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    in Humans

    Earliest known bubonic plague strain found in 5000-year-old skull

    By Adam Vaughan

    The skull of a young man thought to have died from plague 5000 years agoDominik Göldner, BGAEU, Berlin
    The bacterium behind the Black Death, which wrought devastation in medieval times, has been found in the skull of a man who lived 5000 years ago in what is now Latvia, making it the earliest known plague strain.
    Analysis of ancient DNA in the hunter-gatherer’s skull suggests that the strain of Yersinia pestis, which causes the bubonic plague, was less transmissible and harmful than later versions, say Ben Krause-Kyora at Kiel University, Germany, and his colleagues. The lack of the bacteria in three other people buried next to the man, dubbed RV 2039, is one hint of a less deadly disease, says Krause-Kyora.
    The apparent lower virulence leads the team to suggest that the plague wasn’t to blame for the decline of European people between 5000 and 6000 years ago, as claimed by a 2018 paper looking at Swedish farmers’ genomes.Advertisement
    “There’s an ongoing discussion as whether Y. pestis played a big role in the Neolithic decline,” says Krause-Kyora. “Our hypothesis is really contradicting the one before. It was maybe a more chronic, more omnipresent infection. It caused, for sure, some deaths, but it’s maybe not as severe as it became in the Middle Ages.”

    Nonetheless, the high abundance of the bacteria found in the skull of the man, who was probably aged between 20 and 30 when he died, implies he succumbed to the plague, says Krause-Kyora. The man may have been bitten by a rodent such as a beaver, which are known to carry Y. pestis.  Remains of the animals have been found at the same site by the river Salaca in Latvia.
    The evidence points to the plague spreading from animal to human at the time, rather than human to human, says Krause-Kyora. The bacteria hadn’t yet gained the genetic mutation that enables fleas to carry it, and which allowed it to infect and kill so many people centuries later.
    “To have a close look at the early evolution of this deadly pathogen is really interesting,” says Krause-Kyora. “We see it was more chronic and harmless in the beginning before it became a more deadly disease.”
    However, Simon Rasmussen at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, says the evidence is weak for the claim the plague was milder 5000 years ago. “There are no new results to substantiate these claims and therefore it remains a hypothesis,” he says. Rasmussen also believes the new study doesn’t invalidate the case he and his colleagues put forward in 2018, of the plague driving the Neolithic decline.
    “The individual does in fact overlap with the Neolithic decline and very likely died from the plague infection. We know that large settlements, trade and movement happened in this period and human interaction is therefore still a very plausible cause of the spread of plague in Europe at this time,” he says.
    Mark Achtman at the University of Warwick, UK, says the team’s interpretations of the plague’s epidemiology appear speculative. “The reasons for epidemic and pandemic outbreaks are unlikely to be found in the bacterial genomes, so ancient DNA of single genomes is not going to help,” he says.
    Journal reference: Cell Reports, DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109278
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    in Space & Astronomy

    Gravitational waves reveal the first known mergers of a black hole and neutron star

    Caught in a fatal inward spiral, a neutron star met its end when a black hole swallowed it whole. Gravitational ripples from that collision spread outward through the cosmos, eventually reaching Earth. The detection of those waves marks the first reported sighting of a black hole engulfing the dense remnant of dead star. And in a surprise twist, scientists spotted a second such merger just days after the first.

    Until now, all identified sources of gravitational waves were twos of a kind: either two black holes or two neutron stars, spiraling around one another before colliding and coalescing (SN: 1/21/21). The violent cosmic collisions create waves that stretch and squeeze the fabric of spacetime, undulations that can be sussed out by sensitive detectors.

    The mismatched pairing of a black hole and neutron star was the final type of merger that scientists expected to find with current gravitational wave observatories. By pure coincidence, researchers spotted two of these events within 10 days of one another, the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA collaborations report in the July 1 Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    Not only have unions between black holes and neutron stars not been seen before via gravitational waves, the smashups have also never been spotted at all by any other means.

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    “This is an absolute first look,” says theoretical physicist Susan Scott of the Australian National University in Canberra, a member of the LIGO collaboration.

    The result adds another tick mark to the tally of new discoveries made with gravitational waves. “That’s worth celebration,” says astrophysicist Cole Miller of the University of Maryland in College Park, who was not involved with the research. Since the first gravitational waves were detected in 2015, the observatories keep revealing new secrets. “It’s fantastic new things; it’s not just the same old, same old,” he says.

    Signs of the black hole-neutron star collisions registered in the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories in 2020, on January 5 and January 15. The first merger consisted of a black hole about 8.9 times the mass of the sun and a neutron star about 1.9 times the sun’s mass. The second merger had a 5.7 solar mass black hole and a 1.5 solar mass neutron star. Both collisions occurred more than 900 million light-years from Earth, the scientists estimate.

    To form detectable gravitational waves, the objects that coalesce must be extremely dense, with identities that can be pinned down by their masses. Anything with a mass above five solar masses could only be a black hole, scientists think. Anything less than about three solar masses must be a neutron star.

    One earlier gravitational wave detection involved a black hole merging with an object that couldn’t be identified, as its mass seemed to fall in between the cutoffs that separate black holes and neutron stars (SN: 6/23/20). Another previous merger may have resulted from a black hole melding with a neutron star, but the signal from that event wasn’t strong enough for scientists to be certain that the detection was the real deal. The two new detections clinch the case for black hole and neutron star meetups.

    One of the new events is more convincing than the other. The Jan. 5 merger was seen in just one of LIGO’s two gravitational wave detectors, and the signal has a relatively high probability of being a false alarm, Miller says. “If this were the only event, then you would not be as confident.” The Jan. 15 event, however, “seems pretty solid,” he says.

    Epic rendezvous between neutron stars and black holes happen regularly throughout the cosmos, the detections suggest. Based on the pace of detections, the researchers estimate that these events take place about once a month within 1 billion light-years of Earth.

    [embedded content]
    In a newly reported class of cosmic smashup, a neutron star (apparent in orange in this computer simulation, after the video zooms in) and black hole (dark gray) spiral inward, producing gravitational waves (blue) in a dance that ends when the black hole swallows the neutron star.

    Scientists don’t yet know how neutron stars and black holes come to meet up. They might form together, as two stars that orbit one another until both run out of fuel and die, with one collapsing into a black hole and the other forming a neutron star. Or the two objects might have formed separately and met up in a crowded region packed with many neutron stars and black holes.

    As a black hole and neutron star spiral inward and merge, scientists expect that the black hole could rip the neutron star to shreds, producing a light show that could be observed with telescopes. But astronomers found no fireworks in the aftermath of the two newly reported encounters, nor any evidence that the black holes deformed the neutron stars.

    That could be because in both cases the black hole was significantly larger than the neutron star, suggesting that the black hole gulped down the neutron star whole in a meal worthy of Pac-Man, Scott says.

    If scientists could spot a black hole shredding a neutron star in the future, that could help researchers pin down the properties of the ultradense, neutron-rich material that makes up the dead stars (SN: 4/20/21).

    In past detections of gravitational waves, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, based in the United States, has teamed up with Virgo, in Italy. The new observations are the first to include members of a third observatory, KAGRA, in Japan (SN: 1/18/19). But the KAGRA detector itself didn’t contribute to the results, as scientists were still preparing it to detect gravitational waves at the time. LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA are all currently offline while scientists tinker with the detectors, and will resume their communal search for cosmic collisions in 2022. More

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    in Humans

    'Dragon man' claimed as new species of ancient human but doubts remain

    By Alison George

    A reconstruction of Homo longiChuang Zhao
    A large fossil skull discovered in China may belong to one of our mysterious long-lost relatives, the Denisovans, potentially offering us our first glimpse of a Denisovan face. It has, however, been placed in a new human species – Homo longi – a name that derives from a Chinese term meaning “dragon”, and that means the early hominin may become known informally as “dragon man”.
    Other researchers say the discovery is important and exciting, but think the decision to add a new species to our family tree is premature.
    The Harbin cranium was discovered in mysterious circumstances in Harbin City in the Heilongjiang province of China in the 1930s. The man who unearthed it reportedly hid it in a well, only revealing its location on his deathbed. It was recovered in 2018 and has now been analysed for the first time.Advertisement
    “It’s a really amazing discovery. It is one of the most complete crania I have ever seen,” says Xijun Ni at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who was part of the team that studied the fossil. It is also the largest known Homo skull ever found.
    “This is the biggest human skull I’ve seen – and I’ve seen a few,” says Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum, London, who was also a member of the team.
    The researchers estimate that the skull belonged to a man who was about 50 years old when he died, between 146,000 and 296,000 years ago. Its features are a mix of those seen in archaic and modern humans. It has thick brow ridges, for example, yet “the face looks so much like a bigger version of a modern human face”, says Stringer. Its brain size was similar to ours too.

    “It’s got such an interesting combination of features,” says Stringer. “The morphology shows that this is definitely a distinct lineage in eastern Asia. It’s not Neanderthal and it’s not Homo sapiens, it’s something quite distinctive,” says Stringer.
    One possibility is that the Harbin fossil is a Denisovan. This mysterious group of extinct humans was first identified a decade ago from DNA in a finger bone found in the Denisova cave in Siberia, Russia. The Denisovans were closely related to the Neanderthals, and lived in Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. They also interbred with H. sapiens.
    A few additional Denisovan fossils been identified in recent years, including a jawbone at least 160,000 years old from Tibet, known as the Xiahe mandible. But Denisovan skulls have proved more difficult to track down: the Harbin cranium may be one of the strongest candidates yet found, bringing us closer to our first definitive glimpse of a Denisovan face.
    When a team led by Ni constructed a family tree to establish the ancestral lineage of the Harbin fossil, based on physical characteristics of the fossils, they found that it was most closely related to the Xiahe mandible. Interestingly, both of these fossils have massive teeth.

    “What’s remarkable about the Denisovans to me is the size of their teeth,” says Shara Bailey at New York University, who wasn’t involved with the study. “It’s an exciting possibility that [the Harbin cranium] could be our first Denisovan skull. It could be the face of a Denisovan.”
    John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison agrees. “My opinion is that… this is more than likely Denisovan.”
    The clincher would be if DNA could be extracted from the Harbin cranium, something that may be done in future.
    “I think it’s possible that Harbin will turn out to be a Denisovan skull, the most complete one,” says Stringer. “That’s something we’ll have to test with DNA, but that’s probably a long shot because it’s at least 146,000 years old.”

    Although there is excitement at the possibility that the Harbin skull might be Denisovan, there is less enthusiasm about the decision to officially name it as a new species. Five members of the research team, including Ni – but not Stringer – co-authored an accompanying paper in which they established it as H. longi.
    Many researchers prefer not to name new human species for several reasons, including the fact that DNA evidence shows that “species”, including Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, interbred. Most academics prefer to refer to the Denisovans as a “group” or “lineage” rather than a distinct species. “You can be a separate lineage and not have achieved species status,” says Bailey.
    “I do think that the one type of analysis they use isn’t conclusive enough to say that there’s a new species,” says Sheela Athreya at Texas A&M University.
    Journal references: The Innovation, DOI: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100130 and  DOI: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100132
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    in Space & Astronomy

    Dark matter may slow the rotation of the Milky Way’s central bar of stars

    Dark matter can be a real drag. The pull of that unidentified, invisible matter in the Milky Way may be slowing down the rotating bar of stars at the galaxy’s heart.

    Based on a technique that re-creates the history of the slowdown in a manner akin to analyzing a tree’s rings, the bar’s speed has decreased by at least 24 percent since it formed billions of years ago, researchers report in the August Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

    That slowdown is “another indirect but important piece of evidence that dark matter is a thing, not just a conjecture, because this can’t happen without it,” says astrophysicist Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who was not involved with the study.

    Many spiral galaxies, including the Milky Way, contain a central bar-shaped region densely packed with stars and surrounded by the galaxy’s pinwheeling arms. The bar also has some groupies: a crew of stars trapped by the bar’s gravitational influence. Those stars orbit a gravitationally stable point located alongside the bar and farther from the galaxy’s center, known as a Lagrange point (SN: 2/26/21). 

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    If the bar’s rotation slows, it will grow in length, and the bar’s tagalongs will also move outward. As that happens, that cohort of hangers-on will gather additional stars. According to computer simulations of the process, those additional stars should arrange themselves in layers on the outside of the group, says astrophysicist Ralph Schönrich of University College London. The layers of stars imprint a record of the group’s growth. “It’s actually like a tree that you can cut up in your own galaxy,” he says.

    Schönrich and astrophysicist Rimpei Chiba of the University of Oxford studied how the composition of stars in the group changed from its outer edge to its deeper layers. Data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft revealed that stars in the outer layers of the bar tended to be less enriched in elements heavier than helium than were stars in the inner layers. That’s evidence for the group of stars moving outward, as a result of the bar slowing, the researchers say. That’s because stars in the center of the galaxy — which would have glommed on to the group in the more distant past — tend to be more enriched in heavier elements than those farther out.

    The bar’s slowdown hints that a gravitational force is acting on it, namely, the pull of dark matter in the galaxy. Normal matter alone wouldn’t be enough to reduce the bar’s speed. “If there is no dark matter, the bar will not slow down,” Chiba says.

    But the results have drawn some skepticism. “Unfortunately, this is not yet convincing to me,” says astrophysicist Isaac Shlosman of the University of Kentucky in Lexington. For example, he doubts that the tree ring layering would really occur. It is “hard to believe that this is the case in a realistic system” as opposed to in a simplified computer simulation, he says.

    Weinberg, on the other hand, says that although the study relies on a variety of assumptions, he suspects it’s correct. “It’s got the right smell.” More

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    in Humans

    Newly identified ancestor of Neanderthals complicates the human story

    By Michael Marshall

    The Nesher Ramla excavation in IsraelHershkovitz, I et al.
    A previously unknown group of ancient humans lived in what is now Israel for hundreds of thousands of years. They lived alongside modern humans for some of that time, and the two groups may have interacted and learned skills from each other.
    The newly discovered people were the ancestors of the Neanderthals, who later roamed Europe and western Asia, argues the team behind the work. If that is true, Neanderthals originated in western Asia, not in Europe as many researchers have previously suspected.
    The hominin remains were found at Nesher Ramla in Israel, in a quarry operated by a cement factory. Following its identification, the archaeological site within the quarry was briefly protected to allow excavations to proceed in 2010 and 2011, after which it was quarried. “The site itself is gone,” says Israel Hershkovitz at Tel Aviv University in Israel, a member of the team.Advertisement
    Nesher Ramla was once a shallow depression in the landscape that gradually filled with sediment. “It was used by hominins for quite a long time, and it’s very rich in terms of archaeological material and very well preserved,” says Yossi Zaidner at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a member of the research team.

    The team found parts of the roof of a hominin skull and a near-complete jawbone. “We believe it’s of the same individual,” says Hila May, also at Tel Aviv University, another author of the work.
    It isn’t clear if they were male or female, because the most telltale bones are missing. “But we can say it’s a young adult based on the teeth,” says Rachel Sarig, a member of the team, also at Tel Aviv University.
    The sediments in which the bones were found are between 140,000 and 120,000 years old. Our species had emerged in Africa by this time, and made some forays outside: Homo sapiens specimens from 210,000 years ago have been found in Greece, and a seemingly more sustained population existed in the Israel region from at least 177,000 years ago. But H. sapiens wasn’t the only hominin: Europe and western Asia were home to the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), while eastern Asia was home to a related group called the Denisovans.
    To find out if the Nesher Ramla hominin belonged to one of these groups, the team compared the shapes of the bones with those of dozens of other hominin remains. “It was easy to say that it’s not Homo sapiens,” says May. The skull was low and flat, rather than rounded and tall, and the jawbone lacked the chin that is characteristic of our species.
    But it didn’t fit any of the other groups either. In some ways, the bones resembled Neanderthal ones, but in others they looked like those of hominins that lived earlier in prehistory.
    However, the Nesher Ramla bones do resemble several other hard-to-classify fossils. These include bones from the Qesem, Zuttiyeh and Tabun sites in Israel, and from Atapuerca in northern Spain, some of which are considerably older. Hershkovitz says there are also specimens from China and India that might fit.

    The team argues that all these bones should be considered together as a new hominin group, which lived in western Asia between 420,000 and 120,000 years ago. The hominin at Nesher Ramla was “a residue or survivor of this source population”, argues Sarig.
    The team hasn’t given the group a species name like Homo neanderthalensis, and simply calls them “Nesher Ramla Homo”. This is because the group says it doesn’t like classing hominins as distinct species if they can interbreed, so also wouldn’t count Neanderthals as a species distinct from us.
    “They’re very careful not to call it a species,” says Mirjana Roksandic at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. She says that requires “more discussion”.
    The Neanderthal-like features of Nesher Ramla Homo can be explained if they were the ancestors of the Neanderthals, the team argues. On this account, the usual story of the origin of the Neanderthals – that they evolved from earlier European hominins – is wrong. Instead, they originated in western Asia as a subgroup of Nesher Ramla Homo, and entered Europe only when the climate was favourable.

    Roksandic is intrigued but not convinced. “These morphological traits of Neanderthals that they see could be easily interpreted as the movement of Neanderthals back,” she says – in which case, Nesher Ramla Homo may have picked them up from Neanderthals, rather than the other way around.
    However, May thinks the research team’s scenario makes more sense. Moreover, it would explain a mystery. A Neanderthal who lived in northern Europe 124,000 years ago had some H. sapiens DNA, around 80,000 years before modern humans got there. This could be explained if modern humans interbred with Nesher Ramla Homo in western Asia and some of the resulting hybrids interbred with European Neanderthals.
    The Nesher Ramla Homo may also explain other unusual fossils. The bones from the caves of Skhul and Qafzeh in Israel have sometimes been classed as H. sapiens, but don’t look typical of our species. The team suggests they are actually the result of interbreeding between H. sapiens and Nesher Ramla Homo.
    There is clear evidence that Nesher Ramla Homo and H. sapiens were interacting, says Zaidner. They made very similar tools, using exactly the same process. This suggests that one group learned the skills from the other. But “we don’t know… who learned from who.”
    Journal references: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.abh3169 and DOI: 10.1126/science.abh3020 
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    in Humans

    Magical image of ‘tree island’ shortlisted for major photo prize

    By Gege Li

    Magic Tree by Yevhen Samuchenko
    Photographers: Antonio Pérez, Yevhen Samuchenko, Ju Shen Lee, Roberto Buenov
    THESE captivating photos each tell a powerful story about human influence on the planet. The images are among shortlisted entries for Earth Photo 2021, a global photography and video competition developed by the UK’s Royal Geographical Society and Forestry England.
    001 The Sea Moves Us, the Sea Moves (Fuvemeh Ghana)Advertisement
    Above is an image called 001 The Sea Moves Us, The Sea Moves (Fuvemeh Ghana) from a series by Antonio Pérez, showing Bebli Adzotor in what is left of her home in the fishing village of Fuvemeh, Ghana. Such communities have disappeared or are at risk because of coastal erosion and rising sea levels driven by climate change.
    Ukraine’s Sofiyivsky Park is the focus of Magic Tree by Yevhen Samuchenko, showing part of this idyllic park photographed aerially to look like a tree. The park contains more than 2000 types of tree.
    Balancing Act All Day Long by Ju Shen Lee
    Above is Balancing Act All Day Long by Ju Shen Lee, which features a man fishing on Inle Lake, Myanmar. People here  have a unique fishing technique, rowing their boats with one leg while standing on the other. This requires a lot of strength and balance, as this image shows.
    Finally, Forest Like Gardens by Roberto Bueno captures the effects of deforestation, shown through the stepped vineyards in the province of Tarragona, Spain, that have been carved out of land once dominated by forest.
    Forest Like Gardens by Robert Bueno
    The images will be exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society in London. Competition winners will be announced on 19 August.

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    in Humans

    Does quantum physics explain why parcel delivery times are so vague?

    Josie Ford
    Post quantum?
    One minor consequence of the global pandemic has been the many hours spent indoors waiting for the doorbell to ring – often, once we have made it from the office stationery cupboard, to be left with a card saying they are sorry we were out, and that the parcel we were waiting for is now being redirected to a sorting office in one of the less fashionable outer London suburbs.
    This game of cat and mouse has been given an additional edge recently by the sort of text message sent by the UK’s Royal Mail to reader Martin Andrews, which states that his delivery is due to arrive “between 11:11am and 3:11pm”. “This made me wonder what function it serves to be so precise in their vagueness,” Martin writes.
    The Royal Mail’s spread in ETA of exactly 4 hours suggests to us an origin in fundamental physics. Quantum uncertainty would dictate that if your parcel is at a well-defined location in relation to you, you can’t know how fast it’s travelling towards you, and vice versa, so time of arrival will always be, to a certain extent, moot.Advertisement
    Putting in the numbers, assuming a spread of velocities between zero and the UK’s national speed limit, only leads us to a truly huge value for a parcel’s wavelength of some 500 metres. Fundamental physics having failed us, yet again, we have put in an enquiry with the Royal Mail press office. We’ll keep you, ummm, posted.
    Heard it here last
    Stephen Jorgenson-Murray enjoys our Twitter account’s own mazy travels in the fourth dimension as it tweets “Partial solar eclipse will be visible in the UK and Ireland on 10 June” on 13 June.
    Drowning out our social media guru’s dark mutterings about the algorithm going wrong – presumably, going by last week’s cover story, one of the ones that runs our life – we’re happy to accept Stephen’s charitable suggestion that a cutting-edge magazine like our own would naturally take the lead in catering to the time traveller market.
    Love shine a light
    As we write, the summer solstice is just passing in our northern hemispheric climes. Top of our list of concerns, as you might expect, is how to harness the energy of the sun at its zenith and what effect this might have on our relationships.
    Only half of that question is ever going to be answered by a working nuclear fusion reactor, and we’re increasingly doubtful whether that will be in our lifetime. So we are grateful that both parts are tackled in what appears to be a PR email for a boiler installation website in consultation with “renowned psychic Inbaal”.
    “During this time, those in relationships will enjoy increased attraction to their partners and will be keen to meet up frequently and passionately,” it burbles. “With this natural phenomenon bringing a new or stronger urge to be outdoors, it is the season of al-fresco amore.”
    Fortunately, this being the UK, it was raining with fair commitment the other side of Feedback’s curtains this midsummer morn. We hope this will assist our fellow citizens in keeping their passions sensibly zipped up.
    Head in the clouds
    A delightful prospect is afforded by the bed spotted by Tony Cuthbert on eBay, promising “Height 820 mm” and “Height from under bed to floor 200 m”. Just beware of the sensation of falling you sometimes get as you are about to drift off.
    Brighter than 160 GKet
    Inappropriate measurement comparison of the week comes via various readers from various US news media. These quote oceanographer Gregory Johnson as saying that an increase in Earth’s heat imbalance (between what we gain from the sun and lose to space) from 2005 to 2019 was the energy equivalent of “four detonations per second of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, or every person on Earth using 20 electric tea kettles at once”. Apropos Johnson’s additional comment: “It’s such a hard number to get your mind around.” Latching on to the second of those numbers, that’s quite some tea party.
    How many kangaroos?
    Our contingent in Australia, meanwhile, pops by with the culturally attuned unit of the week, courtesy of an article on The Conversation from the discoverers of the country’s largest dinosaur, Australotitan cooperensis.
    The description in the title that Australotitan spanned the length of two buses being deemed, we presume, too generic, the body copy goes on to describe it as having weighed “the equivalent of 1,400 red kangaroos”. “How many red kangaroos = one blue whale?” asks Carol Symington, while Libby Kerr bemoans the lack of a conversion into quokkas. Given the uncertainty we uncovered last week, we are wondering about Australotitan‘s volume in Australian pints.
    Drink to that
    It’s that time of day already – give or take 4 hours, anyway. And so, a toast. A. P. Dawid is a distinguished statistician, emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society, but that isn’t the reason we raise our glass.
    No, that is because he is the first, although by no means the only, person to write noting the newly appointed deputy chair of the Wine Society, Eleanor de Kanter. Cheers!
    Got a story for Feedback?Send it to feedback@newscientist.com or New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ESConsideration of items sent in the post will be delayed
    You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website. More

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    in Humans

    Fathom review: What happens when humans try to talk to whales

    By Katie Smith-Wong

    Michelle Fournet and researcher Natalie Mastick Jensen listen in to whalesApple
    Apple TV+: premiere 15 June
    Fathom
    Drew XanthopoulosAdvertisement

    MOST of us introduce ourselves for the first time by saying hello and giving our name. But what if you were trying to greet another species and understand its background? This is the premise of Fathom, a new documentary by director Drew Xanthopoulos, known for directing The Sensitives, which explored the lives of people who are debilitatingly sensitive to our world.
    Fathom follows biologist Ellen Garland at the University of St Andrews, UK, and marine acoustician Michelle Fournet at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, on their respective studies into humpback whale songs and social communication.
    While Fournet analyses different whale calls as she tries to create a conversation between humpbacks to understand their communication better, Garland studies the cultural transmission, vocal learning and function of whale songs. We watch as the two prepare for field studies in Alaska and French Polynesia.
    Fathom‘s languid pace prevents viewers from completely immersing themselves. Although this leaves you waiting for something to happen, it allows Xanthopoulos to hone in on detail and show marine bioacoustics at its slow work. The scientists use hydrophones to acoustically track whales, capturing different calls, most notably the “whup” call, which Fournet studies.
    Basing herself in Hobart Bay, Alaska, she is forthcoming about the challenges of surveying 30 whales in a month using focal follows, which involves tracking a specific animal, and playbacks, in which she rebroadcasts natural or synthetic signals to animals and notes their response.
    Her candour about the likelihood of failure because of logistical complications brings a level-headedness amid the lofty ambitions, and her willingness to adapt her approach to fine-tune the “conversation” shows flexibility.
    As she analyses audio tracks of a series of “whups” and begins to understand their significance, we share her sense of achievement from a groundbreaking insight: that humpbacks use sound to perceive not only each other but their surroundings.
    In 1996, marine biologist Philip Clapham described whale song as “probably the most complex in the animal kingdom”, justifying the task of deciphering it as a single research topic. Indeed, Garland has her work cut out: whale songs are mostly used by males for mating purposes. But she identifies that the same series of calls (also known as songs) are “culturally transmitted”, and evolve across vast distances.
    Throughout, the haunting sound of whale songs beautifully accompanies Xanthopoulos’s serene cinematography, underlining the simplicity of nature while evoking a sense of isolation. As a result, Fathom captures the calmness of the scientists’ surroundings, while the precise yet soft black-and-white visualisations of the whale call are reminiscent of another film with language at its heart: the 2016 sci-fi film Arrival.
    As Garland eloquently points out: “Some things we do are not innate – they are learned. They tell us who we are connected to and where we belong. We call these things culture. We call our communication ‘language’.” For some reason, she adds, we think that what whales do is different.
    Fathom celebrates not only the steps towards understanding another species, but the women helping us get to the finishing line.

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