunmen buy the $700 assault rifle.
The gun was originally developed
for use on the worlds battlefields.
But US soldiers were issued with
the near-identical M16 rifle, so the
AR-15 was developed for civilian use
and is now mainly in private hands;
an estimated five million of them are
stashed away in Americas garages,
kitchens and bedrooms. The weapon
can be bought in shopping centres in
virtually every state, with accessories
also freely available.
The right to bear arms is guaranteed

by the Second Amendment to the US

Constitution. So, while the American
government can ban large bottles of
shampoo being taken aboard aircraft
for fear of terrorist attacks, there is no
such legislation in place when it
comes to buying weapons and
ammunition over the counter. Instead,
there are thousands of shooting
ranges across the country where even
children can learn to fire a gun. Omar
Mateen was a regular visitor to ranges
in the years before his shooting spree,
with one instructor describing him as
an expert shot.

Mateens was a killing spree that,

according to Donald Trump, could
have been prevented. But not by
introducing stricter gun laws or
banning the AR-15. Instead, the
70-year-old presidential candidate said
at a rally: If we had people, where the
bullets were going in the opposite
direction, right smack between the
eyes of this maniac You know what?
That would have been a beautiful
sight, folks. So Trump advocates a
society where more and more people
carry a weapon. It seems Americas
nightmare could rumble on and on
67

PHOTOS: PR (2)

Lt Col Scott Man, weapons expert and former Green Beret

HUMAN BODY

We believe that
studying the dark
proteome will clarify
future research directions,
as studies of dark matter
have done in physics.
DR SEAN ODONOGHUE, DATA VISUALISATION
SCIENTIST AT THE COMMONWEALTH
SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH
ORGANISATION IN SYDNEY

68

veryone knows that a caterpillar

changes completely when it
becomes a butterfly. However,
paradoxically, it also stays the
same. The process is probably

the most dramatic transformation

in the animal kingdom: limbs
appear where there were none,
while organs move throughout the
body, mutating, disintegrating and
being put back together again.
Theyre two creatures that couldnt
be more different, but the butterfly
and caterpillar have an identical
genome. How? What caused the
caterpillars metamorphosis, if not
its genetic blueprint?
The answer has astonished
even experienced biologists. The
change from caterpillar to butterfly
is actually controlled by proteins.
Proteins are polymer chains
formed from amino acids and

>

THE SECRET CHEMISTRY OF PROTEINS

HOW MUCH
DARK MATTER
IS IN MY BODY?
For years, scientists have been trying to get a handle on dark matter, the
mysterious substance holding our universe together. Now new research has
led to a stunning discovery: our bodies may also be dependent on their power

Dark proteins
definitely have an
important role,
but we dont know
what it is yet.
ANDREA SCHAFFERHANS,
DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMISTRY
AT THE TECHNICAL
UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
are based on a blueprint in the DNA.
All the bodys proteins link together
to form the proteome.
In modern medicine, this is
considered a dull area of study
and is often overlooked.
Proteins were researched a
long time ago, their role
in the body reduced to
being a source of
energy and building
block for muscles,
organs and the
blood. But that
was a big mistake
because, in actual
fact, proteins are the
most active designers
of life and implement
our genetic makeup.
Furthermore, there are
400,000 different proteins that
affect every process in the body,
making up 15% of our overall
mass. They influence healing,
communication between cells and
the immune system. Many people
think that were controlled by our
genes, explains Professor Matthias
Mann from the Max Planck Institute
of Biochemistry. But, in reality,
its the proteins that do something
in us and to us.
The strange thing is that around
50% of these proteins are still
completely unknown. They are a

kind of dark matter in our bodies

and were only just beginning
to understand the power they
have over us.

HOW MANY SECRETS ARE

HIDDEN IN THE BODY?
The role proteins play in the body is
crucial, but it was long thought
impossible to decode their powerful
network. After all, a single cell can
be controlled by up to 10,000
proteins. Our proteome is probably
a lot more complex than our
genome, explains Professor Mann.
However, with the computing power

he and his team have been putting

together gene maps to depict the
cosmos of proteins in our body
and has stumbled across thousands
of previously unknown chains. For
the researchers, its like discovering
human dark matter without having a
clue what it actually does. It may
sound absurd, but we had to do two
things, explains Dr Andrea
Schafferhans from the Technical
University of Munich. First we had
to discover proteins we didnt know
were there, and then we had to find
out why we didnt know about them.
However, all thats about to change.

DO PROTEINS HAVE
A DARK SIDE?

Just as you
cant see dark matter
in the universe using
a telescope, you cant
represent dark proteins
using conventional
methods.
DR PETER WRIGHT, THE SCRIPPS
RESEARCH INSTITUTE IN CALIFORNIA

now available, its finally poss

to unscramble the complicat
protein codes in the body and
put them in a database.
Its a job for Dr Sean
ODonoghue, data
visualisation scientist at
the Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation
(CSIRO) in Sydney. For years,

For medicine, the discovery

of dark matter in the body
is both a blessing and a
curse. On one hand,
it could provide insights
into protein-based
illnesses like
cancer and
type 2 diabetes,
neurodegenerative
diseases such as
Parkinsons and
Alzheimers, and it
might also be a way
of managing the ageing
process. In other words it

>

WHAT ARE
PROTEINS?
Practically every cell on the planet
(including hormones and enzymes) is
made up of hundreds or even thousands
of proteins. These consist of a combination of 20
amino acids. The acids are strung together like a
code: for example, the hormone insulin is composed
of a chain of 21 amino acids, while the muscle protein
titin has 30,000. Proteins are everything to a cell: an
energy source, structure,
sensor and means of
communication. Its
widely believed that
proteins are even
more important than
the genome in
understanding
the body. The
reason: the
25,000 human
genes have largely
been deciphered,
but the roles of the
80,000 to 400,000
proteins in the body
havent. Scientists dont
know when and where the
proteins are used yet.

HOW DID SCIENTISTS DISCOVER

HUMAN DARK MATTER?
Human DNA is like a
huge book containing
the exact instructions
for building a person. Here, spread
over around three billion pages, is
the complete protein code. These
gene sequences dictate the makeup of
a protein and have become essential to
the study of dark matter in the body.
Thats because, biochemically speaking,
dark proteins are simple molecules and
their instructions are neatly written in the
DNA. Together with an international research

team, Dr Bernhard Kuester from

the Technical University of Munich
has read these blueprints. Using the
human gene map, which lists all
of the genes in the genome, the
researchers were able to find out which
proteins are actually built by the body.
While this doesnt necessarily tell
us anything about what they do, its
possible to compare these protein assembly
instructions with the known proteome
and, therefore, get an overview of the
amount of dark matter in the body.

71

WHAT DOES PROTEIN

DO TO MY BODY?
Fats, carbohydrates (sugars) and proteins
are the three main components of our
diet. Proteins (mainly absorbed from
meat, fish, nuts and grains) are especially
important: there are just as many calories in
a gram of protein as there are in the same
amount of sugar. However, the body only
requires 25% of the energy contained in
protein and, because it takes such a
long time to digest them, they are the
nutrient group with the highest
degree of saturation. But producing
energy isnt the be-all and end-all
for the body because, unlike plants
and microorganisms, we cant
produce all of our bodys components
ourselves. Because of this, we need to
include a good dozen amino acids the
building blocks of bodily protein in our
diets. One of the best foods for this are eggs,
which contain all of the amino acids we need.

could allow doctors to reach areas

that were previously closed off,
despite recent medical
advancements. On the other hand,
researchers have confided to
ODonoghue that the discovery of
dark matter feels like an admission

Millions of
different protein
molecules are
moving around
our bodies and
most of them are
dark matter
BERNHARD KUESTER, PROTEOME
RESEARCHER AT THE TECHNICAL
UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH

of failure for medicine a blank area

on a map that was meant to have
been fully explored a long time ago.
Were amazed at how much we
still dont understand, admits
Schafferhans. From a scientific
perspective, the discovery of dark
proteins is comparable to the
search for dark matter in the
universe, according to Dr Peter
Wright of the Scripps Research
Institute in California. Even the
worlds most respected scientists
feel as if theyve been thrown back
to square one: the search for
answers is like groping around a
pitch-black room for objects that
a human has never seen before.
What ODonoghue and his team
have managed to find out about
the bodys dark matter shows that,
despite its shadowy nature, it plays
an important role. The behaviour
of dark proteins marks them out as
different from regular varieties and
contrasts with every known bodily

proteome but it could

found. Now, after the
discovery of dark prote
a breakthrough is
finally within reach.

CAN THE BODY

LOSE DNA?
But before we gain
complete access to our
bodily functions using t
dark proteins, theres
another puzzle to solve
Although other research

Many people think

that were controlled by
our genes. But, in reality,
its the proteins that do
something in us and to us.
PROFESSOR MATTHIAS MANN,
PROTEOME RESEARCHER AT THE
MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE
OF BIOCHEMISTRY

teams have begun mapping

the dark matter, more
blind spots are appearing in our
knowledge of the genome. For
example, Professor Akhilesh
Pandey, a biochemist at Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore,
has identified 193 dark proteins,
which, despite being formed
from amino acids in the body,
dont have a blueprint in the
genome. The fact that 193 of

the proteins came from

DNA sequences predicted
to be non-coding means
that we dont fully
understand how cells
read DNA, explains
Professor Pandey.
Just as startling is
the discovery that 2,000
of the proteins in our bodies
might not exist, despite
appearing on the gene maps.
So whats the explanation for
these phantom proteins? Well,
we simply dont know.
The changes that exploring the
dark proteins in our body will make
to peoples lives is unknown it
could even be as dramatic as the
metamorphosis of a caterpillar. But
one thing is now certain: whether
its in the fight against hitherto
incurable diseases, boosting life
expectancy or tapping into new
reserves of power, dark proteins
definitely have an important role,
explains Schafferhans. But we
dont know what it is yet.

PHOTOS: Fotolia (2); iStock; PR (4)

structure. They keep to themselves

and hardly ever interact with other
proteins, but they still have a
far-reaching influence on the body.
This independent behaviour would
explain why they prefer to float
outside cells and glandular tissue.
From examining normal proteins,
experts know that these wanderers
have highly specialised jobs relating
to cellular communication and the
immune system. Professor
ODonoghue predicts that the
discovery of dark proteins will
therefore have a widespread
impact on the future of medicine.
Just like the study of dark matter in
physics, dark proteins will usher
in a new era of research. And
the development has already
begun: in China, for
instance, scientists
-have discovered a link
between proteins and
the production of
antibodies to
combat harmful
germs. Researchers
from the Chinese
Academy of Science in
Yunnan managed to isolate
700 peptides (short chain
proteins) from the dark matter
of previously undiscovered
proteins. They were so effective at
fighting bacteria without side-effects
that they could help kickstart a new
generation of antibiotics.
But thats not all. For many
researchers, the discovery of dark
proteins sheds new light on
diseases we still dont understand.
Its as if a door that was previously
locked shut has suddenly opened.
Examples include Alzheimers and
Parkinsons both of which are
caused by protein aggregation,
or clumping. For years, it was clear
that a treatment was hiding in the

73

WORLD EVENTS

HOLLYWOOD
he camera glides
slowly through the
church, as if riding
on a huge wave. It
descends from the
ceiling to almost
ground level, filming
over the actors shoulders. This
teaser trailer for HBOs wildly

successful Game Of Thrones only

lasts a few seconds, but until
recently it would have been
impossible. No crane or slider can
carry a camera as smoothly and
flexibly as a drone. Were getting
shots you wouldnt get any other
way, says Tony Carmean, of
Aerial MOB, the leading US

company for camera drones.

His regular clients include the
BBC, HBO and Netflix, and they all
want spectacular images: tracking
shots through narrow gaps, a
birds eye view of an explosion,
zooming out from a close-up to
a panorama. Theyre shots that
a few years ago would have

HOW A DRONE FILMS

AND ACTION!
The pilot steers the drone using remote control,
with the director and cameraman watching the
shot on a monitor. Camera direction can be
controlled independently of the drone so it
doesnt matter which way the drone is facing.
Below is a still from the finished scene.

Theyve been responsible for some of the most impressive images ever seen
in movies and on TV. Heres how camera drones are revolutionising filmmaking

been replicated using computer

trickery, but are now possible with
a flying robot. From a storytelling
perspective, this offers an entirely
different look that we cant get
any other way, says aerial
cinematographer Nick Kolias.
But, until 2014, commercial
drones were banned in US

airspace. This meant that the sets

of blockbusters like Skyfall had to
be moved to Europe and Asia.
Pressure from Hollywood
caused the US Federal Aviation
Administration to finally give in,
and today around 250 licenses a
month are issued to film using
drones. In addition to the visual

impact, drones have other

advantages: the train fight scene
in Expendables 3 was originally
slated to take 38 days to film, but
the director reduced that to just
ten by using a drone, rather than a
helicopter. This also dramatically
cut costs and meant the likelihood
of an accident was much lower.

75

POWER PACK
Two lithium polymer batteries

ROTORS
Eight rotors, usually made of beech
wood, spin at 80km/h and alternate
between clockwise and anticlockwise

BODY
Carbon fibre with titanium alloy, the body is robust but ultra light at just 4kg

CARRYING HANDLE
The camera is attached here.
A three-axis positioning system helps
stabilise the images, even in high winds

What drone
pi
l
o
ts
SHOULD KNOW
1 The key thing when steering
a drone is hand-eye coordination.
Consequently, people who play
a lot of computer games often
make the best drone pilots.

2 If you want to familiarise

yourself with acceleration and
slowing down, turn off the GPS
when flying or switch the drone
to manual mode.

3 The rules governing the use of

drones are still evolving, but at the
moment you dont need a special
licence to fly one in Australia. You
can fly a drone if it weighs less
than 2kg and you arent using it for
commercial reasons. Always keep
it in sight and fly below 120m.

STUNTASTIC
Hollywood directors are
increasingly relying on drones
to record daredevil stunts.
They offer unique perspectives
and entirely different ways of
capturing a scene.

SKYFALL The opening motorbike chase scene over the rooftops of Istanbul was filmed
using a drone. A helicopter would have proved too cumbersome and noisy.

CONTROL CENTRE
The brains of the drone contains
the flight computer, motor controls
and GPS

WHAT YOUR MONEY

WILL GET YOU
The best drones to suit every budget,
from entry-level indoor flyers to state-ofthe-art machines beloved by
professional cameramen

SYMA X5C EXPLORER

Basic quadcopter with an HD camera and looping
function. A battery life of just ten minutes makes
it more of a toy than a serious machine.
Price: around $60

MICROPHONE
Used to record ambient noise

CAMERA
The camera sends images to a
monitor on the ground. The zoom
and shutter are controlled via
remote control

Multiple test winner that can be controlled via

a tablet or smartphone. Features a 180-degree
field of vision and GPS. Flight time: 25 minutes.
Price: around $900

5 Take part in training sessions

and workshops. Familiarise
yourself with safety regulations
and the different parts of your
drone (see above). Finally, its good
practice to have another person
around when filming one
flies the drone and the other
controls the camera.

DJI PHANTOM 4
Professional drone that automatically flies around
obstacles and can follow moving objects. Carries a
rotatable camera. Range: 5km.
Price: around $2,400

DJI SPREADING WINGS S1000

THE EXPENDABLES 3 To capture the train scene, the camera floated
around a speeding carriage. A camera crane wouldnt have worked.

Powerful octocopter with a retractable landing

gear. A professional piece of kit thats designed
to carry cameras weighing up to six kilos.
Price: around $6,100

77

PHOTOS: Skynamic; Getty Images, Verleih; PR

4 A quadcopter is great for

beginners because it offers decent
manoeuvrability for the money and
is easy to repair. Octocopters are
the top of the range option, and
are faster and more stable.
These are used by professional
videographers and can carry
heavy camera equipment.

PARROT BEBOP 2

HISTORY
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Putin:
Pol Pot:
Caligula:

79

JOSEPH STALIN
PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS

Criminal
versatility
Callousness,
lack of
empathy
Parasitic
lifestyle

ADOLF HITLER
PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS

Failure to accept
responsibility for
own actions
Lack of remorse
or guilt
Poor
behavioural
controls

ook around. On the street. On

the train. In the place you work.
One in every 100 people is a
psychopath. They are charming,
charismatic and inspiring. But
theyre also ruthless. They can lie
and cheat. They can hurt you
and, in the worst case, kill.
Statistically, this untapped
potential hides in one in 100
people. However, two worlds
contain a disproportionate
number of psychopaths.
Unsurprisingly, the first is the
criminal world: every fifth prison
inmate is a psychopath. The
other world is much more
shocking: according to Gerhard
Roth of the Brain Research
Institute one in ten people in
positions of power exhibits
psychopathic traits. The basic
psychopath is the urge to wield
rules. Thats why they need
environments that give them as much leeway as
possible, so they sit on the boards of businesses or
become managers and politicians. They use these
positions for their own benefit and the damage they
often wreak is immense, something the history of
mankind can attest to. Although criminal psychologist
Robert D. Hare only defined psychopathological
disorders 50 years ago, psychopaths have always
been a part of history indeed, their twisted visions
have had a direct impact on its course.

PSYCHOPATHS ARE TICKING TIME BOMBS

One in 100 of us finds it enjoyable to manipulate,
humiliate or kill people. But how do you recognise
them? Hare spent 35 years trying to answer this
question. With his team, he performed thousands of
field studies in psychiatric hospitals, scanned the
brains of hundreds of rapists, murderers and serial
killers, and analysed the behaviour of countless
despots and people in positions of power. Then he
compared them to normal people. Using his results,
the Canadian researcher developed a tool to accurately
identify psychopaths: the Psychopathy Checklist
revised (PCL-R). The test consists of 20 categories, in
which either zero, one or two points are awarded and
added up to give an overall score (see page 33).
The criteria of the PCL-R and, consequently, the
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4(507<3(;0=, ),/(=06<9 F 7(;/636.0*(3 3@05. F ( 3(*2 6,47(;/@ F ( 56;0*,()3@ /0./ 047<3:0=0;@ $/, 469,
these characteristics are pronounced, the more difficult
they are to keep under control the person is either
already a psychopath or on the verge of becoming one.
And many historical figures have crossed the line.
Many of the charismatic leaders in history were
psychopathic, claims Jens Hoffman, director of the
Institute of Psychology and Threat Management.
Sometimes the trait can actually be quite useful
because strong, fearless personalities are the sort to
push through change. This leads to important historical
developments. But things soon escalate when a
psychopathic leader cant be controlled or removed

HOW PSYCHOPATHS CHANGED THE WORLD

If the one-in-100 rule holds true, back in 1939 there
were approximately 800,000 psychopaths in Germany
from a population of 80 million. They used the turbulent
time to secure positions of power. But the Nazi regime
didnt have to search for unscrupulous criminals. No,
800,000 psychopaths were drawn to the totalitarian
system like moths to a flame, willing to commit terrible
crimes in the name of the Fatherland.
What about Hitler himself? Even as a boy he had
unusually bad temper tantrums. And his arrogance was
demonstrated early on: when he played the lottery as a
teenager, he was convinced hed win and made plans
to build a fine house in Vienna. When he inevitably lost,
hed fall into a frantic rage. He also wanted to be an
artist. However, after being rejected by the Academy
of Fine Arts in Vienna, he tried again and was turned
down again. So the painter became a warmonger.
He threw himself into life as a soldier during the First
World War. Rejection and failure are unacceptable
to a psychopathic personality, claims Robert Hare.
Add it to a trait like narcissism, and it makes a highly
combustible mixture: a type that Adrian Raine of the
Department of Criminology at the University of
Pennsylvania calls successful psychopaths.
Successful psychopaths have risen to prominent
positions throughout history. In 1933, psychiatrist Ernst
Kretschmer remarked: The psychopaths are always
around. In calm times we study them, but in times of
upheaval, they rule over us. However, its particularly
tragic that two of the worst psychopaths to ever live
happened to face off against each other: Hitler and
Stalin. Neither could give in and, as a result, 50 million
people lost their lives. Moreover, they both created
societies where psychopaths could flourish and had
no trouble recruiting more and more of them to their
cause every hundredth person, in fact.

81

VLADIMIR PUTIN

FROM PROFESSIONAL LIAR

TO STATESMAN
When Angela Merkel
visited Sochi in 2007,
Russian president Vladimir
Putin let his dog Konni loose.
The black Labrador sniffed at
the German chancellors legs,
under the watchful eye of
Putin. He had been told of
Merkels fear of dogs and
wanted to see how his rival
would react. Merkel toughed it
our, making it clear to Putin
that he was dealing with a
robust diplomatic opponent.
The Russian president is a
master of deception and
manipulation, but he isnt just
predisposed to lying it used
to be his job. As a senior KGB
agent during the Cold War,
Putin was trained to make
sure his lies could withstand
pressure. Lying, deceiving
and manipulating are natural
talents of the psychopath,
says Robert D. Hare. A lie told
often enough becomes the
truth, Lenin once said, and
this is certainly something his
namesake bears in mind. Be
they accusations of plagiarism
in his thesis, involvement in the
murder of journalists or dodgy
dealings involving his personal
wealth, Putin always shakes
off lies because theyre not
part of his manufactured
reality. Angela Merkel has said
that Putin is out of touch with
reality and lives in another
world. Criminal psychologist
Jens Hoffman explains: Putin
combines two or three
personality styles with

dominance being the most

obvious. But he has too many
emotional attachments for
a psychopath.
But how many of these
emotional ties does Putin still
have? In 2014, he divorced his
wife of 30 years, Lyudmila, and
one of his daughters lives in
the Netherlands. He has also
been politically isolated since
the conflict in Ukraine. And its
not going well economically
due to EU sanctions and his
own counter-sanctions. His
pet project, the 2018 World
Cup in Russia, has become
mired in controversy and the
Russian athletes suspended
for doping were banned from
this years Olympics.
Nevertheless, many Russians
continue to back him, meaning
he can still show that hes the
strong man in the Kremlin.
But what if the economic
crisis in Russia has more
serious consequences for its
population? What if NATO
continues to arm itself and
station more troops in eastern
Europe? When people with
psychopathic tendencies are
frustrated, they become
violent, says William Tiller
from Stanford University. Its
the cornered rat syndrome.
The trapped rodent will do
everything in its power to
injure its opponent and ensure
it survives including using its
entire arsenal of weapons. In
Vladimir Putins case, that
includes nuclear warheads.

VLADIMIR PUTIN
PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS

Superficial
charm
Pathological
lying
Parasitic
lifestyle

CALIGULA

FROM EMPEROR

TO KILLER
How does the hope of a nation
become a raving psychopath?
No historical figure meets more of the
psychopathic criteria than the young
emperor Caligula. He had behavioural
problems from the start: as a teenager,
he witnessed torture, rape and the
killing of prisoners by his foster father
Emperor Tiberius crimes that he
would later outdo.
When he came to power in 37 AD,
Caligula could hold his psychopathic
traits in check, but only just. He was
popular at the start of his reign after he
abolished many of Tiberius draconian
punishments but Caligula became an
unpredictable monster almost overnight.
For centuries, historians were puzzled
about what caused this dramatic
transformation. And psychologists
asked: why are some psychopaths easy
to spot and others not? In Caligulas
case, the contributory cause took even
experienced researchers by surprise:
he drank wine
Since the local wine was too dry and
tart for the Romans, they sweetened it
with defrutum: grape juice that was
boiled down with spices until it became
a thick, sugary syrup. To enhance the
sweetness further, the wineries cooked
defrutum in lead containers. During
cooking, lead sugar (or acetate), which
is a toxic chemical salt, leaked out from
the metal pots. As lead is excreted from
the body slowly, it tends to accumulate
in the blood and bones. This can cause
heart disorders, anaemia, kidney
damage and eventually death from
circulatory failure. Modern research has
shown that lead in the body attacks the
nervous system and can also cause or
exacerbate psychological disorders.
Emperor Caligula had always been
unhinged. Since his childhood with

Tiberius, he suffered
from a narcissistic
personality disorder: he
wanted to be idolised and
betraying him was the
worst sin. As a young man,
Caligula was already going
to feasts and orgies and
his fondness for sweet wine
was legendary. The high concentration
of lead not only made his personality
disorder worse, but also switched
off any sense of morality: Caligula
quickly became a psychopathic
monster. He tortured, raped and
murdered at will. With every sip,
the emperor continued to poison
himself and lose his mind.
Roman citizens had to endure his
inept rule for four years, until he fell
victim to a conspiracy started by his
own bodyguards. But the celebrations
were short-lived: just 13 years later,
another infamously unpopular
emperor came to power: Nero.

CALIGULA
PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS

Callousness,
lack of
empathy
Promiscuous
sexual
behaviour
Juvenile
delinquency

83

It was a time of historic inertia:

nothing moved and nothing
changed. By the middle of the 18th
century, Europe had lapsed into
social rigidity. The king was at the
top and the poor, who struggled to
survive, were at the bottom. It was
the way of the world. But then a
spark of change glimmered in the
dark: the French Revolution of
1789. One part of society in
particular wanted to fan the
flames: psychopaths. Being
manipulative, they find it easy to
recruit followers and by doing
this they make themselves leaders.
Once in power, they trigger social
developments and accelerate
historical change. Napoleon was one
of them. He changed the progress of
history far more than any of his
contemporaries. And most historians
agree that Napoleons achievements
were of central importance to the
progression of mankind.
From a modern day psychological
point of view Napoleon was a
psychopath, says psychologist
Alfred Jones. This type of person
has great tolerance for stress and
anxiety. His military tactics show
psychopathic traits: attack

with full force, regardless of the

casualties. The sheer brutality of his
offensives left enemy commanders
quaking in their boots. He was an
intelligent man, able to read his
opponents intentions, and because
he was decisive and not prone to
anxiety he could often overwhelm his
enemies. Napoleon didnt hide the
fact that hed stop at nothing to
achieve his aims. He organised show

84

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

FROM SOCIAL CLIMBER

TO WAR CRIMINAL

trials, murdering political

opponents and prisoners
even though hed promised
to spare them. And when the
French emperor conducted
his disastrous campaign in
Russia, his army of more than
500,000 soldiers were
annihilated in the winter snow.
By then, of course, he had
long since retreated.

NAPOLEON
BONAPARTE
PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS

Grandiose
sense of
self-worth
Shallow affect
Callousness,
lack of
empathy

FROM JOHN F. KENNEDY TO DONALD TRUMP

WHY YOU NEED TO BE A PSYCHOPATH

TO BECOME US PRESIDENT
On 22nd November 1963, John F.
Kennedy became immortal. A
6.5mm bullet struck his head and turned
the president into an all-American hero.
The country mourned its idol, a man who
was engaging, fearless and could wrap
people around his little finger all
psychopathic characteristics.
A research group led by American
psychologist Scott Lilienfeld has
examined the psychopathic
traits of 42 US presidents.
At the top of the pile was
John F. Kennedy, closely
followed by Bill Clinton. The
researchers investigated
two primary psychopathic
attributes: impulsivity
and an inflated ego.
These characteristics
are essential if you
want to be
president, say
experts, and are
combined with
assertiveness and
fearlessness.
We found
that boldness
was positively
associated with
better overall
presidential
DONALD TRUMP performance, says

Lilienfeld. The list proves him right.

The top ten presidents with the most
psychopathic features are also the ones
who had the greatest impact on their
country: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush
and the two Roosevelts. At the bottom of
the list are names youre probably not
familiar with: Calvin Coolidge, James
Buchanan and William H. Taft. Arguably,
they had hardly any influence on US
history because their psychopathic
tendencies werent strongly pronounced.
Its the reason why Donald Trump
wouldnt be suitable for the presidency:
he isnt psychopathic enough. At least, he
doesnt have the features necessary for
the highest office in the land. He goes
berserk easily, although its not the
fearless impulsivity of a Kennedy but a
sign that he cant control his behaviour.
Moreover, psychologists argue that he
doesnt just have a strong sense of
self-importance, but is an egomaniacal
narcissist. His rival Hillary Clinton has
more of the desired attributes. Perhaps
she picked them up from her husband.

JOHN
F. KENNEDY

PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS

Poor
behaviour
controls
Shallow affect
Manipulative

PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS

Impulsivity
Promiscuous
sexual
behaviour
Superficial
charm

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN

Democracy is like a
train. We shall get out
when we arrive at the station
we want and the mosques
are our barracks, the domes
our helmets, the minarets our
bayonets and the faithful our
soldiers. These quotations
wouldnt sound out of place
from a hate preacher. Indeed,
the man who said them was
thrown into jail in 1998 for
inciting violence and religious
hatred. Today, hes the most
powerful person in Turkey
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
comes from humble stock. He
dragged himself up to become
mayor of Istanbul. Four months
later, he was in prison. Did he
work out how to take control of
liberal Turkey while there? After
his release, he gathered his
supporters and founded the
now all-powerful Justice and
Development Party (AKP). In
2002, Erdogan became prime
minister of Turkey and hes
currently the president. People
see him as a man of action,
someone who tackles issues
head-on. He modernised
Turkey and brought it into the
21st century. He stands up for
the little guy and represents
pious Muslims. Its an image
that Erdogan has carefully
constructed and broadcasts in
the news. Then theres the man
who drives the desecularisation
of Turkey and who has broken
down legal structures. The man
who threatens journalists and
locks away hundreds of Turkish
citizens just because they have
offended him. The man who
fires tear gas at protestors and
bombs Kurdish men, women
and children. The man who has
been accused of cooperating
with Islamic State.

FROM FORGER

TO PRESIDENT
Is the public persona of
Erdogan just an act by a
psychopath? Psychologist
Robert D. Hares test shows
several convincing patterns.
For example, Erdogans
manipulative behaviour: to
date, its debatable whether
he received an economics
degree or not. His diploma
seems forged because a dean
only signed it when Erdogan
gave him the job. And you must
have a degree to be president
of Turkey.
The failed coup against
Erdogan on 15th July, in which
hundreds were killed or injured,
only seems to have further
cemented his power. It was an
excuse to flex his authoritarian
muscles and brought his
psychopathic tendencies
to the fore. The attempt
has doubtlessly been
used as a pretext for
Erdogan to do
whatever he
intended to do
in any case
pushing for
one-man rule
by a total
cleansing
of all
RECEP TAYYIP
opposition,
ERDOGAN
says
PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS
journalist
Poor
Yavuz
behavioural
Baydar.

controls
Shallow affect
Parasitic
lifestyle

WILHELM II

FROM WEAKLING

TO MEGALOMANIACAL
RULER
Can the character of a nation
be embodied in one person?
Can a population have the same
psychological profile as their leader?
Its tempting to make parallels between
the German Empire and its ruler,
Wilhelm II. The German Empire was
born from three wars and Wilhelms
birth was similarly dramatic: he
suffered a respiratory arrest and
only just survived. But he had a
withered, paralysed arm as a result
of the breech birth. We now know a
lack of oxygen at birth can cause
brain damage, which can manifest
itself as psychopathological disorders.
That Wilhelm II learned to ride a horse,
despite his paralysed arm, convinced
him that he could do anything if he
set his mind to it the first step
in his journey towards
megalomania.

WILHELM II
PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS

Lack of
realistic,
long-term
goals
Grandiose
sense of
self-worth
Impulsivity

When Wilhelm II inherited the throne

in 1888, people celebrated. The
German Empire was just 17 years
old and was already a major power.
Kaiser Wilhelm saw himself as the
embodiment of the forward-looking
nation: strong, up to every challenge,
destined for great things. But he was
massively overconfident, says
Professor John Rohl, a historian at the
University of Sussex. Wilhelm II was
irresponsible, arrogant, a know-it-all
and often delusional. He forced Otto
von Bismarck to resign, despite having
little knowledge of the machinations of
diplomacy. He repeatedly alienated the
UK, provoking Britain with his naval
expansion. He believed that he was
completely surrounded by enemies
and, consequently, became more and
more militaristic forcing the major
European powers into an alliance
against Germany.
The mistrust sown by the emperor
made its way to the German people.
Like Wilhelm II, the Germans felt
persecuted and like they werent being
taken seriously. Along with its leader,
Germany inevitably slipped into the
catastrophe of the First World War.
Wilhelm wanted a convincing victory,
but it didnt materialise. The war has
ended quite differently, indeed, from
how we expected. Our politicians have
failed us miserably, he bemoaned. The
euphoria was replaced with anger.
Eventually, he sank into apathy and
experienced panic attacks. When the
defeat was made official, Wilhelm II
fled into exile in Holland. He never took
responsibility for the fate of Germany.

87

POL POT

FROM UNASSUMING TEACHER

TO MASS MURDERER
At first glance, Saloth Sar looks
like an ordinary teacher from the
Chamraon Vichea private school in
Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.
Educated in Paris, the capital of the
colonial power that controls his
country, Saloth Sar is popular with his
students. Hes patient, his instructions
are clear and hes fair. He doesnt sit at
the front of the class but walks
between the students desks as he
explains the history of early
Cambodian culture. The year is 1951.
What the students dont know is that
one day their teacher will put his
twisted plan into action a plan that
will end up killing two million
Cambodians. By then, he will have
cast off the name Saloth Sar and
adopted his revolutionary title: Pol Pot.
The mass-murderer waged a brutal
war against his own people. He
dreamt of the bygone splendour of
Cambodia, when the world wonder
Angkor Wat was in use 500 years
ago. The warped logic of his
psychopathic mind drove him to try to
rewind time, to revert the country to
how it was half a millennium ago. His
plan was divided into three steps:
1) Remove the French colonialists.
2) Overthrow the monarchy and
proclaim communism. 3) Destroy all
technological progress and return to
an agriculture-driven peasant state.
A series of events helped him
achieve his aims: first, the Vietnamese
drove out the French; then, in 1966,
the USA overthrew the Cambodian
king and established a military
government. Next, Pol Pot and his
Khmer Rouge guerrilla soldiers took
up the fight and, in 1975, captured
the capital Phnom Penh from the

88

unpopular military government. It

was the beginning of the most
brutal extermination of people in
the history of South-East Asia.
The entire population of
Phnom Penh was forced
to leave the city and
become peasants.
Many died from
disease or hunger
during the
relocation. Those
who refused to
work or did their
job half-heartedly
were murdered.
But the harvest
didnt increase
it collapsed. Pol
Pot suspected
sabotage, seeing
every criticism
as a betrayal,
and a political
purge began.

Thousands were murdered in

the so-called Killing Fields. Pol
Pots psychopathy crossed the
line into madness. Believing that
Vietnam would attack him, he
regularly launched offensives
against them after 1978, with his
Khmer Rouge causing one
bloodbath after another. The
Vietnamese struck back and
launched a fullscale invasion,
occupying
Phnom Penh in
1979. Pol Pot
went into hiding
and died in
1998.

POL POT
PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS

Lack of
remorse or
guilt
Criminal
versatility
Shallow affect

THE BIG TEST

HOW DO YOU SPOT A

PSYCHOPATH?
F

/$&. 2) '((3 )((/,1*6



ollowing years of research, Canadian

psychologist Robert D. Hare developed
a method of identifying psychopaths:
the Psychopathy Checklist revised (PCL-R).
The checklist of 20 categories is now the
standard tool used in the analysis of
psychopathic characteristics. The highest
achievable score is 40 points. If a person
scores more than 25, theyre on the
borderline of psychopathy, while those
scoring 31 or above are classed as definite
psychopaths. For each of the 20 categories,
put a cross through the zero if the person
displays none of the traits described,
through the one if they partially do, and
through the zero if it completely applies to
them. Then add up the points and compare
the result to the classification on the right.

683(5),&,$/ &+$50

PHOTOS: Platon/Schirmer Mosel; Bridgeman; DPA (2); Verleih (3); Bauer Stock (2);
Fine Art Images; Stphane Lavou/Pasco and co; Alamy (2); Laif; PR










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RESULTS

,55(63216,%,/,7<


Warning! The psychopath

test published here is an
edited summary of Robert
D. Hares Psychopathy
Checklist revised (PCL-R).
A proper clinical evaluation
and analysis of psychopathic
traits involves much more
comprehensive tests
performed under the
supervision of a
psychologist. But this
self-test can provide the
first clues that a person has
psychopathic tendencies.
0-15 points: The person
doesnt exhibit any
psychopathic behaviour.
However, if they scored
two points in a particular
category, they should
review this abnormal
behaviour and talk to
friends or relatives about it.
16-25 points: Compared
to the population average
of a mere two to four
points, this is a very high
score. In certain areas, this
person exhibits at least
antisocial behaviour or
maybe worse.
26-30 points: This person
is on the threshold of
psychopathy. They have
difficulty dealing with
social situations and lack
emotional characteristics
such as empathy, guilt
and responsibility.
31-40 points: According
to Robert D. Hares
definition, this person
belongs to the 1% of the
population who can be
described as psychopaths.
Their severe behavioural
anomalies, lifestyle and
antisocial demeanour
mean that they should do
one thing above all else:
contact a psychologist
to talk about this test.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

DO YOU HAVE A
QUESTION FOR OUR
TEAM OF EXPERTS?
Simply send us an
email with Questions
and Answers in the
subject line to
worldofknowledge@
bauer-media.com.au

17 m

etr

es

SUCTION TOOL
The arm of the collecting
machine measures almost
ten metres. It sucks in
valuable minerals and
pumps them to the support
vessel on the surface.

HOW DO YOU COLLECT

FROM THE

At the bottom of the sea, off the coast of

Papua New Guinea, lies some of the worlds
greatest treasure and the high-tech contraption
pictured here is helping to hunt it down. Canadian
mining company Nautilus Minerals is planning to
use three of these giant machines to extract a
million tons of minerals and precious metals from
the sea bed 1,600 metres down. Theyll do so with
the help of special seafloor production tools (SPTs)
designed and built in Newcastle, UK. First, two
remote-controlled auxiliary cutter and bulk cutter
robots will scrape the best material from the ocean

floor and pile it up for collection. Then the 250-ton

collecting machine (left) rumbles into action. Using
an inbuilt pump, the megatool will suck up the
mineralised silt and push it through a pipe into the
bowels of a 230-metre-long production support
vessel on the surface. Before it enters the ships
storage holds, the seawater is drawn out of the
slurry and returned to the deep sea floor, preventing
the shallows from becoming murky. Theres enough
copper here to meet world demand for the next 30
years, explains Mike Johnston from Nautilus
Minerals. The mission is set to begin in 2018.

REMOTE-CONTROLLED
The collecting machine and the
other two mining instruments
work at a depth of around
1,600 metres. They are
controlled remotely by the
ships crew on the surface.

TREASURE
91

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

HOW DOES AN

F1 STEERING
WHEEL WORK?
1

It may look like a PlayStation controller on steroids, but this is

F1 world champion Lewis Hamiltons steering wheel. Engineers
working for the Mercedes AMG Petronas team have laid out all of the
important steering elements so the British driver can reach them with his
thumbs, without needing to take his hands off the custom-made grips.
That makes the wheel safer to use because it means even the tightest
hairpin bends dont require hand acrobatics. Changing the steering
wheel only takes a few seconds when theres a problem the settings
are saved onto the cars computer. Such a specialised bit of kit doesnt
come cheap, though. Each steering wheel will set you back $73,000.

DIFFERENTIAL

This dial allows Hamilton to

control how much power is
delivered to each of the
wheels and, therefore, the
speed at which they spin
when turning a corner. By
changing the setting, he can
limit the amount of underand oversteer. It also impacts
fuel consumption and the
wear and tear of the tyres.

DRS

The drag reduction

system opens a wing
flap at the back of the
car, giving a short
speed boost of around
12km/h. However, this
tool is only permitted
on certain stretches,
or zones, of track.

14

10

11

12

SKIP 1/10 PRESET

This button allows

Hamilton to access all
the 100 control sensors
in his car. It can be used
to turn off faulty sensors
or activate other ones for
tactical reasons.

NEUTRAL

5
6

Press this once and the gearbox switches

to neutral. Press and hold for reverse
gear. The button is located on the front
of the steering wheel and not on the back
with the gear levers to ensure that its not
pressed by accident.

The Limiter restricts the car to

80km/h. Hamilton hits the Pit
Confirm button to give the okay
to a message from his crew.

:+(1 :,// 7+( 681 ',("

A gigantic cloud of gas and dust formed in our galaxy 4.6 billion years
ago. Gravitational forces and rising temperatures (10,000,000C) made the
nuclei of hydrogen atoms move so quickly that a nuclear reaction occurred,
creating our sun. The star will continue to heat up and expand until, in
a billion years time, the average temperature on Earth will exceed the
critical value of 30C, killing off most higher forms of life. In five billion years,
the sun will become a red giant, having expanded to over 100 times its
current size. One billion years later, it will die, cast off its external layers and
create a planetary nebula. A hot, dense core of oxygen and carbon one
and a half times larger than Earth will remain: a white dwarf.

PIT-LANE SPEED LIMITER

PIT CONFIRM

BIRTH

13

BRAKE BALANCE

MARK

If Hamilton notices something

unusual, such as a dodgysounding engine, he can mark
the potentially damaged part or
system error for later analysis.

10
6

ACCEPT

Similar to 6. Another button

used to confirm messages or
instructions from the team
of engineers in the pits.

These buttons control

the delicate balance, or
bias, between the front
and rear brakes. Its
crucial that Hamilton
gets the bias spot on:
too much rear braking
will make the car spin,
while being heavyhanded with the front
brakes will stop the car
from turning in.

STRATEGY REGULATOR

Instead of having to scroll up and

down through lots of different
options, this button means Hamilton
can quickly switch between preset
modes such as a high-performance
or energy-saving setting.

11
12

MULTI-FUNCTION DIAL
HPP REGULATOR

These two dials regulate settings

such as braking, cruise control and
torque, as well as managing the
fuel mixtures and ignition timings
in the engines to suit different
weather conditions.

13

How clever are

dogs really?
The dog chases its tail again. Youd be forgiven
for thinking that mans best friend isnt the brightest
spark, but youd be wrong, as psychologist Stanley
Coren from the University of British Columbia in
Canada has discovered. Coren collected data from 208
dog obedience experts who judge canine intelligence
or talent competitions. The dogs were found to have
the same intelligence level as a child aged between
two and two-and-a-half, and their brains structured in
a similar way to a human. The pooches could process
voices, decipher emotions, recognise over 200
commands and even solve simple mathematical
problems. So which is the smartest breed? Border
collies are number one; poodles are second, followed
by German shepherds. Fourth on the list is golden
retrievers; fifth, dobermans; sixth,
Shetland sheepdogs; and finally,
Labrador retrievers, said Coren.

RACE START

At the start of the race, the car

has to reach its maximum
performance level within seconds.
Pressed shortly before the race
begins, the Race Start button gets
Hamilton off the line as quickly
as possible.

14

RADIO

One of the most important

functions in the car: over the team
radio, Hamilton can communicate
with his team in the pits during the
race and quickly let them know
about any unfolding problems.

TODAY

GRADUAL WARMING

RED GIANT

PLANETARY NEBULA

WHITE DWARF

%,//,216 2) <($56
93

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

LESS MEAT

WHAT WILL
REMAIN
ONCE BEES
ARE GONE?
Grapes, avocados, cucumbers: if bees were extinct,
the list of fruit and vegetables we could no longer
eat would be lengthy. In the worst case
scenario, it would even include dairy
products because bees (including
honeybees, wild bees and
bumblebees) pollinate many
of the crops used to feed cows.
If they were to suddenly
vanish, our plates would
are pollinated by a single
become a lot emptier as bees
colony of bees every day. A
pollinate approximately 70% of
colony consists of around
food crops. And this scenario
50,000 bees.
isnt as unlikely as it sounds:
alarmingly, the British bee
population, for example. has declined
by a third since 2007 and the number of
hives has plummeted by 73% over the past
century. Mites and viruses are partly to blame for
this, but pesticides are also thought to have wiped
out bee colonies. That said, not all fruits and
vegetables would disappear if bees werent around:
some would be unaffected because theyre
pollinated by the wind or other insects. Today,
researchers and farmers are already frantically
searching for new ways to pollinate plants.

300,000,000

As cows are mainly fed plants

that are pollinated by bees,
the production of meat and
milk would sink.

TIME FOR
LEMONADE
Citrus fruits are
self-pollinating.
Bees have hardly
any influence on
the harvest of
lemons, oranges
and grapefruit.

NO MORE MELONS
No other fruit is
as reliant on bee
pollination as the
melon: the plant
would have to be
hand-pollinated,
which would be
extremely costly.

GOODBYE COURGETTES
AND CUCUMBERS
Vegetables from the gourd
and squash families would
have to be pollinated by
hand if there were no bees.

NONE OF YOUR FIVE A DAY

Kiwis, berries, apples and
grapes would vanish.

BLAND CAKES
Sweet treats would be dull: the dough
would have to be made without butter. For
the filling, strawberries would do they can
be pollinated by the wind. However, the
strawberry plant is more susceptible to
diseases when pollinated this way and
produces smaller fruits with less flavour.

COTTON SHORTAGE

Wheat is pollinated
by the wind so
there would still be
bread without bees.

Cotton plants
pollinated by bees
produce larger
harvests and are
more resistant to
disease. Without
bees, there would
still be cotton, but it
would be of a lower
quality and much
more expensive.

The crew on the International Space Station (ISS) kip in

sleeping bags attached to the wall with Velcro or cables.
On average, crew members get six hours of sleep a night,
but as there is no up or down in weightless conditions,
many suffer from sleep disorders. These are made worse
by the fact that the ISS experiences 16 sunrises and
sunsets every 24 hours. This frequent switching between
day and night disturbs the production of the hormone
melatonin, which regulates our circadian rhythms. Another
cause of sleep deprivation are solar lightning strikes, which
the astronauts can still see with their eyes closed.

PHOTOS: CM Nautilus/Matt Smith; Fotolia; Bauer Stock; Getty Images; PR (3); Shutterstock

BREAD BASKET

+RZ GR \RX VOHHS

LQ ]HUR JUDYLW\"

NO GUACAMOLE
Without bees, there
would be hardly any
avocados, but tortilla
chips would still
exist as corn can
grow without insects.

PASTA SALAD
Bland without
onions, pepper
and broccoli.

TOMATO SALSA
The only
tomatoes would
be those grown
in greenhouses.

:+$7 '2 7+( 180%(56

21 $ 581:$< 67$1' )25"
The numbers on every runway in the world are based on
a magnetic compass bearing. The figures indicate the
direction of approach in relation to the magnetic pole.
If a runway has a magnetic orientation of 183 degrees,
for example, it will be marked with the number 18. For
that reason, runways are always numbered between
01 and 36. However, because the Earths magnetic field
is on the move, airports frequently have to change the
numbers on their taxiways. If the magnetic field lines
move so that the approach direction is 186 degrees, the
runway number would be changed to 19, explains
aviation expert Jrg Handwerg.
95

AND FINALLY...

colony. They burrow a hollow on the

edge of a steep cliff, furnish their home
with seaweed and feathers, and raise
a single chick there. The houseproud
parents keep it warm and clean, and fly
tirelessly round the clock to catch small
fish with which to feed their nestling.
But after five to six weeks something
weird happens, something virtually
unheard of in the bird world: the young
puffin crawls out of its hollow for the
first time in its life, topples over the
cliff into the sea and vanishes. Little
hatchlings who have never seen the
sun, never learnt how to catch fish;
whose wings are too weak to carry
their bodies, whose feathers have never
got wet; these young things now tumble
into the bitterly cold dark blue water,
paddle out to sea and never look back.

5LGHUV
RQWKH

Its as if they are born to be called into

the Atlantic. And as if their elders know
how powerful this call is, for they stand
motionless next to one another at the
entrance to their burrow, watching their
offspring leap into the unknown.
The North Atlantic is considered one
of the most dangerous oceans in the
world, even in summer. But in winter it
is nothing less than a hellish nightmare
of monster waves, fields of pack ice
and blizzards. What happens to the
chicks out at sea? It might sound
unbelievable, says Kress, but they
learn to catch fish and sort them in
their mouths. They acclimatise to the
sun and the Earths magnetic field
and get the hang of navigation. They
spread their wings and become
surprisingly fleet fliers.
Four years pass before the animals
reach adulthood and become acquainted
with the puffin they will spend the rest
of their lives with. Together the new
pair retreat to their colony to raise their
own single chick, before watching on
proudly as it follows the call of life.

PHOTO: Andreas Mulder

ts first steps are tentative.

After all, its legs arent
used to steady ground.
This young Atlantic puffin
has spent four years on the
high seas without once
returning to dry land. It has seen waves
higher than a house and flown through
200km/h winter storms. It has dived
through salt water colder than ice.
And it has found the love of its life,
says Stephen Kress.
The American ornithologist has been
observing the colonies of puffins in
Newfoundland for more than 30 years.
He has dedicated his life to researching
the species, because these animals
symbolise the meaning of life like
no other living beings. Every year
the same couple pair up in the same

Puffins they laugh in the face of 200km/h winds!

97

LETTERS
AUSTRALIA

WorldOfKnowAU
worldofknowledgeau

*Letters may be edited for publication

Welcome to World Of Knowledges Letters page, where you can share your thoughts on
anything you see in the magazine. Write to us at World Of Knowledge, GPO Box 4088,
NSW, 2001 or email us at worldofknowledge@bauer-media.com.au

Over the Moon

Fishy business
JOAN MORTON
Your feature about illegal trawling in the South China Sea was
eye-opening (The Secret World War For Fish, October). Have
any similar fishing battles ever taken place near Australia?
> Most of Australias nautical run-ins have been with Japan over
whaling in our waters. For similar wars, we have to look to our Anglo
cousins in the UK, and the so-called Cod Wars with Iceland. Kicking
off in 1958, the disagreement centred on fishing zone boundaries in
the North Atlantic, with the UK government taking umbrage at
Iceland expanding its zone from four to 12 nautical miles off its
coast. In the First Cod War (1958-1961), the Royal Navy deployed 37
warships and 7,000 sailors to protect its trawlers in Icelandic waters.
As a result, Iceland threatened to withdraw from NATO, forcing the
UK to back down. The Second Cod War (1972-1973), which came
about when Iceland extended its fishing limits to 50 nautical miles,
was more violent: the Icelandic coastguard cut nets and shelled
trawlers, while the Royal Navy flew jets over off-limits waters and
deployed frigates. Again, the UK government was forced to cave in to
Icelands demands. The Third Cod War (1975-1976) saw 55 ramming
incidents and extended Icelands limit to 200 nautical miles, with
serious consequences for the British fishing industry.

On the brink
CARINA EVANS
What are the most endangered animals in the world? And what has
caused them to be under threat?
> Unfortunately, there are nearly 5,000 animal and plant species
classified as critically endangered by the International Union for
Conservation of Nature. One example is the Hainan black crested
gibbon, which lives exclusively in the broadleaf forests of Hainan
Island in China. Experts estimate that there are less than 20 left in
the wild, compared to more than 2,000 in the 1950s. The main
cause of their decline is habitat loss: over 25% of the gibbons
territory has been chopped down by illegal paper pulp producers.
Moreover, gibbon bones are highly valued in traditional Chinese
medicine, something that led to mass hunts from 1960 to 1980.

98

QAM DINN
Why hasnt the USA been back to
the Moon? Are there any manned
missions planned for the future?
> NASAs six manned Apollo missions
between 1969 and 1972 proved that
lunar landings were possible, despite
the limited technology available. But
the Apollo programme was also
expensive, costing around US$20.4
billion, or US$109 billion in todays
money. NASA simply couldnt afford to
carry out further landings and stated
that all of its research aims had been
achieved. Theyd accomplished
everything they were trying to do, says
former NASA engineer John
Schuessler. Apollo was proof that the
United States was a leader in
technology in space. However, there
are ambitious plans to return to our
rocky satellite. Russias space agency,
Roscosmos, recently announced a
scheme to station 12 cosmonauts on
the lunar surface permanently. The
mission, pencilled in for 2030, will
involve building a base to research
and mine precious minerals near the
Moons poles. NASA is also
investigating the feasibility of settling
on the Moon in its Evolvable Lunar
Architecture Plan a stepping stone to
realising its long-term goal of reaching
Mars. Closer to home, a post on the
European Space Agency website
confirmed that it intends to send robots
and astronauts to the Moon by 2030.
Once there, they will explore unknown
lunar regions and conduct research.

Worn away
GEORGE CARR
In the How Do You Move A
Lighthouse? article (October), you
say that the coast erodes at a rate of
one metre per year. So how can the
lighthouse be safe for 150 years if its
only 40 metres away from the sea?
> The Gay Head Lighthouse on
Marthas Vineyard in Massachusetts
will only collapse after 150 years
because its been moved on top of a
vein of hard red clay. This is
significantly less susceptible to
erosion than the rest of the coast,
meaning it will take a lot longer for
the sea to eat under the lighthouse.

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