A model of forces that Spawned from "junk" DNA: COVID-19, aerosols, and

MOVE THE EARTH HOW GENES ARE BORN ELEVATOR SAFETY

AMERICAN

Scientist
May–June
M J 2021 www.americanscientist.org
i i ti t

Cosmic Particle
New theories could finally
unmask the dark matter that
shapes the universe.
 Genuine
HELENITE
Mount St. Helen
Origin
The Biggest Rock Star
to Come out of the '80s
We transformed one of history's most powerful performances
into a showstopper of a ring. Then, we gave it an epic price.
O n May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens in the Pacific
Northwest erupted, sending a column of ash and smoke
80,000 feet into the atmosphere. It was the most powerful
natural event in U.S. history. But it was what was discovered
in the aftermath that really stole the show... a stone that burns
with a blue so deep and luxurious it outshines even the world's
most legendary blue sapphire––Kashmir. We're talking
helenite. And, the Men’s Blue Heat Helenite Ring showcases
over four carats of this smoldering hot piece of geological
history for a very cool price of $149.
So how did we create such a phenomenon? While it's not
easy to harness the raw power of nature, it can be done. You
just need the right gemologists and gemcutters. Our helenite
is created under extreme pressure and intense heat, using the
natural, volcanic rock found only at the site of the intensely
powerful Mount. St. Helens eruption. Then expert jewelers
give these stones a high precision cut and polish before
“...the eruption of Mount St. Helens sparked the advances
in cutting-edge volcano science and monitoring that exist
today.” — U.S. Geological Survey (usgs.gov)
• 4½ carat rectangle cushion cut Blue Helenite • Rhodium-finished .925 sterling silver setting • Wholes sizes 8-14
Stauer… Afford the Extraordinary.®
Over 4 carats of fiery
Blue Helenite in precious
.925 sterling silver
ONLY $149
Save 350!
PRAISE FOR
STAUER MEN’S RINGS
“This is one cool ring!
Feels great and looks
even better! Get one!”
– B. H., Lyons, IL
placing them center stage in gleaming sterling silver. This is a
ring for the ages. Bold and intense with a captivating story of
American history. Just like your favorite rock star.
Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Experience
the cool fire of the Blue Heat Helenite Ring for 30 days. If you
aren’t a fan, send it back for a full refund of the item price.
Limited Reserves. Headliners priced like this sell out fast.
Don’t miss the biggest rock star of the '80s. Call today!
Men's Blue Heat Helenite Ring (4½ ct) $499† $149 +S&P
You must use the insider offer code to get our special price.
1-800-333-2045
Your Insider Offer Code: BHR147-01
Please use this code when you order to receive your special discount.
† Special price only for customers using the offer code versus the price on
Stauer.com without your offer code.
Stauer ®
14101 Southcross Drive W., Ste 155, Dept. BHR147-01,
Rating of A+
Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.stauer.com
AMERICAN

Scientist
Departments Feature Articles
Volume 109 • Number 3 • May–June 2021

130 From the Editors

131 Letters to the Editors

134 Spotlight
Isolating the instructions for
life • DART (Double Asteroid
Redirection Test) • Learning from
pandemic perinatal experiences •
Briefings

144 Perspective
An octet in Flushing Meadows 158
Roald Hoffmann and
Dasari L. V. K. Prasad 158 Enter the Axion

148 Engineering
A new fundamental particle could
solve a major puzzle in particle 166
Elevators rise to the occasion physics—and also explain the nature
Henry Petroski of the dark matter that permeates 174 Turning Junk into Us:
the universe. How Genes Are Born
152 Arts Lab Chanda Prescod-Weinstein You are garbage. Don’t feel too bad,
Tinkering with crystals though—so is everyone else. Now,
166 The Chicken, the Egg, and
geneticists are learning what all the
Plate Tectonics
junk in your genome has been
Scientists’ Whole-planet models could upend doing all along.
Nightstand our view of how geophysical forces Emily Mortola and Manyuan Long
shape the Earth.
182 Book Reviews Nicolas Coltice
Physicians of the Manhattan
Project • The drawbacks of
making threats

From Sigma Xi
187 Sigma Xi Today
Sigma Xi launches online student
networking program • Registration
open for Annual Meeting and
Student Research Conference •
Breaking barriers: women in STEM

The Cov er
174
Enormous collections of invisible dark matter are thought to have seeded the formation of galaxies in the early universe. This
computer simulation, created by a team led by Hsi-Yu Schive of National Taiwan University in Taipei, maps dark matter based on
its density to make its structure obvious. Despite substantial evidence for dark matter, nobody has yet detected it directly. In “Enter
the Axion” (pages 158–165), physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein explores the increasingly popular idea that dark matter consists
of particles called axions. Over large scales, axions could act like waves rather than collections of particles, producing the rippled
forms seen on the cover. Prescod-Weinstein is studying the cosmological implications of this phenomenon and assisting efforts to
determine whether axions really exist. (Cover image courtesy of H.-Y. Schive et al., with permission from Nature Physics.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2996)
From the Editors
AMERICAN

Hidden Secrets at All Scales Scientist

www.americanscientist.org

Z oom out to the level of the whole universe, if

you can imagine that. Looking at the whole
thing at once, you might notice that there’s a lot that
VOLUME 109, NUMBER 3

Editor-in-Chief Fenella Saunders

you actually cannot see. We can observe this same Managing Editor Stacey Lutkoski
quandary at smaller scales: Stars in galactic systems Senior Consulting Editor Corey S. Powell
rotate as if much more mass is present than the stars Digital Features Editor Katie L. Burke
could contain. So where is this mass? This mysteri- Senior Contributing Editor Sarah Webb
Contributing Editors Sandra J. Ackerman, Emily
ous stuff is what astrophysicists call dark matter, but
Buehler, Christa Evans, Jeremy Hawkins, Efraín E.
as University of New Hampshire theoretical physi-
Rivera-Serrano, Diana Robinson
cist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein points out in our Editorial Associate Mia Evans
cover feature (“Enter the Axion,” pages 158–165), Intern Reporter Lily Pinchbeck
that moniker is really a misnomer. As she says, we
can see light bouncing off dark objects, but so-called Art Director Barbara J. Aulicino
dark matter doesn’t interact with electromagnetic
radiation at all. It’s more hidden to us than if it were simply dark. SCIENTISTS’ NIGHTSTAND
Book Review Editor Flora Taylor
So how do we go about getting data about something that we can’t image with
any known methods? What could dark matter be made of? There are a number of AMERICAN SCIENTIST ONLINE
theories, but in her article, Prescod-Weinstein discusses a promising theoretical Digital Managing Editor Robert Frederick
particle called the axion, and a number of experiments that are aimed at finding Acting Digital Media Specialist Kindra Thomas
evidence of its existence. Acting Social Media Specialist Efraín E.
There are hidden phenomena in nature at all Rivera-Serrano
scales. Let’s zoom in now from the whole uni-
verse to our own planet. We can see the surface Publisher Jamie L. Vernon
of it, but the interior is more mysterious. What’s
CIRCULATION AND MARKETING
happening in its roiling depths, and does that NPS Media Group • Beth Ulman, account director
activity shape the surface—or does the surface
shape the interior? In “The Chicken, the Egg, and ADVERTISING SALES
Plate Tectonics” (pages 166–173), geodynamicist advertising@amsci.org • 800-282-0444
Nicolas Coltice of École Normale Supérieure in
Paris describes a decade of effort to create mod- EDITORIAL AND SUBSCRIPTION
CORRESPONDENCE
els of the Earth’s interior that are as accurate as
American Scientist
climate models (one example showing the surface
P.O. Box 13975
and interior convection is at right). His research Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
shows how the dynamic activity of Earth’s in-
Nicolas Coltice, Maëlis Arnould et al.

919-549-0097 • 919-549-0090 fax

terior can alter the ways that rocks themselves editors@amscionline.org • subs@amsci.org
behave and move on the surface of our planet,
hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. PUBLISHED BY SIGMA XI, THE SCIENTIFIC
Zoom in again, this time to the scale of our RESEARCH HONOR SOCIETY
genetic material inside our cells. There’s a lot President Sonya T. Smith
Treasurer David Baker
going on in our DNA as it forms RNA, which
President-Elect Robert T. Pennock
then forms proteins that our bodies need to
Immediate Past President Geraldine L. Richmond
function. But there’s quite of a lot of DNA that Executive Director Jamie L. Vernon
doesn’t seem to do much at first glance, which
has been labeled junk DNA. Why would such long stretches of seemingly use- American Scientist gratefully acknowledges
support for “Engineering” through the Leroy
less code stick around? It may not be surprising to find out that it’s there be-
Record Fund.
cause it’s not so useless after all. In “Turning Junk into Us: How Genes Are Born”
(pages 174–181), Emily Mortola and Manyuan Long of the University of Chicago
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor
describe their extensive research aimed at seeing beyond the assumptions and Society is a society of scientists and engineers,
figuring out the process through which these stretches of nonsense DNA start founded in 1886 to recognize scientific
evolving and eventually begin producing functional proteins. achievement. A diverse organization of
Throughout this issue, there are other stories of exploration leading to unex- members and chapters, the Society fosters
pected discoveries, from the first isolation of nucleic acids, to artistic depictions interaction among science, technology, and
of electrons, to serendipitous patterns of crystal growth on organic objects, to society; encourages appreciation and support
a new mission to move an asteroid. We hope all these accounts inspire you to of original work in science and technology; and
search for new ways of seeing—or sensing by other means—the workings of promotes ethics and excellence in scientific and
engineering research.
everything around us. —Fenella Saunders (@FenellaSaunders)
Printed in USA

130 American Scientist, Volume 109

Letters
Creating Green Hydrogen
To the Editors:
The concept of using “green” hydro-
gen in a fuel-fired power plant, as
discussed in Lee S. Langston’s article
“Generating a Cleaner Future” (Tech-
nologue, March–April), leaves me with
a basic question: If green hydrogen is
created by the electrolysis of water,
will it not require more electrical pow-
er from the grid to make the hydrogen
than can be returned to the grid by
burning the hydrogen as fuel?
Using the most efficient process-
ing available today, the electrolysis
of water would take more than twice
as much power as the resulting burn-
ing of hydrogen would provide. And
no matter what improvements can be
made to the efficiencies of the electrol-
ysis and combustion processes, it will
always take more power to produce
the hydrogen than can be generated
from burning it.
Unless there is a means to create hy-
drogen other than the electrolysis of
water, what is the reasoning that leads
one to pursue the use of hydrogen as a
fuel in a gas-fired power plant?
W. M. Goldberger
Columbus, OH
American Scientist (ISSN 0003-0996) is published bimonthly by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 (919-549-0097). Newsstand single copy
$5.95. Back issues $7.95 per copy for 1st class mailing. U.S. subscriptions: one year print or digital $30, print and digital $36. Canadian subscriptions: add $8 for shipping; other foreign subscriptions: add
$16 for shipping. U.S. institutional rate: $75; Canadian $83; other foreign $91. Copyright © 2021 by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise copied, except for onetime noncommercial, personal use, with-
out written permission of the publisher. Second-class postage paid at Durham, NC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send change of address form 3579 to Sigma Xi, P.O. Box 13975, Research
Triangle Park, NC 27709. Canadian publications mail agreement no. 40040263. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to P. O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, Ontario L4B 4R6.
Travel Adventures September - December 2021
For information about
Covid and travel,
please call our office.
Greenland Voyage: Glacial
Wonderland
September 9 - 20, 2021
On board M/V Hondius
Black HIlls & Mt. Rushmore
September 18 - 25, 2021
A wonderful adventure including
the buffalo roundup
We invite you to travel
the World with Sigma Xi!
www.americanscientist.org
Dr. Langston responds:
You are certainly correct that the process
of electrolyzing water to produce hydro-
gen will require electrical power—from
somewhere. The key words in my ex-
planation are “created from a surplus of
renewable energy.” One problem with
wind- and solar-generated electric-
ity is what to do with those electrons
when there is no market for them. For
instance, Denmark has on occasion re-
sorted to paying neighboring countries
to take surpluses of its extensive wind
power electricity rather than shut down
whole arrays of its wind turbines. Ger-
many has had a similar problem with
surplus solar power generated in its
southern states. Using that extra energy
to create hydrogen would be a way to
perpetuate green power.
Venusian Atmosphere
To the Editors:
I read Paul Byrne’s article “Unveiling
Earth’s Wayward Twin” (January–
February) with great interest. I learned
a lot I had not known about the planet
we once believed to be our near-twin
and gained a better understanding of
how studying Venus could help us
learn more about planets outside our
own Solar System.
Mesa Verde & the San Juan Mountains
September 18 - 26, 2021
Breathtaking sites at the time of fall color!
Madagascar: Lemur Wonderland
September 25 - October 12, 2021
SIGMA XI Expeditions
THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH HONOR SOCIETY
17050 Montebello Rd, Cupertino, CA 95014-5435
Phone: (800) 252-4910
Two facts that struck me are that Ve-
nus’s atmosphere is so much denser
than Earth’s and that Venus has far
fewer impact craters relative to other
planets and moons. The author sug-
gests that these facts show that Venus’s
surface must have formed much more
recently than that of, say, Mars. That’s
certainly a possibility.
But might not Venus’s very dense
atmosphere affect both the number
and size distribution of impact cra-
ters? A dense atmosphere will burn
up more incoming objects than a thin
atmosphere, such as that of Mars, will.
Small objects entering Venus’s thick
atmosphere will be most likely to burn
up completely, but even the surface ef-
fects of larger objects will be reduced.
Perhaps Venus’s surface is old but lit-
tle battered.
In any case, the author made a con-
vincing case that Venus certainly de-
serves more study than it’s received so
far given how different it is from Earth
despite a few great similarities.
John Cushing
Bend, OR
Dr. Byrne responds:
It’s true that Venus’s atmosphere does
a very effective job screening incom-
ing asteroids and comets from hitting
Columbia River Cruise
On Nat Geo Sea Lion
October 3 - 10, 2021
Fantastic geology with
Dr. Duncan Foley
New Zealand
November 21 - December 6, 2021
A paradise down under,
with naturalist Lloyd Esler
Discover Egypt & the Nile
December 1 - 14, 2021
With Red Sea Ext to December 17
Fascinating & not to be missed!
For information please contact:
Betchart Expeditions Inc.
Email: SigmaXiInfo@betchartexpeditions.com
2021 May–June 131
 Online | @americanscientist.org
Tracking the Pandemic
Integrating big data into
surveillance models can provide
near-real-time information about
the spread of COVID-19. Shweta
Bansal, associate professor of
biology at Georgetown University,
discussed how these models can
inform decision-making about
pandemic policies as part of
the Sigma Xi Virtual COVID-19
Francisco J. AragÓn Artacho/Jonathan M. Morwein/CARMA
Distinguished Lectureship Series.
https://bit.ly/3f5QWrM
A Special Collection for Pi Day
To celebrate March 14 (frequently
abbreviated as 3-14), the editors dug
into the American Scientist archives
and compiled a compendium of
articles all about π. The digital
collection is available as a premium
to subscribers.
https://bit.ly/2OYR3L7
Does In-Person Schooling
Contribute to COVID-19 Spread?
Two new well-designed studies
indicate that in-person schooling
does not contribute to SARS-
CoV-2 transmission when baseline
community spread is low, but it
does when spread is high.
https://bit.ly/3cP5yJb
the surface. In fact, there are relatively
few craters less than 25 kilometers in
diameter, and none less than 3 kilo-
meters, purely because of that thick at-
mosphere’s ability to shield the surface
from impactors.
However, Venus doesn’t boast
any of the really large impact ba-
sins that are so common on Mer-
cury, the Moon, or Mars, say—
none of the 500- kilo meter-wide,
1,000-kilometer-wide, or even bigger
132 American Scientist, Volume 109
Seeing the Unseeable
A new documentary film provides
a fly-on-the-wall view of two
recent endeavors to understand
black holes: the work of the Event
Horizon Telescope team to make
the first picture of a black hole and
a theoretical initiative to resolve the
black hole information paradox.
https://bit.ly/3cOGYZ2
Check out AmSci Blogs
http://www.amsci.org/blog/
Find American Scientist
on Facebook
facebook.com/AmericanScientist
Follow us on Twitter
twitter.com/AmSciMag
Join us on LinkedIn
linkedin.com/company
/american-scientist
Find us on Instagram
instagram.com/american_scientist/
Read American Scientist
using the iPad app
Available through Apple’s App Store
(digital subscription required)
basins such as Caloris on Mercury,
Orientale on the Moon, and Hellas on
Mars. Indeed, the largest impact fea-
ture on Venus is Mead crater, which is
about 280 kilometers across; there are
more than 40 basins larger than this
on Mercury. Thus, although the atmo-
sphere plays some role in the impact
record (or lack thereof) on Venus, it’s
far from the only factor responsible for
the second planet’s relatively youthful
average surface age.
Virtually Lost Knowledge
To the Editors:
Elizabeth Keating’s interesting ar-
ticle on the oddness of virtual meet-
ings (“Why Do Virtual Meetings Feel
So Weird?” Perspective, March–April)
identifies problems that emerged three
or four decades ago under different
circumstances.
In the 1980s, companies under pres-
sure from corporate raiders and take-
over operators began divesting opera-
tions that were deemed “noncore.”
This move marked the beginning of
a trend away from vertical integration
(where a company does everything it
needs to design and make its products
in-house) to outsourcing (a company
contracts with other businesses to per-
form many of these tasks).
Not only did this change break
social and cultural bonds, but it also
broke technical links—interactions
between the product’s components
that had to be kept in mind to create
a competent design. My colleagues
and I at the MIT Leaders for Global
Operations have published research
on this topic.
Outsourcing transforms personal
and corporate relationships from colle-
gial to transactional, and the loss of in-
ternal knowledge was severe. In many
situations, a personal visit allowed
for three-dimensional visualization of
both things and people. These inter-
actions are indispensable, especially
for those who do not pick up on body
language and other forms of nonver-
bal communication. (I speak from per-
sonal experience.)
Though the topics Keating raises
are not new, the internet has brought
them to the surface again. There are,
as far as I can tell, no good technologi-
cal solutions.
Daniel Whitney
Redmond, WA
How to Write to American Scientist
Brief letters commenting on articles
appearing in the magazine are wel-
comed. The editors reserve the right
to edit submissions. Please include
an email address if possible. Address:
Letters to the Editors, P.O. Box 13975,
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 or
editors@amscionline.org.
Make your home more comfortable than ever

“To you, it’s the perfect lift chair.

To me, it’s the best sleep chair I’ve ever had.”
— J. Fitzgerald, VA
NOW
also available in
Genuine Italian Leather
(and new Chestnut color)

Three Chairs
in One
Sleep/Recline/Lift

Pictured: Italian Leather chair ACCREDITED

chestnut color. Chestnut color BUSINESS A+
also available in DuraluxTM fabric

You can’t always lie down in bed and sleep.
Heartburn, cardiac problems, hip or back aches –
and dozens of other ailments and worries. Those
are the nights you’d give anything for a comfortable
chair to sleep in: one that reclines to exactly the right
degree, raises your feet and legs just where you want
them, supports your head and shoulders properly, and
operates at the touch of a button.
Our Perfect Sleep Chair® does all that and more.
More than a chair or recliner, it’s designed to provide
total comfort. Choose your preferred heat and
massage settings, for hours of soothing
relaxation. Reading or watching TV? Our chair’s
recline technology allows you to pause the chair in an
infinite number of settings. And best of all, it features
a powerful lift mechanism that tilts the entire chair
forward, making it easy to stand. You’ll love the other
benefits, too. It helps with correct spinal alignmentand
promotes back pressure relief, to prevent back and
muscle pain. The overstuffed, oversized biscuit style
back and unique seat design will cradle you in comfort.
Generously filled, wide armrests provide enhanced
arm support when sitting or reclining. It even has
a battery backup in case of a power outage.
White glove delivery included in shipping charge.
Professionals will deliver the chair to the exact spot in
your home where you want it, unpack it, inspect it, test
it, position it, and even carry the packaging away! You
get your choice of Genuine Italian leather, stain and
water repellent custom-manufactured DuraLux™ with
the classic leather look or plush MicroLux™ microfiber
in a variety of colors to fit any decor. New Chestnut
color only available in Genuine Italian Leather
and long lasting DuraLux™. Call now!
The Perfect Sleep Chair®
1-888-760-5882
Please mention code 114604 when ordering.

Chestnut
REMOTE-CONTROLLED Genuine Italian Leather
EASILY SHIFTS FROM FLAT TO classic beauty & durability
A STAND-ASSIST POSITION
Chestnut Burgundy Tan Chocolate Blue
Long Lasting DuraLux™
stain & water repellent
Burgundy Cashmere Chocolate Indigo
Footrest may MicroLux™ Microfiber
vary by model breathable & amazingly soft
46556

Because each Perfect Sleep Chair is a made-to-order bedding product it cannot be returned, but if it arrives damaged
or defective, at our option we will repair it or replace it. © 2021 firstSTREET for Boomers and Beyond, Inc.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 133

 Spotlight | Sesquicentennial of the discovery of nucleic acids

including tumors, and he briefly specu-

Isolating the Instructions for Life
Friedrich Miescher was a pioneer in the field of molecular genetics,
but he never achieved scientific rock-star status.
Conversations in the first half of 2021
are dominated by COVID-19 vaccines:
where they are being distributed, who
has had the coveted shots, and how
life will change after the majority of
adults have been vaccinated. The jour-
nal Science even chose RNA-based
vaccines as their “2020 Breakthrough
of the Year.” These developments are,
of course, highly welcome, and they
could not have been achieved without
a key event that occurred 150 years
ago but that is now virtually forgotten:
the discovery of nucleic acids, DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ri-
bonucleic acid). This finding marked
the start of a new era in our under-
standing of organisms and disease.
But the story also holds lessons in how
we remember those who bring about
breakthroughs.
Courtesy of the University of Tübingen and Ralf Dahm
In the winter of 1869, Friedrich
Miescher (1844–1895), a young Swiss
doctor, was working in the former kitch-
en of a medieval castle in Tübingen, Ger-
many. His aim: to uncover the chemical
basis of life. He used pus-soaked ban-
dages from a local hospital to first isolate
cells, then their nuclei. From the latter,
he extracted an enigmatic substance.
When analyzing it, he found that it had
chemical properties unlike any molecule
described before. (See “The First Discov-
ery of DNA,” July–August 2008, for more
about Miescher’s methods.)
Miescher found that nucle-
ic acids were present in the
nuclei of every cell type
he studied. He also no-
ticed that the amount
of DNA increased in
proliferating tissues,
lated that DNA might play a role in
fertilization and the transmission of
heritable traits. When he published his
discovery in 1871, Miescher was so con-
vinced of the significance of the new
substance that he considered it “tanta-
mount in importance to proteins.”
These insights were prescient at the
time; it is hard to make a bigger dis-
covery than DNA. Indeed, DNA is so
central to how we think about biol-
ogy today that it has become the icon
of the life sciences and is deeply em-
bedded in our culture. Yet, very few
know of Miescher and his discovery.
By contrast, James Watson and Francis
Crick—the scientists who revealed the
structure of DNA—have achieved al-
most rock star–like fame.
There are several reasons for
Miescher’s relative obscurity. In some
ways, his discoveries were just too
far ahead of their time. For de-
cades, DNA, which is com-
posed of only four building
blocks, was considered too
simple a molecule to en-
code the complexity of life
in all its forms. Instead,
the proteins, compris-
ing 20 amino acids, were
favored as carriers of he-
reditary information. Only
in 1944—75 years after Mi-
escher’s discovery—did sci-
entists show that DNA is the
genetic material. At that point,
the race was on to understand how
DNA encodes information. But it took
another nine years before Watson and
Crick uncovered the structure of DNA:
the now iconic double helix.

Coincidentally, 2021 marks another

anniversary in the history of DNA re-
search: The first drafts of the complete
human genome sequence were pub-
lished 20 years ago by the International
Human Genome Sequencing Consor-
tium and the firm Celera Genomics.
This event was another landmark for
the life sciences and biomedicine. It also
ushered in the era of big data in biology.
Huge datasets produced by various ge-
nomics projects around the world have
transformed our understanding of how
This year is the 150th anniversary of Friedrich Miescher’s discovery of nucleic acids, a we develop, age, and become ill. (See
finding that marks the beginning of modern molecular genetic research. The Swiss doctor “Turning Junk into Us,” pages 174–181,
conducted his experiments in the former kitchen of Hohentübingen, a medieval castle for one application.) They also further our
that is now part of the University of Tübingen. comprehension of how life evolved and

134 American Scientist, Volume 109

how ecosystems function. Thanks to
genomics, scientists have made major
steps toward Miescher’s dream of un-
derstanding the chemical basis of life.
In recent years, molecular genetics has
led to the development of new, person-
alized treatments for a variety of diseas-
es. Innovations such as CRISPR-based
genome editing have opened the door
to a new era of genuine precision medi-
cine. Moreover, RNA-based vaccines,
such as those currently employed to
fight COVID-19, may prove equally ef-
fective at combating cancer and other
major diseases. A century and a half af-

ter Miescher first announced DNA and
RNA to the world, scientists are not only
making great strides toward under-
standing the operating instructions of
living beings, they are also increasingly
able to treat diseases in ways unimagi-
nable only a few years ago.
Given that these groundbreaking
developments are based on Miescher’s
seminal discoveries, it is all the more
surprising that he is so little known to-
day. Aside from being too far ahead of
his time, another reason for Miescher
passing comparatively unnoticed may
be his disinclination toward engaging in
communication and self-promotion. Un-
Science Source
A single strand of DNA, as shown in this color-enhanced transmission electron micro-
graph, contains the genetic material required for life. Miescher was convinced that he had
found a fundamental component of living organisms, but it took another 75 years before
the scientific community recognized the significance of his discovery.
like Watson and Crick, who were gifted Miescher’s story: Even the greatest dis-
communicators, Miescher was introvert- coveries require effective and accessible
ed, gave few talks, and did not interact communication for them to be noticed
much with colleagues. He published lit- and remembered. —Ralf Dahm
tle and when he did, he wrote long and
convoluted papers with key messages Ralf Dahm is the director of scientific management
often buried deep in less important de- at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Mainz,
tails. Thus, we can learn a lesson from Germany. Email: R.Dahm@imb-mainz.de

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 135

Infographic | Gary Schroeder

136 American Scientist, Volume 109

First Person | Zaneta M. Thayer

Learning from Pandemic Perinatal Experiences

Families who carefully planned the perfect time to welcome a new child into their lives
were thrown into chaos in early 2020 by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. As
healthcare systems reorganized their care around treating and preventing the disease,
expectant parents faced uncertainty about how these changes would affect their preg-
nancy and birth plans. Biological anthropologist Zaneta M. Thayer of Dartmouth Col-
lege studies how stress caused by this unpredictability affected pregnant individuals
and their families. Thayer’s approach is biocultural, meaning that the biological factors
affecting a person cannot be separated from the cultural elements of their surroundings.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a stressful environment that could not ethically be
replicated in normal circumstances, but it allowed Thayer to examine the far-reaching
effects of stress on mothers and children both during and after gestation. She expects her
study will continue for years to come as she looks for lingering effects on the participants.
Thayer spoke with Scott Knowles, a historian of risk and disaster at the Korean Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology, on his daily podcast, COVIDCalls. On the podcast,
Knowles speaks to guests about the latest research and the far-reaching effects of the pan-
demic. This interview is part of an ongoing collaboration between American Scientist
and COVIDCalls. It has been edited for length and clarity.

What effects of the pandemic have
you seen on maternal care?
People need a lot of emotional sup-
port through pregnancy, childbirth,
and postpartum. What we’ve observed
in the pandemic is a huge disruption
to systems of support and a huge in-
crease in uncertainty.
As an example, people aren’t al-
lowed to have support persons in pre-
natal appointments. They have to go to
the ultrasound appointment by them-
selves. There were lots of stories last
March and April about people hav-
ing to give birth alone. Support per-
sons who tested positive for COVID
weren’t allowed to accompany them.
Maybe they were planning on having
a doula; now the doula can’t come to
the birth because they’re allowed to
have only one support person. There
were even concerns and recommenda-
tions that if parents tested positive for
COVID, their infant should be sepa-
rated from them for two weeks, which
is obviously severely traumatic.
One thing that came up in our study
was a lot of uncertainty among par-
ticipants about how hospital protocols
would be affected by COVID. And
since there was no national response
strategy, every hospital had its own
regulations. What this meant was that,
maybe you picked your hospital based
on where you gave birth last time,
or where a friend gave birth. Now,
whether you chose hospital A versus
hospital B could mean a drastically
different birth experience. Hospital A
might allow only one support person.
Or at hospital B your partner might
not be able to leave the hospital after
you give birth because once they do,
they can’t come back in. All sorts of
different regulations were constantly
changing, which was causing a lot of
uncertainty and stress.
And then after people come home
with their babies, they normally have
systems of support, such as friends
and family bringing food and help-
ing to watch the baby or other kids.
But the parents didn’t have that either.
So there’s been huge disruptions for
people across this whole stage.
After the baby is born, parents nor-
mally have a support system—siblings,
parents, extended friend networks—
that must have been disrupted as well.
Yes, we’ve been working on another
analysis about the postpartum period,
when these systems of support are
particularly important. We’ve found
that individuals who say that they’ve
received less help with housework or
with caring for their newborn in that
postpartum period were likely to have
more severe depression than those
who were still able to get that support
during the pandemic. We also looked
at childcare disruptions, because if you
have older kids, and now they’re not
at school or in day care, you’re having
to care for them and a newborn and
not getting help from anyone else.
These childcare disruptions were also
associated with more depression.
What are some of the ways you think
about how these stresses on pregnant
mothers manifest themselves as effects
on children?
One of the big things we think about
when we’re talking about maternal
stress and pregnancy is how it affects
the developing baby. We know that
maternal stress hormones, such as cor-
tisol, can cross the placenta and influ-
ence fetal development. We think it
can affect things such as birth weight
and gestation length, so it potentially
increases the risk of having a preterm
baby. In the longer term, it can increase
risk for metabolic or immune disease,
and some psychiatric conditions in
children as well.
Now, obviously, the pandemic hasn’t
quite been going on long enough to
understand all of these long-term out-
comes, but I am currently working on
an analysis looking at fear of childbirth,
which is something that happens inde-
pendent of COVID, but which in our
sample is very clearly exacerbated by
COVID-related worries.
As an example, there were individ-
uals in our sample who were really
concerned about catching COVID and
the effects that it would have on their
developing baby or who were afraid

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 137

that if they caught COVID their baby
would be taken away from them at
birth. All of these individuals had a
higher “fear of childbirth” score. Basi-
cally, we give people a dial from zero
to 100, and we say, “How calm or
scared are you about your upcoming
birth?” In the analysis I was running,
I found associations between fear of
childbirth and shorter gestation length
as well as lower birth weight.
In our study, we don’t have the
same sample without the pandemic,
and our sample is not nationally rep-
resentative, so I can’t compare it to a
nonpandemic time. But qualitatively,
in terms of our participant responses,
as well as looking at the association
with COVID-specific variables, I think
it’s an appropriate interpretation that
fear of childbirth has been exacerbated
during the pandemic, because of all
the reasons we’ve been talking about.
People are more afraid than ever of be-
ing separated from their babies, of not
having support people in labor, and of
having their pain management strate-
gies and labor altered.
What do you rely on to draw that cau-
sality between stress of a mother and
the long-term health impact on a child?
In humans, we rely primarily on obser-
vational studies, such as this COVID
study I’ve been describing, because it
is unethical to experimentally expose
people to stress during pregnancy.
People are out in the world. Some of
them are experiencing more stress dur-
ing COVID than others. We’re inter-
ested in seeing how that natural varia-
tion and stress experience relates to
outcomes in maternal and child health.
But COVID does provide a quasi-
natural experiment, because it’s an un-
usual situation. Natural experiments
can be particularly useful if you have a
group of people before or after the in-
cident or big natural disaster, or maybe
two closely related populations, one
of whom experiences it and the other
doesn’t. I know there’s a whole prolif-
eration of COVID-related studies, even
many other studies looking at COVID
and pregnancy.
All of this observational research is
supported by animal model research.
We have a lot of experimental research
in animals showing that prenatal stress
leads to changes in offspring stress
hormones, and changes in metabo-
lism or immune function, that’s con-
sistent with our observational studies
138 American Scientist, Volume 109
in humans. And so that gives us more
confidence that the associations we’re
finding are meaningful.
I’ve talked to people on COVIDCalls
about radical changes they foresee in
medical research, and also in the ways
medicine is delivered. Is maternal care
also wrapped up in that?
There’s been a predominant assump-
tion within our society that hospitals
are the place you give birth, and the
pandemic caused a lot of people to re-
think that for the first time on a much
broader scale. There were people who
thought, “I don’t want to go to the
hospital—that’s where all the COVID
patients are. What are my other op-
tions?” And when people explored
those options, they realized that there
“The pandemic
may be shifting
some of the
cultural norms
about where we
should be
giving birth.”
are not that many alternatives, because
there are lots of structural factors that
inhibit access to out-of-hospital com-
munity birth.
Other places to give birth include
freestanding birthing centers, but
those are not available in all 50 states,
and also home births, but they can also
be difficult to access, they’re not cov-
ered by insurance, and they can only
be attended by midwives. With the
pandemic, you saw a lot of people try-
ing to explore these community birth
options for the first time.
Individuals who went to those com-
munity birthing centers, oftentimes
were very satisfied with it. My col-
league Theresa E. Gildner and I have
a paper in Frontiers in Sociology (Feb-
ruary 18, 2021) that discusses how
the pandemic is affecting our partici-
pants’ future maternity care prefer-
ences. We asked, “If you were to be-
come pregnant again, where would
you give birth?” About 6 percent of
our participants said that if they be-
came pregnant again, they would give
birth outside of a hospital; if you think
back, only 3 percent of people give
birth out of the hospital in the first
place. Their responses suggest that
the pandemic may be shifting some
of the cultural norms about where we
should be giving birth.
Are there documented cases of children
being taken away from mothers for a
quarantine period after giving birth?
Yes, there are. We asked about it in
our survey, and there were people who
were separated from their infants at
birth in our sample.
One of the things I asked partici-
pants was whether the mothers felt
like they had a choice or not. The of-
ficial Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention recommendations are for
the provider to inform the patient that
this was the recommended course of
action, but that the patient has a right
to decide about their medical care. So
technically, the patient could refuse
to be separated from their baby. We
asked our participants whether they
felt like it was presented to them as a
choice or as something that they had
to do. And all our participants said
that they felt like it was something that
they had to do and it was not present-
ed to them as a choice.
The U.S. guidelines were discon-
nected from the World Health Orga-
nization guidelines, which said that
keeping moms and babies together is
extremely important and should al-
ways be a priority. And there was no
evidence to suggest vertical transmis-
sion from mom to baby of COVID.
The mom should be masked and
wash her hands, but she and the baby
should be together.
How did stress affect women who
were pregnant but were also part of
essential worker groups?
In our study, we asked people if they
were working outside the home, and
about whether the pandemic was af-
fecting their work plans and how long
they planned to work in pregnancy.
We saw that work was a huge source
of stress for people, because a lot of
them felt like they had to choose be-
tween their health and their income.
(continued on page 140)
The Next Great Italian Masterpiece
The Argento Byzantine Bracelet is an
impeccable work of art with a price
unmatched by any in its class.

Raffinato ™

——— Italy

D a Vinci’s Mona Lisa, David by Michelangelo, Madame Butterfly by Puccini. Italy has produced
some of the world’s greatest masterpieces. And, it’s no secret it is the epicenter of the best
metalworking on earth. Which is why we sought out one of the best artisans to ever melt precious metals
to create yet another great Italian masterpiece. For over two decades, Fabio Aguti has pursued his passion
for making jewelry of great beauty inspired by the Tuscan countryside. The Argento Bracelet is his latest
masterpiece. And, you can own it for under $40!
Each bracelet is meticulously made by hand from pure sterling silver and celebrates the traditional woven
Byzantine design–– an intricate array of woven links that forms a flexible and elegant drape. Passing the test
of time and surpassing the definition of beauty, the Argento Byzantine Bracelet is perfect for the lady who
appreciates fine art. And, priced for those who appreciate a fine value.
The difference between priceless & overpriced. While shopping for bracelets, I spotted a 7” woven sterling
silver Byzantine bracelet with a big designer name for $250. Ridiculous. It wasn’t Italian made. It wasn’t near as
nice. High-end design shouldn’t carry a high price just because of a big name designer name up-charge.
No questions asked, 30-day money back guarantee. We want you glowing with satisfaction.
Masterpiece, not mass produced. Because each bracelet is handmade in Italy–– taking months to create––
we only have a select number available. Don’t miss this opportunity to own a piece of impeccable Italian-made
jewelry for a truly amazing price. Call today!

• Made in Arezzo, Italy • .925 sterling silver • 7.5" bracelet; lobster clasp

Argento Byzantine Bracelet The classic Byzantine

chain pattern has stood
Stunningly well-priced at $39 + S&P the test of time for over
2,500 years
ÌÌÌÌÌ
To show exquisite
“She loves it and details, bracelet
shown is not
wears it proudly. exact size.

The quality is outstanding,

and her friends recognize the
classy and elegant look.”
—M.B., Minneapolis, MN

Call today. There’s never been a better time to let your elegance shine. 1-888-444-5949
Offer Code: RFJ295-01. You must use the offer code to get our special price.

Raffinato ™ 14101 Southcross Drive W., Ste 155, Dept. RFJ295-01, Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.raffinatoitaly.com
A c ol l ec tion of impec c ab le d e s i g n & cr af ts mans hi p f r om I taly.
(continued from page 138)
It caused a huge psychological burden
for these people, because they didn’t
feel like they had a choice, and they
had to continue to expose themselves
and their unborn baby.
Are there COVID babies who will be
studied as a population group for the
rest of their lives?
Absolutely. With our own cohort, we
have the potential to follow these chil-
dren as they grow and develop, which
is certainly an opportunity I had not
anticipated a year ago. We’ve done
two rounds of data collection so far:
one during pregnancy and one about
one month postnatal. We’re gearing
up for a third data collection wave
with questionnaires again, and we’re
also going to collect hair from our
participants—from the mothers and
their babies—to look at cortisol stress
hormone levels in hair.
Based on research already out there,
what effects might we be looking at
for the life course of these children?
There’s certainly evidence for behav-
ioral and psychological outcomes,
such as anxiety or altered stress re-
sponse. A lot of research suggests po-
tential cardiovascular health effects.
But I would say that when we look
at those big cohort studies, there are
modest associations that come out.
One thing that is important to make
clear is that sometimes when we do
this research, we describe these pre-
natal stressors as like programming
offspring health in a way that’s irre-
versible. And I think that can be dam-
aging and pathologizing. Human bod-
ies are sensitive to the environment
beyond just the prenatal period. Even
if we were able to find some mod-
est associations at a population level,
when we’re talking about individu-
als, I don’t want to imply that they’re
doomed to disaster.
What will be interesting to see is
when and how, and in what way, life
becomes normal again. And if there’s
differences in the timing of that nor-
malcy, how that can influence the long-
term trajectories. Because again, the
sensitive period of development isn’t
only pregnancy.
There’s this whole cohort of people
who have had to go through some
really difficult things in pregnancy
and postpartum. What can we do
140 American Scientist, Volume 109
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Because she was infected with COVID-19, new mom Clarissa Munoz was separated from
her baby after giving birth at DHR Health in McAllen, Texas, in July 2020. The United States
does not have a nationwide standard for pandemic maternity care, so regulations have varied
among hospitals, including whether infected mothers are separated from their babies. The
uncertainty of these standards has caused significant stress for many pregnant women.
to support them now and to try and tively accurate assessment about that.
make sure that we improve environ- It’s always a new adventure.
ments in order to avoid the devel-
opment of these adverse outcomes? Do you think online study design is
There are still things that we can do. now going to become a requirement
for anthropological training?
How has the pandemic changed the I had three undergrads who were
way that you work? about to go to the field last year, so we
I’m an anthropologist, so normally I were working on their human subjects
like to go places and talk to people approvals. And when COVID hit, two
and build rapport. And so in some of them decided that was it. They were
ways, the online survey has been chal- overwhelmed and didn’t want to try
lenging because I haven’t gotten to to shift. But one of them shifted, and
see my participants face to face yet. we did her study online. She was origi-
We did provide a lot of opportuni- nally going to go to Peru and Japan,
ties for participants to provide open- but we did all these remote surveys
ended responses, and in that sense, and interviews instead. And now I’m
it’s been amazing to be able to hear designing some other studies with un-
these women’s voices, and read about dergrads, and we’re doing all online
their individual experiences that they surveys. And so I find myself training
have so graciously shared with us. But students in an area where I never re-
I am hoping in subsequent rounds that ceived training.
we will be able to do more interviews, I think there’s some value to internet
even if it’s just over video for now. surveys and to video interviews, in
I’ve had to pivot and figure out that we can reach more people quickly,
how to use my skills differently. And and we can access people geographi-
certainly, even if I were to start a ret- cally who would otherwise be diffi-
rospective study anytime in the next cult to reach. But I still think there’s
few years where I generate a new something about face to face that will
cohort and talk to people, for better never die. So I do think that maybe
or worse, this pandemic has had a this will become another tool in our
substantial enough effect that I think toolkit that we can certainly improve
I can ask about specific things that the methods on and do better. And
have happened to people and have that’s a good thing to learn. But I’d
confidence that they’re being recalled like to think that it will not replace our
with a high accuracy. For example, traditional bread-and-butter data col-
if I asked about whether someone’s lection methods.
financial situation was impacted by
the pandemic, even five years down, Am A podcast interview with the
hopefully, they can still give me a rela- Sci researcher is available online.
 Flashback, 1984
Honesty: noun, plural hon·es·ties. The quality or fact
of being honest; uprightness and fairness.

Ethics: noun, plural ´e-thik. The discipline dealing

with what is good and bad and with moral duty and
obligation

Integrity: noun in-´te-gr-te. The quality of being honest

and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.

,Q&,DQ-DFNVRQ6LJPD;L([HFXWLYH'LUHFWRU
UHFRJQL]HGWKDWLQWHJULW\LQVFLHQWLILFUHVHDUFKLVYLWDOWR
WKHDGYDQFHPHQWRINQRZOHGJHDQGWRWKHPDLQWHQDQFH
RISXEOLFFRQILGHQFHLQVFLHQFH:LWKWKLVNQRZOHGJHKH
FUHDWHGDERRNOHW³+RQRULQ6FLHQFH´SULPDULO\GLUHFWHG
WRZDUG\RXQJVFLHQWLVWV,QKLVZULWLQJ-DFNVRQH[SORUHV
ZK\KRQHVW\HWKLFVDQGLQWHJULW\PDWWHULQVFLHQWLILF
UHVHDUFK7KLVERRNOHWKDVEHHQDUHFRPPHQGHGUHDGLQJ
DVVLJQPHQWIRUVFLHQFHVWXGHQWVDWXQLYHUVLWLHVDURXQGWKH
FRXQWU\IRUGHFDGHV
6LJPD;L(WKLFV3XEOLFDWLRQVDUHDYDLODEOHIRUDQRPLQDOIHH
6LJPD;LDFWLYHPHPEHUVPD\GRZQORDGWKH3')VRIWKHVHERRNOHWVIUHHRIFKDUJH

For the Record: American Scientist Essays on Scientific Publication

The Responsible Researcher: Paths and Pitfalls
Honor in Science
9LVLWKWWSVZZZVLJPD[LRUJSURJUDPVHWKLFVDQGUHVHDUFKHWKLFVSXEOLFDWLRQV

Nominate a new member today

Email: membership@sigmaxi.org

www.sigmaxi.org
5REHUW50RUULV6LJPD;L7KH6FLHQWLILF5HVHDUFK6RFLHW\ă0DUHQJR,OOLQRLV:DOVZRUWK3XEOLVKLQJ&RPSDQ\

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 141

 Briefings
I
n this roundup, managing editor
Stacey Lutkoski summarizes
notable recent developments
in scientific research, selected from
reports compiled in the free electronic
newsletter Sigma Xi SmartBrief.
www.smartbrief.com/sigmaxi/index.jsp
Opening 17th-Century Mail
Intricately folded Renaissance letters can
now be read without damaging their
delicate paper. A team of computer sci-
entists, historians, conservationists, and
dentists—yep, dentists—pooled their
skills to develop an automated computa-
tional approach to uncovering the secrets
in these messages. Before the invention
CC-SA 4.0
of modern, self-sealing envelopes, cor-
respondents kept their messages private
with letterlocking, a complicated folding
technique. The researchers used x-ray
microtomography—a method used in
dental research to examine cross-sections
of teeth—to analyze the folded lay-
ers of paper; the technology also picks
up ink on the paper. The team used
these x-ray images to create 3D digital
Dambrogio, J., et al. CC BY-NC 4.0
reconstructions of the letters, which a
computational algorithm then unfolded.
The researchers tested the technique
on items from the Brienne Collection, a
17th-century Dutch postmaster’s trunk
containing more than 3,000 undelivered
letters. Reading these letters will help in-
form our understanding of the everyday
lives of people in Renaissance Europe.
Dambrogio, J., et al. Unlocking history
through automated virtual unfolding of
sealed documents imaged by X-ray micro-
tomography. Nature Communications doi:
10.1038/s41467-021-21326-w (March 2).
Interstellar Nitrogen Iceberg?
The interstellar object ‘Oumuamua has
puzzled astronomers since its discovery
in 2017 because it was observed acceler-
ating away from the Sun like a comet,
but astronomers didn’t see any evidence
of outgassing that would explain the
increasing speed. This mystery even led
142 American Scientist, Volume 109
to speculation by some that the object
could be alien technology. In a pair of
papers in the Journal of Geophysical
Research: Planets, astronomers Alan P.
Jackson and Steven J. Desch of Arizona
State University present some more
plausible explanations for ‘Oumuamua’s
oddities. They tested a variety of ices
to see which would give the object the
right albedo (the fraction of sunlight
reflected back into space), and settled
on nitrogen ice as the most likely can-
didate. ‘Oumuamua’s albedo is similar
to that of Pluto and of Neptune’s moon
Triton, both of which are covered in
nitrogen ice. Furthermore, the evapo-
ration of nitrogen ice would give the
object a push, explaining its accelera-
tion. Jackson and Desch suspect that
‘Oumuamua is a chunk that broke off of
an exo-Pluto (a Pluto-like planet outside
of our Solar System) and was propelled
through space by a gravitational disrup-
tion in its home system. A similar event
occurred in our Solar System billions of
years ago, when Neptune’s migration
caused collisions and the ejection of the
majority of the Kuiper Belt’s mass.
Jackson, A. P., and S. J. Desch. 1I/‘Oumuamua
as an N2 ice fragment of an exo-Pluto sur-
face: I. Size and compositional constraints.
Wolfgang Stinnesbeck
Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets doi:
10.1029/2020JE006706 (March 16).
Desch, S. J., and A. P. Jackson. 1I/’Oumuamua
as an N2 ice fragment of an exo-Pluto surface
II: Generation of N2 ice fragments and the
origin of ‘Oumuamua. Journal of Geophysical
Research: Planets doi: 10.1029/2020JE006807
(March 16).
Fingerprints Are Hypersensitive
The patterns on fingers are good for
more than deducing whodunit. We have
long known that fingers are sensitive,
and a team of Swedish physiologists
has discovered that much of that sen-
sitivity is concentrated in the ridges of
fingerprints. The researchers ran a series
of raised dots over participants’ fingers
and tracked the reactions of individual
nerve cells. They found that the areas
with highest sensitivity are about 0.4
millimeters wide—approximately the
same width as a fingerprint ridge. The
topographies of these sensitive regions
were consistent regardless of the speed
or direction from which the raised dots
passed over the participants’ fingers,
and they followed the same unique
pattern as their fingerprints. The high
level of precision in our fingers for rec-
ognizing and spatially locating touch
may help explain in part why humans
are so dexterous.
Jarocka, E., J. A. Pruszynski, and R. S. Johans-
son. Human touch receptors are sensitive to
spatial details on the scale of single fingerprint
ridges. Journal of Neuroscience doi: 10.1523/
JNEUROSCI.1716-20.2021 (March 15).
Prehistoric Shark Had “Wings”
Paleontologists have discovered a Late
Cretaceous shark fossil with features
similar to those of a manta ray. The
many species of modern sharks found
in marine ecosystems worldwide share
a common form: streamlined bodies
with long tails used to propel them-
selves forward. This new fossil species,
Aquilolamna milarcae, had sharks’
characteristic strong tail, but it also had
a 190-centimeter pectoral fin span, mak-
ing the animal wider than it was long.
A. milarcae shares other features with
manta rays, including a mouth that is
better suited for filter feeding on plank-
ton than for predation. The fossil may
be an example of convergent evolution,
and it indicates that despite the narrow
range of body types in modern sharks,
their evolutionary ancestors did experi-
ment with a variety of forms.
Vullo, R., E. Frey, C. Ifrim, M. A. González
González, E. S. Stinnesbeck, and W.
Stinnesbeck. Manta-like planktivorous
sharks in Late Cretaceous oceans. Science
doi: 10.1126/science.abc1490 (March 19).
 ,QYHVWLQJLQWKHIXWXUH
17
RIVFLHQFHDQG eligible
WHFKQRORJ\ disciplines
Open to
TXDOL¿HG
30,000+
science and
students
engineering
supported
students
$13+
30,000+ worldwide million
students supported awarded

Grants in Aid of Research

$SSOLFDWLRQ'HDGOLQHV
0DUFKDQG2FWREHU
The Sigma Xi Grants in Aid of Research (GIAR)
program has awarded funding to XQGHUJUDGXDWH Learn more:
and JUDGXDWH students across disciplines since 1922. www.sigmaxi.org/giar
Grants of up to  are available in most giar@sigmaxi.org
disciplines. Designated funds from the National
Academy of Sciences provide grants of up to  Support GIAR:
for astronomy research and  www.sigmaxi.org/give
for vision related research.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 143

 Perspective
An Octet in Flushing Meadows
The Fountain of the Atom at the 1939 New York World’s Fair married
art deco design with one of chemistry’s most enduring conceptual tools.
Roald Hoffmann and Dasari L. V. K. Prasad
I
n the spring of 1939, as the world
emerged from the Great Depres-
sion and braced itself against the
threat of impending war, the Unit-
ed States hosted an optimistic exhibi-
tion of a brighter future. The 1939 New
York World’s Fair was a showcase of
economic might, nationalism, culture,
and modernist and art deco design.
Visitors arriving in Flushing, Queens,
by subway entered the fairgrounds
through the Community Interests zone.
To their right was the Hall of Fashion,
to their left was the Town of Tomorrow,
and straight ahead, the Home Furnish-
ing building. In the center of this area
stood the Fountain of the Atom.
The Fountain of the Atom had distinct
tiers resembling a wedding cake. On
the upper terrace were four figures sig-
nifying each of the classical elements:
earth, air, water, and fire. On the lower
tier were eight ceramic sculptures,
each representing an electron. Eight
is not merely a lucky number, nor just
the number of right practices on the
Eightfold Path of Buddhism, it’s also
the number of electrons associated
with a stable atom.
Life magazine, then at the height of
its popularity, ran a 17-page photo-
essay on the World’s Fair just prior
to its opening and gave a prominent
place to the terra-cotta statues on the
lower terrace in the fountain. They
are electrons, but they are surely not
your usual electrons. Nonetheless,
the Life feature had no doubts of their
significance, describing the electrons
as “symbolizing the modern atomic
theory of matter.”
A Precocious Sculptor
The fountain’s statues are a high
point of the ceramic art of American
144 American Scientist, Volume 109
sculptor Waylande De Santis Gregory
(1905–1971). Gregory collaborated on
the fountain with architect Nembhard
Culin (1908–1990), who designed the
steel-framed structure, which also fea-
tured water running in columns and a
flame burning from the top tier.
It is unclear whether Gregory had
any exposure to chemistry or phys-
ics in his education, but he certainly
lived through the atomic age. He was
Chemistry has
a wonderful way of
adapting productive
chemical concepts
to alternative
understandings
of the underlying
reality.
a precocious, talented young sculptor
who had mastered a variety of tech-
niques but concentrated on the ce-
ramic arts. Ceramics requires knowl-
edge of practical chemistry, from the
properties of different clay mixtures
to the complex chemistry of glazes,
as well as the engineering of precari-
ous three-dimensional objects (the el-
ements on the Fountain of the Atom’s
upper tier were nearly 2 meters tall).
Gregory mastered these many tech-
niques, and he taught them in his
years at the Cranbrook Academy of
Art, a modernist school in Bloomfield
Hills, Michigan.
There is no sign in Gregory’s pre-
vious work that he was familiar with
the theory of atoms; however, he had
shown a previous interest in scientific
innovation. A year before the World’s
Fair, Gregory created a fountain ded-
icated to Thomas Edison titled Light
Dispelling Darkness, which you can still
visit at Roosevelt Park in Edison, New
Jersey. On one side of the fountain is
a sculptural group titled Science and
Achievement, which portrays people
working with electrical equipment
(including one holding a dynamo), as
well as the medical sciences. But no
chemists. So how did Gregory learn
about the Lewis octet, the theory that
eight electrons make for a strong and
stable bonded atom?
The Octet
In an interview with the Illustrated Lon-
don News published April 29, 1939—one
day before the opening of the New York
World’s Fair—Gregory says, “I based
[the fountain’s] general design on the
octet theory of the atom.” The vast ma-
jority of chemical compounds, includ-
ing those that make up living organ-
isms, testify to the special stability of the
octet: eight electrons unshared or shared
around carbon or other elements in the
periodic table’s so-called main groups
(columns 1–2 and 13–18). The fountain’s
architectural design (the circular plan,
several terraces, and the fixed number
of figures on each terrace) is consistent
with what a perceptive artist such as
Gregory could have known at the time
about the structure of the atom, and
about the central role of electrons.
The octet rule is attributed to Gil-
bert N. Lewis (1875–1946), one of the
 Donald G. Larson Collection on International Expositions and Fairs, Special Collections Research Center, Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno

Visitors arriving at the 1939 New York World’s Fair were greeted by the Fountain of the Atom, 1844) postulated, the spectral lines that
an art deco celebration of chemistry. Ceramicist Waylande Gregory created 12 terra-cotta Robert Bunsen (1811–1899) discovered
figures for the structure. The top tier featured representations of the four classical elements characteristic of the elements of the
(earth, air, water, fire), and the lower tier displayed eight colorful, playful electrons. The octet
periodic table, and the nature of the ra-
of electrons represented a strong and stable bonded atom.
diant energy emitted from heated bod-
ies all waited for their interpretations
greatest American chemists, who laid loafer electrons in other atoms. until the early 20th century, when Max
the foundation for the electronic theory The physicist, on the other hand, Planck had his profound insight that
of chemical bonding. But the story of the has preferred to think of them as the radiated energy will only be emit-
octet is in fact a complex one, involving leading more active lives, play- ted in discrete quantities, called quanta.
along the way independent discoveries ing ring-around-the-rosy, crack- This quantum theory then set the stage
by Richard Abegg, J. J. Thomson, Wal- the-whip, and other interesting for the work of Niels Bohr to propose
ther Kossel, and Irving Langmuir, and a games. In other words, he has the planetary model of electrons circu-
dance between chemistry and physics in pictured them as rotating with lating around the nucleus of an atom,
the first quarter of the 20th century. enormous speeds in orbits, and as like tiny worlds orbiting a sun. This
Gregory’s circular orbit representa- occasionally flying out of these perspective on atoms could have been
tion in the Fountain of the Atom may orbits for one reason or another inspirational as well for Gregory as he
have been inspired by Lewis’s theory, [emphasis in the original]. contemplated the design of the Foun-
but it does not match with Lewis’s tain of the Atom.
cubical model of the atom—not that Try as one might, thus far no one In 1927, German physicists Walter
the latter is right, anyway, except as a has “seen” an electron. The reason Heitler and Fritz London developed
heuristic device. From the beginning, for the quotes is that seeing is a non- a quantum mechanical treatment of
the “real” whereabouts of the electrons trivial disturbance of the system. At the chemical bond. Lewis’s cube was
have been points of intense debate. this scale, one has to give it a quantum replaced by electrons moving in inde-
American experimental physicist Rob- mechanical operational significance, terminate ways that we could only vi-
ert Andrews Millikan wrote in 1924: which in turn means considering sualize on average, as an electron cloud
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle— attracted to the nuclei of the atoms in-
The chemist has in general been that is, the moving electron does not volved in bonding. “Hybrid orbitals”
content with what I will call the exist at a perfectly defined location. pointing along the directions of the
“loafer” electron theory. He has Subject to those limitations, the elec- vertices of a tetrahedron came into play
imagined these electrons sit- tron cloud in an atom has been seen; it as a kind of housing assignment for the
ting around on dry goods boxes is certainly not cubical. electrons. Linus Pauling’s great experi-
at every corner ready to shake More broadly, the detailed structure ence in structural chemistry, for which
hands with, or hold on to, similar of the atoms that John Dalton (1766– he won his first Nobel Prize in 1954,

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 145


The Fountain of the Atom featured eight anthropomorphized electrons (above and at top of
facing page). Gregory described the playful terra-cotta figures as participating in “a joyous,
energetic dance around the nucleus.”
The Evolution of Atomic Representations
The concept of atoms—the minuscule building blocks of matter—has been
around at least since the 5th century bce, when the Greek philosophers Leu-
cippus and Democritus argued that there is a smallest possible component
of matter. They called this fundamental unit atomos, meaning indivisible.
The beginning of modern atomic theory is often credited to chemist
John Dalton, who starting in 1803 proposed that each chemical element
is composed of a single type of atom—an indestructible particle with a
distinct mass and unique properties—which can combine with others to
form compounds. Another century passed before physicist J. J. Thomson
published his discovery of electrons, the first
identified subatomic particles.
Understanding the nature of the components
of the atom was one challenge, but getting a com-
prehensible picture of how these components
bind, and how atoms interact with other atoms,
was another. Although the quantum model of
electrons in orbitals moving around a nucleus is
widely accepted as an accurate and useful repre-
sentation, Gilbert N. Lewis’s dot structures ap-
pear to give a clearer description.
Lewis structures focus on atoms’ valence
electrons—the outer shell of electrons that can
form chemical bonds. The main group of ele-
ments tends to form bonds that will create a
stable shell of eight valence electrons, hence the
octet of Gregory’s Fountain of the Atom. Lewis
conceived of the valence shell as a box with elec-
trons at each corner (as shown in this 1902 sketch by Lewis, top left). Over
the years, these cubes have been flattened and simplified into the chemical
notations familiar to anyone who has taken Chemistry 101 (bottom left).
Electron sculpture photographs courtesy of University of Richmond Museums. From left: collection of Martin and Judy Stogniew; private collection; University of Richmond Museums, promised gift of Tom Folk; gift of the estate of Yolande Gregory
allowed him to reinterpret the Lewis
octet in quantum mechanical terms,
and reconcile the chemical and quan-
tum mechanical views of the atom.
Chemistry has a wonderful way of
adapting productive chemical con-
cepts to alternative understandings of
the underlying reality. And so, despite
knowing from quantum theory that
the atom bears no resemblance to a
hard, sculptural object, the octet re-
mains the first of every chemist’s con-
ceptual tools with which one tries to
understand which molecules are likely
to be stable, and which very reactive.
Just right for the Fountain of the Atom,
which married the streamlined aes-
thetic of Art Deco with scientific ideas
that, in retrospect, marked the birth of
the “Atomic Age.”
Elemental Beauty
Although, at first glance, the larger
sculptures of the four elements may
seem out of place on the Fountain of
the Atom, Gregory viewed them as in-
tegral to the creation of ceramics. In
a 1935 article in the journal Design,
Gregory wrote:
Earth, Water, Air, and Fire are all
companions in the creation of a
ceramic sculpture. Nature’s voice
seems very near in the clay at one’s
feet, awaiting the release, the com-
mand to speak. The earth seems
pregnant with potential sculpture
and when commanded by the cre-
ative force, the surge is unrelent-
ing until complete crystallization

146 American Scientist, Volume 109

 results in sculptured creatures of
elemental beauty.
That aptly expressed appreciation
of “elemental beauty” may have led to
Gregory’s interest in the atomic struc-
tures of elements. Around the lower
tier of the fountain, four of the elec-
trons are male and four are female.
At least half of them have schematic
lightning around them. One female
electron is surrounded by bubbles,
while a male electron sports fins. All
are cavorting, in delight at their nudity,
and seemingly able to defy gravity.
The electrons are certainly fun.
There are no hints of them stealing or
sharing another electron, but then the
architectural constraints of the foun-
tain do not allow them to interact. In
the real world, they would most cer-
tainly be up to something. Gregory
described the electrons as
boys and girls dancing a joyous,
energetic dance around the nu-
cleus. I portray them as elemental
little savages of boundless electri-
cal energy, dancing to the rhythm
of sculptured bolts of lightning-
like flashes in brilliant colored
glazes, their buoyant bodies of
richly modeled terra cotta clays in
warm colors.
Although the focus of the fountain
was on the electrons and modernity,
we cannot pass over the colonialist
language. The headline of the Life ar-
ticle about the fountain paraphrased
Gregory’s description: “These Little
Savages Are Electrons.” Sadly, this was
how the dominant powers in society
at the time, without batting an eyelid,
commonly depicted the “other”—as
elemental primitives. These tropes
were especially insidious at World’s
Fairs, which were explicitly promo-
tional, nationalistic spectacles.
Courtesy of Alfred Ceramic Art Museum at Alfred University
Honor to the Atom
Gregory’s allegorical ceramic repre-
sentation of the atom with the octet
was noticed by Albert Einstein on
April 30, 1939, when he visited the
World’s Fair. He is quoted as saying
to Gregory, “Young man, I wanted to
To make ceramic sculptures, such as this rep-
resentation of fire from the Fountain of the
Atom, artists must harness all four of the
classical elements. Gregory was a master at
the medium and developed new techniques
to create large-scale pieces.
www.americanscientist.org
meet the artist who gave honor to the
atom.” Einstein was a great believer in
visual and heuristic thinking, and we
believe he is likely to have appreciated
the sculptural solidity that Gregory
crafted to “honor” the atom. It was
also Einstein who gave us the quan-
tum mechanics of light emission and
absorption, and Lewis who invented
the word “photon” (for what Einstein
called light quanta, lichtquanten). The
theory of how we see in absorption
the radiant colors of the striking glazes
that Gregory ground and mixed him-
self was formed by that other immi-
grant to New Jersey.
When the World’s Fair was over, the
Fountain of the Atom was disassembled,
and its elements scattered. One can
see individual pieces in the Cranbrook
Academy collection, the Everson Mu-
seum of Art in Syracuse, New York,
the University of Richmond Museums,
and the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum
at Alfred University. The dispersal
of the Fountain of the Atom is itself a
metaphor—the sculptural electrons
moving off into the world, making new
connections, bonding with new view-
ers. The electrons are still having fun.
Bibliography
Folk, T. C. 2013. Waylande Gregory: Art Deco
Ceramics and the Atomic Impulse. Richmond,
VA: University of Richmond Museums.
Jensen, W. R. 1984. Abegg, Lewis, Langmuir,
and the octet rule. Journal of Chemical Educa-
tion 61:191–200.
Karp, I., and S. D. Lavine, eds. 1991. Exhibiting
Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum
Display. Washington, DC: Smithsonian In-
stitution Press.
Kohler, Jr., R. E. 1974. Irving Langmuir and the
“octet” theory of valence. Historical Studies
in the Physical Sciences 4:39–87.
Lewis, G. N. 1916. The atom and the mole-
cule. Journal of the American Chemical Society
38:762–785.
Millikan, R. A. 1924. The physicist’s present
conception of an atom. Science 59:473–476.
Preziosi D., and C. Farago. 2004. Grasping the
World: The Idea of the Museum. London:
Routledge.
Shaik, S. 2007. The Lewis Legacy: The chemical
bond—a territory and heartland of chemistry.
Journal of Computational Chemistry 28:51–61.
Roald Hoffmann is a theoretical chemist and the
Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters,
Emeritus at Cornell University. He is also a writer,
carving out his own land between poetry, philoso-
phy, and science. Dasari L. V. K. Prasad is an assis-
tant professor of chemistry at the Indian Institute
of Technology Kanpur. He is currently dislodging
electrons from crystal lattices. Email for Hoffmann:
rh34@cornell.edu
2021 May–June 147
 Engineering
Elevators Rise to the Occasion
Virus safety now joins practicality and structural reliability as a performance
metric for vertical transport.
Henry Petroski
H
alf a century ago, New York
City’s Empire State Build-
ing was the tallest in the
world, measuring 381 me-
ters from the sidewalk to its roofline. It
had set the height record upon its com-
pletion in 1931 and held onto it until the
North Tower of the World Trade Center
was topped out four decades later.
In the meantime, architectural prefer-
ence in skyscrapers had evolved from
the Art Deco style of the Empire State
Building to the Bauhaus-inspired Inter-
national Style that emerged in the 1950s.
Whereas the former was characterized
by an ornamented and tiered profile that
provided a form of buttressing, the lat-
ter was marked by strict rectilinear ele-
ments that were often unbroken from
bottom to top. Without the structural
advantages of buttresses, International
Style buildings grew inherently more
flexible as they rose to new heights.
(Since 2010, the tallest building in the
world has been the strongly buttressed
828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai.)
The pursuit of a world trade center
in New York City began in earnest in
1943, when the state legislature passed
a bill authorizing the development of
plans for its realization. Exactly where
it would be located became a point of
disagreement between the states of New
York and New Jersey, each of which had
a seat at the table of the Port of New
York Authority, the entity that controlled
the metropolitan area’s airports, bridges,
tunnels, and other significant infrastruc-
ture, including the planned trade center.
(The entity has since been renamed the
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Distin-
guished Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering
at Duke University. Address: Box 90287, Dur-
ham, NC 27708.
148 American Scientist, Volume 109
Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey, to reflect both states’ involve-
ment.) New York pushed for a location
on the Lower East Side of Manhattan,
but New Jersey felt it should be on the
West Side, which is across the Hudson
River and New York Bay that separates
the two states. The latter choice pre-
vailed, in part because the megaproject
could also help an area of the city that
would benefit from urban renewal.
A design competition for the project
was won by Detroit-based architect Mi-
noru Yamasaki, who was relatively un-
known on the East Coast. His lack of rep-
utation was no doubt a factor in the elite
architectural community’s displeasure at
the choice and, after the project’s comple-
tion, its almost universally negative re-
views of the aesthetics of the Twin Tow-
ers. Yamasaki’s winning design called
for each tower to be 80 stories high, but
the Port Authority’s wish that the trade
center have 930,000  square meters (10
million square feet) of office space drove
the decision to build each tower 110 sto-
ries high, thus making them taller than
any existing building. Obviously, this
had great implications for the design of
the engineered structure that would un-
derlay the spare architectural facade.
Structural engineers of the time real-
ized that in high winds such a super-tall
and super-slender building could expe-
rience unprecedentedly large horizontal
motions, which occupants of the highest
floors might find intolerable. The ques-
tion was: How flexible could the towers
be and, consequently, how much sway
should be allowed? It was not a question
answerable by theory; it had to be based
on empirical data. An experiment to col-
lect such data was devised in 1965 by
the structural engineer Leslie E. Robert-
son. At the time, he was working for the
Seattle-based engineering firm of
Worthington, Skilling, Helle, and Jack-
son, which had been selected to design
the steel and concrete structure of the
towers. It was Robertson’s first high-rise
project, and he carried it out with distinc-
tion. In 1967, in recognition of his work,
he was made a partner in the firm, which
was renamed Skilling, Helle, Christian-
sen, Robertson. A decade after the com-
pletion of the Twin Towers project, the
practice split its operations geographi-
cally, and the East Coast office was re-
named Leslie E. Robertson Associates.
A bit of subterfuge was used to col-
lect data on human tolerance for sway.
Advertisements were placed in a lo-
cal newspaper on the West Coast of-
fering free eye examinations at a new
vision research center; people accept-
ing the offer were directed to report to
an ordinary-looking reception room
in an unremarkable shopping center.
After being checked in, the unwitting
subjects were led into a windowless
exam room that was, in fact, a motion
simulator—a room-sized box mounted
on a mechanism driven by hydraulic
actuators. The subjects were instructed
to stand at a mark on the floor and es-
timate the height of triangles projected
on the wall. As they were doing so,
unannounced to them the room began
to move. The movement was increased
until the subjects signaled that they
noticed something funny.
These experiments revealed that 10
percent of people could be expected to
detect 5 to 10 centimeters of sway, and
the average person about 12 centimeters.
Keeping the sway of an actual building
smaller than that would obviously both-
er fewer people. It may not have taken
an experiment to come to that conclusion
qualitatively, but Robertson had quanti-
fied what “small” actually meant. It was Tower, which consists of a collection of down the building by damaging what
also important to keep a very tall build- nine framed tubes with a footprint sug- they thought were critical structural sup-
ing’s sway small enough that its elevator gestive of a tic-tac-toe grid, making it a ports. Other than the explosion leaving
shafts did not bend and interfere with an so-called bundled tube. some dangerously unbraced columns
elevator car’s movement within it. The The weight of a typical framed tube and causing a good deal of smoke dam-
final design of the Twin Towers ensured, is borne by two sets of steel columns, age, the building continued to stand
by adjusting the buildings’ structural one around the perimeter and one clus- tall even in its compromised state, thus
stiffness, that unacceptable amounts of tered in the core of the building, where attesting to its redundant design. The
movement were seldom reached. Even stairwells, elevator shafts, and lobbies, as robustness of the structural design was
though the top of a tower as built could well as the essential utility conduits and also demonstrated during the terror-
actually sway as much as a meter in the restrooms, are located. In the 63-meter- ist attacks of September 11, 2001, when
wind, damping devices incorporated square footprint of the World Trade the badly damaged towers stood for
into the design meant that such an ex- Center towers, this arrangement left the an hour or so after the hijacked aircraft
treme amplitude would quickly dimin- 18-meter distance from the central core took out numerous perimeter columns.
ish to an acceptable value. to the outside wall free of any structural The buildings might have stood even
longer, and maybe not have
collapsed at all, had the
fireproofing on the steel col-
umns not been destroyed
by the impact or had the fire
been contained. One of the
factors that impeded first
responders from gaining ac-
cess to the damaged floors
was the crowds of people
rushing down the same
stairwells that firefighters
were running up.
Access—ingress, egress,
and nearness—is something
that has not always been
given sufficient thought in
the design of a building, but
it is something that draws
attention in the wake of a
tragedy. After the truck-
bomb incident, vehicle ac-
cess to the underground
garage and human access
to the building itself were
severely restricted. (In 1995,
just two years after the first
World Trade Center attack,
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo a truck bomb went off in
front of the Alfred P. Mur-
During the COVID-19 pandemic, elevators worldwide have been outfitted with signs and rah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
floor markings to indicate proper social distancing in the enclosed spaces. In the wake of what had happened in
New York, the likeliness of a terrorist at-
Tubular Design obstructions, thus allowing for an open tack on the Oklahoma structure should
The form of structure Robertson chose floor plan. In the mid-1990s, during a have been viewed as credible. The build-
for the towers is known as a framed visit to the Port Authority’s chief engi- ing’s facade was supported by widely
tube. At the time, it was a relatively new neer, Eugene J. Fasullo, who occupied spaced columns located very close to
way to build tall without having a for- prime office space in the North Tower, the street. Had strict limitations on park-
est of columns breaking up the interior I saw how this open space was filled ing there been enforced, the explosives-
space. The system was developed by with a crop of cubicles, whose occupants laden truck might not have been able to
the Chicago-based architecture and en- should not have felt as claustrophobic as get close enough to be so effective.)
gineering firm of Skidmore, Owings they might have in cramped, window-
& Merrill. Among their tubular build- less inner offices. An Easy Lift
ings contemporary with the New York My visit took place not too long after Even modestly tall buildings would
World Trade Center were the John Han- a truck bomb had exploded in an open- not be practical without the concept of
cock Tower, which is distinguished by access underground parking garage, an elevator. The basic idea goes back to
its sloped sides and exposed diagonal leaving a crater several levels deep. Evi- ancient times, when humans and draft
bracing, and the Sears (now Willis) dently, terrorists were hoping to bring animals provided the motive power

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 149

 Going from lifting replaceable loads to
lifting human beings introduced new
concerns for safety, not only because a
free-falling elevator car could result in
technical
severe injury or death, but also because
services
floors
buildings did not want to face costly liti-
gation. Such considerations led inven-
tor Elisha Otis to develop his automatic
emergency brake, which he demonstrat-
ed in the 1853 World’s Fair in the New
York City exhibition space known as the
Sky Lobby Crystal Palace. Four years later, a safety
floor for passenger elevator was installed in a
transferring building on Broadway in Manhattan.
from express On the day I visited the World Trade
to local
elevators
Center’s North Tower, the lobby was
outfitted with check-in booths much
like those found in a venue hosting a
large conference. Before I could even ap-
proach the elevators, I had to produce
identification and have my appointment
technical
services confirmed. The elevator system for a
floors supertall building housing on the or-
der of 10,000 office workers and guests
was another limiting design factor. At
plaza level the time, a rule of thumb was that as
much as 30 percent of a building’s vol-
ume had to be allocated to banks of el-
evator shafts and their adjacent lobbies.
Because return on investment depended
express local balanced
largely on how much office space would
elevators elevators ventilation
shafts be rentable in a building, it was desirable
to maximize the amount and quality of
usable interior real estate and minimize
that devoted to unrentable common
space. For the Twin Towers, it was this
objective that drove the design decision
to locate all stairways in the core of the
structure, thus leaving the perimeter for
prime window and corner-office space.
Barbara Aulicino
a local elevator that served the floors in
its zone. The system, although poten-
tially confusing for a first-time visitor,
was efficient for its time and place.
Reduced Capacity
Amidst the current COVID-19 pan-
demic, a renewed focus has been put
on elevators, even those in buildings no-
where near skyscraper height. The New
York City Building Code, for example,
defines a high-rise as a building greater
than 22 meters (75 feet), or roughly eight
stories tall, which is about the maxi-
mum height that a fire truck’s ladder can
reach. Few people would wish to climb
up that many flights of stairs to reach
their workplace in the morning or their
apartment in the evening. Thus, even
much lower-rise office and apartment
buildings are equipped with elevators.
But an elevator car or cab is a com-
munal place of assembly, and even a
ride of short duration can be fraught
with anxiety over who in the car pre-
viously or among current fellow riders
might be infected with the SARS-CoV-2
virus. Naturally, this kind of concern
has changed elevator ride regulations,
as well as the behavior of some eleva-
tor riders, especially those in high-risk
classes. Some people, especially those in
buildings with smaller elevators, have
adapted to the new normal by waiting
for an empty car, and perhaps even car-
rying disinfectant materials into it when
it arrives. If another person gets into the
car before it departs, a person concerned
about aerosol transmission may even
exit before the doors close.

The Empire State Building has 73 Municipal governments, along with

office space
The World Trade Center towers were de-
signed with all of their stairwells, elevators,
and other facilities at the center of the struc-
ture to maximize office space (above). The el-
evators were set up with express cars (green)
to “Sky Lobbies” (blue) from which local
elevator banks (yellow) were accessible (top).
through windlasses to lift buckets of ore
out of mines. In the 19th century, eleva-
tors in the form of platforms were raised
and lowered by steam power. When an
elevator was used to lift such inanimate
goods as coal and warehouse supplies,
safety was mostly a matter of inconve-
nience. When a hauling rope broke—a
not-infrequent occurrence—it was sim-
ply replaced with a fresh one and the
scattered and damaged goods salvaged.
elevators to serve its 102 floors, which
collectively amount to 200,000 square
meters (2.5 million square feet). Extrap-
olated to a single World Trade Center
tower, which contained about twice the
square footage, its size meant that as
many as 150 elevators might have been
needed. To be economically viable, an al-
ternative to having a dedicated shaft for
each elevator had to be found. One way
of doing so was to use double-decker
elevators and to have multiple elevators
share a single shaft, in a vertical system
of express and local elevators akin to
the horizontal scheme used for trains
in the New York City subway system.
The World Trade Center building was
divided into stacked zones, each upper
one accessible by express elevators from
the ground floor and a mezzanine lobby
(reached by escalator), as well as a Sky
Lobby, where passengers transferred to
elevator designers and service compa-
nies, as well as building managers, condo
and co-op boards, and resident commit-
tees, have tried to respond to pandemic
concerns by regulating the number of
passengers in a car at one time. A consid-
ered occupancy limit should naturally
depend upon a car’s size, meaning it
could be as small as a single individual
or a single family group. Signs announc-
ing capacity have been posted beside
and inside elevators, but just as not ev-
eryone wears a face mask, not everyone
adheres to such restrictions. How can
they be enforced, other than by a compli-
ant passenger exiting the car?
There have been low-tech efforts to
maintain social distancing by marking
lobby and elevator floors with proper
spacing indicators. Thus, passengers in
a large elevator car might be positioned
on marks like X’s and O’s on a tic-tac-toe

150 American Scientist, Volume 109

 Courtesy of MAD Elevator Inc
New touchless elevator technologies under development include buttons with proximity
sensors (left) and floor-level kick buttons (right) to call elevators. As a stopgap, some elevator
riders have adopted the use of a stylus for pushing buttons (middle).
grid. Still, riding in a closed, window-
less room with poor ventilation makes
it difficult to abide fully by such sensible
rules. A newly entering passenger may
have to reach around someone standing
close to the control panel to register her
floor. Asking that person to do it, as used
to be common practice, is now asking
that person to touch buttons more fre-
quently than he may wish. Furthermore,
every new passenger to an elevator that
is already almost fully socially distanced
will face the problem of positioning him-
self among passengers who have staked
out their own positions. Will existing
passengers move to the rear to make
room for the newly added occupant? If
they do, they may have to break social
distancing guidelines later by pushing
their way through a crowd to get off at
the proper floor; if they do not, the enter-
ing passenger will have to pass closely
between them. These are not strictly
technical questions; they are questions
of social design, which can be more dif-
ficult to answer.
Crowd Control
Controlling how many people are al-
lowed in an elevator does not solve the
related problem of crowds accumulat-
ing in the lobbies of large office build-
ings when employees show up during
the morning rush hour. Indeed, it can
exacerbate it. Fortunately, having many
employees work from home during a
pandemic greatly reduces the passenger
load on elevators. For those employees
who cannot work virtually, staggered
work hours can go a long way toward
achieving the same effect in the office. To
prevent an entire floor from going out
to lunch at the same time, one solution
has been pop-up snack carts that can
be scheduled to bring lunch to the floor.
www.americanscientist.org
Carolina Jaramillo Castro/Alamy Stock Photo
Some buildings and businesses have
even gone so far as to assign elevator
boarding times. Workers who show up
outside their reservation window have
to wait for a standby lift spot—at a prop-
er social distance, of course.
Some potentially offensive practices
can be obviated by hard (and soft) tech-
nology. Summoning an elevator and
Technological
upgrades to elevators
may have to be
considered long-
term investments.
directing it to a specific floor used to
be a simple act of pressing a button or
two. But when touching a potentially
contaminated surface was discouraged,
that became a potentially risky act. It
could be avoided by wearing gloves
or poking the button with a makeshift
stylus or any one of the many “anti-
touch” gadgets that have become avail-
able. The shape of most of these hastily
designed all-in-one keychain gizmos is
graceless, but so was the design of the
so-called church key that was needed
to open a beverage bottle or can before
the advent of twist-tops and pop-tops.
Some lower-tech options in develop-
ment include copper buttons, as copper
is known to kill off microorganisms,
and floor-level buttons that are kicked
instead of touched.
Touchless technology that is well-
established in other areas has been
adapted to some elevators. We are
accustomed to using touchless touch-
screens at airport check-in kiosks
that employ heat-sensing buttons to
Courtesy of MAD Elevator Inc
register a choice even before a finger
touches the keypad. There are also
voice command features, such as those
incorporated into television apps, au-
tomobile navigation systems, smart-
phones, and the like. Such technology
is not difficult to incorporate into ret-
rofitted elevator systems, but it comes
at a price that an operator of a building
or its tenants have to decide is worth
paying. Some elevator companies are
working on smartphone apps that
building occupants could download
to call wirelessly for an elevator, check
if it is occupied even before its doors
open, and have it not respond to oth-
er potential passengers until the cur-
rent one has exited. Recently adapted
technologies involve disinfectant sys-
tems that become activated when an
elevator is sensed to be empty. They
can take the form of bathing the car
in ultraviolet light—a technology al-
ready established in disinfecting water
supplies—or spraying it with disinfec-
tant between passenger loads.
Risk-benefit and cost-benefit analy-
ses of developing and adopting such
prophylactic conveniences are com-
plicated by our limited knowledge
of the virus itself, by changing guide-
lines about how to respond to it, and
by how long a pandemic will last. The
cost of installing smart systems may
be prohibitive for smaller buildings,
or too disruptive for really large ones
financed by investors who expect
a certain return on their investment.
But because there seems to be increas-
ing concern that if not this virus, then
some other one will attack the popula-
tion in future years, such technologi-
cal upgrades to elevators may have to
be considered long-term investments.
However, like any design decision,
these ones will involve a lot of judg-
ment calls, including who will pay for
them—the government, the landlord,
or the tenants? Q
2021 May–June 151
 Arts Lab
Tinkering with Crystals
The beautiful and fragile crystallized creatures from Tyler Thrasher showcase his
artistic attitude of serendipity, exploration, and staying fascinated with the world.
Artist Tyler Thrasher has a big personality,
and he’s not going to tone it down. Indeed,
his genuine enthusiasm and fascination are
some of the hallmarks that have catapulted
him to artistic success. Based in Tulsa, Okla-
homa, Thrasher is best known for growing
crystal formations on organic remains,
especially cicadas, but his endeavors don’t
end there. He also hybridizes plants, makes
music, and produces clothing for Black Lives
Matter fundraising. Thrasher developed and
donated hundreds of science kits to children
in underfunded schools. His current work
is an installation of ghostly bleached plants
and insects at the Philbrook Museum of Art
in Tulsa. Thrasher discussed his explorative
approach to science-inspired art with Editor-
in-Chief Fenella Saunders.
What got you interested in science?
My dad was a landscaper. I grew
up surrounded by plants. My
dad had these absolutely mes-
merizing gardens that I would of-
ten explore. So as a kid I spent a lot
of time exploring in nature, literally
in my own backyard—a lot of time
exploring and tinkering. My degree is
actually in computer animation and
art history. Anything I do with science
is mostly self-taught, a fun sort of side
venue for my creative expression.
What are your thoughts on how
people can better see science as not
just something you learn in school,
but something you experience?
When I was growing up, school was
like, here’s the book, here’s the chapter,
here’s the test. But looking back, I was
doing science every day, when I was
left to my own devices in the natural
world. I just didn’t call it science. It
was an escape, or it was me being
fascinated. I do think science comes
naturally to most people, but we don’t
152 American Scientist, Volume 109
like to be in those boxes with it. Now, these old structures, which outdated
when I share my experiments or my anything I had learned about in his-
hybridizing of plants, one response I tory class. I found myself drawing
usually get is, man, I wish I had you crystals and minerals I’d seen in a cave.
as a science teacher. I don’t think I’m I even started shading my art in ways
doing anything special. I’m just doing that resembled mineral formations or
what I enjoy, and I’m sharing how I do textures. Next thing I knew I thought,
it. I wish there was more of that in sci- what if I grew my own crystals? I had
ence, where we encourage kids to view a chemistry background from high
science as an everyday thing, not just a school, so I knew how to grow crys-
sit-in-a-room-with-a-book thing. tals. What if I grew crystals on some-
thing that’s not expected? Not rocks. I
found a little cicada shell outside and
I wondered if I could grow crystals on
an insect exoskeleton. Would the body
break down? Would it react? There
were no papers or journals on crystal-
lizing insect carcasses; the only way
to find out was to try it. I
downloaded free science
How did you
combine your art
background with your
interest in caving and mineralogy
to get where you are?
I doodled throughout school, but my
art fascination started with a sup-
portive high school teacher. In college
I went on a caving adventure. My first
cave experience was like my mind was
just catapulted. If you spend enough
time underground, isolated from other
humans, you start to view the world a
little differently. I started looking at all

journals where I could. I’d buy old col-
lege textbooks and just sift through
and gather notes. I crystallized a cicada
shell, and the first time I saw it, again,
my mind was just enraptured. I shared
an image of it on the internet, and it
didn’t take long before other people
also thought it was the craziest
thing they’d ever seen. It became my
full-time job, mostly just because
I explored. I had something I
was curious about, and I just
did it. It changed my life
completely.
www.americanscientist.org
How would you describe your artis-
tic aesthetic?
I think for me the way I categorize
my art is just how can I take the at-
oms around me and make something
new? How can I use the natural world
around me as a palette, like a box of
brushes and paints? How can I look
at the world like a big Lego box and
tinker and have fun? I never really
stopped to say, where does my art fit?
I think science art is a good mix, but
I really think I’m just tinkering and
having fun.
When you first started crystallizing
things, was that easy?
There was a lot of trial and error at
first. That’s mainly my fault. I don’t
like instructions. I like to just try
things on my own and learn all the
ways to go wrong. After that it be-
came really easy. Growing crystals
is as simple as taking a compound
that deionizes in water, supersaturate
the solution, put something in it, and
Artist Tyler Thrasher uses his own solutions
of compounds that form crystals of various
colors, shapes, and sizes, and immerses or-
ganic remains such as a beetle (below) or a
dragonfly (opposite) in the solutions to grow
the structures that make each of his artworks.
(All images courtesy of Tyler Thrasher.)
crystals will nucleate and grow. All
systems are looking for equilibrium.
Once you understand that, my job as
an artist is to destroy the equilibrium,
add a dollop of chaos—that’s literally
what dissolving and breaking down
compounds is—and watch how the
chaos can make something new.
Crystal nucleation points are basi-
cally imperfections, places where
something can grab hold. Does that
figure in your work, that you’re us-
ing imperfections to make art?
That’s the big one. In a way, yes, it’s
me relying on the natural imperfec-
tions of organic objects. Cicadas have
all these grooves and scratches on
the exoskeleton from having sur-
vived in the wild. Every scratch or
ding is a spot where a molecule can
rest and pull in other molecules and
crystallize around it. In a fun way,
my art does heavily rely on imperfec-
tions to make something visually
satisfying.
2021 May–June 153
Thrasher immersed this cicada in a solution
of potassium ferricyanide to produce these
bright red salt crystals on its surface.
Do you have any insights to why
crystals grow larger in certain
places than others?
There are so many theories. There’s a
lot going on in any given vat. One ex-
ample I could offer is say I float a cicada
on the top of a crystal vat. The way I set
the cicada in, some of the solution goes
over one of the wings. The wing gets
a little waterlogged and the cicada tilts
at an angle. All of a sudden, that half of
the cicada is breaking the surface ten-
sion enough that it forms this vacuum
where, when crystals start to grow on
the surface of the solution, they’ll follow
that flow line where the surface tension
is breaking and flow to that part of the
cicada. Then once those crystals grow,
all of a sudden they’re pulling in more
molecules. Sometimes if the cicada
comes out more crystallized on one
half than the other, that’s why. That’s
all dependent on how many pieces are
in the vat, what’s on top of what, how
things are sitting there in the solution,
that attracts and controls where crystals
grow and how the molecules and ions
move in that system.
Do you ever try to control that, or do
you leave it to chance?
Scientifically I know exactly what’s
going to happen, but it leaves this tiny
154 American Scientist, Volume 109
little margin for surprise, where every
now and then, maybe one in every 200
pieces I make, something happens that
I didn’t expect, and it’s so inspiring. So
I don’t control it, because that tiny mar-
gin of surprise is kind of what I live for
when it comes to making art.
The colors that you get are all done
just by using different chemicals?
It’s all dependent on the molecule and
how it interacts with light. I don’t add
any dyes. I just pick the piece and pick
the chemical based on the color the
crystal will be and go from there.
How do you think that art and sci-
ence overlap and fit together?
For the most part I think they’re the
same thing, just with different goals.
Art and science are the human brain’s
way of understanding the world in
reality around us. Both are trying to
communicate reality to some degree.
Art can be a catalyst for emotion, con-
versation, dialogue, political move-
ment. More of those abstract ideas
that don’t provide hard answers. And
science sometimes wants to do that,
but science has to have the hard an-
swers. The difference is, both routes
require a human to look at the world
around them, be curious and want
answers, but art doesn’t necessarily
give you the answer. Science’s job is
to always look back and always be
doubtful and always refine, refine,
refine. The point of art isn’t to look
at everything you did wrong and go
and make it better necessarily. But
I do think both schools largely deal
with trying to understand and com-
municate the world around us. Both
scientists and artists do exactly this.
How can we find a balance between
learning standard techniques and
still keeping creativity and personal
direction?
I think we need both. The formal
education shows us the toolbox. Here
are some tools. They’ve been around
for decades. This is how you can use
them. But I want to see fewer limits
on what those tools can do. We can’t
just go out into the world without tools
and come out a mess or do something
crazy and hurt ourselves. We should
be shown what the tools are and told
and encouraged that these tools are for
us to use how we want to use them.
Do you feel that you want to be a
role model for science outreach?
I do want to encourage people to ex-
plore the world. It’s your world. It’s
your home. Have fun. But there is al-
ways this looming goblin behind me
from bigger institutions or even other
scientists who have messaged me to
remind me that I’m not a real scientist.
I’ve had people who’ve told me that
I’ve encouraged science in their lives
more than their science teachers did.
I do find comfort where I see there
are leading scientists who have faced
opposition and criticism, but have led
some groundbreaking work. If they
can survive that, then maybe I can get
myself together and come in with my
little science flag too and say what I
need to say.

You give yourself a mad scientist

label, a bit as a joke. But do you
think that perpetuates the idea that
madness is required to have creativ-
ity in science?
There are times when I’m in my lab
and if something works and I put it
under the microscope, I will literally
jump up, scream, hop on my skate-
board with my lab coat, and do laps
while shouting in joy. On the outside,
someone would look and say, that
dude is mad. And I’m like, no, you
don’t get how cool the world is! I think
the mad part is just another synonym
for—I don’t know, madly inspired. So I
think the mad part is just me trying to
contain how cool I think the world is.

You had a lot of involvement in 2020

with Black Lives Matter. What are
your thoughts on increasing trust
and inclusion in science?
Growing up as a BIPOC [Black, Indig-
enous, and people of color] American,
very poor, and having friends who
grew up in North Tulsa, which is
largely a Black community that’s very
underserved, science is not a priority.
The priority, we’re told, is survival. A
lot of Black Americans are in a place
where we don’t feel like we can afford

Thrasher does not control the pattern of

crystallization in any of his pieces. Crystals
form on nucleation sites, imperfections in the
surface where the molecules can grab hold.
Sometimes this leads to large growths in one
small area of the subject (bottom). The size,
shape, and color of the growth depend on the
solution used (potassium chromium sulfate is
purple, and ammonium iron sulfates are pale
green) but also have an element of chance,
because of the random texture of natural sur-
faces. The role of imperfections and serendip-
ity in producing beautiful pieces is a factor
that Thrasher embraces in his art.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 155

Thrasher holds one of his crystallized snail
shells (top), hundreds of which he sold for $1
each to reach people economically impacted by
the pandemic. One of his larger pieces, a snake
skeleton (above), includes blue crystals of am-
monium copper sulfate.

156 American Scientist, Volume 109

Thrasher used a solution of potassium chromium sulfate to grow crystals on this fish skeleton,
with some of the crystal growth nucleating toward the tips of some of the spines.
to stop and look at things like science
and the arts and all this stuff that gets
higher up on that hierarchy of needs.
Science isn’t prioritized in school with
Black kids. It comes down to teachers
who can encourage that, and they have
to have those uncomfortable conversa-
tions. They have to stop and look at
their Black students and say, “You could
be a scientist.” I was one of three Black
kids in my chemistry class, and we
were kind of ostracized. We make these
adventure kits, and we want to go to
underserved communities and schools
where they don’t have those activities
and give a bunch of kids just a bag
with tools in it and say, “Let’s go on a
hike for two hours. What do you find?”
Something as simple as that, encour-
aging exploration within the BIPOC
community, that’s a big deal. We’re not
shown that we’re allowed to explore.
We’re not really shown that this is our
world. When you take people and tell
them that this isn’t really where they
belong, why would they feel the need
to explore it and do science, which is
largely exploration? We need to change
how we talk to Black kids about their
possibilities and open it up for them to
be able to explore the world.
Are you hopeful about change?
I think I’m a pretty optimistic, hope-
ful person when it comes to change.
Humans, we’re really young. Science
is even younger. I think we’re going
to get to a point, hopefully, where we
www.americanscientist.org
will get things back on track. We’ll
consider other ways to look at science
and approach it, and listen to other
types of scientists. How do we scien-
tifically view what is science? All these
conversations are happening. So I do
remain very hopeful that the conversa-
tion will change and humans will get
it together, because we’re all essentially
just celestial toddlers trying to figure
this whole thing out. We have not been
here very long. We’re just a bunch of
molecules, chaotically zipping through
space and time. We’ll get there. We’ll
figure it out—just not overnight.
You have listed hundreds of crystal-
lized snail shells for $1 each and
donated hundreds of science kits. Who
do you reach with those programs?
I got all these emails from hundreds
of people who said, I really want
some of your art, I was really hop-
ing for it this year, but then I lost my
job, or I have kids that haven’t been
in school. A lot of people have had a
bummer year. I thought it would be
really nice to share this. I decided to
list 200 snail shells for a dollar, and
either it’s adults who lost their jobs or
parents who have kids who have been
sitting in the house all year looking
at a computer. They need something
to inspire them or spark their imagi-
nation. Parents got snail shells just
to give them to their kids, give them
something to say, “Whoa!” If you can
just say “Whoa!” once this year—just
any tiny sparkle we can get—there’s
that. And then with the science kits
we did earlier this year, I put to-
gether some chemistry kits, and we
went into North Tulsa. I know some
schools here that just don’t prioritize
science because they don’t have the
funding or encouragement. We went
to their front porches and dropped
off around 100 science kits. For me it’s
just for whoever needs it.
What makes art successful?
That is a question. I think it’s a mix-
ture of character, probably resource-
fulness, and a little bit of luck. Once
I found my community and reached
out to those people, they started to
reach out to like-minded people. Once
you see something working, it’s like
growing plants: You have to tend to
it and pay attention. On top of all
that, you have to be a semi-decent
human, too. It’s a mixture of, what do
you give back? Do you use your art
to connect with others, or is it more
self-indulgent? What’s the purpose
of your art? Does it make people feel
good? I think it’s just being genuine.
It’s scary to be yourself, because we’re
afraid of being rejected. I’m this crazy,
excited, loud, energetic individual,
and I’m not going to be quiet to make
people comfortable. I think a lot of
people respond well to artists being
themselves and making the art that
they believe in.
Thrasher talks about taking chances,
growing opals, and more in an ex-
tended interview, available online.
2021 May–June 157
Enter the Axion
A new fundamental particle could solve a major puzzle in particle physics—and
also explain the nature of the dark matter that permeates the universe.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
T
here are two ways to start a
story about the axion. One is
to explain that this hypotheti-
cal particle could be the key
to a major problem in the Standard
Model of particle physics, which de-
scribes all of the known fundamental
particles. The beauty of the axion is
that there is a second, equally signifi-
cant beginning to its story. We now
suspect the axion may also be the
answer to one of the most important
questions—if not the most important
question—in all of particle physics and
astronomy: What is dark matter?
Dark matter is the term that research-
ers use for the invisible substance that
seems to dominate the formation of
cosmic structure and to make up the
majority of all tangible matter in the
universe. The first thing I like to tell
people about dark matter, to help them
develop some intuition for this strange
idea, is that dark matter is a terrible
name for this stuff, whatever it is. The
term is often attributed to Swiss astro-
physicist Fritz Zwicky, who proposed
the existence of dunkle Materie in 1933,
but in fact the first articulation of some-
thing like it goes back to 19th-century
scientist William Thomson, better
known as Lord Kelvin. In 1884, Kelvin
first spoke of “dark bodies,” proposing
that there might be celestial objects that
do not radiate light or other energy,
making them difficult to detect with
our astronomical instruments.
The modern conception of dark
matter draws on this apparently intui-
tive idea that something that does not
radiate is dark. But the dark matter
problem we are dealing with is much
The Standard Model is a powerful but in-
complete theory of particle physics. The axion
could deepen our understanding of the mod-
el and explain a puzzling asymmetry within it.
158 American Scientist, Volume 109
more fantastic than that: We are con-
tending with a type of matter that sim-
ply does not interact with light or oth-
er radiation. This property is why dark
matter is a terrible name: We can see
matter that is dark. We can see dark
hair, for example, when light scat-
ters off it into our eyes. A better name
would be invisible matter, transparent
matter, or clear matter.
The first substantive evidence for
the existence of dark matter came from
the work of astronomer Vera Rubin
in collaboration with Kent Ford. Us-
ing an instrument Ford developed,
Rubin looked at the speeds of stars as
We are contending with a type of matter
that simply does not interact with light or
any other form of radiation.
they orbited the center of their galactic
homes. What she found was inconsis-
tent with what one might expect based
on estimates of the galaxy’s mass that
researchers made by using stars. If the
stars were all of the matter in the gal-
axy, they should have been orbiting
more slowly. The stars were moving
as if there was more matter than as-
tronomers could see. In other words,
the data indicated that there was a lot
of matter on the outer edges of the vis-
ible parts of the galaxy—matter that
wasn’t radiating but was nonetheless
gravitationally influential.
QUICK TAKE
Unlike familiar protons and electrons, axions
would not interact with light. Axions could be
the invisible “dark matter” that seems to guide
the formation and structure of galaxies.
Today, there is a plethora of evi-
dence for the existence of this miss-
ing dark matter. Besides Rubin and
Ford’s galaxy rotation curves, we
now know plenty about clusters of
galaxies, galaxy mergers, and other
aspects of cosmic structure formation.
Moreover, our evidence goes beyond
the galactic and even comes from a
time long before galaxies had formed.
Data from cosmic microwave back-
ground (CMB) radiation—the first
light to travel freely in a transparent
universe after the post–Big Bang plas-
ma cleared—match best with a model
NASA, ESA, D. Harvey (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland), R. Massey (Durham University, UK) and HST Frontier Fields
that includes dark matter. Indeed,
CMB data are currently the strongest
evidence for dark matter.
We also know that dark matter is a
totally different substance from any
of the particles in our elaborate Stan-
dard Model of particle physics. The
best way to develop an intuitive feel
for this concept is to understand that
most of those particles would radiate
in ways that dark matter does not. No
particle in the Standard Model has the
right properties to be the dark matter.
The idea that most of the matter
in the universe is something we’ve
never seen or touched might seem
Physicists are running experiments to find
direct evidence of the axion. The author is
also studying the axion’s theoretical properties
and its possible astronomical effects.
 Galaxy cluster MACS J0416.1-240 contains far
more mass than its visible stars and gas can
account for. Scientists infer the location of the
unseen matter (indicated in blue) by the way it
distorts the light of more distant galaxies, but
its nature is entirely unknown.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 159


dark energy
68.3%
The composition of the universe is written in the sky, encoded in the cosmic microwave
background, relic radiation from the Big Bang. An all-sky map based on data from the Planck
space telescope shows that the radiation is warmer (red) in some places and cooler (blue) in
others. The pattern of variation confirms the presence of abundant dark matter; ordinary mat-
ter alone cannot match the observations.
implausible. How do we know it’s
there? Is it truly the case that we, along
with stars, dust, and everything else
that is luminous, are a demographic
minority in the universe? Spend some
time thinking about these questions,
and you may find it difficult to stop.
This could seem like a problem to
someone who isn’t a scientist, but from
the point of view of a theoretical phys-
icist, it is a wonderful problem to have.
A Massive Problem
Over the past several decades, many
theoretical physicists have taken up
There was new physics out there
waiting to be theorized. The axion
emerged from one of these searches.
the task of trying to solve the dark mat-
ter problem. Accounting for all of the
hypothetical particles proposed to ex-
plain it is like trying to describe all the
denizens of an enormous menagerie.
For a while, many researchers placed
their hopes on candidates inspired by
a theory called supersymmetry. These
models were tested using CERN’s
Large Hadron Collider or in giant
160 American Scientist, Volume 109
dark matter
26.8%
ordinary
4.9% matter
Barbara Aulicino; ESA and the Planck Collaboration
underground detectors such as Large
Underground Xenon (LUX) in South
Dakota and XENON1T in Italy. The
lack of a discovery or even a hint of
discovery during the past decade sent
many physicists back to the drawing
board in search of a new dark matter
particle to research. As a result, over
the past few years one candidate that
can be detected through other mecha-
nisms and had previously garnered
relatively little attention has swelled in
popularity: Enter the axion.
I didn’t always believe that dark mat-
ter was so important. In fact, I used to
think dark matter was a boring, fringe
problem in particle physics that would
get sorted soon enough. For a long time
I thought the only great challenge of our
time was cosmic acceleration, perhaps
because scientists discovered it the year
I applied to college. It’s easy to think my
youthful ignorance drove this, but it’s
also the case that everywhere I looked,
there were exciting conversations about
dark energy happening. (Despite their
similar-sounding names, dark matter
and dark energy are ideas that address
distinctly different problems.)
During the summer after my first
year of college, I had the opportunity
to spend a few months doing research
in particle physics. During that time, I
had the opportunity to visit Fermilab,
where I saw a talk by distinguished
theoretical physicist, Edward “Rocky”
Kolb. It was 2000, just two years after
astronomers had discovered that the
universe is not only expanding, but
that its expansion is also accelerating.
Reconciling this new empirical data
about cosmic acceleration with our best
theoretical framework for gravitation—
general relativity—led to the idea that
space is filled with an unseen energy
known as dark energy.
As a result, Kolb opened his talk—to
the best of my recollection 21 years
later—by saying that cosmologists had
worked out the universe’s composi-
tion. It was 5 percent “normal” every-
day matter, 20 percent dark matter,
and 70 percent dark energy. We were
almost there, he said. We just needed
to figure out what dark matter and
dark energy were, and we would be
done. It’s a funny story, and part of
what’s funny about it is that I figured
we’d soon find dark matter and that
dark energy was the only real mystery.
Dark matter has a way of draw-
ing you in though, and for me the
tug came through axions. Today I
am known by colleagues around the
world to be an expert on this particle.
To understand how a scientist like me
gets captured by a particle that isn’t
even necessarily real, it’s important to
go back to that particle’s origin story—
to the strong CP (charge conjugation
and parity) problem.
Cracks in the Standard Model
The axion began as a solution to a
problem in the Standard Model of
particle physics—specifically, the
part built on the theory of quantum
chromodynamics (QCD), which gov-
erns the fundamental particles we call
quarks and gluons. QCD is highly suc-
cessful, but it predicts properties we’ve
never seen in the neutron (which is
made of quarks). To understand that
problem, it’s important to know some
basics about the math behind the elab-
orate artifice of the Standard Model.
There is a specific recipe for writing
down new ideas in particle physics.
Barbara Aulicino/photos Andrey Elkin; janniwet wangkiri/Alamy Stock Photo; UK Open Educational Resources/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

60 e–
Co

B
S
e–

P C
e–

60 60 e+
Co e– Co

B
S
e– CP e+

B S

Symmetry is a ubiquitous aspect of everyday e– e+

physics. If a symmetry is broken—if a mirror re-
flection looked different than the object being 60 e+
Co
reflected—it would indicate an unexpected pro-
cess at work (above). The same is true in particle C P
physics, as shown in an experiment with electrons
emitted by radioactive cobalt atoms (right). The e+
decay process breaks mirror or parity symmetry S
B
(P), which reveals a deeper symmetry of parity
plus charge (C). Another type of symmetry break-
e+
ing predicts the existence of the axion.

We use an equation that we call the
Lagrangian that is meant to character-
ize a particle’s properties and from
which we can derive the equations
that predict the particle’s behavior
in space and time. The most funda-
mental ingredients for this equation
are components that describe the dif-
ferent types of energy that character-
ize a particle. Additional “spices” in-
clude how the particle interacts with
other particles. As with baking, there
are very specific rules about how to
add these components and to make
sure that they don’t do too much or
too little. Many of these rules are built
on the expectation that each term in
the Lagrangian will remain the same if
we carry out a mathematical operation
associated with a symmetry on them.
This process might sound compli-
cated, but we are very familiar with
symmetries in our everyday lives. A
circle, for example, is symmetric: No
matter how we rotate it, every spot on
the circle is the same as every other
spot. In other words, when you rotate
a circle around its center, it will always
look the same. This property is a rota-
tional symmetry. The symmetry can be
broken if, for example, I draw a dot in
one place on the circle. Now there is a
special place on the circle, and rotating
the circle changes the location of the
special place.
An example of a symmetry we
might require a Lagrangian to have is
time-translation invariance—that is, if we
change the time interval we put into
the equation, the answer remains the
same. The Earth’s gravity is the same
day and night. It is time-translation in-
variant. If a term that we are thinking
about adding to the equation doesn’t
respect a symmetry that we know or
theorize to be important, we discard
that term. If your hypothesis contains
an equation indicating that gravity
changes from time to time, it is dead
on arrival. From a physical standpoint,
these symmetries imply the existence
of conservation laws, ensuring that,
for example, we can’t create an electric
charge out of nothing.
From a mathematical perspective,
the Standard Model is a lengthy La-
grangian with many terms, describing
all of the particles we have ever seen.
Scientists have developed this formu-
lation of particle physics through a mix
of theoretical and experimental trial
and error. Where experiment hinted at
the need for new terms, theorists wrote
down models with hypothetical sym-
metries and checked if they matched
the data. Sometimes these models
matched the data but indicated there
were more particles out there, yet un-
detected. Sometimes models matched
the data, but then new data came in
suggesting that the model wasn’t rich
enough: There was new physics out
there waiting to be theorized and ob-
served. The axion emerged from one
of these searches for new physics.
Small Fix, Big Implications
The dynamical relationship between
theory and experiment has led to
many successful developments in
particle physics. One example is the
discovery of the top quark, which
was predicted in the 1970s but wasn’t
observed until 1995. Starting in the
1960s, experiments with an unusual
particle called a kaon indicated that
when it decayed, there were violations
of charge conjugation parity (CP) sym-
metry. This symmetry has two com-
ponents: Charge conjugation symmetry
is the phenomenon where the phys-
ics of the system remains the same
even if the sign of the particle’s charge
changes from positive to negative or
vice versa. A phenomenon or object
that has parity symmetry has the same

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 161

 The theory suggests there should be
CP symmetry violation, but there is no

BOSONS
QUARKS
mass: 2.2* 1,270 173,100 0 125,180
charge: 2/3 2/3 2/3 0 0 experimental evidence of it happening
spin: 1/2 1/2 1/2 1 0 in what we call “the strong sector,”
which is the part of the Standard Mod-
u c t g H el where the strong force is dominant.
up charm top gluon Higgs boson This is known as the strong CP problem.
In part because this problem has not
4.7 96 4,180 0 been resolved, the Standard Model—
–1/3 –1/3 –1/3 0 despite all its successes—remains in-
1/2 1/2 1/2 1 complete, even when we ignore the
d s b γ looming dark matter problem. The ax-
ion, it turns out, first arose in response
down strange bottom photon
to this challenge during the same time
period when Rubin and Ford were dis-
LEPTONS

0.511 105.66 1,776.8 91,188

–1 –1
1/2 1/2
e μ
electron muon
<0.00000012 <0.00000012
0 0
1/2 1/2
νe νμ
electron muon
neutrino neutrino
The Standard Model of particle physics contains a family of fundamental particles: leptons
(such as the electron), quarks (including the up and down quarks that make up protons and
neutrons), bosons (force particles such as the photon), and the Higgs particle. The axion, if
it exists, would go beyond the Standard Model. It would be associated with its own field,
entirely different from the fields that are associated with the Higgs and the force particles.
physical outcome despite a change in
the sign of its spatial coordinates (flip-
ping it right-left or top-bottom). Tak-
en together, charge conjugation and
parity symmetries are known as CP
symmetry. Importantly, CP symme-
try means that matter and antimatter
should behave similarly. (For more in-
formation on antimatter, see “The Origin
of Matter,” March–April 2004.)
Kaon decays displayed evidence of
CP symmetry violations, which hinted
that the original formulation of QCD
did not have enough quarks in it.
Quarks are fundamental particles that
comprise other particles, notably pro-
tons and neutrons that are each com-
posites of two types of quark: the up
and the down quark. At the time of the
kaon decay experiments, there were
four known types of quarks. Based
on the experimental results, Makoto
Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa at
Kyoto University proposed the exis-
tence of two additional quarks, known
today as the top and bottom quarks.
Though they made this prediction in
1973, the top quark was not observed
–1 0
1/2 1
τ Z
tau Z boson
<0.00000012 80,379 ? Peccei-Quinn mechanism, as it is now
0 +/–1 0 known, upgrades a constant variable
1/2 1 0
ντ A variable that “relaxes” to zero, cancel-
tau
Z ing the neutron electric dipole moment.
neutrino W boson axion
Barbara Aulicino
until 1995 because it was too heavy to
be observed with technologies avail-
able in the 1970s.
Today a similar hunt is on for ex-
perimental evidence of CP symmetry
breaking in other parts of QCD. Spe-
cifically, a term can be added to the
QCD part of the Standard Model La-
grangian that does not obey CP sym-
metry. This violation becomes an issue
when we consider the experimental
implications: The additional term
gives the neutron an electric dipole
moment, meaning that some parts
of a neutron should have a measur-
ably positive or negative local charge.
So fine, you say, the neutron has an
electric dipole moment. That’s a bit
strange, because it’s supposed to be a
neutrally charged (zero charge) par-
ticle, but things get weird in particle
physics, you admit.
The only problem? There’s no ex-
perimental evidence for a neutron
electric dipole moment, and as of last
year, the experimental constraints on
it are so good that we can say with
confidence that the likely value is zero.
covering that dark matter was a real
problem to be solved.
Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn
developed the current, most popular
solution to the strong CP problem at
Stanford University in the 1970s. The
in the CP-violating term to a dynamical
It was realized soon after they first pub-
lished their idea that this mechanism
led to the production of a new, hypo-
thetical particle. Inspired by a brand of
laundry detergent, theoretical physicist
Frank Wilczek named the particle axion,
which in turn got its name “Axion”
from Greek Orthodox liturgy.
In the early 1980s, papers on the
potential observational consequences
of the hypothetical axion proliferated,
including suggestions by theorists
such as University of Florida physi-
cist Pierre Sikivie that the axion had
exactly the right properties to solve
the dark matter problem. Thanks to
observational data, we know that the
dark matter particle must be low in
mass, uncharged, long-lived and slow-
moving. Ideally, there should also be
an obvious mechanism for produc-
ing many of the dark matter particles
in the early universe. The axion can
satisfy these requirements. It is pretty
much everything we know enough to
want in a dark matter candidate, ex-
cept that we’ve still never seen it and
don’t know for sure that it’s real.
Axions as Dark Matter
Dark matter is writ large on our sky.
Because of gravity’s tendency to pull
things together, dark matter dominates
the formation of the universe’s big-
gest visible structures, such as galaxies
and galaxy clusters. We can learn a
lot about what properties dark matter

162 American Scientist, Volume 109

needs to have from studying cos- as my collaborator Anna Watts at
mic structures and their forma- the University of Amsterdam has
tion. We can infer that dark mat- dubbed them.
ter particles must be long-lived These kinds of hypothetical
and not flicker in and out of ex- calculations of what astrophysical
istence over short time scales, for phenomena axions might pro-
example, because otherwise they duce are valuable because we can
wouldn’t last the necessary bil- compare them with observations
lions of years to have the gravi- to see if the axion makes sense
tational influence necessary to as a dark matter candidate. To-
grow a galaxy. The details of the day my research centers primar-
dark matter particle’s properties ily on developing robust calcula-
have implications for not only tional tools for modeling axions
the particle but also the large- in space. This research includes
scale evolution of our universe. work with my colleagues Kay
In the end, I came to the dark Kirkpatrick and Tony Mirasola
matter problem through questions at the University of Illinois at
about the cosmological evolu- Ramon Andrade 3DCiencia/Science Source Urbana-Champaign. We are try-
tion of axions. In the early 2010s, The energy field associated with a hypothetical particle ing to understand exactly what
physicists debated about what such as the axion can take on a number of values, which mathematical techniques are nec-
kinds of quantum states in which taken together look like a bowl with a raised center. The essary to account for all of the ax-
axions would typically find them- particular state of the field is indicated by the ball in the ion’s properties. This work has
selves, and part of the debate was image above; the ball’s off-center location indicates that implications for what we put into
the symmetry has been broken. The shape of the bowl
about how to do the calculation computer simulations designed
determines the mass of the predicted particle; the axion’s
that would check this. I initially mass could be less than a billionth of that of an electron to model the halo of dark matter
arrived at axions because I was in- and still be cosmologically significant. thought to surround our galaxy.
terested in the technical questions The observational implications
behind these calculations. The axion is a the lab with atoms for almost 25 years. of axions are still not totally under-
distinct dark matter candidate not just Now we wonder, is it happening in stood across different possible masses
because of its specific microphysical space, with dark matter? If so, it could for the particle. We find that lighter
properties or because we need it regard- profoundly influence the structure and axions could form a galaxy-halo–sized
less of its relationship to the dark matter evolution of the universe. condensate. The heavier ones may
problem, but also because those proper- The devil is in the details. This ques- form axsteroids in the early universe,
ties can translate into astrophysical sig- tion is an important one, but there are but we don’t know yet what they do at
natures that are different from those pro- others that follow in its wake. If there later times—specifically, at the time in
duced by other dark matter candidates. is such a thing as Bose-Einstein con- which we now live.
There is something of a raging debate in densate dark matter, we would like to
the field about the extent of these differ- know what types of objects it typically A Galaxy-Wide Search
ences between dark matter models. forms: their typical mass and length Astronomical studies can provide only
Unlike most dark matter candidates, and how they interact with one another. indirect indications of the axion’s prop-
for example, axions have zero quan-
tum mechanical angular momentum,
making them what we call scalar boson
particles. Bosons are one of two possible
The axion is pretty much
quantum classes of particles, the other
being fermions. Most other hypotheti- everything we know enough to
cal dark matter particles are fermions.
The difference between bosons, such want in a dark matter candidate.
as axions, and fermions can be stark,
because all fermions cannot share the
same quantum mechanical state. This In 2014, along with fellow Massachu- erties and behavior. Ideally, we want
rule explains why electrons end up in setts Institute of Technology (MIT) to characterize axions more directly by
different atomic orbitals. Bosons, on postdoctoral researcher Mark Hertz- detecting them with experiments de-
the other hand, have no problem shar- berg (now at Tufts University) and our signed for this purpose. Direct detec-
ing a state. They’re a bit like the pep postdoctoral mentor, Alan Guth, I set tion would almost certainly yield more
squad and are able to completely sync out to test a claim that the scale of these information about the axion’s specific
up. A remarkable outcome of this abil- Bose-Einstein condensate axions would properties, and also allows us a level
ity is the Bose-Einstein condensate, in be enormous—galaxy-size enormous. of certainty that may always elude us
which many bosons share the same We found the opposite. Assuming the as long as we are reliant on astronomy
low-energy state and behave like one properties of the original QCD axion to provide us with all of our data. One
single super-boson. We know the Bose- Peccei and Quinn predicted in the 1970s reason to worry is that two different
Einstein condensate is a real phenom- led us to something more like asteroid- hypothetical particles might produce
enon because we’ve been watching it in sized axion condensates, or axsteroids similar large-scale structures. We might

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 163


coupling strength (gaγγ (GeV–1))
not be able to tell the difference just by
looking at astronomical data.
Happily, despite the fact that dark
matter typically doesn’t radiate and
light typically passes right through it,
it’s possible this isn’t always the case.
Under certain conditions—we hope—
dark matter candidates may interact
with photons (particles of light) or other
We are hunting, ultimately, for a richer
understanding of the mathematical
tapestry that describes our universe.
known particles. These interactions
would produce unique observable ef-
fects that may allow us to determine the
identity of dark matter and to character-
ize the properties of the particles. This
method is how much of experimental
research in particle physics is done.
Under the right conditions, the ax-
ion has what we call a “coupling,” or
interaction, with the electromagnetic
field, which is a fancy way of saying
that it can interact with light if we cor-
164 American Scientist, Volume 109
Courtesy of Soohyung Lee/ Center for Axion and Precision Physics Research, Institute for Basic Science
search frequency (gigahertz)
10–1 1 10 102
CAST
10–10
10–11
cosmology
CAPP25T
HAYSTAC
CAPP18T
ADMX
10–12
Z
KSV
10–13
DM Z
Warm DFS
10–14
10–15 P 35T
CAP
10–16
10–6 10–5 10–4 10–3
axion mass (electron volts)
Axion searches have a lot of space to cover, because there are many possible values for the
mass of the axion and for how strongly it interacts with photons (above). The ADMX experi-
ment in the United States has scanned some of this possible range, as have experiments such
as CAPP-8TB (left) at the Center for Axion and Precision Physics Research in South Korea.
rectly tune the environment. In the To make things more complicated,
presence of an extremely intense mag- today “the axion” doesn’t refer just to
netic field, a QCD axion should decay the original QCD axion derived from
into microwave-frequency photons the Peccei-Quinn mechanism. It turns
that could be measured and detected. out that the quantum gravity model
The Axion Dark Matter Experiment known as string theory has many par-
(ADMX), located at the University of ticles in it with properties very similar
Washington, is testing this phenom- to the QCD axion, and physicists have
enon using an 8-tesla magnetic field, now loosely classified them all as ax-
about 100,000 times as powerful as ions too, even though they do not have
Earth’s magnetic field, to search for the properties to solve the strong CP
evidence of QCD axions. problem. Those of us who are careful
I’ve made this experiment sound use the term “axion-like particle.” Not
simple, but it’s actually pretty dif- everyone is so careful, however. These
ficult work. Tuning the mag- days when I give talks to audiences
of physicists, I include a slide where
I explain axion nomenclature, includ-
ing terms such as “ultralight axion,”
which refers to very low-mass string-
theory–inspired particles.
Because axion-like particles don’t
have to solve the strong CP problem,
there are fewer constraints on their
potential properties. Ultralight axions
and other axion-like particles could
have a wider range of interactions with
netic field and making sure the the electromagnetic field and have a
microwave cavity doesn’t have broader range of masses than the more
noise—accidental photons caused by constrained QCD axion. There is more
something else—is key to prevent- freedom, which is great fun for theo-
ing a false discovery. The Peccei- rists but also creates an empirical chal-
Quinn model does not tell us what the lenge. Looking all over parameter space
strength of the relationship between the for axion-like particles is a difficult (but
magnetic field and the axion may be or entertaining!) slog.
the mass of the axion. So the ADMX ex-
periment must look for a whole range Viewing the Invisible
of possible axion properties rather than When I first started working on axions
focus on one area in particular. in 2014, it seemed like the most ac-

tive interest in the particle was com-
ing from my colleagues in Europe and
Asia. Things are dramatically different
in 2021. It seems like everyone is talk-
ing about axions, and axions as a sub-
ject of research are everywhere. It may
also be the case that axion particles are
everywhere. We are certainly looking
for evidence of them everywhere, both
here on Earth and up in the heavens.
ADMX continues to search for
evidence of the QCD axion. In addi-
tion to ADMX, the ABRACADABRA
(A  Broadband/Resonant  Approach
to Cosmic Axion Detection with an Am-
plifying B-field Ring Apparatus) at MIT
and several others housed at the Cen-
ter for Axion and Precision Physics Re-
search (CAPP) in South Korea are using
related, magnet-based instruments to
find direct evidence for the existence
of the axion. Other researchers, includ-
ing my group at the University of New
Hampshire, in collaboration with col-
leagues at Stanford University and
Fermilab in Illinois, are incorporating
axions and axion-like particles into com-
puter simulations that model the forma-
tion of galaxies. We then compare those
simulations with observations of actual
galaxies to see if axion dark matter leads
to the right kinds of structures.
Our efforts to investigate the axion
will expand greatly in the 2020s, as new
astronomical facilities—such as the
Vera C. Rubin Observatory (named for
the woman who discovered the first
www.americanscientist.org
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, scheduled to begin science operations in 2023, will
greatly expand our understanding of how dark matter is distributed through space. Those
data will make it possible to test different models of dark matter particles and to determine
which ones best match the real universe.
conclusive evidence for dark matter)—
start taking data. These facilities will
map the structure of the universe and
the inferred distribution of cosmic dark
matter with unprecedented precision.
We can also look for something akin to
an ADMX in the sky. In this case, we
are looking for celestial systems with
a strong magnetic field. That means
looking at neutron stars, which are
extremely compact, dense objects that
form at the end of the life of massive
stars. Because of their collapsed struc-
ture, neutron stars often have extremely
powerful magnetic fields. In theory, ax-
ions could interact with these magnetic
fields to produce unexpected emission
of radio waves. One research group
recently reported tentative evidence
of such emissions, although I remain
skeptical about this claim.
These efforts are easy to frame as
a search for dark matter, but they are
far more than that. The QCD axion is a
byproduct of the Peccei-Quinn mecha-
nism, and the strong CP problem re-
mains unresolved. In other words, the
hunt for axions is also the hunt for a
more complete Standard Model of par-
ticle physics, and ultimately for a rich-
er understanding of the mathematical
tapestry that describes our universe.
Courtesy of Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA
Bibliography
Braine, T., et al. 2020. Extended search for the
invisible axion with the axion dark mat-
ter experiment. Physical Review Letters
124:101303.
Glennon, N., and C. Prescod-Weinstein. 2021.
Using PySiUltraLight to model scalar dark
matter with self-interactions. Preprint.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.09510.
Guth, A. H., M. P. Hertzberg, and C. Prescod-
Weinstein. 2015. Do dark matter axions
form a condensate with long-range correla-
tion? Physical Review D 92:103513.
Hui, L. 2021. Wave dark matter. Preprint (to ap-
pear in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astro-
physics). https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.11735.
Kirkpatrick, K., A. E. Mirasola, and C. Prescod-
Weinstein. 2020. Relaxation times for Bose-
Einstein condensation in axion miniclus-
ters. Physical Review D 102:103012.
Schive, H.-Y., T. Chiueh, and T. Broadhurst.
2014. Cosmic structure as the quantum in-
terference of a coherent dark wave. Nature
Physics 10:496–499.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant profes-
sor of physics and core faculty in women’s and
gender studies at the University of New Hamp-
shire. Her work in theoretical physics focuses on
dark matter and early-universe cosmology; it is
featured in her new book, The Disordered Cos-
mos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime,
and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type Books, 2021).
Website: http://profcpw.com
2021 May–June 165
The Chicken, the Egg, and
Plate Tectonics
Whole-planet models could upend our view of how geophysical forces
shape the Earth.
Nicolas Coltice
T
en years ago, I took a fate-
ful train trip from my home
in Lyon, France, through the
Alps, mountains forged by
Earth’s powerful forces over millions
of years, to Zurich, Switzerland. At the
time, my thoughts weren’t on the ma-
jestic scenery, but on one of the biggest
puzzles in Earth science: how to con-
nect the huge, invisible motions of the
deep Earth to the detailed, dramatic
changes on the planet’s surface. These
processes created the Alps, move con-
tinents, and have helped keep our
Only within the past century have
we started to appreciate the ways that
geophysics on Earth’s surface and deep
below are constantly shaping the planet.
planet habitable for billions of years.
At the other end of the trip, Paul Tack-
ley and Tobias Rolf showed me some
remarkable work that promised the
beginning of a meaningful answer.
Tackley, a geophysicist at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zu-
rich, had spent three decades developing
computational strategies for modeling
mantle convection on parallel supercom-
puters. I hoped to use his mathematical
models and code to work on the prob-
For nearly half a century, plate tectonics has
provided a simple, convenient way to explain
the formation of mountains and deep-sea
trenches and movement along fault lines.
166 American Scientist, Volume 109
lem that had grabbed my attention. I
had realized that plate tectonics was
only scratching the surface of explaining
the geophysics shaping our globe, and
I wondered about temperature changes
below the continents over geologic time-
scales. Rolf, one of Tackley’s doctoral
students, had similar interests, and they
proposed that we collaborate.
As I sat in Rolf’s office, they showed
me animations that represented years of
hard work. Though they were still rough
around the edges, I was awestruck and
almost wondered if I was hallucinating.
On the screen, distinctive natural ridge
patterns formed within oceans; subduc-
tions commenced and died out.
That night at my hotel, my mind
raced. We could simulate plate tecton-
ics and mantle convection simultane-
ously. I realized that this work could
be the beginning of building compre-
hensive models of Earth’s movements,
analogous to those for its climate. In
2018, we ran the most comprehensive
and realistic model of an Earth-like
QUICK TAKE
Geological and geophysical experiments
combined with supercomputers and algo-
rithms allow us to model how internal and
external forces shape the Earth’s surface.
planet ever. And today, such models
are reshaping our notions of how our
planet and others like it evolve.
Continental Drift to Plate Tectonics
The Earth has changed dramatically
in its 4.5-billion-year life span. But
only within the past century have we
started to appreciate the ways that
geophysics on Earth’s surface and
deep below are constantly shaping
the planet. In the early 20th century,
German climatologist Alfred Wegener
proposed the idea of continental drift
and the idea of supercontinents, syn-
thesized in his 1915 book The Origin of
Continents and Oceans. But he also de-
scribed incorrect driving mechanisms
and drift speed. The idea was large-
ly ignored and ridiculed by famous
physicists at the time, but it started to
gain some traction by the 1930s.
Until the 1950s, most of what we
knew about the structure in the deep
Earth came from continental rock
samples and geophysical data such as
seismology and gravity measurements.
But in the 1950s and 1960s, scientists
mapped the ocean floor with sound-
ing studies and examined its geology
through oceanography missions. The
discoveries of structures—such as
underwater escarpments, volcanoes,
100-kilometer-long faults such as the
Great Sumatran Fault (which caused
the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
and tsunami), and 10-kilometer-deep
trenches such as the Mariana Trench in
the western Pacific Ocean—pushed the
David Parker/Science Source
Just as large-scale atmospheric models can
probe climate, these new whole-planet mod-
els allow us to better understand the physical
forces that continue to sculpt the planet.
The San Andreas Fault runs for 1,200 kilo-
meters through most of California and marks
the point where two large plates—the North
American and Pacific—meet. Such boundaries
can create new mountains, valleys, and volca-
noes. Models show how movements deep in
the Earth also connect to these surface changes.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 167

 by these processes. Groups of atoms
and molecules dislocate and diffuse to
divergence accommodate massive stresses.
at ridges The organization of plates on Earth
is peculiar and seems to have persisted
for a minimum of 150 million years. A
few large plates—a total of seven to-
day, such as the Pacific plate—connect
with about 50 smaller plates of various
sizes. The Pacific plate has 10 times the
area of the continental United States,
and it borders the U.S. Pacific Coast,
convergence Japan, and New Zealand. It connects
at subduction with the smaller Philippine plate,
zones which has half the U.S. land area and
is also bordered by China and Austra-
lia. The smaller plates are distributed
across the Earth’s surface, much like
the debris from broken glass.

Jason McAlexander
transverse Geodynamicists have built models
motion at to simulate the forces that are shap-
transform ing these movements that sculpt our
faults planet. Elevation differences can allow
gravity to shape large rock formations:
Plate Tectonics: Explaining Earth’s Evolution Thick, high mountains can push down
on the surrounding areas, particularly
For decades, scientists have used plate tectonics to describe how the Earth’s if there is limited resistance from the
surface is organized and changes over time. Although simplified, it is a use- area below. At colder surface tempera-
ful tool for describing—in broad terms—how the Earth’s cooler lithosphere tures, rocks break, but in the warmer
moves in response to its hotter interior. Plate tectonics allows researchers and mantle depths they flow. A similar ef-
students alike to intuitively map the Earth’s planetary jigsaw puzzle based on fect occurs where plates meet in the
a global map of elevation from the land and seafloor. deep ocean to form ridges—the weight
The Earth’s lithosphere includes several large plates and dozens of smaller of new, hot, solidified magma seeping
ones. At some boundaries they diverge (white arrows), pulling apart at the up to the surface pushes plates down-
seams to allow magma to seep upward and form ridges. At convergent bound- ward and apart, a force known as ridge
aries, plates collide (red arrows), and one plate’s edge crumples and folds under push. Friction can cause plates to catch,
the other, plunging into the mantle at a subduction zone. At other boundar- causing resistance as they slide across
ies, rocky plates can slip and slide against each other along the surface (green each other. At boundaries where plates
arrows), through transverse motion. collide, slab pull describes how the
Several forces interact to drive these motions. At convergent boundaries, slab heavy sinking section of the plate in
pull drags one plate under its neighbor and pulls the entire plate along with subduction tows an entire plate with
it. That movement, in turn, pulls a plate away from another plate, creating a it. Finally, the mantle—the hot rocks
divergent boundary on its far edge. At divergent boundaries, as fresh magma slowly flowing within the Earth—has
seeps upward, new rock rises to the top, forming an elevated ridge. its own convection, simmering up
matter and heat from within like a
planetary saucepan. That convection
can create a force known as mantle drag
community of geoscientists to imagine outer mantle—into a set of massive, on the surface. All of these forces inter-
new principles for the origin of Earth’s rigid pieces. They collide, overrunning act, slowly and constantly, sculpting
landscapes: seafloor spreading. Every- each other and forcing a plate’s edge the Earth along the way.
thing pointed toward constant lateral downward into the hot mantle.
motion of rocks, consistent with con- But real rocks are far more elastic Making Models
tinents drifting slowly at about 1 to 10 and plastic, and they deform both These models have led to a paradoxi-
centimeters per year, the speed of the temporarily and permanently. The cal question: Is the Earth shaped from
growth of fingernails and hair. And to- ground can experience tides like the inside out or from the outside in?
day with the Global Positioning Sys- oceans, moving up or down by up Since the 1970s, scientists have con-
tem, we can measure these continuous to 20 centimeters per day. Fault lines structed computational models to
motions and their jolts over decades. permanently deform plates through piece together these forces and evalu-
Those ideas laid the foundation displacement and seismic waves. ate which ones dominate. They made
for plate tectonics (see sidebar “Plate Apparently solid rocks also flow on models of the ocean floor and comput-
Tectonics: Explaining Earth’s Evolution,” geological time scales, like ice within ed the forces needed to displace rigid
above). This framework simplifies the glaciers. The Himalayas, for example, blocks of the Earth’s crust at the veloci-
Earth’s lithosphere—the crust and the have beautiful rock structures formed ties we observe at the surface. But such

168 American Scientist, Volume 109

models showed conflicting results. In
most cases, slab pull dominated ridge
push. In some models, slab pull, the
sinking force from the surface, is stron-
ger than mantle drag, the convective
force from within. But in other models
it is the opposite.
To deal with these contradictions,
researchers have taken a step back to
try to evaluate the whole system si-
multaneously. The Earth’s mantle and
crust are made of similar materials—
silicate rocks—and the deep mantle
forces overlap with those forces oper-
ating at the surface. To begin to tack-
le that problem, researchers started
building more comprehensive com-
puter models that treated the mantle
and the crust as pieces of a global sys-
tem, and simulated forces between
these small parcels. Such models used
simple properties of materials and
could only take a single snapshot of
the Earth’s geology. Overall, the game
of modeling plates’ dynamics and
mantle convection requires estimat-
ing how rocks deform and how the
temperature changes within the Earth
over millions of years.
Building on an analogy to Newton’s
second law, we can compute mass
times acceleration from the balance
between stresses and buoyancy. What
makes this calculation easier is that
acceleration is negligible: The kinetic
energy of the Pacific plate moving at
10 centimeters per year is so small that
it is equivalent to that of a car moving
at 40 kilometers per hour. This limit
means that the velocity of a tectonic
plate at a given time does not depend
on its original velocity. Instead, model-
ers work to estimate the forces within
the rocks: the stresses and buoyancy
within every small volume of the
mantle–crust system. Unlike model-
ing atmospheric or ocean circulation,
stresses require understanding how
matter resists, and rocks’ resistance de-
pends on temperature, pressure, and
the stress itself. Buoyancy primarily
depends on temperature, but chem-
istry can be important in the mantle’s
deepest regions.
Through smaller-scale laboratory
experiments geoscientists explore how
stresses such as pressure and tempera-
ture deform rocks. They place small
cylinders of rocks within a press at
what geologists consider low temper-
ature, less than 400 degrees Celsius.
Under these conditions, the stress lim-
its that break these rock cylinders are
www.americanscientist.org
similar, even with different rock types.
At higher temperature, above 500 de-
grees Celsius, cylinders start to flow at
a stress limit and eventually yield. Sci-
entists have refined and pushed these
experiments, changing apparatus,
sample sizes, and shapes. They also
do these experiments at high pressure
and examine the samples’ structure
with powerful microscopes.
At temperatures greater than 1,500
degrees Celsius and high pressure, de-
formation laws and physical mecha-
nisms aren’t ambiguous. But the flow
of rocks at lower temperature remains
difficult to express simply. Diverse
microscopic ways to deform the rock
compete with one another. The com-
mon ground is the effect on the rocks.
When a stress limit is reached, solid-
state flow localizes itself on small
bands that become very weak. There,
deformation becomes easier and even
more localized as stress increases, and
often as strain increases, too.
These models have led to a paradoxical
question: Is the Earth shaped from the
inside out, or from the outside in?
Buoyancy forces within the Earth’s
mantle emerge from the density dif-
ferences between adjacent volumes of
rocks. As temperature rises, density
decreases because rocks expand when
they heat up. Therefore, hot regions
inside the Earth are locally lighter and
tend to rise, whereas cold regions are
denser and sink. Chemical differences
also affect buoyancy, as iron-rich rocks
are usually denser than magnesium-
rich rocks. In the deepest mantle, seis-
mological studies suggest that sections
of the Earth’s mantle as large as con-
tinents have distinct chemistry, and
scientists do laboratory experiments
with micron-sized rock samples under
extreme pressures and temperatures
to understand how their buoyancy
changes under those conditions.
But these laboratory samples are
small when compared with vast con-
tinental blocks, and the time it takes
to run the stress experiments is much
shorter than natural rock deformation.
To interpret these microscopic effects
in terms of tectonics, mountains, or
flow within the Earth’s mantle, we
must integrate these results within a
whole-planet evolution model.
By the end of the 1990s, a hand-
ful of geodynamicists had developed
software to solve for the balance of
stress and buoyancy while account-
ing for rock deformation over a vol-
ume comparable to the Earth’s mantle.
They simplified the way rocks would
flow at low temperature but preserved
the essential features. But a key chal-
lenge both then and now is that rocks
can flow at different rates over short
distances. On Earth, almost all defor-
mation at the surface occurs at plate
boundaries, which can be as narrow
as 10 kilometers; therefore, the mod-
elers had to build algorithms that
could incorporate important chang-
es at this local level but encompass a
whole-planet. Moreover, modeling the
flow laws that were built from these
laboratory experiments of small rock
volumes on a much larger, Earth-like
scale didn’t immediately produce mo-
tions that resembled tectonic plates.
We needed to tweak mathematical
parameters to find solutions that de-
pict the spreading ridges and plung-
ing trenches as large rocky plates pull
apart and collide with one another.
Even with improved mathematics,
such calculations require extremely
large computational resources: months
of time on large supercomputers with
parallel processors. By 1995, super-
computers were finally sophisticated
enough that several groups in the
world could move from smaller con-
vection models to fully 3D spherical
models. By 2010, these systems were
far more affordable and more acces-
sible. From that point, making more
complex global models that incorpo-
rated local details became possible.
At about the same time, Tackley had
improved his code to solve equations
with variable material properties,
which allowed us to use flow laws
2021 May–June 169

Deep motions within the mantle form the
Earth’s largest tectonic plates, and resistance
at subduction zones shatters them into small-
er fragments. This model, by Claire Mallard,
the author, and their colleagues, maps viscos-
ity on the planet surface against mantle flow
beneath. Dark blue regions are continents,
which represent high viscosity, whereas red
boundaries on the surface represent low vis-
cosity plate boundaries. Inside the model,
reds represent hot spots, and light blue areas
are subducting slabs.
with stress limits and scale them up to
study convection with tectonics.
Pushing Models to Extremes
Before I started working with Tackley
and Rolf on large, 3D models, I had
studied the chemical structure of the
Earth’s mantle. For decades, geochem-
ists had proposed that the mantle
was stratified into chemically distinct
upper and lower mantle, whereas
geophysicists proposed that rocks
were moving throughout the whole
mantle. However, it was unclear how
significant land masses or long-lived
chemical domains could remain in-
tact within a convecting, simmering
system. I fitted chemical observations
from magmatic hot spots—such as
mid-ocean ridges, Hawai’i, and the
Galapagos Islands—with geophysical
observations. Ultimately, our research
helped build consensus between the
two viewpoints: The mantle is not dy-
namically stratified in shells, but dis-
tributed, chemically distinct domains
can resist mixing from top to bottom
over billions of years.
While working on that project,
I realized that the biggest issue was
understanding exactly how continents
formed. Indeed, when new continen-
tal crust is generated, some elements
are sucked into the crust, which alters
170 American Scientist, Volume 109
mantle composition. Also, continents
are a component of mantle convection
and help drive the long-term cooling
of the planet. Working with petrolo-
gists, I made models showing how the
formation of a supercontinent would
heat up the rocks beneath it. To solve
that problem, I needed to account for
plate-like behavior in my models with
drifting continents, which is what led
me to contact Tackley in the first place.
I also sensed that Tackley and Rolf
hadn’t completely recognized the full
power of their 3D models. While ly-
ing in bed in that Zurich hotel room
in 2010, I realized that we finally had
the computational power and the al-
gorithms to model Earth’s depths in
the way that climate scientists and me-
teorologists model the layers of atmo-
sphere that envelop it.
I wanted to be able to understand
the Earth’s interior at the same level
of detail and complexity that climate
researchers could model atmospheric
currents and storm fronts. The fun-
damental limits of plate tectonics
I wanted to be able to understand
the Earth’s interior at the same level
of detail and complexity that climate
researchers could model atmospheric
currents and storm fronts.
come from assuming that the plates
interacting on the Earth’s surface are
perfectly rigid, and from neglecting
the physical mechanisms at play. Dy-
namic models—like those employed
in climate modeling and weather pre-
diction—allow us to use softer, more
“fluid” boundaries, and to observe the
evolution of forces over time. Weather
forecasting takes observations from
various locations and time points and
then uses physical models to extrapo-
late conditions over days to come. A
similar opportunity exists for tectonic
plates, by extrapolating into the past
rather than projecting into the future,
but with much slower processes. We
needed to generate a new model that
was predictive enough for tectonics,
and software that was robust enough
to incorporate observations to recon-
struct the evolution across our vast
planet over the past tens to hundreds
of millions of years.
But though I now had a clear goal
in mind, realizing it would take years
of work. First, we would have to push
the limits of Tackley and Rolf’s models
so that they would capture the essen-
tials of Earth’s tectonics. Claire Mal-
lard, a doctoral student in my group,
started working with these models as
if they represented a real planet. She
understood what it would take for
us to generate virtual planets with an
Earth-like plate jigsaw.
Through a series of models Mallard
developed, we learned that the deep
motions of the mantle forge the largest
plates, whereas the resistance of the
plates close to subduction zone shat-
ters larger chunks of crust into a suite
of smaller shards. Both results depend
on one physical property: the rocks’
resistance close to the surface. When
rocks have higher resistance, subduc-
tion remains infrequent; plates remain
large rather than fracturing into small-
er pieces. If plates are much softer,
large plates can’t remain intact, but
fold and crack into smaller parts. Be-
cause we see a distribution of plate siz-
es across the Earth’s surface, it’s clear
that mantle forces are comparable to
the plates’ resistance, and both factors
shape how seafloor spreads and conti-
nents drift. Mallard’s work gave us a
clear guide to which parameters mat-
ter within the model.
Then another doctoral student,
Maëlis Arnould, and I pushed the
models more, to build a full model of
an Earth-like planet from crust to in-
terior. To reach that goal we had to op-
timize the time it would take for com-
puters to solve our equations, without
compromising the quality of the
numerical solution. Because a whole-
planet calculation running in three di-
mensions would take months, we also
had to design tricks that would help us
find key parameters for our equations.
We couldn’t rely on blind trial and er-
ror when we ran the full 3D model.
To develop those tricks, I spent a
summer launching trial calculations
and letting them run for a week or so.
Then I’d stop them, evaluate the re-
sults, adjust parameters, and try again.
That experience allowed me to devel-
op intuition so we could make choices
that made it possible to run the model
in months rather than years.
While I built the computational
framework for our big model, Arnould
used 2D models to understand how
convection currents shape the observed
topography. Those models helped us
explain how to interpret the evolution
of observed features such as seafloor
elevation or continental margins mov-
ing up and down over longer distances,
between 500 and 10,000 kilometers.
Within our models, the viscosity
law, which describes how rocks flow
and deform, plays a central role. We
formulate the law so that it varies
with temperature. Cold rocks are stiff
whereas hot rocks are soft. We also ac-
count for how rocks resist stress, and
once the rocks reach a threshold, their
viscosity decreases, and they soften.
To be Earth-like, the mantle’s aver-
age viscosity must be set at a level to
generate sufficiently vigorous convec-
tion. And our models needed to cal-
culate at sufficient grid points across
the globe to resolve the equations with
a supercomputer and get sharp, de-
tailed images of the plates and their
interactions. Our model planet was di-
vided into 50 million 3D cells, and we
incorporated 1 billion tracers within
the system to follow transport material
properties in the circulation.
A single snapshot of our model
generated more than 20 gigabytes of

The author and Maëlis Arnould, along with

their colleagues, have built a geophysical
model of an entire Earth-like planet that incor-
porates both the planet’s surface (left column)
and the convection of its interior (right col-
umn). Colored regions highlight areas where
plates meet and interact, such as shallow mid-
ocean ridges (oranges) and deep subduction
zones (blues) where one plate plunges be-
neath another. Simultaneously, the hot mantle
convects deep within the planet with plumes
of soft rock that shoot toward the surface.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 171


Complex geophysical forces also shape other planets in our Solar System. Mars has a network
of faults and trenches, such as the Cerberus Fossae, shown in this image from the European
Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter. Advanced seismic data from the current NASA InSight
mission in combination with whole-planet models could help researchers understand how
the Red Planet evolved, too.
data. A key challenge in this modeling
work is that convection and plates in-
teract as a complex system. The result-
ing tectonic behavior is an emergent
property that results from the numer-
ous interactions that influence it. Such
results are unpredictable, like trying to
forecast the movement of a large crowd
of people based on individuals. The
same was true for our models—though
we chose a set of parameters and start-
ed our calculation, we couldn’t know if
Earth-like tectonics with subduction or
supercontinent cycles would emerge.
Model features are woven together so
intricately that such models need to
run for many months, and we needed
several models to truly understand
how our initial assumptions shaped
our models’ results.
Because of the size and complexity
of this model, I knew that it would take
months to run and that we’d have only
one chance to see if it would work. That
part of the work was daunting and
lonely—much like taking a small boat
out to explore open ocean.
Watching a Planet Evolve
By 2018, we were ready to start calcu-
lations that would be the closest pos-
sible simulation of Earth. The whole
172 American Scientist, Volume 109
model took nine months to run, but
we checked in on its progress regu-
larly. Each simulation day represented
several million years on Earth, but
in that time span a continent moves
My goal was never to replicate a
synthetic planet, but to build tools and
data to scrutinize and test the links
between surface observations and forces
within planetary depths.
by approximately 100 kilometers,
the distance between New York City
and Philadelphia. We needed 10 days
of computing to simulate 50 million
years, the time it took to form the Alps.
Over those months we became increas-
ingly excited as we saw Earth-like fea-
tures evolve from drifting continents
to the plunging seafloor. We watched
deep trenches and hot-spot swells
emerge. Features that looked like
plates formed, and sometimes initiated
© ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
subduction at their boundaries, as hot
material from the mantle rose toward
the surface.
Even though I put years into de-
veloping this model, we were several
months along before I realized that this
dynamic model could be a scientific
leap forward, beyond making an im-
pressive movie. There was so much I
could do, but at the same time the data
was overwhelming to analyze. I spent
two weeks in a small workshop in the
South of France with my group, sever-
al other early-career scientists, as well
as Laurent Husson from the Universi-
ty of Grenoble in France, Claudio Fac-
cenna from Roma Tre University, and
Thorsten Becker from the University of
Texas at Austin. They helped me focus
on the forces behind plate tectonics.
With the models we built, mantle and
plates make a single self-organized
system, in which plates and tectonics
are emergent properties. Hence, we
could use the model to study where
the driving forces in the system were
operating, and how they would evolve
over geologic timescales. We could be-
gin to explore and describe the rela-
tionships between the deeper Earth
and the surface: topography, motion
of the axis of rotation relative to the
Earth’s solid shells, the connection be-
tween the deep Earth and climate, and
changes in the magnetic field behavior
in response to mantle convection and
tectonics. These models now produce
data that we can compare directly to
the geological and geophysical record.
In addition to the nine-month-long
calculation, I have made other smaller,
simpler models, because a single calcu-
lation isn’t sufficient for understanding
this system. Bringing these together, we
concluded that this self-organized sys-
tem with mantle circulation generated
plate tectonics, and the dominant forces
that we observe are localized within
the first 100 kilometers below the sur-
face. The locations that produce these
forces are essentially subduction zones.
In these areas, the circulation within
the mantle under subducting plates
does not follow surface motions. It’s
not behaving like the ocean surface in
response to wind.
On the other hand, in the con-
tinental areas, and especially under
growing mountains, the key forces
are located deeper, between 100 and
500 kilometers, and show us that the
movements of the mantle can drag
the surface. In this case, motions at the
surface are slower than when forces
are shallow, moving approximately 1
centimeter per year instead of 10.
The deeper forces dominate when
continents come together, ultimately
forming mountain ranges through
collision. In Earth’s history, this corre-
sponds to the period 300 million years
ago when Pangea formed, and possi-
bly in more recent continental aggrega-
tions. Africa collides with Eurasia to-
day, India aggregated 50 million years
ago, and within the past million years
Australia has been inching toward In-
donesia. We also could study the role
of mantle plumes, localized currents
of hot rocks rising from the base of the
mantle, hitting the base of plates and
generating volcanic activity. For ex-
ample, Hawai’i and Iceland were built
up from the magmatic activity gener-
ated by plumes, but researchers have
questioned whether magmatic activ-
www.americanscientist.org
ity breaks up continents. Our models
suggest that rising plumes aren’t the
primary force that carves continents
into pieces; instead, these plumes heat
up the rocks and soften them, making
deformation easier. As a consequence,
when continents are in tension, new
plate boundaries tend to cut through
them. Plumes located today below
Iceland, Tristan da Cunha, or Bouvet
helped cleave the last supercontinent,
Pangea, into different pieces in the
past 200 million years.
Waiting for months to generate digi-
tal planetary evolutions was worth it,
because the combination of models fi-
nally gives us a comprehensive view
of which forces drive the tectonic mo-
tions we observe today and all the pre-
vious cycles of continental aggregation
and dispersal.
Next, we’d like to study transform
faults, such as the San Andreas Fault.
In my model, these active boundaries
are diffuse and broad, but on Earth
they are prominent structures, and
we don’t know how they initiate and
evolve. We would also like to under-
stand how mountains are made and
how plate tectonics evolved since the
Archean, Earth’s earliest geological
period. Eventually we hope to inves-
tigate how changes in plate tecton-
ics might influence the evolution of
Earth’s magnetic field and climate.
These questions have always been im-
portant, but now that we have a global
model of convection, we can look for
sophisticated, detailed answers.
Modeling Other Worlds
As with plate tectonics theory, our
models aren’t perfect. For instance,
our models cannot account for surface
erosion, brittle faulting in the upper
crust, magma migration, or rock elas-
ticity. But with our models, scientists
finally have a powerful tool to eluci-
date the physics underlying plate tec-
tonics. Other groups and their studies
and software laid the foundation, but
we designed and executed the global
model to generate the fundamentals of
tectonics and deep mantle motion.
My goal was never to replicate a
synthetic planet, but to build tools and
data to scrutinize and test the links
between surface observations and
forces within planetary depths. The
physics within our models aren’t lim-
ited to Earth. They should also work
for studying other planets, allowing
scientists to explore the relationships
between the interiors of Mercury,
Venus, and Mars and their surfaces.
That idea is especially tantalizing
as NASA’s InSight mission now takes
seismic measurements on the surface
of Mars, opening our eyes to the way
its mantle works. (A rock that Mallard,
Patrice Rey, and I collected in Austra-
lia’s Pilbara region in 2015 is on Mars
today, used to calibrate the Persever-
ance Rover’s SuperCam.) Physics from
our models alongside data from the
Red Planet could help scientists work
out key questions such as whether Mars
might have had plate tectonics early in
its history. One day we hope that com-
puters could help planetary scientists
understand why the first four planets of
our Solar System have such stark differ-
ences, although they are composed of
similar matter. Stepping beyond Earth
opens up a more universal goal: not just
how the laws of physics have shaped
the evolution of our planet, but also
how they sculpt other worlds.
Bibliography
Arnould, M., N. Coltice, N. Flament, and C.
Mallard. 2020. Plate tectonics and mantle
controls on plume dynamics. Earth and
Planetary Science Letters 547:116439.
Arnould, M., N. Coltice, N. Flament, V. Sei-
gneur, and R. D. Müller. 2018. On the scales
of dynamic topography in wholeǦmantle
convection models. Geochemistry, Geophys-
ics, Geosystems 19:3140–3163.
Bercovici, D., Y. Ricard, and M. A. Richards.
2000. The relation between mantle dynam-
ics and plate tectonics: A primer. Geophysi-
cal Monograph-American Geophysical Union
121:5–46.
Coltice, N., M. Gérault, and M. Ulvrová. 2017.
A mantle convection perspective on global
tectonics. Earth-Science Reviews 165:120–150.
Coltice, N., L. Husson, C. Faccenna, and M.
Arnould. 2019. What drives tectonic plates?
Science Advances 5:eaax4295.
Conrad, C. P., and C. Lithgow-Bertelloni. 2002.
How mantle slabs drive plate tectonics.
Science 298:207–209.
Forsyth, D., and S. Uyeda. 1975. On the rela-
tive importance of the driving forces of
plate motion. Geophysical Journal Interna-
tional 43:163–200.
Mallard, C., N. Coltice, M. Seton, R. D. Mül-
ler, and P. J. Tackley. 2016. Subduction con-
trols the distribution and fragmentation of
Earth’s tectonic plates. Nature 535:140–143.
Nicolas Coltice is professor of geodynamics and
director of studies in the Geosciences Department
of École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. He
blends geological, geophysical, and geochemical
observations and dynamic models to understand
the underlying laws of physics that drive planetary
evolution. Email: coltice@protonmail.com
2021 May–June 173
Turning Junk into Us: How
Genes Are Born
You are garbage. Don’t feel too bad, though—so is everyone else. Now, geneticists
are learning what the junk in your genome has been doing all along.
Emily Mortola and Manyuan Long
F
or most of the history of ge-
netics, the most prominent
experts of the field have held
that you, your mom, your
great-great-uncle, Abraham Lincoln,
all the emperors of Rome, and every
one of Genghis Khan’s Mongol Army
all inherited a vast amount of “junk
DNA.” As we discovered in 2003 with
the conclusion of the Human Genome
Project, a monumental 13-year-long
research effort to sequence the entire
human genome, approximately 98.8
percent of our DNA was categorized
as junk. The other 1.2 percent includes
every one of the genes that determine
the makeup of the human body and
allow it to function. In molecular
terms, about 6.4 billion of the indi-
vidual organic subunits—known as
nucleotides—that make up the DNA in
each of our cells just sit there like the
boxes in the back of your attic, doing
nothing but taking up space.
Researchers have generally regard-
ed these human genetic sequences
as random and meaningless. We are
not alone, either. To some extent, just
about every eukaryote—that is, every
descendant of the first cellular organ-
ism to develop a nucleus roughly 2.7
billion years ago—is a genetic pack-
rat, too. For mammals in general, the
percentage of junk DNA ranges from
roughly 85 percent to 99 percent. Ge-
neticist and evolutionary biologist Su-
sumu Ohno, who conducted critical
Close to 99 percent of our genome has
been historically classified as noncoding, use-
less “junk” DNA. Consequently, these se-
quences were rarely studied.
174 American Scientist, Volume 109
research on the importance of gene
duplication in evolution, wrote that
stretches of random, noncoding nu-
cleotides cannot spontaneously evolve
into sensible, coding, useful genes. But
this classic interpretation left a gaping
mystery: What is the function of all
that junk DNA?
To most geneticists, the answer was
that it has no function at all. The flow
of genetic information—the central
dogma of molecular biology—seems
to leave no role for all of our intergenic
sequences. In the classical view, a gene
consists of a sequence of nucleotides of
four possible types—adenine, cytosine,
guanine, and thymine—represented by
the letters A, C, G, and T. Three nucleo-
tides in a row make up a codon, with
each codon corresponding to a specific
amino acid, or protein subunit, in the
final protein product. In active genes,
harmful mutations are weeded out by
selection and beneficial ones are al-
lowed to persist. But noncoding regions
are not expressed in the form of a pro-
tein, so mutations in noncoding regions
can be neither harmful nor beneficial. In
other words, “junk” mutations cannot
be steered by natural selection.
Ohno instead believed that all of our
functional modern genes have an an-
cient lineage, being merely tweaked
versions of the genes found in our evo-
lutionary relatives. In his 1972 paper
“So Much ‘Junk’ DNA in Our Ge-
nome,” the conclusion Ohno reached
QUICK TAKE
An international project has revealed that
these DNA are far from junk. Through muta-
tions and natural selection, these DNA se-
quences can give birth to new genes.
was that, at most, the noncoding inter-
genic sequences might serve to keep
the coding regions separate from one
another. Unfortunately, Ohno passed
away just three years before the con-
clusion of the Human Genome Proj-
ect. We have no way of knowing what
he would have thought of the vast
amount of junk in our genome, or
whether he might have re-examined
some of his ideas as a result.
The standard view began to crumble
in 2006, when geneticists Mia Levine
and David Begun at the University of
California, Davis, coined the term de
novo genes when they observed a few
genes in fruit flies that seemed to have
no ancestors. Proteins are such complex
and delicately constructed things that
it seems impossible for any random
assortment of nucleotides to acquire
over time enough beneficial mutations
to form an entire, folded, functional,
brand-new protein (see sidebar on page
176). In our work, we have built on this
discovery and determined that new
proteins appear all the time. Indeed,
our evolutionary analyses have shown
that this phenomenon has happened
at least 175 times in Oryza sativa sub-
species japonica, one of the two major
domesticated Asian rice varieties. And
this result is just in one species.
Boxes of junk in the attic, or trea-
sure chests full of potential wait-
ing to be unlocked? This is a story of
many diamonds in many roughs—an
The rise of de novo genes is far from un-
common, suggesting that these genes play a
bigger role in evolution and adaptation than
once thought.
 Stephanie Freese

The Human Genome Project was a 13-year-long research effort aimed at mapping the entire hu- of rice crop and gone through the peak
man genetic sequence. One of its most intriguing findings was the observation that the number of typhoon season, the real work began
of protein-coding genes estimated to exist in humans—approximately 22,300—represents a for them. Every morning between 5:00
mere 1.2 percent of our whole genome, with the other 98.8 percent being categorized as noncod- and 6:00 a.m., they would go out to
ing, useless junk. Analyses of this presumed junk DNA in diverse species are now revealing the fields to pick the tiny anthers, the
its role in the creation of genes.
segments of the male flowers that hold
the pollen. Starting their day any later
international scientific project that of life as we know it and revealing the meant running up against the worst
spanned the Earth, revolutionary dis- forces that have shaped the definition of the tropical climate. By high noon,
coveries found in one of our most ubiq- of what it means to be a species. the male flowers would have wilted in
uitous crops, and genes appearing ap- heat that regularly reached 40 degrees
parently out of almost nothing. New Research in the Rough Celsius. The collection went on until
genes without close relatives emerging By the end of the spring of 2017, re- they had 60,000 anthers from each rice
out of otherwise gibberish DNA, let- searcher Yidan Ouyang of Huazhong species they were growing—enough
ters with no pattern coming together Agricultural University, with the help for the one gram of male rice gam-
and creating something new every few of her team of graduate students, had etes necessary for detecting proteins
millennia (see figure on page 177). As we collected more than 60,000 samples translated from de novo genes. But such
have discovered, some of these genes of anthers and other tissues from rice analyses had to be performed some-
are found fully formed only in modern plants to help answer the question of where else, in the southern mainland
domesticated rice and not in its wild how common de novo genes are. Un- city of Shenzhen. Yan Ren and Siqi Liu,
ancestors. That finding suggests that fortunately, Ouyang, who at the time two protein scientists at the genome
these unlikely genetic strands, resur- was trying to determine in which rice sequencing company BGI-Shenzhen,
rected from the noncoding “junk” of plant tissues the de novo genes func- were waiting for the tissue samples.
the genome, are likely a crucial part of a tioned, quickly found herself with no- They had designed and developed an
crop that feeds a large part of the world. where to go with them. advanced technology called targeted
With no apparent ancestral origin, After months upon months of proteomics to test whether de novo genes
the only way that fully formed genes planning and labor, it felt like a ter- were translating novel proteins.
can appear out of nothing is if they are rible place to reach a dead end. She Reaching Shenzhen was the prob-
not really appearing out of nothing and her research team had spent half lem. The team had intended to fly the
after all. The human genome—as it is a year waiting for the paddy rice they samples back to the state-of-the-art
for rice—is a vast reservoir of garbage had cultivated on the tropical island protein detection facility in the city,
full of potential. As we will see, dig- of Hainan, China, to sufficiently grow along with the tanks of liquid nitrogen
ging through this trash has proven to and mature. After they had ensured needed to preserve them throughout
be key in understanding the origins the success of many different varieties the roughly 750-kilometer journey.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 175

 to farm, which led me to work in the
Alterations to DNA Sequences fields of Hainan. It seemed fitting that
ancient Chinese dynasties had chosen
Our genetic material exists in the form of DNA molecules stored as chromo- this as a place of exile for their adver-
somes. The two DNA strands are composed of a sequence of four possible saries, including felons, politicians,
subunits known as nucleotides, represented by the letters A, C, G, and T; an ex- and poets. For example, Su Dongpo,
ample of a natural, or wild-type, sequence is shown below. Three nucleotides the “Chinese Shakespeare” in the Song
in a row make up a codon, with each codon coding for a specific amino acid— dynasty, was exiled to the island 925
the subunit of a protein—or a stop signal. Although not all mutations influ- years ago. There was no escape for
ence the encoded amino acid (silent mutations), a nucleotide substitution can these political enemies, surrounded
change the sequence in a way that results in a change to the codon (missense as they were by rough waters. The is-
mutations). In more extreme situations, nucleotides can be either removed land, with its shambolic politics and its
or inserted (frameshift mutations), changing the frame in which codons are struggling economy dependent almost
translated and, as a result, the encoded protein. entirely on agriculture, seemed like a
blemish in the glimmering blue sea
and felt desolate even with its proxim-
ity to mainland China. I worked out-
side on days when burying a raw egg
in the sand at noon would hard-boil
A G C G T A C C C T A A
it. Despite the fertility of its farmland,
I doubted that anyone could have the
chance to grow there.
I eventually left Hainan and was
glad to be free of its harsh environ-
mental conditions. In June 2017, this
time of my own free will, I returned
nucleotides G T A C C C T A A
WILD-TYPE SEQUENCE there hoping for that same, awful cli-
mate to be a saving grace for my team
amino acids valine proline STOP signal
and our research.
Rice plants love two things,
C T and Hainan has them both in great
SILENT MUTATION abundance: moisture and heat. As it
has no effect on turns out, the tropical temperatures
amino acid sequence
nucleotides G T A C C T T A A
and lashing typhoons that make the
amino acids valine proline STOP signal island an ideal place to grow the crops
were also necessary for our discov-
eries. Rice is an ideal evolutionary
C A model in part because of how much
MISSENSE MUTATION of it can be grown and harvested all at
results in an amino acid nucleotides G T A A C C T A A once, and its reproduction and matu-
substitution
ration times are short compared to,
amino acids valine threonine STOP signal for example, many species of mam-
mals. In addition, we wanted to look
at the origin of de novo genes in a spe-
FRAMESHIFT T and A removed cies that had undergone the process
MUTATION of domestication. The rice that we eat
an insertion or deletion
of nucleotides results nucleotides G C C C T A A ? ? today was developed through artifi-
Stephanie Freese

in a shift in the cial selection—that is, humans who

reading frame amino acids
Anyone who has tried to transport
tanks of liquid nitrogen through an
airport may already suspect what the
airlines thought of this plan.
The name “Hainan” translates liter-
ally to “south of the sea.” This descrip-
tion is fitting for an island that was
thought in ancient times to be the end
of the world—a place beyond even
the sea, a last stop before one faces the
alanine leucine
vast nothingness of the open ocean. It
might as well have been the end of the
world for one of us (Long) as a high
school–aged boy. Following the start
of the so-called Cultural Revolution
in the mid-1960s, unrest throughout
China meant closed universities and a
lack of employment for young people.
My one and only option, then, was to
go out to the countryside to learn how
? lived around 13,000 years ago selected
and bred only the plants with qualities
that would benefit a newly agricul-
tural society. This history means that,
although in chronological time the do-
mestic rice plant is not so far removed
from its wild relatives, it underwent
an accelerated rate of change on an
outward and genetic level. Mean-
while, its direct ancestor has existed
in nature for hundreds of thousands
of years, and this ancestor might have
accumulated a large number of ge-
netic changes, too. Domesticated rice,
therefore, has new genes specific to it.

176 American Scientist, Volume 109

Anthers in particular were one of the
tissues we chose to sample, as newly
evolved genes have a tendency across
organisms to be expressed more in
male reproductive cells compared to
older genes.
Li Zhang, a geneticist and colleague
of Manyuan at the University of Chi-
cago, first saw the plethora of genes
born from junk in the rice genome in
2014, after two years of computational
analyses of nucleotide sequences from
10 Oryza species and one relative in
the Leersia genus. Zhang used a high-
quality genome data set generated by
scientists of a national consortium in
the study of the Oryza genome evolu-
tion, including us and organized by
genome scientist Rod Wing at the Uni-
versity of Arizona. It was unexpected
that so many de novo genes appeared
in so short an evolutionary period (see
figure on page 178), a timescale during
which the junk DNA of animals from
humans to mice and fruit flies stayed
mostly dormant. Nonetheless, to in-
vestigate this intriguing finding even
further, we had to get our own sam-
ples and data, which meant growing
our own crops.
As I was traveling from Chicago
back to Hainan, now a tourist destina-
tion, half a lifetime later, I saw from
my plane the coastal city of Sanya at its
southern tip, which features a shining
silver crescent of tall, modern build-
ings embracing the sea. Massive luxury
cruise ships come and go. Elsewhere
on the island, though, agriculture has
remained the basis for the economy.
Even after witnessing the develop-
ment that has occurred over the past
decades, it is still hard for me not to
associate Hainan with the difficult cir-
cumstances I experienced. The history
of life on Earth, though, has shown
time and time again that the most dra-
matic growth can happen in unlikely
places. Sometimes all it takes is time.
Sea of Genes
“The really creative part of biochem-
istry must have occurred very early,”
wrote the French geneticist François
Jacob, just over a decade after he and
two of his colleagues were awarded
the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine. By this statement, Jacob
meant that when the first-ever genes
formed from the random mix of in-
gredients found in the “primordial
soup” 4 billion years ago, they did so
under environmental conditions that
www.americanscientist.org
we cannot accurately replicate on any
large scale today—not that we would
want to. The planet was just barely
beginning to resemble something hab-
itable. The oceans were young, and
lightning fused together the gases of
an atmosphere that was far different
from the one we have now.
The first organic matter formed
from inorganic compounds in this en-
vironment, where it cannot do so now.
So it seems reasonable that genes dur-
ing that time could also form in ways
that they cannot now. “Evolution does
not produce novelties from scratch,”
Jacob claimed. Besides that, up un-
til very recently, it has been difficult
to prove that the origin of a gene is
truly de novo. De novo genes fall un-
der the umbrella of orphan genes, but
the two terms are not synonymous.
Orphan genes are those without ob-
vious homo logues, or genes with
analogous sequences in the genome
of another related species. However,
that status does not mean that most of
these orphan genes evolved from non-
coding sequences. Rather, they can—
and do—descend from genes that
have since deteriorated and become
noncoding, or accumulated many
De novo genes fall under the
umbrella of orphan genes, but the
two terms are not synonymous.
sequence changes over time, making
them unrecognizable as the orphan’s
parent gene.
It has been known for 25 years that
orphan genes can develop through a
number of pathways. In many cases,
even if geneticists believed that there
was merit in the possibility of the de
novo gene evolution mechanism, it
was nearly impossible to distinguish
true de novo genes from orphan genes
that formed through other means. Be-
cause it was easier to find evidence
of genes that had originated through
these other mechanisms, the proof
for these methods accumulated over
time as opposed to proof of the de novo
method. For example, the British re-
searcher Cyrus Homi Chothia, like
many other scientists, believed that all
proteins formed from a set of domains,
noncoding “junk”
DNA sequence past
random
mutations create accumulation
functional open of mutations
reading over time
frame
present
new protein- noncoding “junk”
coding gene DNA sequences
Stephanie Freese
An evolutionary tree shows the origination
of a de novo gene. Random mutations occur
and accumulate throughout the genome, in-
cluding in regions that do not encode for a
protein. Although mutations often have no
effect on noncoding regions, in some cases
they can lead to the birth of a de novo gene
with protein-coding capabilities. Evolutionary
analyses of noncoding genetic sequences be-
tween related species unfolds the emergence
of new genes over time.
or subsections that join to form full
proteins, that came from just 1,500 pro-
tein families—meaning, allegedly, a
limited number of gene families en-
coding them, with very little de novo
evolution over time.
The major shift in this state of af-
fairs brings us back to the mission of
trying to decode the entire genome of
a species, starting in the 1990s. It took
well over a full decade to sequence
the first human genome. Since then,
both sequencing technologies and the
creation of genome sequence libraries
have improved by leaps and bounds.
Researchers today need only an inter-
net connection to access the complete
genetic code for a vast number of spe-
cies from all branches of the tree of life.
This resource has allowed researchers
to directly compare genome sequences
from closely related species including,
for the first time, the parts of a genome
that are noncoding.
Doing so has produced some re-
markable results, even in geneticists’
proverbial backyard. Genomic studies
2021 May–June 177
 yeast species. Such findings suggest
that these orphan genes could have
been created by several different mech-
anisms such as horizontal gene trans-
fer from rapidly evolving bacterial or
viral donors, but also through de novo
gene origination. Moreover, the evolu-
tion of de novo genes in isolated cases
has already been confirmed in multi-
cellular organisms as well.
Courtesy of Manyuan Long and colleagues
One particularly intriguing exam-
ple concerns the “antifreeze” protein
found in Arctic cod, which prevents
a
nic
of a gene there should be no room for
subjectivity. In our de novo gene stud-
ies in rice, to truly assess the potential
significance of de novo genes, we relied
on a strict definition of the word “gene”
with which nearly every expert can
agree. First, in order for a nucleotide
sequence to be considered a true gene,
an open reading frame (ORF) must be
present. The ORF can be thought of as
the “gene itself”; it begins with a start-
ing mark common for every gene and
ends with one of three possible finish

their blood from freezing in frigid wa- line signals. One of the key enzymes
ica
po

pu ion la

ter. This protein was highly similar to in this process, the RNA polymerase,
ind

ier ha
O. pog p ja

br ctata lis
O. erid patu
O. luma ma

an antifreeze protein found at the oth- zips along the strand of DNA like a
a

err ant
p
O. ivara n
rufi ss

ba ss
o

rri
e

L. p achy
i

er pole, in the Antarctic icefish. How- train on a monorail, transcribing it into

i
O. ativa

O. rthi
O. labe
O. tiva

time ever, whereas the gene that encoded its messenger RNA form. This point
sa

m
g
g
n
s
O.

O.

(MYA) the icefish’s protein was known to be brings us to our second important cri-
0 derived from parent genes, the anti- terion: A true gene is one that is both
37 1
freeze protein from Arctic cod seemed transcribed and translated. That is, a
to have a different origin. It took 22 true gene is first used as a template to
2

20 3
De novo genes encode shorter, simpler
4

41 5
proteins, and are often expressed at lower
6 rates and in fewer tissues.
37 7

8
34
9
10
6 11
12
13
14
15
Stephanie Freese
Comparative studies of the rice genome and
that of closely related species were used to map
the origins of de novo genes throughout the
evolution of the genus. The Oryza sativa sub-
species japonica (top) and related species were
grown in Hainan, China. The phylogenetic tree
(bottom) shows the number of de novo genes
(left axis) at different ancestral stages (purple
branches) arising over time (millions of years
ago, right axis) in domesticated rice.
of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the brewer’s
yeast used in baking and in scientific
research alike, have revealed that an
astounding 50 percent of genes in this
species have no homologues in other
years for Chinese American researcher
Chi-Hing Christina Cheng and her re-
search team at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign to demonstrate
the origins of the protein in Arctic cod,
which turned out to be de novo. These
de novo genes from the two poles of the
Earth provided strong evidence that
two similar proteins had emerged in-
dependently through natural selection
for survival.
The discovery of a few isolated ex-
amples in the 2010s confirmed the oc-
currence of de novo genes. However,
although this was an inspiring first
step, it did little to encourage scientists
to explore de novo evolution as a mean-
ingful mechanism, let alone convince
them that the junk in our DNA has its
role. That required a more widespread
effort, starting with a staple food we
see every day.
What Is a Gene, Really?
If a string of letters in a chromosome is
to be considered a true gene, certain cri-
teria must be met. Some of these criteria
may differ from study to study and de-
pending on whom you ask, but when
you are interested in assessing the birth
make transient messenger RNA, which
is then translated into a protein.
It is important to note here that this
way of defining genes appears to set up
a false dichotomy—something either
is or is not a true gene. For our gene
evolution studies, this strict definition
used by many in the field is useful, as
we wanted an estimate as conservative
and as definitive as possible to deter-
mine the prevalence of de novo genes.
In reality, however, the study of genet-
ics is rarely so kind to researchers as to
be black and white. Between the poles
of gene and junk is the spectrum of
pseudogenes, bits of sequence that have
partially complete ORFs but that do not
actually code for proteins. Although
these are sometimes termed “dead
genes,” they can and do have demon-
strable uses. Some of these can encode
different types of functional RNAs that
are never translated into proteins.
We, however, were concerned only
with the protein-coding true genes
in domesticated rice and its nearest
neighbors on the evolutionary tree of
life. Previous years of work in and out
of the laboratory had involved creat-
ing detailed libraries of full-genome

178 American Scientist, Volume 109

 sequences for O. sativa japonica and
nine other species in the Oryza genus,
along with one species from a differ-
ent but closely related grass species,
Leersia perrieri, for comparison. The so-
phisticated nature of the technology
we used highlights one more reason
why studies like this were nearly im-
possible up until now. We now have
the technology to detect genes that
have very low levels of expression—
that is, those that produce only small
amounts of protein. This limitation is
essential for our purposes, because it
is known that young genes, regard-
less of their origins, often tend to be
expressed minimally. As previously
mentioned, because Oryza sativa is a
recently evolved species that has only
just been domesticated by humans (at
least by evolutionary standards), it is
likely that a good number of its genes
are relatively new. The improved ac-
curacy of genome libraries means that
we were far less likely to miss any of
these newcomers in the shuffle.
When we began the hunt for de novo
genes in Oryza genomes in 2012, we
knew that they would hold importance
for the scientific community at large.
Oryza sativa japonica is, after all, the
most essential staple crop for most of
the world’s population. As we look to a
future of changing climates and poten-
tial food shortages, any increase in our
collective understanding regarding rice
evolution comes with inherent signifi-
cance. What we did not expect was the
way that these genome libraries could
flag leaf anther
14
0 24 pistil
57
1 4 stigma stamen
ovary style
4
filament
pistil plus anther
glume
panicle
flag leaf
blade
glume
pedicel
pedicel
Stephanie Freese
The expression of de novo genes is often limited to low levels and in specific tissues, likely
while their functions are fine-tuned by evolutionary pressure. A Venn diagram shows the
distribution of the protein products of de novo genes in different plant tissues. Most of the
new genes are uniquely expressed in anthers, which contain the pollen and represent the male
reproductive organ in flowering plants.
have implications for the behavior of to their older counterparts. These genes
genes in general as we know them. seem to also be harder to “read” by the
machinery in our cells responsible for
Shifting Views transcribing and translating messenger
From the study of the 175 genes that we RNAs. As a result, de novo genes are
determined to be de novo genes, some often expressed at lower rates and in
clear tendencies began to emerge. For fewer tissues.
example, most of the newly evolved de Although not insignificant to our
novo genes in Oryza sativa subspecies understanding of de novo genes, how-
japonica have structures that encode ever, these findings are mere observa-
shorter, simpler proteins in comparison tions of what they look like and what

gene structure protein length gene expression in root

1.0 old singleton genes 0.8 old singleton genes 60

de novo genes de novo genes
messenger RNAs transcribed

0.8
0.6
percentage of genes

percentage of genes

40
0.6
0.4
0.4
20
0.2
0.2
Efrain Rivera-Serrano

0.0 0.0 0
1–4 5–7 >10 100–200 200–300 > 300 de novo old singleton
number of exons per gene number of amino acids genes genes

Compared to older genes (greater than 15 million years old, purple of them transcribing more than 10 messenger RNAs per unit of total
bars), de novo genes (3 million years or younger, blue bars) are transcripts (right chart). Altogether, these factors define a stepwise
shorter in length (left chart) and encode for shorter proteins (middle architectural evolution as they expand their coding length, complex-
chart). The expression of these genes is also limited, with only a few ity, and expression levels.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 179

 frequency random nonsense before the ORF has
(percent) completely formed.

transcription model transcription model transcription model

This de novo gene problem has a
early ORF–late

transcription
clear answer, as we found out through

coding
transcription
5.70 our studies. Examples of evolution un-
de novo ORF de novo gene protein der both models could be found in the
ancestral noncoding sequence

history of the Oryza genus, with some

ORFs emerging before transcription
coding + transcription

ever took place and some appearing

simultaneous ORF

only after a sequence had been tran-

transcription scribed for generations (see figure at
3.40 left). However, in general, examples of
de novo gene protein the late ORF–early transcription model
are overwhelmingly more common.
From a certain point of view, the fact
that the transcription machinery has be-
late ORF–early

transcription

gun acting on sequences that are not

transcription
coding

transcription
even complete ORFs could be seen as a
noncoding 90.9 sign of malfunction, a bug rather than
de novo gene protein
RNA transcript a feature in the system. Stranger still,
at least at the outset, is how these ORFs
tend to form and reach completion once
Efrain Rivera-Serrano intergenic sequences have begun to be
De novo genes can follow one of three routes as they rise from ancestral noncoding sequences. transcribed. As part of our analysis, we
In the early ORF–late transcription model, mutations in junk sequences create an ORF, or determined which types of mutations
open reading frame, that can only then be transcribed and translated. Interestingly, most genes most frequently led to the formation
follow a late ORF–early transcription model in which transcription of nonsense RNA occurs of complete ORFs in Oryza. Genes that
before a complete ORF is formed. Very few genes follow a model where formation of an ORF evolve from other parent genes tend to
and transcription occur simultaneously. do so in gradual ways, often via substi-
tution mutations. In this case, one nu-
effects they have on the organism writ significance of de novo evolution. cleotide is swapped for another, which
large. Moreover, they are findings that Our question for de novo genes then would change the codon and could
would be expected in many recently became this: Does a complete ORF cause one amino acid in the resulting
evolved orphan genes in general, not need to develop before it starts get- protein to be exchanged for another.
only those that evolved de novo. To an- ting transcribed, or can transcription Although this substitution can some-
swer the pressing question of how de of noncoding sequences—yielding times have remarkable consequences,
novo genes come to be, seemingly out of nothing but mRNA gibberish—occur beneficial to the organism or otherwise,
the ether, we needed to track how the de even when the development of a func- it is still a fairly conservative way to
novo genes in rice began to emerge and tional ORF is still ongoing? As such, evolve: Only one amino acid is changed
change within the species we studied. we had two models to consider: the at a time, and the number of nucleotides
within the gene remains the same. It is in
line with the general perception of evo-
lution as a gradual process that does not
Many de novo genes are, in all take kindly to fast, massive shifts. But
this approach was not the case for many
likelihood, still at the beginning of their of the de novo genes found in Oryza.
By way of explanation, suppose the
development, and we are capturing letter E were removed from the Eng-
lish alphabet. It now goes A, B, C, D,
F, G, etcetera. If you tried to sing the
snapshots of their evolution. alphabet song with one letter missing,
everything up to D would feel normal,
and then everything after that would
This included observing not only how “early ORF–late transcription” model sound off to your ears, all sung on the
ORFs first appeared from stretches of and the “late ORF–early transcription” wrong note. Even though only one let-
noncoding sequence, but also at what model. Under the former, the com- ter has been removed, everything fol-
point in their evolutionary process they plete ORF must have formed under lowing it has been thrown off—good
began to be transcribed, the first step to completely random conditions, with- luck when you get to “LMNOP.” You
expression of the gene. out the influence of natural selection would get the same effect if you added
This information is necessary to to shape it. Meanwhile, if the other a new letter to the alphabet.
solving a certain chicken-and-egg model is more reflective of reality, A frameshift mutation has a similar
problem, which has contributed to the transcribing machinery will have effect on a protein. Because the nucleo-
doubt regarding the existence and been spending energy on transcribing tides in DNA and RNA are “read” in

180 American Scientist, Volume 109

 · intergenic DNA in a dark matter state of junk genes that emerge from these sequenc-
es are, in a sense, raw. For example, de
intergenic junk
novo gene codons are in general less
efficiently translated into amino ac-
transcription ids compared to those of older, more
junk RNA established genes. This result means
that many de novo genes are, in all like-
· evolve a primitive gene locus lihood, still at the beginning of their
· with a short open reading frame (ORF), the seed ORF appears development, and we are capturing
snapshots of their evolution. Although
a few potential human de novo genes
transcription have been identified, we still do not
primitive mRNA know the extent of their influence on
evolutionary time

how we came to be. What we do know

· evolve a primitive gene locus is that the birth of such genes can be
· the seed ORF expands to a longer ORF by accumulating abler mutations highly species-specific and can only
be essential to a particular species. As
species evolve, so do these new genes,
transcription becoming more and more efficient at
primitive mRNA producing their proteins by the forces
of natural selection, each one of them
· primitive gene locus evolves a full length functional ORF by continuing likely shaping traits that will play larg-
accumulation of abler mutations er roles in how we function.
De novo genes are perhaps not so
much junk as imperfect. Even after
transcription gaining a complete ORF and reaching
de novo mRNA an adequate level of expression, their
Stephanie Freese

roles remain constrained to specific tis-

translation
During the birth of most de novo genes, part of the “junk” in the genome is continuously
being transcribed into junk RNA. Over time, mutations in this nonsensical sequence allow
it to gain a short ORF as the sequence continues to be transcribed, with this new ORF now in-
cluded in the resulting mRNA. Additional mutations continue to accumulate until a complete
ORF is formed, producing a functional protein-coding mRNA.
groups of three, an insertion or deletion
can have dramatic effects, sometimes
changing every amino acid following it.
Often, it will result in a premature fin-
ish line signal, meaning that a section
of the protein is simply never created
at all. We discovered that rather than
substitutions, such larger frameshift
mutations are the most common in the
evolution of de novo ORFs.
How can such drastic mutations
be so pivotal in the creation of de novo
genes? It likely has to do with the levels
of expression present for new genes. As
mentioned before, younger genes tend
to be expressed at lower levels com-
pared to older genes. In the context of a
whole organism, partial ORFs, pseudo-
genes, and other intergenic sequences
that are just beginning to be expressed
in fewer tissues allow newly dramatic
functions to evolve out of the newly
used ORFs without interfering with the
functions in all tissues. This evolution-
ary fine-tuning process allows small
de novo protein
trials before launching their expression
across the whole organism.
The Diamonds
We do some amazing things with
our genome full of “junk.” We build,
learn, conquer, and love day by day.
Some of us, like Yidan Ouyang and
members of her team, even pick up
and travel 11 hours by car and ferry
from Hainan to Shenzhen, believing
the transport of precious specimens of
anthers and other tissues to be worth
the work and sacrifice.
It is not currently clear how much
de novo genes have effected our own
development as a species. But our
findings have revealed two general
properties of the junk DNA. Firstly, the
repetitive elements in the junk often
generated repetitive amino acids in the
de novo genes in Oryza and other spe-
cies, such as the polar fishes. Secondly,
the more randomized sequences found
in junk DNA mean that the de novo
sues while they are still undergoing sig-
nificant changes. Such “green” genes
are still in the process of becoming
something greater. But aren’t we all?
Bibliography
Chen, L., A. L. DeVries, and C. H. Cheng. 1997.
Evolution of antifreeze glycoprotein gene
from a trypsinogen gene in Antarctic noto-
thenioid fish. Proceedings of the National Acad-
emy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 94:3811–3816.
Levine, M., C. D. Jones, A. D. Kern, H. A. Lind-
fors, and D. J. Begun. 2006. Novel genes
derived from noncoding DNA in Drosophila
melanogaster are frequently X-linked and ex-
hibit testis-biased expression. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.
103: 9935–9939.
McLysaght, A., and L. D. Hurst. 2016. Open
questions in the study of de novo genes:
what, how and why. Nature Reviews Genetics
17:567–578.
Tautz, D., and T. Domazet-LoŠo. 2011. The evo-
lutionary origin of orphan genes. Nature
Reviews Genetics 12:692–702.
Zhang, L., et al. 2019. Rapid evolution of pro-
tein diversity by de novo origination in Ory-
za. Nature Ecology & Evolution 3:679–690.
Emily Mortola is a freelance writer and medical ed-
itor for the National Board of Osteopathic Medical
Examiners. She graduated from the University of
Chicago as a premedical student and was involved
in the analysis of the de novo genes found in O. s.
japonica. Manyuan Long is the Edna K. Papazian
Distinguished Service Professor in the department
of ecology and evolution at the University of Chi-
cago. Email for Long: mlong@uchicago.edu

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 181

 S c i e n t i s t s’
Nightstand
The Scientists’ Nightstand,
American Scientist’s books
section, offers reviews, review
essays, brief excerpts, and more.
For additional books coverage,
please see our Science Culture
blog channel, which explores
how science intersects with other
areas of knowledge, entertain-
ment, and society:
americanscientist.org/blogs
/science-culture.
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
THREATS: Intimidation and Its
Discontents.
By David P. Barash.
page 185
ONLINE
On our Science Culture blog:
americanscientist.org/blogs
/science-culture
Seeing the Unseeable
Peter Pesic reviews a new film
directed and produced by Peter
Galison, Black Holes: The Edge of
All We Know, which depicts the
work of both the Event Horizon
Telescope team and theoreticians
investigating the black hole
information paradox. Below,
the behavior of black holes is
mimicked by creating spinning
vortices in a large tank of fluid.
From Black Holes: The Edge of All
We Know.
182 American Scientist, Volume 109
Physicians of the
Manhattan Project
Jonathan D. Moreno
ATOMIC DOCTORS: Conscience and
Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear
Age. James L. Nolan, Jr. 294 pp. The
Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2020. $29.95.
F
or many years I have shown my
students a curious memento of
the mid-20th century: a Western
Union telegram that was used to trans-
mit top secret information. Dated No-
vember 30, 1945, it was sent by Robert
M. Fink to “Dr. Wright Langham c/o
D. L. Hempelman [sic].” In its entirety
it reads “h.p.-3 and h.p.-4 injected
tuesday, november twentyseventh.
h.p.-5 injected friday, november
thirtieth.”
To begin to decode this message, one
would have had to know the occupa-
tions of the sender and recipients: Rob-
ert M. Fink was a physician at the Uni-
versity of Rochester’s Strong Memorial
Hospital, where the toxicity of radioac-
tive isotopes was being studied; Wright
Langham, a chemist, led the Biological
Research Division at Los Alamos, New
Mexico, where a nuclear weapon was
being secretly developed as part of the
Manhattan Project; and Louis Hempel-
mann was a physician and director of the
Health Group at Los Alamos. “H.P.” was
an abbreviation for the disconcerting
term human product. Human products
3, 4, and 5 were patients at Strong Me-
morial, and they had been injected with
plutonium without their consent as part
of a highly sensitive experiment to deter-
mine the effects of the new element on
the human body. Fifteen additional pa-
tients were subjected to the experiment
at other hospitals—at the University of
California, at the University of Chicago,
and in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. All four
locations were Manhattan Project sites.
This shocking experiment was mo-
tivated by worries about the safety of
the laboratory workers at Los Alamos,
but the U.S. government’s willingness
to expose unwitting Americans to dan-
gerous radiation without their consent
is appalling. Thus it is unsurprising
that the legacy of this and other radia-
tion experiments carried out during
World War II and the Cold War has
proved vexing for the government.
The experiments were covered up for
decades. Rumors about the plutonium
injections nevertheless persisted; then
in the fall of 1993 the Albuquerque Tri-
bune began publishing an investiga-
tive series by reporter Eileen Welsome
titled “The Plutonium Experiment,”
which later won a Pulitzer Prize. Word
of Welsome’s reporting reached Pres-
ident Clinton’s Secretary of Energy,
Hazel O’Leary, who brought it to the
president’s attention. He then appoint-
ed an Advisory Committee on Human
Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), for
which I served as a staff member. The
ACHRE produced a thousand-page
report based on 18 months of intensive
investigation, during which tens of
thousands of pages of classified docu-
ments, including the aforementioned
telegram, were examined and became
part of the ACHRE record. The report
concluded that the federal govern-
ment had engaged in experiments that
were wrong even by the standards of
the day and had in some cases result-
ed in demonstrable harms that were
not disclosed.
Now James L. Nolan, Jr., has writ-
ten a book—Atomic Doctors: Conscience
and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear
Age—that provides an admirable ac-
count of the central role of physicians in
the Manhattan Project and its aftermath.
He makes use of many of the old docu-
ments that were available to ACHRE in
the mid-1990s. But he also has access
to a source that was unavailable to us:
notes made by his grandfather, James F.
Nolan, who along with Hempelmann
was one of several physicians in charge
of the medical care of the thousands of
residents of Los Alamos, the city that
was created for the express purpose of
building the Bomb. Hempelmann’s and
Nolan’s assignments went well beyond
the provision of routine medical care.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was scien-
tific director of the Manhattan Project,
wanted them also to monitor Los Ala-
mos lab workers for radiation exposure,
because he was aware of cases in which
excessive exposure to ionizing radiation
had been harmful to people, including
Marie Curie, health care workers who
developed leukemia from working
with x-rays, and women factory work-
ers who applied paint containing a
small amount of radium to watch dials
to make them luminous.
Hempelmann and several colleagues
from the Metallurgical Lab at the Uni-
versity of Chicago modeled their safety
operation on the safety measures that
eventually had been implemented at
the watch factories. However, condi-
tions at Los Alamos did not match
those in the factories, not least because The uranium-based bomb “Little Boy” was not tested before being shipped off for use in
the material being used was plutonium Japan—in part because there was only enough uranium on hand to build one weapon of that
(whose effects on the body were less type. But the design of plutonium-based bombs was more complicated, so Los Alamos scientists
well understood than those of radium) decided to detonate one of those devices atop a 100-foot tower at the Trinity Site in the desert in
and the operations being carried out New Mexico. Dubbed “the Gadget” and shown here in the tower, it exploded on July 16, 1945,
were far more complicated than watch with greater force than anticipated. The physicians at Los Alamos had been greatly concerned
about how much radiation the blast might produce and had developed plans for evacuating
painting. As the work proceeded at
neighboring towns before the test. But General Leslie Groves vetoed those plans, which he
Los Alamos, both the workers and the
feared would compromise the secrecy of the Manhattan Project, and he wouldn’t allow the phy-
members of the Health Group insisted sicians to inform residents about their exposure to dangerous levels of radiation after the fact
on stricter conditions. Even in that far either; protection against legal exposure was the priority. From Atomic Doctors.
less litigious era, the doctors worried
about their potential legal liability. Nolan does not spare his grand- ing the American occupation of Japan,
Atomic Doctors is no mere family father a moral reckoning. But before he was a member of one of several
memoir. Nolan’s skillful weaving of his reaching that assessment, he makes teams that were assigned to investi-
grandfather’s story into an account of superb use of James F. Nolan’s de- gate the residual radiation effects of
the pressures exerted on medical ethics scriptions of his role in a series of the atomic attacks on civilians—effects
by time, place, and circumstance makes events that unfolded after his sojourn that the experiment with plutonium
for compelling reading. Nolan, who is in Los Alamos ended. First we are injections would not necessarily illu-
a sociologist, shrewdly notes the dis- treated to a gripping reconstruction of minate. The team from the Manhat-
tinctive ethos of each of the three com- the transport of a massive lead canis- tan Project, which included physicist
munities at Los Alamos. The military, ter of uranium-235 from Los Alamos Philip Morrison, was merged with two
led by the ruthless, egotistical, whip- to Albuquerque to San Francisco to other groups to form the Joint Com-
smart General Leslie Groves, wanted Tinian Island. Along with a colleague, mission for the Investigation of the Ef-
to build a nuclear weapon before Nazi Dr. Nolan accompanied the U-235 fects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan. The
Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviet in the guise of an artillery officer to Manhattan Project’s participation in
Union could do so. The scientists, led by maintain maximum security. (Nolan the investigation, which lasted only
the brilliant, philosophical, somewhat knew not the first thing about artil- five weeks, was later characterized
naive Oppenheimer, wanted to know lery, however, and in one somewhat by journalist Daniel Lang, who inter-
whether their theories would be borne comical scene he makes an uncon- viewed Morrison about it, as “an un-
out in this engineering project. And the vincing stab at persuading a couple usual mixture of tourism, scientific ex-
physicians, led by Hempelmann, were of officers that he is an expert.) Their ploration, and public relations work.”
torn between a mission of healing and cargo was a portion of the core explo- Groves and others pressured team
protection and the momentum of the sive material used to fuel “Little Boy,” members to minimize the medical con-
massive weapons development orga- the bomb that was loaded onto the sequences for survivors in an attempt
nization of which they were a part. Ul- Enola Gay on Tinian Island and then to avoid creating a hostile reaction
timately the physicians succumbed to dropped on Hiroshima. to the bombing at home and abroad.
that momentum, and security, secrecy, Nolan’s atomic odyssey did not end Hempelmann, who wasn’t included
and speed superseded health concerns. there. In the weeks that followed, dur- on the team that went to Japan, was

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 183

 might be brought against the gov-
ernment. Operation Crossroads was
followed in 1948 by Operation Sand-
stone, in which three more bombs
were dropped on the Marshall Islands,
and by 1958 the United States had con-
ducted another 62 bomb tests there.
After participating in Operation
Sandstone, James F. Nolan was more
than happy to resume his profession
as a civilian obstetrician-gynecologist
with a special interest in applying
nuclear medicine to cancer therapy.
But what he had done and seen, espe-
cially in the nightmarish landscape of
postwar Japan, was never far from his
mind. In a 1971 lecture, after stress-
ing that he had not developed seri-
ous medical problems from his nu-
merous exposures to radiation, he
emphasized that physicians had an
obligation to take radiation risks for
improved patient care, and he made a
disparaging remark about the emerg-
ing emphasis on informed consent.
In the first phase of Operation Crossroads (a misguided U.S. military effort to investigate what These comments are chilling, because
effects a nuclear attack might have on naval vessels), a plutonium bomb was aerially dropped off they bring to mind the rationaliza-
the shore of the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on July 1, 1946, sinking 5 ships, immobiliz- tions of other medical experimenters
ing 6 others, and setting another 23 on fire. Dr. James F. Nolan, who participated in the operation who have continued to resist reforms
as a safety officer, is shown here measuring radiation levels on the U.S.S. New York the day after in ethical practices.
that blast. After a second bomb was detonated 90 feet under water in the same area later that
What, in a moral sense, are we
month, radiation levels on the ship were found to be dangerously high, and the Navy’s attempts
to decontaminate it proved fruitless. Nevertheless, the ship’s captain and crew resisted the warn-
to make of James L. Nolan’s atomic
ings of the safety team: The military didn’t want to believe the doctors. From Atomic Doctors. medical career? Historians and phi-
losophers struggle with the pitfalls
drawn into this public relations vor- leave their island homes before the of “retrospective moral judgment,” a
tex when Groves and Oppenheimer bombing began, but they thought that form of ethical anachronism. Unques-
brought reporters to the Trinity Site in their relocation would be temporary; tionably, World War II was a national
New Mexico (where the first nuclear no one told them that the atoll would emergency, and a Nazi victory in the
detonation had taken place) and false- be rendered uninhabitable, and they race for the Bomb would have been a
ly claimed that the area was free from were never justly compensated. The disaster for human civilization. Nev-
dangerous levels of residual radiation. book explains that they, along with ertheless, carried forth by a vast insti-
Concerns about residual radiation other Marshall Islanders, were outra- tutional momentum, most of the Man-
danger haunted at least some of the geously exploited. hattan Project protagonists persisted
physicists, including Oppenheimer, As a radiation safety officer, Dr. No- even after that danger had passed.
Leo Szilard, and Albert Einstein. lan was part of a team that assessed The destructive force of this killing
The Marshall Islands were the the dangers that the targeted naval technology seared the souls of those
last stop on Nolan’s atomic odyssey. vessels would pose if boarded after a who, like Nolan, saw the results in
In 1946 he came to the Bikini Atoll, detonation. After the blasts, he found Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the weeks
where the atomic tests of Operation high levels of radiation, but his find- after the bombs were dropped. Was
Crossroads were to be carried out ings were downplayed. So began a James F. Nolan a good man, caught in
in an attempt to settle the question decades-long push and pull between a maelstrom of extraordinary times,
of whether armies and navies were health physicists and military lead- who responded to a call to national
even needed anymore in the atomic ers about what should be labeled the service but was finally swept up in cir-
era; the notion that they might not be maximum tolerable dose of radiation. cumstances that few of us could have
necessary was being propagated by The risks were nearly always under- transcended? (He did, after all, pro-
the emerging air force, led by the ag- estimated, despite the fact that the vide some care to Japanese victims.)
gressive General Curtis LeMay. In a level of exposure deemed medically Or was he an ambitious young pro-
reckless exercise of interagency com- acceptable was repeatedly lowered fessional with a sense of adventure
petition between the Army and the drastically. One of the main purposes who saw remarkable career challenges
Navy, nuclear detonations were going in having doctors record radiation and opportunities unfolding and re-
to be used to test the effects of atom levels appears to have been to create sisted any prods of conscience? We
bombs on naval vessels. The residents a paper trail that could be helpful in know that he felt relief at leaving the
of the Bikini Atoll were persuaded to denying any future legal claims that military so that he could turn to using

184 American Scientist, Volume 109

radiation to heal people in his medical
practice, but beyond that, his internal
moral journey remains opaque to the
reader—and, it appears, to his grand-
son, who opts for a different approach
to questions of morality.
Near the end of the book, Nolan ex-
amines his grandfather’s role through
the lens of French sociologist Jacques
Ellul’s philosophy of technology, in
which the modern notion of tech-
nique is taken to be driven by a quest
for efficiency. Since the dawn of the
Atomic Age, that quest has had its op-
timistic advocates—including, in our
own time, Raymond Kurzweil. But
pessimists such as Oppenheimer see
technology as not only irresistible but
also finally destructive. As the decades
have passed, Ellul’s description of nu-
clear technology as a “whole package”
whose benefits cannot be separated
from its difficulties (particularly the
necessity of storing massive quan-
tities of nuclear waste) has come to
seem increasingly apt. Nolan extends
this view of technology as inherently
destructive from the atomic bomb to
gene editing, which some readers may
find a stretch, though bioethicists such
as Daniel Callahan have made quite
similar arguments about the techno-
logical imperative.
Throughout the book, the reader
encounters details and descriptions
that pack a moral punch. I was par-
ticularly struck by Nolan’s account of
a conversation that took place in Japan
in 1945 between Morrison and Masao
Tsuzuki, a distinguished surgeon who
had been a student at the University
of Pennsylvania. The sardonic Tsuzuki
handed Morrison a copy of his 1926
paper on the effects of radiation on
laboratory animals. “After Morrison
scanned and returned the document,”
Nolan writes, “Tsuzuki slapped the
American physicist on the knee and
said, ‘Ah, but the Americans—they are
wonderful. It has remained for them
to conduct the human experiment.’”
Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen
University Professor and a Penn Integrates Knowl-
edge professor at the University of Pennsylvania,
where he teaches medical ethics and health policy,
the history and sociology of science, and philosophy.
He is coauthor with Amy Gutmann of Everybody
Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to
Die: Bioethics and the Transformation of Health
Care in America (Liveright, 2019), and is coau-
thor with Jay Schulkin of The Brain in Context:
A Pragmatic Guide to Neuroscience (Columbia
University Press, 2019).
www.americanscientist.org
The Drawbacks of
Making Threats
William B. Swann
THREATS: Intimidation and Its Discontents.
David P. Barash. 235 pp. Oxford University
Press, 2020. $27.95.
L
iving through the Cuban Mis-
sile Crisis shook me to the core.
I was only a young boy at the
time and quite naive about world af-
fairs, but it was obvious to everyone
that the leaders of the planet had come
perilously close to destroying it. Horri-
fied and aghast, I lost faith in the adult
world, and that faith has never been
fully restored. The same feelings of hor-
ror washed over me when I read evo-
lutionary biologist David P. Barash’s
Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents.
In this erudite yet highly readable
book, the author uncovers innumer-
As threats become more sophisticated
and complex, their effectiveness
decreases while the risk of serious
miscommunication increases.
able flaws inherent in the very notion
of nuclear deterrence and reveals why
it is doomed to fail. By exposing the fu-
tility of nuclear deterrence as a policy,
he both amplified my feelings of terror
and sparked in me a desire to persuade
others of the policy’s folly.
The first two sections of the book
set the stage for the final section on
nuclear deterrence. Section 1, “The
Natural World,” explains how threats
function among nonhuman animals.
The reader learns that threats among
nonhumans typically involve some
degree of exaggeration, if not outright
deception. For example, by assuming
particular appearances or postures,
animals can persuade competitors or
predators to divert their efforts else-
where. Within this scheme, genes that
allow animals to successfully deceive
others will be advantaged, but so too
will genes that allow for the detection
of deception. Presumably, these coun-
tervailing forces balance each other
out, so that the use of threats among
these animals remains adaptive.
Although Barash’s writing is gener-
ally quite lucid, early in the book I oc-
casionally felt that I was sinking into
a morass of details with only a vague
idea of how they contributed to the
overarching narrative. This feeling was
strongest in section 1 when he chron-
icled numerous threats displayed by
a small army of creatures. I could un-
derstand why Barash, as an ethologist,
might find this subject matter exhila-
rating, but I would have been satisfied
with far less detail. Perhaps I would
not have had this reaction had he done
a more convincing job of showing how
this material contributed to his conten-
tion that threats are not terribly effective
regulators of human behavior.
Section 2, “Individuals and Soci-
ety,” shifts rather abruptly to the use of
threats among individual humans, with
emphasis on documenting the ways in
which human threats can misfire. For
example, Barash devotes a subsection
to society’s use of capital punishment,
torture, and other threats as a means
of scaring people into prosocial behav-
ior. He systematically evaluates the
evidence for the effectiveness of each
of these strategies, and concludes that
none of the approaches are particularly
effective. For example, he notes that the
evidence indicates that capital punish-
ment actually increases violent crime
rather than serving as a deterrent. Al-
though the reasons for this effect have
not yet been nailed down, it may be
that violence begets violence by creat-
ing an atmosphere that condones vio-
lence as a strategy of social control. De-
spite the dearth of evidence that capital
punishment and other putative threats
are effective, they remain popular with-
in certain segments of society.
In another subsection, the author
examines the effectiveness of more
benign systems of threats designed to
elicit desired behavior, such as religious
2021 May–June 185
teachings. Once again, he concludes
that such threats are not effective regu-
lators of behavior. He then proceeds
to consider strategies through which
individuals strive to avoid perceived
threats posed by other people. He
notes, for example, that just as some
respond to perceived threats by ac-
quiring guns, others embrace right-
wing populist policies designed to
discourage immigration. Here again,
he concludes that such strategies are
either ineffective, counterproductive,
or both. Guns, for instance, increase
rather than decrease mortality rates.
And the riots at the U.S. Capitol on
January 6, 2021, (which took place af-
ter the book was published) demon-
strated that right-wing populism can
threaten democracy itself.
It is indefensible to put all life on the
planet at risk and sheer folly to wager
that nuclear deterrence will save us.
My takeaway from the first two sec-
tions was that as threats become more
sophisticated and complex, their effec-
tiveness decreases while the risk of se-
rious miscommunication increases. In
the third and final section of the book,
the author considers the implications
of these conclusions for international
relations. He alludes to psychological
research over the past half-century that
has made it clear that decision makers
routinely violate rational rules, espe-
cially when they are operating under
pressure (as they would be in a nucle-
ar confrontation). Recent research on
group processes (in which I have been
involved) indicates that decision mak-
ers may suffer from an additional form
of bias: When people become deeply
aligned (“fused”) with their group, a
threat to the group is perceived as a
threat to the self, and when this hap-
pens, cost-benefit analyses give way
to purely emotional reactions. If the
recipient of such a threat happens to
have a finger on the nuclear button, an
emotional response could end life as
we know it. If this scenario was scary
during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is
even scarier now that weaponry has
become far more lethal.
Much of the last section of the book
is devoted to examining the role of
perceived threat in the proliferation
186 American Scientist, Volume 109
of nuclear weapons. Barash begins by
noting that governments often exag-
gerate threats from foreign countries to
justify huge expenditures of money to
counter the perceived threats. In reality,
however, monies spent on elaborate
defense systems, including nuclear sys-
tems, typically do not diminish threat.
For example, he notes that the histori-
cal record offers no evidence that the
possession of nuclear weapons has suc-
cessfully deterred conflict between na-
tion states. In fact, possessing nuclear
weapons has not even helped coun-
tries achieve their goals. The abun-
dance of nuclear weapons possessed
by the United States and Russia, for
example, did little to avert catastrophe
in their successive campaigns in Af-
ghanistan. Nor did the acquisition of
nuclear weapons advantage Pakistan
in its conflict with India. In these and
other instances, nuclear weapons have
been shown to have little utility.
When confronted with a paucity
of evidence that nuclear weapons are
instrumental in achieving goals, advo-
cates of such weaponry retreat to the
position that brandishing the threat of
mutual annihilation will discourage
countries from mounting attacks. Per-
haps. But even if that is true, Barash
says, this approach is morally dubi-
ous; it has been compared to strap-
ping babies to the front and rear bum-
pers of cars as a means of reducing
accidents. That technique may indeed
reduce accidents, but it is obviously
indefensible to place babies in harm’s
way for any reason. It is similarly in-
defensible to put the survival of hu-
mans and all other living organisms
on the planet at risk to deter nuclear
war. Furthermore, given the evidence
for the ineffectiveness of deterrence in
all its forms, it is not merely morally
indefensible but sheer folly to wager
that nuclear deterrence will save us
from disaster.
Barash is at his boldest in the fi-
nal subsections, where he contends
that his analysis calls for the aboli-
tion of nuclear weapons. To this end,
he points to concrete steps that will
take us in that direction. Among oth-
er things, he suggests that we do the
following: (1) take all existing nucle-
ar weapons off hair-trigger alert and
separate nuclear warheads from their
delivery systems to reduce the risk that
any other country might perceive that
the weapons constitute a sudden, first-
strike threat to them; (2) decommission
all land-based intercontinental ballistic
missiles; (3) announce and institute a
no-first-use policy; (4) eliminate any
hints of launch-on-warning and do
nothing that would give computers
ultimate control; (5) halt all plans for
“modernization” of the nuclear arse-
nal; (6) eliminate all tactical, battlefield
nuclear weapons; and (7) rejoin the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to elimi-
nate other countries’ fear that we
might be so foolish as to launch an
attack thinking that we would be im-
mune to retaliation.
For the benefit of readers (like my-
self) to whom his bullishness about
implementing these suggestions
might seem a tad Panglossian, Barash
recounts the story of one of history’s
greatest missed opportunities. In a
summit meeting between Ronald Rea-
gan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986,
the two leaders nearly endorsed the
abolition of all nuclear weapons. Un-
fortunately, the potential agreement
was undermined by Reagan’s insis-
tence that the United States be al-
lowed to pursue the development of
a strategic missile defense system (aka
“Star Wars”), and Gorbachev rejected
Reagan’s plan. I was startled by the
revelation that the two leaders had
come so close to ending the nuclear
era, especially given that the Cold War
was still in full swing at the time.
Could it be that Barash’s plan for
nuclear détente is not a pipe dream
after all? Although I remain skeptical,
it is important to take his arguments
seriously. As he points out, the human
race just barely managed to stumble
through the Cuban Missile Crisis and
several later near misses. We have
been extraordinarily lucky so far, but
there is no telling how long our luck
will hold out. One can only hope that
this book will inspire successful efforts
to take luck out of the equation.
William B. Swann is professor of social and personal-
ity psychology at the University of Texas at Austin,
where he also has appointments in clinical psychology
and the School of Business. His chief current research
interest is identity fusion theory and research.
 May–June 2021
Sigma Xi Today A NEWSLETTER OF SIGMA XI, THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH HONOR SOCIETY
Sigma Xi Launches
Online Student
Networking
Platform Through
Tallo Partnership
Sigma Xi has estab-
lished an exciting
new partnership
with Tallo, a web-based networking
platform. The partnership gives Sigma
Xi student members the opportunity to
create free, online profiles that highlight
their talents, skills, and accomplish-
ments to colleges, universities, and an
extensive list of companies around the
United States.
Through the Tallo networking
platform, student members from
high school through graduate school
can create private online profiles to
showcase their achievements, enrich
college search materials, and connect
with potential career opportunities.
Additionally, students can create valu-
able relationships with mentors and
request digital badges offered by
Sigma Xi.
“This partnership between Sigma
Xi and Tallo will allow students to
underscore their accomplishments—
particularly those achieved through
Sigma Xi—to colleges, universities,
and future employers,” said Sigma
Xi CEO Jamie Vernon. “We’re thrilled
to help our members and student
affiliates advance their careers by
sharing their skills and talents on the
Tallo platform.”
continued on page 189
Sigma Xi Today is managed by
Jason Papagan and designed by
Chao Hui Tu.
www.americanscientist.org
Volume 30 Number 03
From the President
We Can Do Hard Things
When I first addressed you at Sigma Xi’s Annual
Meeting in November 2019, I invited you to come
to the next year’s meeting in Alexandria, Virginia
to “celebrate with me that every day something
has tried to kill us and has failed.” I never imag-
ined that less than four months later we would
be facing a new, more onerous “something”—
a global pandemic and a nationwide shutdown.
The loss of Sigma Xi members and their loved
ones to the COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult
for everyone at our organization to bear. Amidst the chaos, we have
exhibited strength and learned many lessons as we begin to re-emerge
and re-engage.
Sigma Xi, like many organizations, was required to come to a full stop
on in-person activities. Personally, I had planned to visit many chapters
to participate in induction ceremonies to catalyze membership and be
more engaged in the Society. I had already set aside some personal funds
to travel to these events, and I had made commitments to some chapters
to do so.
During that period, we were required to pivot and make contingency
plans for future events, such as the 2020 Annual Meeting in Alexandria.
Given the modest size of our staff, I was impressed by how quickly we
pivoted to produce a high-quality virtual meeting that incorporated both
arts and STEM. We had an overwhelmingly high number of attendees
from around the globe, many of whom would not have been able to
attend had it been an in-person event. As a result, we have expanded
Sigma Xi’s global reach during the pandemic, which is no small feat, for
which I am thankful to our entire team.
As a nation and as an organization, we’ve proven that we can do hard
things in difficult circumstances. Therefore, as we return to in-person
spaces and begin reconnecting the synapses that we previously used for
conversations with colleagues, cocktail chitchat, and other interactions, I
hope we remember some of the lessons learned from the pandemic. If we
come together in the community of nations, we can focus our scientific
talents to solve hard problems—like developing COVID-19 vaccines in
record time. And if the nation’s attention is focused on the hard problem
of distributing those vaccines, we can create solutions that deliver those
vaccines to millions of people in record time. These are lessons that Sigma
Xi members already know, as science advocates and zealous research-
ers. We must work together. We must act as champions for science and
research to solve today’s problems and those we will face in the future.
It has been my honor to serve as Sigma Xi’s president during this pan-
demic year. I hope to have in-person conversations with many of you at
the upcoming 2021 Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference.
Sonya T. Smith
2021 May–June 187
 EVENTS

Registration Now Open for 2021 Annual Meeting and Student

Research Conference
November 4–7, 2021
The Conference & Event Center
Niagara Falls, Niagara Falls, New York
Sigma Xi invites members and the public to attend our 2021 Annual Meeting and
Student Research Conference, taking place November 4–7 in Niagara Falls, New
York. The theme for this year’s meeting is Roots to Fruits: Responsible Research for
a Flourishing Humanity — How scientific virtues serve society. Join researchers,
ethicists, educators, and science communicators from around the globe as they
examine what it means to conduct ethical, responsible research in science and engi-
neering disciplines.
The conference will showcase emerging trends and challenges across a broad spec-
trum of topics, including the responsible conduct of research, ethical considerations
in the design and implementation of new technologies, the social responsibilities
of researchers, and the public’s confidence in science and their views on scientific
discoveries. Some sessions will be streamed live for remote attendees. Visit
www.sigmaxi.org/amsrc21 to learn more and register today!

Responsible Research and Discovery: Conference Tracks Science Communication, Education,

Sessions and case studies on the
broader societal impact of scientific
discoveries, as well as emerging issues
in scientific integrity from different
perspectives, including researchers,
policymakers, and funding agencies.
Responsible STEM Education: Sess-
ions on cultivating scientific virtues
and values, the role of the scientific
community in protecting science edu-
cation against policies that undermine
scientific evidence, and comprehen-
sive approaches to STEM education
that address equity and inclusion and
promote excellence in research.
Responsible Technology Innovation:
Sessions that examine how to build
values into the design process, as well
as emerging ethical challenges associ-
ated with new technologies such as
gene editing, artificial intelligence,
robotics, data mining and privacy, and
facial recognition.
General Research Ethics: Sessions on
the broader ethical challenges facing
the research community, such as sci-
ence and human rights, implicit biases,
environmental ethics, authorship, and
intellectual property.
and Public Engagement: Sessions on
the science and best practices of science
communication, the social responsi-
bilities of researchers in engaging with
the public and policymakers, ethi-
cal considerations in citizen science,
and integrating ethics training in
STEM education.
Research Enterprise and Professional
Development: Sessions on both
academic and nonacademic STEM
careers, effective interdisciplinary col-
laborations, leadership training, sci-
ence policy, publishing, mentorship,
and diversity and inclusion.

Give Feedback to Participants in the

Student Research Showcase
Sigma Xi’s 2021 Student Research Showcase competition is underway, and our
presenting students want to hear from you! All participants submitted research
abstracts, and the accepted students have each designed a webpage to present
their research. The webpages will go live on April 26, 2021. The competition builds
students’ science communication skills so they can convey the value and broader
impact of their research to both technical and nontechnical audiences. Sigma Xi
members, students, and the public are encouraged to view the presentations and
provide feedback to these future researchers.
Follow the steps below to view the projects, share your thoughts and encourage-
ment, ask questions, and provide constructive feedback:

1. Starting on April 26, 2021, visit

the Student Research Showcase
2. Find the section called 2021
Presentations and click on a re-
3. tion
Click on the title of a presenta-
to visit the presentation
page at www.sigmaxi.org/srs. search category. website.

Each presenter submitted a website containing an abstract, slideshow, and video about their research. Judges evaluate
presentations on scientific thought and method, as well as on how well presenters communicate enthusiasm for their projects;
clearly state the significance of their work; effectively use text and visuals; and clearly answer questions.
Presenters compete in the high school, undergraduate, and graduate divisions. Winners in each division receive $500, and
the competition’s overall top presenter receives an additional $500. The winner of the People’s Choice Award is selected based
on a public vote and receives a $250 monetary award.

188 Sigma Xi Today

 PROGRAMS

Grants in Aid of Research Recipient Profile: Atbin Doroodchi

Grant: $500 (October 2010)
Education level at time of the grant:
Undergraduate student
Project Description: In 2010, Atbin’s
undergraduate research focused on
understanding the pathophysiology of
restless legs syndrome (RLS), a common
neurological disorder. Multiple genetic
studies have associated polymorphisms
in the genes BTBD9 and MEIS-1 to a
higher risk of RLS. Furthermore, an
altered dopaminergic system is asso-
ciated with pathogenesis of RLS.
However, the functions of BTBD9 and
MEIS-1 in the dopaminergic system
and RLS are not clear. Atbin utilized the
simplicity of the Caenorhabditis elegans
nervous system to better elucidate the
role of BTBD9 in the dopaminergic sys-
tem. His work further demonstrated
similar results that were evolutionary
conserved in mammals. He also exam-
ined the interaction between BTBD9
and MEIS1 homologs in C. elegans
(hpo-9 and unc-62, respectively), which
demonstrated that the hyperactive egg-
laying phenotype that was observed
in hpo-9 mutants was counteracted by
inhibiting unc-62 mRNA through RNAi.
This work will help better explain the
pathophysiology of RLS, and the Grants
in Aid of Research award tremendously
supported the project’s advancement.
How has the project influenced him
as a scientist? The project introduced
Atbin to the basics of scientific research.
Particularly, the support provided by
Sigma Xi’s Grants in Aid of Research
award has helped open multiple career
opportunities for him. He is extremely
grateful to Sigma Xi, as well as to his
mentors throughout his career: Dr.
Diane Tucker of University of Alabama
at Birmingham, Dr. Samir Khleif of
Georgetown University, Dr. Jack Yu
of Medical College of Georgia, and
Dr. Yuqing Li of University of Florida.
Where is he now? Atbin is currently
a fourth-year surgery resident at the
Medical College of Georgia. He is
planning a career in plastic and recon-
structive surgery as a surgeon–scientist.

Sigma Xi Launches Chapter Spotlight:

Online Student
Networking
Platform Through
Tallo Partnership
continued from page 187
“Tallo was created to serve as a
digital ecosystem where students
and professionals can showcase the
talents they’re most proud of, and
companies and colleges can discover
them and foster early connections,”
stated Tallo’s President & CEO
Casey Welch.
Tallo is an online platform that
connects talent with opportuni-
ties. The Tallo app assists students in
designing a career pathway, educa-
tors in recruiting top talent to their
schools, and employers in devel-
oping a stable, continuous talent
pipeline. More than 850,000 students
and professionals showcase their skills
and abilities in their online profile,
connect directly with companies and
colleges, and match with over $20 bil-
lion in scholarships.
To get started on Tallo, Sigma
Xi student members should visit
www.tallo.com/sigma-xi.
Millicent E. Goldschmidt Seminar Series at
Rice University–Texas Medical Center
Launched in November 2020 at
Sigma Xi’s virtual Annual Meeting
and Student Research Conference,
the Millicent “Mimi” E. Goldschmidt
seminar series provides an opportunity
for junior faculty at institutions in the
Texas Medical Center (TMC) to share
their research journey. These virtual
events take place quarterly and are
hosted by the Rice University–Texas
Medical Center Chapter of Sigma Xi.
“The seminar series was established
to honor Mimi’s contributions to science
and to women in STEM, by highlighting
the accomplishments and unique
career path of junior investigators at
the Texas Medical Center,” says former
Chapter President Daniel Harrington.
Goldschmidt, a Sigma Xi Fellow and
professor emerita in the Department of Millicent E. Goldschmidt
Diagnostic and Biomedical Sciences in
the School of Dentistry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston,
spent her life and career mentoring and advocating for women in STEM, even in
the days when, according to Goldschmidt, “it wasn’t very popular to be a woman,
a scientist, and a mother.”
Each seminar features two speakers who give presentations on their lab’s work,
followed by question-and-answer sessions with attendees. Visit www.sxricetmc.org
for speaker biographies, upcoming dates, and registration details.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 May–June 189

 MEMBER STORIES
Breaking Barriers:
Women in STEM
Judith Klinman
Professor Emerita in the
Department of Molecular
and Cell Biology, University
of California, Berkeley
I
arrived at UC Berkeley
in 1978 as the first
woman in the physi-
cal sciences—a challenge, to
say the least. There are now
many successful women in
chemistry, chemical engi-
neering, and molecular and
cell biology at Berkeley.
Overcoming those initial
hurdles was essential but
came at some cost. I have no
regrets. Over the many years
that I have been pursuing
science, my laboratory has
made observations that go
against mainstream think-
ing. I have had to learn to
trust my intuition and stick
to my guns!
The one person who
impacted my career the
most was Mildred Cohn, a
biochemist at the University
of Pennsylvania. She was in
my field of research, took me
under her wing, and became
a friend. She was a rock, so
smart both scientifically and
professionally; it was won-
derful to see her navigate the
challenges of her life.
190 Sigma Xi Today
Lakiesha N. Williams
Associate Professor in the J.
Crayton Pruitt Family De-
partment of Biomedical Engi-
neering, University of Florida
I
was proudly the first
Black master of science
student to finish in
biological engineering from
Louisiana State University,
the first Black PhD student
to graduate in biomedical
engineering from Mississippi
State University, and the first
female and first Black tenure-
track faculty member in
that respective department.
I have come to realize that I
value trailblazing and enter-
ing spaces as the first and
the only. I encourage other
women to do the same. I am
hopeful that my messages
of challenges and triumphs
are inspirational for many
women, especially those
who are underrepresented
and aspire to pursue careers
in STEM.
Let your integrity lead
you. Be true to your disci-
pline, yourself, and to others,
even if it is costly. Working
with a clear conscience and
peace of mind makes life
easier and allows us to be
more effective in our pursuit
as problem solvers. I have
found this to be true, and it
is one of the basic tenets by
which I lead my lab.
Read more at www.sigmaxi.org/2021-women-in-stem.
Sigma Xi asked members to share their experiences overcom-
ing the many barriers women face pursuing careers in STEM,
along with advice they would pass on to the younger genera-
tion of women entering the STEM workforce.
Missy Cummings
Professor of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at the
Pratt School of Engineering,
Duke University
W
hile it is clear how
I broke barriers in
being one of the
first female fighter pilots in
the United States, as an aca-
demic, I would say the bar-
rier I am trying to break is
trying to change academia to
consider the study of human
interaction with technology
(i.e., human-systems engi-
neering) as a legitimate field.
This is not really gender-
specific, but given that
women in engineering are still
very much a minority, I am
still fighting gender stereo-
types as both an engineer and
an academic.
“Put your oxygen mask on
first.” This advice was given
to me as a new parent, but
I think it applies across all
walks, especially for women.
Women engineers and sci-
entists spend too much time
doing what they think is
expected of them as opposed
to keeping the focus on what
they need from a career, fam-
ily, or personal perspective.
Audrey Chang
Chief Operating Officer
at the Alliance of Crop,
Soil, and Environmental
Science Societies
A
nswering the ques-
tion “How are you
breaking barriers
faced by women in your
field?” makes me reflect on
what I would define as “my
field.” One could argue that
I work at the intersection of
science advocacy, operations
management, and organi-
zational development. In a
very simple sense, we do not
typically see many women in
operations leadership posi-
tions, whether in for-profit
or nonprofit organizations.
We see even fewer women of
color in these roles.
Do not be afraid to ask
for what you believe you
deserve for compensation,
title, etc. Women tend to dis-
count themselves because
we perceive that opportuni-
ties are less plentiful for us,
which is true, but if your
market research shows that
you deserve to earn a certain
figure, stick with that.
SILICON The Davis Institute for Artificial
Intelligence at Colby is the first

VALLEY cross-disciplinary institute for AI at

a liberal arts college. The Institute
will provide new pathways for

needs a talented students and faculty to

research, create, and apply AI and

breath of fresh machine learning across disciplines

while setting a precedent for how

MAINE
liberal arts colleges can shape the
future of AI.

AIR.
Technology has taken us to places
we couldn’t imagine. Now it will
head northward.

colby.edu/ai

44.5639° N, 69.6626° W