Humans

Audible podcast Exoplanets explores the hunt to find planets like our own outside our solar system. There are potentially millions of them out there, and more are found every day

Space 8 July 2020
By Chris Stokel-Walker

NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

Podcast
Exoplanets: The search for another Earth
Audible

Advertisement

THE hunt to find exoplanets like our own has only just begun. In 1992, the first planets outside our solar system were discovered via a pulsar 2300 light years away that signalled at slightly odd intervals, indicating there were two worlds orbiting it. Now, we know there are potentially millions of them out there and more are found every day, says Danielle George, the host of Exoplanets, a six-part series on Audible.
George is an experienced guide to the galaxy: she has worked with Stephen Hawking on the search for far-off worlds, as well as NASA and the European Space Agency. With other researchers as guests, she tackles questions about the size of the universe and what kind of life may live within it.
Though it lacks drama at times, the series is an interesting look at the current state of exoplanet science. George, an optimist, believes there is another Earth-like planet out there somewhere. Any plans for humans to visit such a place should be shelved, however, as exoplanets are all very far away.
The thornier question, then, is: are we alone or could there be intelligent life on an exoplanet somewhere? The series comes to an answer – sort of. If there were other advanced societies out there, surely they would have attempted to detect us in search of another home? Perhaps they don’t need to, having taken better care of their home planet: a message that George says we need to take to heart.
More on these topics: More

A train called Snowpiercer loops the planet after a global disaster, as an onboard mystery keeps the plot of this TV show rolling, says Emily Wilson

Humans 8 July 2020
By Emily Wilson
Jennifer Connolly, Mike O’Malley and Daveed Diggs in Snowpiercer (left to right)
Netflix

TV
Snowpiercer
Streaming on Netflix

Advertisement

This review is designed to be as spoiler-free as possible. It was written based on the first five episodes
SNOWPIERCER is set in a nearish future in which some last fragments of humanity live on a train powered by an “eternal engine”. This 1001-carriage-long ark endlessly circles a frozen Earth made uninhabitable by bungling geoengineers who had been trying to fix climate change.
If you can accept the central premise for what it is, asking no awkward science questions about eternal engines or how a rail track can circumnavigate the globe, then there is plenty to enjoy on board Snowpiercer.
The plot, based on a film by Bong Joon-ho (now of Parasite fame) and before that a French graphic novel, imagines the train as a “fortress to class”.
Up front, a few privileged families live a life of luxury, the decor a cross between a Wes Anderson movie and an Agatha Christie novel.

Next, you get second class (not quite as nice, more economy lodge) and third class (a bit Blade Runner, loud music, steam punk vibe).
Finally, right at the back, you get the filthy wagons occupied by “tailees” who got on the train without a ticket and have subsequently been treated very poorly indeed.
Our two lead characters hail from opposite ends of the train. From the front, we get the leader of train hospitality, Melanie Cavill, played by Jennifer Connolly. Her job is to ensure perfect order on the train or, as she puts it, she “wears many hats”. Connolly, very elegant in her gorgeously cut turquoise uniform, is a mysterious and queenly, yet very human, presence.
Then, from the back of the train, we get a former homicide detective called Andre Layton, played by Daveed Diggs. He has spent the seven years since the train set off living in conditions of horrific squalor, scrabbling to make ends meet, endlessly working towards the revolution that the tailees long for.
“Right at the back, you get the filthy wagons occupied by ‘tailees’ who got on the train without a ticket”
The two leads meet when Layton – as the only murder-solving police officer left on the planet – is scrubbed clean and then dragged forwards from the tail to solve a killing “up train”.
The police procedural is a bit of a clunky addition to a show about a dystopian future on a train cutting through avalanches, but the advantage of it, of course, is that we get to explore the train properly as our cop pokes around, looking for the killer.
We get to see carriages devoted to agriculture and even a lovely aquarium, as well as the various living quarters of our new Snowpiercer friends and a secondary rail system sitting under the carriages that takes workers hither and thither.
As well as piecing together the main murder story, we get to piece together clues about a different background puzzle: the underlying mystery of Mr Wilford. He is said to be the owner and inventor of the train, and to be on board, although the ticket holders don’t see him.
I can’t quite work out yet how this story can keep going beyond its initial 10 episodes, given how tiny this closed world is – will they meet other people, get off the train?
Either way, season 2 has already been commissioned, so it looks like this eternal engine will keep rolling for some time to come, if not for eternity.
More on these topics: More

Most adolescents dabble in delinquency, but few become lifetime offenders. Long-running studies can help tell us why and improve policing, says psychologist Terrie Moffitt

Humans 8 July 2020
By Terrie Moffitt

Rocio Montoya

OUR attitudes towards crime and punishment are highly political. They often come down to how much we believe a person’s particular life circumstances should be taken into account when deciding whether their punishment fits the crime they committed. But criminal justice isn’t an evidence-free zone. Behavioural scientist Terrie Moffitt at King’s College London has spent her career trying to uncover biological and environmental roots to criminal behaviour. Now she has evidence from brain imaging and genetics to support her idea that there are generally two groups of people who persistently commit crime, each with different causes for their behaviour and different prospects for reform.
Dan Jones: How has the nature-nurture debate influenced views on criminal behaviour?
Terrie Moffitt: Our thinking about the roots of antisocial behaviour has followed pendulum swings between putting nature or nurture centre stage. Writing in the late 17th century, philosopher John Locke came down on the side of nurture, arguing that we are born as blank slates and learn all our behaviours, bad ones included. Then in the 19th century, Cesare Lombroso, the founder of criminology, suggested that bad people were born that way and could be identified by the shape of their eyes, ears, teeth and eyebrows. By the 1960s, after John Watson and B. F. Skinner developed behaviourism, the pendulum had swung back to nurture.
Everything changed in the 1980s and 90s, and the debates really heated up. Scientists started reporting studies of crime drawing on thousands of twins and adoptees in Scandinavian registers, which seemed to point to genetic transmission of criminal behaviour from parent to child. This was like … More

Polynesians and Native Americans met and had children together around AD 1200, according to a study of modern Polynesian peoples’ DNA. But the encounter didn’t take place on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the island closest to South America, as has long been suggested. Instead, the Polynesians in question were from islands hundreds of kilometres further […] More

More than 100 distinctive flint artefacts from a Stone Age village in Jordan may be figurines of people used in funeral rituals, according to a team of archaeologists. However, other researchers aren’t convinced that the objects represent people at all. Since 2014, Juan José Ibáñez at the Milá and Fontanals Institution for Humanities Research in […] More

Queen Anne’s Revenge, the ship that helped the pirate Blackbeard gain fame and fortune, was in poor shape and prone to leaking, a new analysis has revealed. The discovery could explain the vessel’s fate, as Blackbeard may have deliberately run it aground to avoid the headache of keeping it afloat. We know little about the […] More

Everyone is entitled to one good scare – and it may be good for us. People who watch a lot of horror films and those who are morbidly curious about unpleasant subjects seem to be more psychologically resilient to the covid-19 pandemic, a study reveals. “Horror users tended to have less psychological distress,” says Coltan […] More

New Scientist’s weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss Humans 1 July 2020 Play Duet-2 is a game from arts collective Invisible Flock on iOS and Android in which pairs of strangers establish a real, though mysterious, connection. Answer a question a day and share glimpses […] More