DINOSAUR TRACKS • THE MARTIAN FOSSILS SPECIAL REPORT:

BUILDING
THE BIGGEST
How the tallest
skyscrapers
and other giant
DECEMBER 1997 $4.95 projects took
shape

1,500 feet over

Kuala Lumpur

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08715

0 737328 2
 December 1997 Vo l u m e 2 7 7 Numb e r 6

Special Report:
87 Building the Biggest
FROM THE EDITORS
Some of the most mammoth structures in
6 the history of the world are now under con-
struction. Fighting high winds, soft soil,
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS earthquakes and the problems of building
8 in densely populated centers, engineers and
architects have pushed their ingenuity, tech-
50, 100 AND 150 YEARS AGO niques and materials to their limits to set
records for length, height and size.
10

NEWS
AND
ANALYSIS

IN FOCUS
Chipmakers cast ultraviolet
in a new light—and other tricks.
15
SCIENCE AND THE CITIZEN
For sale: T. rex, slightly used....
Cell phone confusion.... 88 The Longest Suspension Bridge
Burning biomass and bacteria....
by Satoshi Kashima and Makoto Kitagawa
The universe shows its age.
18
92C The World’s Tallest Buildings
PROFILE by Cesar Pelli, Charles Thornton
World Wide Webspinner and Leonard Joseph
Tim Berners-Lee.
34
102 Building a New Gateway to China
TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS by John J. Kosowatz
Speed record: 763-mph jetmobile
beats Scientific American’s own
linear-accelerated go-cart.... 112 Do We Still Need Skyscrapers?
Trees against pollution. by William J. Mitchell
38
CYBER VIEW
Advertisers find new ways
to target Web surfers.
TIM DUCH

48
4
50 Metal Clusters and Magic Numbers THE AMATEUR SCIENTIST
Matthias Brack So you want to be a rocketeer....
114
Between the atomic world described by quantum
mechanics and the macroscopic world of everyday MATHEMATICAL
objects stretches a great gulf. Molecular aggregates RECREATIONS
of 1,000 or so metal atoms, which curiously form Is cat’s cradle child’s play?
mostly in “magic” numbers, offer a way for physi- Knot to a mathematician.
cists to investigate this transitional realm.
118
58 The Case for Relic Life on Mars
Everett K. Gibson, Jr., David S. McKay, Kathie REVIEWS
Thomas-Keprta and Christopher S. Romanek AND
Last year NASA scientists declared they had found COMMENTARIES
strong clues in an Antarctic meteorite that micro-
bial life existed more than 16 million years ago on
the red planet. Here they present their case and an-
swer critics who favor a nonbiological explanation.

68 Williams Syndrome and the Brain

Howard M. Lenhoff, Paul P. Wang,
Frank Greenberg and Ursula Bellugi

People with Williams syndrome usually have low

IQs but can be surprisingly adept in areas such as
language and music. The unexpected peaks and
valleys in their abilities illuminate the genetic and
neurological underpinnings of normal minds.
The Scientific American Young
Readers Book Awards
74 Tracking a Dinosaur Attack Philip and Phylis Morrison survey the
David A. Thomas and James O. Farlow best on science for children and teens.

In what is now Texas, two parallel trails of foot- Connections, by James Burke
prints left during the Cretaceous tell how a two- Cold beer and the Red Baron.
legged carnivorous dinosaur stalked and pounced
on its four-legged prey. Reading those tracks, a
122
sculptor and a paleontologist reconstruct that ANNUAL INDEX 1997
100-million-year-old hunting tale.
129
Trends in Physics WORKING KNOWLEDGE
82 Exploiting Zero-Point Energy Tell the truth:
Philip Yam, staff writer how polygraphs detect lies.
132
Could vast amounts of power be pulled out of emp-
ty space? Modern physics proves that “zero-point
energy” hums through the vacuum, but most re-
About the Cover
searchers doubt it is worth trying to tap. That
From near the pinnacle of one of the
skepticism has not dissuaded others from trying.
88-story Petronas Twin Towers in Ma-
laysia, the magnitude of this engineering
Scientific American (ISSN 0036-8733), published monthly by Scientific American, Inc., 415 Madison Avenue, New York,
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5
 ®
FROM THE EDITORS Established 1845
John Rennie, EDITOR IN CHIEF

Building Excitement Board of Editors

Michelle Press, MANAGING EDITOR
Philip M. Yam, NEWS EDITOR
Ricki L. Rusting, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

O
Timothy M. Beardsley, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
ne of the most popular children’s videos of recent years had no Gary Stix, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
W. Wayt Gibbs; Kristin Leutwyler; Madhusree Mukerjee;
singing dinosaurs, spaceships, talking dogs or cartoon charac- Sasha Nemecek; David A. Schneider; Glenn Zorpette
ters. What it had was bulldozers. And giant cranes, and back- Marguerite Holloway, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Paul Wallich, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
hoes, and wrecking balls, and other pieces of heavy equipment for putting
Art
up buildings or ripping them down. I like the timelessness of that. Today Edward Bell, ART DIRECTOR
Jana Brenning, SENIOR ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR
we can take our entertainment from virtual reality and sometimes do, but Johnny Johnson, ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR
the fences around construction sites still have windows Jennifer C. Christiansen, ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR
Bryan Christie, ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR
cut in them for the sake of curious pedestrians, and they Bridget Gerety, PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
never stand empty. Lisa Burnett, PRODUCTION EDITOR

Mammoth construction is enthralling; think of how Copy

Maria-Christina Keller, COPY CHIEF
many tourist sites are built around things whose major Molly K. Frances; Daniel C. Schlenoff;
claim to fame is that they are not just big but stupefying- Terrance Dolan; Katherine A. Wong
Administration
ly big: the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower, Mount Rob Gaines, EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR
Rushmore. . . . Look at the Seven Wonders of the An- Sonja Rosenzweig
Production
cient World, legendary for their size as much as their Richard Sasso, ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/
artisanship. The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, 425 VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCTION
William Sherman, DIRECTOR, PRODUCTION
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of Rhodes. The five 50-foot terraces of the Hanging Tanya DeSilva, PREPRESS MANAGER
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Modern architects and engineers are still build- Advertising
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12.97.LETTERS.6P.DOM 8/9/98 3:05 PM Page 8

LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

Gorelik replies:
FASTER THAN LIGHT Ioffe and I agree about the late anti-

I was stunned by your carelessness in allowing the statement in the caption

on page 58 of your August issue that anything can travel faster than the
speed of light [“Lightning between Earth and Space,” by Stephen B. Mende,
communist phase of Landau’s life, but
for the early phase of his life, during the
1930s, I rely on testimonies of people
Davis D. Sentman and Eugene M. Wescott]. Unless the laws of general and who knew him then. Both Hendrik
special relativity have been repealed, I suggest an explanation and correction Casimir (see his 1983 book Haphazard
of this error be made in your next issue. Reality, published by Harper & Row)
STEVEN E. BOLLT and Edward Teller witnessed Landau as
Bethesda, Md. a revolutionary, enthusiastic about the
The Editors reply: Soviet regime. It is beyond the scope of
Many readers have wondered about this page to document the extensive his-
the statement in the caption, but it is torical evidence that supports my belief
correct. It does not contradict the laws in the authenticity of the seemingly un-
of relativity, because in the described believable leaflet that connected two
situation, no physical object or infor- very different phases of Landau’s life.
mation-carrying signal is moving faster
than light. Rather what enlarges faster REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
than light is the ring-shaped intersec-
tion of a horizontal layer with a sphere
expanding at the speed of light. (Recent
measurements of these rings, in fact,
MOVEMENT OF MOVEMENT OF
INTERSECTION WAVE FRONT T im Beardsley’s review of recent
imaging and scanning experiments
designed to elucidate brain function
show the rate of lateral widening to be about three times light speed.) A more [“Trends in Neuroscience: The Machin-
commonplace example may be helpful. Drop a pebble into a pond. The inter- ery of Thought,” August] reveals both
JOHNNY JOHNSON

section of the resulting ripples with a horizontal line (above) enlarges much the strengths and weaknesses of these
faster (white arrow) than the rings themselves do (black arrow). tactics. PET scans, CT scans and MRI
represent a huge leap forward in tech-
nology. But contemporary research still
DOLLY’S DNA mitochondria, however, it is possible that tells us only where something happens
Dolly may have inherited mitochon- in the brain, not what the actual mech-

I just read “Mitochondrial DNA in

Aging and Disease,” by Douglas C.
Wallace [August], and it occurred to me
drial DNA from both sheep lines.

LANDAU AND THE KGB

anisms are for recognizing, remember-
ing and so on. And that, of course, is
what we really want to know.
that Dolly, the famous cloned sheep, MURRAY S. WORK
would have actually inherited mitochon-
drial DNA from the egg cell donor.
From what I understand of the cloning
A s someone who met Lev Landau in
1947 and who had many scientific
and political discussions with him dur-
Carmichael, Calif.

Letters to the editors should be sent

process, the nucleus of a cell from the ing the 1950s, I do not share the opinion by e-mail to [email protected] or by
adult sheep that was to be cloned was that Landau participated in preparing post to Scientific American, 415 Madi-
inserted into an egg cell from another the anti-Stalin leaflet described in Gen- son Ave., New York, NY 10017. Letters
ewe. So Dolly would have inherited some nady Gorelik’s article “The Top-Secret may be edited for length and clarity.
genes from the mitochondria in the egg Life of Lev Landau” [August]. The most
cell, right? plausible explanation of this leaflet is
DANA DORRITY that it was a forgery by the KGB. By the ERRATA
Phoenicia, N.Y. end of the 1940s and into the 1950s, In the article “Gamma-Ray Bursts”
Landau had no illusions about commu- [ July], it was stated that the HETE
Wallace replies: nism, but he would not have been fool- spacecraft failed to separate from its
Dorrity makes an insightful com- ish enough to prepare the leaflet, which launch rocket. In fact, the third stage
of the Pegasus XL launch vehicle failed
ment—Dolly, a clone of a Finn Dorset could only have been written by some-
to release the HETE satellite. The
ewe, was created by the fusion of a one who wished to become a martyr. All Manicouagan crater mentioned in the
whole mammary gland cell from the his life, Landau was a pragmatic and review “Dusk of the Dinosaurs” [Re-
Finn Dorset ewe with an enucleated egg logical man but not a political vision- views and Commentaries, September]
cell from a Scottish Blackface ewe. This ary. Physics was first for him. is in Quebec, not British Columbia.
suggests that most of Dolly’s mitochon- BORIS L. IOFFE And the loss of electricity described in
drial DNA would derive from the Black- Institute of Theoretical “Leaky Electricity” [News and Analy-
sis, “In Brief,” August] is 50 watts per
face ewe. Because the mammary cell and Experimental Physics house, or 450 kilowatt-hours a year.
from the Finn Dorset ewe also contained Moscow

8 Scientific American December 1997 Letters to the Editors

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.50.100.3P.DOM 8/9/98 2:29 PM Page 10

50, 100 AND 150 YEARS AGO

DECEMBER 1947 retains seven figures; a child of ten years old retains six.” [Ed-
NEW 3-D PHOTOGRAPHY—“A new type of glass, con- itors’ note: Binet’s work led him to develop the first intelli-
taining infinitesimal metallic particles throughout its mass, gence test.]
possesses photo-sensitivity to ultra-violet light and offers new
possibilities as a photographic material. The images are FAKE OYSTERS—“Real oysters are expensive in Paris, and
formed in color and in three dimensions by exposing the so artificial oysters on the half shell have been invented, which
glass to ultra-violet light through a negative. To develop the are sold at twenty cents a dozen, and so cleverly made to look
image, the exposed glass is subjected to a temperature of nice and fresh that, once lemon juice or vinegar has been
about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Once developed, the image added, they cannot be distinguished from the real article. The
is extremely permanent and is free from the graininess en- only genuine thing about these oysters is the shell, the manu-
countered with some silver emulsions.” facturers buying second hand shells at a small cost, and fas-
tening the spurious oyster in place with a tasteless paste.”
HARDENED ELECTRONICS—“When a delicate electronic
circuit is subjected to the most violent shock and vibration, UNDER THE SEA—“We present a photograph of a diver
to heavy moisture and to corrosive atmospheres, the problem clad in the new Buchanan-Gordon diving dress. The paten-
of stabilization assumes Gargantuan dimensions. It was in tees, after a number of successful experiments in Australia,
search of an answer that the Nation- where the dress is used in connec-
al Bureau of Standards turned to a tion with pearl fisheries, brought a
technique of embedding, or ‘potting,’ couple of dresses to London. They
entire electronic circuits in plastics, received every assistance from that
and developed a new resin for that famous firm of submarine engineers
purpose. Called the NBS Casting Messrs. Siebe, Gorman & Company,
Resin, this new material minimizes London, in designing the present day
electrical loss and does not shrink on dress. The helmet, which descends to
gelling.” the waist in one piece of solid copper,
weighs no less than 250 lbs., while
the dress weighs 500 lbs., and enables
DECEMBER 1897 the diver to breathe at normal air
DARWIN RIGHT AGAIN—“The pressure. The dress is also equipped
scientific expedition that was dis- with a telephone to the surface.”
patched to the Ellice Islands by the
Sydney Geographical Society has
confirmed Darwin’s theory of the for- DECEMBER 1847
mation of coral islands [that reefs SMOKE SCRUBBER—“The Pitts-
were created over aeons by coral pol- burg Gazette says: Messrs. Black-
yps building successive layers on sub- stock and Co. have made a trial of a
siding landmasses]. Reports from Sa- smoke preventive apparatus, in their
moa are that the diamond drill went Cotton Factory in Allegany city. The
down 557 feet in the coral without experiment has proved successful.
reaching the bottom. Beyond 487 feet, While the chimneys of the neighbor-
the results strongly favor Darwin’s ing factories were vomiting forth
theory, though a final judgment de- clouds of black smoke that dark-
pends upon microscopic examination ened the atmosphere on one of the
of the drill cores.” A novel suit for deep-sea diving finest Indian Summer days we have
seen, the Smoke Preventive in the
PIONEERING PSYCHOLOGY—“Prof. Alfred Binet, the cotton factory consumed all the parts of smoke that dropped
celebrated French psychologist, notes that ‘although the like rain from other points around us.”
methods used for measuring the memory may have been
crude, as they still are, it is nevertheless a great advance to be ANCIENT SCIENCE—“A four-wheeled carriage with brown
able to introduce the concept of measurement into this prob- ornaments and iron wheels has been recently discovered in a
lem at all. So far, attempts have been made to measure but three-story house dug out at Pompeii. It is our opinion that
one kind of memory—the direct faculty of acquisition. The when the Roman Empire was overthrown by the Goths, the
experiments deal with the number of memory images that Romans were nearly as far advanced in civilization as we are
can be stored up at a single trial.’ The average educated adult at the present moment.”

10 Scientific American December 1997 50, 100 and 150 Years Ago
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:38 PM Page 15

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

18 34 38
SCIENCE PROFILE TECHNOLOGY
20 IN BRIEF
AND THE AND
22 ANTI GRAVITY BUSINESS
CITIZEN
32 BY THE NUMBERS

48
Tim Berners-Lee CYBER VIEW

IN FOCUS
THE BIG SHRINK
Federal labs are developing
new chipmaking techniques.
Who will reap the benefits?

T he explosive growth of cheap com-

puting power has made possible not
only virtual-reality headsets and the

SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

key-chain pet Tamagotchi but also “smart” mis-
siles and advanced radar systems, among
other applications. Not surprisingly, gov-
ernments consider the multimillion-dollar
machines that fabricate semiconductor
chips, known as steppers, to be militarily
as well as commercially critical. EXTREME ULTRAVIOLET lithography
system at Sandia National Laboratories
The U.S. supplies nearly half the world’s became, in 1996, the first to pattern a fully
chips but provides only 9 percent of the functional transistor on a silicon wafer
steppers. Simmering strategic and trade using this low-wavelength light. Lines
etched with extreme ultraviolet light
concerns about semiconductor fabrica-
(inset) are less than 0.15 micron wide.
tion technology have recently come to a
boil. The heat was turned up with the announcement in Sep- cron in width, or below one thousandth the width of a hu-
tember that a consortium formed by Intel and two other U.S. man hair. High-tech chips today have channel widths of 0.25
chip manufacturers will pump $250 million into the Depart- micron. EUV lithography should make it possible to pack a
ment of Energy’s weapons laboratories to develop a radically billion transistors onto each silicon sliver, instead of mere
new fabrication technology. Critics, however, charge that the millions, and would slash the distances electrical signals have
technique will be exploited largely by foreign companies and to travel. The result could be low-cost memories that store
that the plan neglects national security concerns. 1,000 times as much information and processors that run
The new approach, known as extreme ultraviolet (EUV) 100 times faster than today’s versions.
lithography, could open new vistas in chip design, allowing Steppers now employ visible or near-ultraviolet light to
them to be made with conducting channels less than 0.1 mi- “print” circuit patterns. Light is shone through a mask, and

News and Analysis Scientific American December 1997 15

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:39 PM Page 16

Other Routes to Speed

IBM
mproved lithography is not the only copper in its place. The company says its
way to make chips more powerful. copper technique should reduce chip
Many manufacturers have high hopes for prices by 20 percent while increasing
using copper, rather than aluminum, to their power by 40 percent. It plans to start
build the internal wiring that connects shipping copper-based products in the
the transistors on a chip. first half of 1998.
Copper wires can be made thinner, Intel, meanwhile, has announced a new
leading to more tightly packed circuits. type of “flash” memory chip in which each
But researchers have been stymied by dif- transistor can precisely hold four different
ficulties laying down copper on silicon. amounts of charge. In this way, it can
Copper atoms diffuse into the semicon- store two bits of information instead of
ductor, ruining its electrical properties one, thus doubling the devices’ capacity.
[see “Under the Wire,” Technology and Flash memories, which retain data during
Business, May]. power outages, account for only a few
IBM announced in October that it has a COPPER CONNECTIONS percent of the chip market. But they are
patented solution: a sealant that keeps conduct quickly. its fastest-growing segment. —T.M.B.

specialized lenses shrink the resulting image fourfold before it ing techniques for use in Japan and Europe has also alarmed
is projected onto a prepared silicon surface. Since the 1960s four Democratic congressional representatives, who have
the number of transistors that can be crammed onto a chip called on the Clinton administration to reexamine the
has doubled every 18 months. But engineers agree that the scheme. The consortium would support about 90 scientists
end is in sight for contemporary methods. Tinier features for three years, principally at Sandia National Laboratories
need shorter-wavelength light to print them, but lenses do in Albuquerque, N.M., and Lawrence Livermore National
not transmit light with a wavelength less than about 0.19 mi- Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. But the arrangement “would
cron. With current techniques that means a minimum chan- result in serious and unprecedented access to U.S. national
nel size of about 0.13 micron, according to Steven R. J. defense labs by foreign companies,” wrote Representatives
Brueck of the University of New Mexico. John D. Dingell of Michigan, George E. Brown of California,
EUV lithography, which arose in part from “Star Wars” re- Ron Klink of Pennsylvania and Tim Roemer of Indiana in a
search, has been demonstrated in the laboratory. It bypasses letter to Peña on October 9.
the 0.13-micron limit by employing light with a wavelength The letter notes that taxpayers are contributing about $34
about 1/30 of that now used in chip manufacture. But there million to the EUV development effort in the form of DOE
are many engineering hurdles facing EUV before it can be overhead costs. Moreover, the legislators maintain that an
employed routinely. Perhaps the biggest challenge is making “unprecedented provision” in the agreement would allow
the optics, according to G. Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research. licensees of EUV technology to avoid the requirement that
They are high-precision aspherical mirrors coated with 40 or they manufacture for two years in the U.S. Instead they could
so alternating layers of molybdenum and silicon. propose an alternative plan.
Other companies are pursuing alternative chip fabrication The EUV consortium has set off national security alarms in
technologies. Several are using electrons in different ways, the Commerce Department. State-of-the-art lithographic
and IBM wants to use x-rays, which have an even shorter equipment is controlled by the U.S. and its allies to keep it
wavelength than EUV. But although x-ray lithography works out of the hands of hostile nations. With EUV, “are there na-
in a research setting, the company has failed to turn it into a tional security implications for this technology that would
commercial proposition, Hutcheson notes. cause us to want to control [it] more tightly?” asks William
If EUV steppers are successfully built, the semiconductor A. Reinsch, undersecretary of commerce for export adminis-
industry would have years more of dizzying advances. Be- tration. Reinsch says he did not learn about the agreement
sides Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Motorola contrib- until after it was signed—an event that took place quietly this
uted small amounts to the original consortium, called the past March. He is now trying to foster a domestic group of
EUV Limited Liability Company. Energy Secretary Federico companies to manufacture EUV equipment.
Peña said in September that equipment producers who li- Intel’s Sander H. Wilson, director of the EUV consortium’s
cense technology from the consortium will be required to business plan, defends his group’s right to allow overseas
manufacture in the U.S. for two years. companies access to EUV technology. The federal govern-
The critics complain that the consortium’s business plan ment cut off funding for lithography at the weapons labs in
will mean that Nikon in Japan and ASML in the Netherlands 1996, he points out; the consortium has thus preserved a
will end up making most EUV-technology steppers. Leading “national treasure.” Wilson insists that “you need to gain
the protesters has been Arthur W. Zafiropoulo, head of Ul- economies of scale to develop the tools.” And the fact is that
tratech Stepper in San Jose, Calif. Zafiropoulo insists that the Nikon, ASML and Canon in Japan do manufacture more
consortium plan “allows the systems integration of the EUV than 90 percent of the world’s steppers. The U.S. may have
technology to be turned over to foreign hands.” to decide whether to support jobs overseas in order to sup-
The prospect of U.S. weapons labs developing manufactur- port jobs at home. —Tim Beardsley in Washington, D.C.

16 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:39 PM Page 18

SCIENCE AND THE CITIZEN

PALEONTOLOGY a South Dakota ranch by Susan Hen- commercial fossil operations would like
drickson, a collector working with the to see public land open to all collectors—
Black Hills Institute of Geological Re- as promised by the Fossil Preservation
NO BONES ABOUT IT search in Hill City, a commercial fossil Act of 1996, which failed to make it to
outfit. The institute paid the landowner, committee before Congress recessed
T. rex Sue highlights the battle over
Maurice Williams, $5,000 for the right earlier this year. Marion K. Zenker of
private collecting on public land to take the fossil, a deal determined by the American Land Access Association,
the courts in 1994 to be illegal. Because an amateur fossil-collecting group, ex-
Williams’s land is held in trust by the pects the bill to be reintroduced. Zen-

O n October 4 one of the most U.S. government (he is a Cheyenne Riv-

famous fossils in the world er Sioux), he cannot sell it—or anything
went on the auction block. on it—without federal permission. The
The sale, at Sotheby’s in New York City, courts subsequently awarded Williams
opened with a bid of $500,000; just over possession of the dinosaur, dubbed for
ker, who also works for the Black Hills
Institute, says such legislation is neces-
sary because large numbers of fossils
erode away on public land. The reason:
there simply are not enough profession-
nine minutes later, Sue—the largest and its discoverer, and the government de- al paleontologists to collect them. “If
most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skel- cided to auction the fossil on his behalf. everyone were allowed to collect, so
eton ever found—sold for $7.6 million John J. Flynn of the Field Museum much more would be found, and sci-
(including Sotheby’s commission, the says the remaining preparation of the ence would gain by measures beyond
total price topped $8.36 million). “She skeleton should take two years to com- imagination,” she insists.
will spend her next birthday in her new plete. Sue will go on display at the mu- Commercial paleontologist Michael
home on the shores of Lake Michigan seum in 2000, and two life-size casts of Triebold concurs but also thinks collec-
in Chicago, at the Field Museum,” an- the T. rex will travel to museums around tors should be held to strict standards,
nounced Richard Gray, president of the the world. Another will be on display such as a demonstrated ability to re-
Art Dealers Association of America, at DinoLand USA in Disney’s newest move fossils carefully and with respect
who represented the museum and out- theme park in Florida, Animal Kingdom. for the science. “Requirements should
bid eight others. Although Sue’s destiny Although most paleontologists were include things such as site mapping;
is settled, the issues she has raised lin- relieved that Sue will go to a museum, photographing before, during and af-
ger. To many academic paleontologists, many worry that the auction estab- ter; proper field techniques; and saving
the sale highlights the troubling com- lished a dangerous precedent. “Muse- contextual data,” he states. If those
mercial trade in fossils. ums bidding against themselves is a ri- rules are satisfied, he believes, then com-
The T. rex was discovered in 1990 on diculous idea,” asserts Louis L. Jacobs, mercial collectors should be given access
president of the Society of to public lands and the right to dispose
Vertebrate Paleontology of fossils as they see fit, perhaps allow-
(SVP). And the high-profile ing for a fee to go to the land manage-
sale sets the benchmark, ob- ment agency. The only exception would
serves Claudia Florian of be if the fossil represented a new species.
Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers Some insist that even framing the bat-
in New York City. Many tle as commerce versus academia is mis-
museums simply cannot af- leading. “Not all fossils have scientific
ford to pay such astronomi- value, and most scientifically important
cal prices. (The Chicago mu- fossils have no commercial value. Only
seum got help from various seldom does a fossil have the two,” main-
donors, including the Cali- tains Henry Galiano, owner of Maxilla
fornia State University system, and Mandible, a New York City fossil
Walt Disney World Resort store. Terry Wentz of the Black Hills In-
and McDonald’s.) “There’s stitute adds, “Just because it went into
no way that setting a high public hands doesn’t necessarily mean
price on fossils ultimately that the specimen would be taken care
helps the profession, or mu- of well. It’s the individual people in-
JEFF CHRISTENSEN Gamma Liaison

seums, or education. It con- volved with the fossils that make the
tributes to the mind-set that difference.”
our national treasures are up Still, Jacobs and the SVP take a hard
for grabs to the highest bid- line: “What we have to do is use the les-
der,” Jacobs argues. son of Sue to make sure that vertebrate
Sue’s sale also raises the fossils are never allowed to be commer-
question of access to public cially collected from public lands, be-
NEW CARETAKER OF SUE lands. Right now, when it cause what belongs to the public should
is the Field Museum in Chicago, represented comes to vertebrate fossils, not be sold to the public.” The fight for
by (left to right) John McCarter, Peter Crane only academics can get the Sue may be over, but the battle over
and Richard Gray at the Sotheby’s auction. necessary permits. But most bones wages on. —Karin Vergoth

18 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:39 PM Page 20

HEALTH (WTRG) is now planning its own ex-

IN BRIEF SAY THAT AGAIN?

Researchers plan to see if
periments. The WTRG’s chairman,
George L. Carlo, says he is “quite im-
pressed” by Lai’s theoretical framework.
He maintains, though, that animals ex-
E = mc 2, Really posed to peak microwave levels in Lai’s
Converting matter into light is a simple cell phones could affect memory microwave experiments might have
trick compared with the flip side of Ein- heard a distracting noise from the equip-
stein’s famed equation—or turning light ment that could have influenced their
into matter. To do so requires far more
energy than physicists have managed
to generate in the laboratory. But a
team at the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center recently succeeded by aiming
R egulators in Europe are tak-
ing a harder look at mobile
phone safety. Although claims
that fields from power lines could cause
cancer have been authoritatively refuted
subsequent learning. The organization,
which Carlo says is scientifically inde-
pendent, is already attempting to repro-
duce Lai’s finding of DNA damage.
H. Keith Florig of Carnegie Mellon
terawatt laser light into the accelerator’s by the U.S. National Research Council University, an engineer and expert on
tightly focused electron beam. Some of (NRC), that body acknowledged that the effects of electromagnetic fields on
the laser photons scattered backward sufficiently strong electrical and mag- cells, declares Lai “is a reputable scien-
and changed into high-energy gamma- netic fields can have behavioral effects tist” who has won grants from the Na-
ray photons. These photons in turn col- on animals. Now experiments on mice tional Institutes of Health. Another ex-
lided with other laser photons and pro-
conducted at the National Radiological pert, Frank Barnes of the University of
duced electron-positron pairs.
Protection Board in the U.K. have con- Colorado, concurs. “There is a lot of ev-
Vodka Woes firmed an apparent effect of magnetic idence going around that shows some-
Between 1984 and 1994 life expectancy fields on learning in animals that was thing is going on” that could allow low-
in Russia for both men and women rose first identified by a U.S. researcher. intensity microwaves to affect the brain,
briefly and then plummeted. In a new In 1994 Henry Lai of the University Barnes observes. But he notes that no-
study demographers led by D. A. Leon of Washington showed that microwave body has demonstrated any harmful ef-
of the London School of Hygiene and radiation seems to slow down learning in fects and that the science is complex.
Tropical Medicine credit the extra rats. He placed rats in a maze that had Intrigued by Lai’s behavioral results,
deaths to heavy drinking. The group 12 arms leading from it, each baited at Zenon J. Sienkiewicz of Britain’s Na-
found that rates of cancer-related deaths its far end with a morsel of food. After tional Radiological Protection Board—
held steady during the decade it stud- a few days of daily training sessions, which is a major player in a European
ied. And although tuberculosis became rats learned to visit each arm once only. Commission study on the safety of mi-
more prevalent and the health care sys- Lai and his colleagues observed that crowaves—decided to check whether
tem changed during the same period— exposing rats to 45 minutes of pulsed he, too, could detect an effect of fields
factors that may have affected life ex- microwave radiation each day before on learning. To start with, Sienkiewicz
pectancy—the incidence of deaths putting them in the apparatus slowed exposed mice to power-line-frequency
from alcohol-related diseases, accidents down their mastering of the task. The magnetic fields of 50 hertz. In a paper
and violence rose most dramatically. effect occurred when the amount of mi- submitted to Bioelectromagnetics, Sien-
crowave energy absorbed in the experi- kiewicz reports that in four separate ex-
The Biggest Star mental animals each minute was close periments using a multiarm maze, “ex-
So named for the shape of its nebula, to levels that might be absorbed by the posure significantly reduced the rate of
the Pistol Star, hidden away amid dust brain of a cellular phone user. The ef- acquisition of the task,” although the
clouds in the center of the Milky Way, fect of the fields could be eliminated by exposed mice did catch up eventually.
has stunned astronomers with its enor- pretreating the rats with drugs affecting The fields he studied were stronger than
mity: it appears to be 100 times larger two neurochemical systems in the brain: those found in homes. But inspired by
than the sun and 10 million times the endogenous opioid system and the the results with Lai’s test, Sienkiewicz is
brighter. Researchers from the Space cholinergic system. Lai thus proposed now planning experiments with micro-
Telescope Sci- that fields can affect those brain systems. wave-frequency fields.
ence Institute
Lai, who last year demonstrated a In the U.S. the NRC reported earlier
and the Universi-
similar behavioral effect from exposure this year that there is “convincing evi-
ty of California at
to 60-hertz power-line-frequency fields, dence” that animals can respond behav-
Los Angeles first
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

also has indications that microwave- iorally to electromagnetic fields, albeit

captured Pistol’s
frequency fields can cause DNA breaks. ones stronger than those found domes-
image in Octo-
ber, using the
Moreover, he has some evidence that tically. Federal agencies are waiting for
Hubble Space such effects may be cumulative. Lai spec- the results of the WTRG studies before
Telescope’s near- ulates that if cellular phones caused for- deciding whether regulation is warrant-
infrared camera and multiobject spec- getfulness, they might cause accidents, ed. Carlo predicts the results will start
trometer, which astronauts installed last for example, among drivers. But he em- to be published early next year. But at
year. Now theorists must struggle to phasizes that the microwaves in his ex- least one company is not waiting for
reconcile Pistol’s seeming size with no- periments were of a higher frequency answers. Hagenuk in Kiel, Germany,
tions of star formation, which generally than those used by cellular phones. started advertising “low-radiation” cel-
do not predict stars that big. An industry-funded body known as lular phones in Europe this past summer.
More “In Brief” on page 22 the Wireless Technology Research Group —Tim Beardsley in Washington, D.C.

20 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:40 PM Page 22

In Brief, continued from page 20

A N T I G R AV I T Y borne levels to plummet. Hosing low-
Bringing Up Baby (in 3-D) ered airborne allergen levels by 44 per-
Researchers at Emory University have
discovered by chance that a range of
Full of Sound and Furry cent in a measurement taken three
hours after the wash. Total immersion
disorders involving three-dimensional
vision are developmental in origin. Eye
doctors long thought such deficits were
C ats, it has long been held, have
nine lives. Some six million Amer-
icans, with but one life, unfortunately
reduced it by an average of 79 percent,
and the total dunk followed by rinsing
brought the decrease to 84 percent.
genetic because they appeared in chil- Two problems, however, keep this
have it made miserable by allergies to
dren born with cataracts. But when Ron cat tale from having a perfectly happy
cats. Two thirds of these red-eyed, snif-
Boothe and his colleagues induced ending. One impediment is that aller-
fling mouth-breathers share a survival
cataracts in rhesus monkeys, none of gen levels shot right back up within a
strategy with small rodents—stay away
these 3-D defects arose in infants older week. Cat baths would thus need to be
from cats. The others, however, have
than three weeks. Further study showed a regular habit. Which brings us to per-
decided that a feline-free existence
that the monkeys’ brains underwent a haps a bigger drawback than wash,
would be catastrophic. Now comes a
major reorganization after three weeks, rinse, repeat ad infinitum: cats, even
study showing the efficacy of a mea-
prompted by environmental stimuli. declawed cats, have exceptionally sharp
sure that might decrease respiratory
This reorganization, which occurs at teeth.
distress, but with peril to the rest of the
three months in humans, is essential for “That’s the question here,” Woodfolk
body: cat washing.
developing normal depth perception. acknowledges. “How compliant is the
“Prior to our study there was some
Brighter Sunshiny Days controversy in the literature regarding animal going to be, regardless of the
Piecing together data from three satel- whether cat washing ac-
lites, Richard C. Willson of Columbia Uni- tually had any beneficial
versity reports that the sun may well be effects,” notes study co-
getting brighter. Indeed, the total solar author Judith Woodfolk
irradiance—or the radiant power ab- of the University of Vir-
sorbed by the earth—rose 0.036 percent ginia Asthma and Aller-
between 1986 and 1996, spanning one gic Diseases Center. In
cycle of sunspot activity. If the sun what probably looked
steadily grows more luminous at this like some kind of me-
rate, Willson predicts that it will warm dieval witch trial, Wood-
the globe by about 0.4 degree Celsius in folk and her colleagues
the next century. In comparison, green- dunked a bunch of cats.
house gases are expected to heat the In a more modern se-
planet by about two degrees C in the quela to said dunking,
next 50 to 100 years. they published their findings in a re- patient’s compliance? From our experi-
cent issue of the Journal of Allergy and ence, most of the cats actually became
ATCG Puzzle Pieces Clinical Immunology. accustomed to the water. But they
Biochemists have long held that weak Actually, the cats were not dunked, didn’t particularly like it.” Larry Kutner,
hydrogen bonds let DNA strands pull per se. One group was washed weekly who is a child-behavior columnist for
apart and zip back together in just the by being immersed up to the neck for Parents magazine and an allergy suffer-
right combinations: adenine molecules three minutes, then toweled off and er, has been washing two cats at regu-
pair up with left to dry. The (plain) water was a toasty lar intervals for some time. “I have yet
thymine, and cyto- 38 degrees Celsius. A second group to find one that enjoys it,” he remarked
sine seeks guanine. was given an additional three-minute purposefully.
But Eric Kool of the rinse in a second tub of clean water. Fi- Thomas Platts-Mills, lead author of
University of nally, a third group was washed weak- the study, notes that those cat lovers
Rochester recently ly, with soap and warm water from a who are both asthmatic and allergic
proved that idea hose for about a minute. have a potentially serious problem
The motivation behind soaking these that must be carefully managed. “We
LEONARD LESSIN Peter Arnold, Inc.

wrong. Kool found

that geometry— cats was curiosity as to whether wash- need a method of helping patients,
and not hydrogen ing could decrease the levels, both on other than simply giving them more
bonding—ensures the cat and in the room air, of the ma- medicine,” he says. “And washing cats,
accurate replica- jor bad guy for cat-allergy sufferers, a together with air filtration and de-
tion. To prove it, he protein called Fel d 1. (Its name comes creasing carpets within the house, is a
made molecules re- from its being the first domestic feline useful approach. Clearly, the decision
sembling adenine and thymine. These allergen to be isolated and chemically about how much to do is in the hands
fake bases had the same 3-D shapes as characterized.) Contrary to a widely of the patients.”
their natural counterparts but could not held notion, most of the allergen origi- With patience, and plenty of kitty
form hydrogen bonds. Even so, the arti- nates from the sebaceous glands in treats, you can probably Pavlov your
MICHAEL CRAWFORD

ficial bases snapped into place as the cats’ skin, not from the saliva. Wash- cat into at least tolerating the water.
readily—and correctly—as the natural ing removed significant amounts of Fel Which could keep the cats in the hands
ones during replication. d 1 on the cats, which caused the air- of the patients as well. —Steve Mirsky
More “In Brief” on page 24

22 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:40 PM Page 24

ENVIRONMENT most polluted U.S. cities, for example,

In Brief, continued from page 22 generally have higher death rates than
Mr. McGregor’s Revenge others. And Mims reports that physi-
Farmers in New Zealand have set out to SMOKE ALARM cians in the remote city of Alta Floresta
rid themselves of crop-eating rabbits in west-central Brazil concluded that
once and for all: many are spreading liq- Haze from fires might
half the local population was suffering
uefied livers promote bacterial growth from respiratory illness. In Manaus,
from calicivirus- some 600 miles northwest, there were
infected ani- “very significant” increases in the num-
mals over car-
rots and oats
left out as bait.
The calicivirus,
which has killed
T his past September, choking
smoke from unchecked forest
fires blanketed millions of
square miles in southeast Asia. But that
was not the only part of the world where
ber of patients hospitalized with bron-
chitis, Artaxo notes.
Mims suggests that one way smog
might cause illness is by absorbing ul-
traviolet light, specifically the band
countless rab- burning of vegetation caused widespread known as UV-B, because it is well known
bits on the haze. In the Amazon Basin the 1997 to kill bacteria and viruses. Mims found
South Island so far, is used as a biologi-
MICKEY GIBSON Animals Animals

burning season produced a “very thick” that levels of UV-B in Alta Floresta dur-
cal-control agent in Australia. But in pall that extended far beyond the re- ing one of the smokiest days of his stay
New Zealand the government has gion where smoke has spread in recent were less than a tenth of levels on a clear
banned it. Anyone found guilty of im- years, according to Paulo Artaxo of the day. Sometimes measured UV-B reached
porting calicivirus to New Zealand
University of São Paulo. Forrest M. zero. Light that plants use for photo-
could face five years in prison and a
Mims III, an independent scientist who synthesis was reduced by more than 50
NZ$100,000 fine.
runs the Sun Photometer Atmospheric percent on some days. Mims also found
Network and is based in Seguin, Tex., that on reduced UV-B days, airborne
Evaluation Evaluations
says smoke may have covered half of bacteria that lack internal pigmentation
How accurate are student evaluations
Brazil when he was in the country in became more common relative to pig-
of instructors? Many university adminis-
August. The blockage of sunlight, Mims mented types. Because most pathogens
trators value them enough to consult
them in making tenure and pay deci- believes, may encourage the spread of are nonpigmented (for reasons that are
sions. But a new study shows that stu- harmful bacteria and viruses. unclear), Mims thinks bacteria and
dents give the highest marks to the Many of the fires in Brazil are set to viruses could become more of a health
most enthusiastic—and not necessarily clear the rain forest, although some take threat in hazy conditions.
the best—teachers. Stephen J. Ceci of hold accidentally when farmers burn Further research will be needed to
Cornell University taught developmen- pasture, Artaxo states. One reason the evaluate Mims’s findings, which he was
tal psychology twice one year. In the fall, 1997 fires were so extensive is that for- expecting to submit for formal publica-
he gave his lectures as he had for the ests were very dry, a consequence of El tion soon. Yet research on the Amazon
past two decades. In the spring, he did Niño, a periodic climatic oscillation, pall is not proceeding as quickly as many
the same but changed the pitch in his which is quite strong this year. scientists would like. Although the ca-
voice and used more gestures. Second- The health effects of breathing smog pabilities of satellites are improving,
semester students found Ceci not only from July to October each year are un- monitoring of biomass burning “is not
more knowledgeable and tolerant but known. Yet the clues seem ominous: the adequate,” says Brent N. Holben of the
more fair, organized and accessible. And
they claimed to have learned more, even
though they did no better than first-
semester students on the same exams.

Jet Chemistry
To cause a chemical reaction, you need
heat, light, radiation, ultrasound or, as
Kenneth S. Suslick and his students at
the University of Illinois have shown, liq-
uid jets. The scientists drove high-ener-
HANS W. SILVESTER/RAPHO Liaison International

gy reactions and broke superstrong

bonds by colliding two streams at a
combined speed of 450 miles per hour.
Water jets, they found, generated hy-
drogen peroxide and fragments capa-
ble of destroying chlorocarbon com-
pounds. For this reason, Suslick sug-
gests that liquid jets might offer a
simple way to purify water supplies
containing low levels of chemical RAIN FOREST BURNS
waste. —Kristin Leutwyler
in the Amazon basin. Unusually dry conditions caused large conflagrations that
SA blanketed much of Brazil during this past year’s fire season.

24 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:40 PM Page 28

National Aeronautics and Space Admin- ments, because officials had concluded Milky Way’s halo, the nebulous regions
istration Goddard Space Flight Center. that Brazil and the U.S. needed a formal outside the galaxy’s disk, and are too
Bureaucratic delays appear to be part agreement covering the network. No far away for parallax measurements. So
of the problem. Two years ago NASA agreement has been forthcoming, and astrophysicists used Hipparcos’s precise
told Holben to remove from Brazil a Holben is still waiting to take his in- measurements of distance and bright-
network of ground-based instruments struments back to Brazil. ness of other stars such as subdwarfs—
that could validate satellite measure- —Tim Beardsley in Washington, D.C. dim objects lacking metals and other
heavy elements—and compared them
ASTRONOMY with compositionally similar stars in
may be only nine or 10 billion years old. globular clusters. If the subdwarfs hap-
Some observers, on the other hand, pen to be younger siblings of their look-
SLAYING THE aren’t so quick to pronounce the age alikes in the clusters, the intrinsic bright-
“AGE PARADOX” paradox as solved. Rather they are sug- ness of the latter stars can be deduced
gesting that Hipparcos’s most profound using models of stellar evolution.
Is the universe now result is to show that scientists don’t un- By such methods, many theorists cal-
old enough for its stars? derstand stars very well at all. culate that the clusters are brighter than
Launched in 1989, the satellite had earlier believed. More brilliant stars
the unassuming task of measuring the burn up their fuel and age faster, so the

T he universe is younger than

some of its offspring, astro-
physicists whispered last year.
Born a mere nine to 12 billion years
ago, it contains aging clumps of stars
luminosities and positions of some mil-
lion stars using the ancient technique of
parallax. It looked at the celestial sphere
from two opposite points of the earth’s
orbit around the sun, in effect endowing
globular clusters must be quite young—
the numbers now range anywhere from
nine to 15 billion years old.
Catherine Turon of the Paris-Meudon
Observatory, who along with others
called globular clusters that looked to its human operators with eyes spaced calculates 12.8 to 15.2 billion years for
be 16 to 18 billion years old. This year 186 million miles apart. The resulting the age of a particular cluster, M92, ad-
a drum roll of press releases is declaring three-dimensional view of the sky re- mits to theoretical uncertainties. There
that the “age paradox” has been van- vealed the distances to individual stars is difficulty in getting models adapted
quished. Researchers analyzing data with unprecedented precision. to such extreme objects with low metal-
from the European Space Agency’s Hip- The leap from Hipparcos’s data to the licity, she explains. The only reference
parcos satellite, the announcements age of a globular cluster is, however, one point for theorists is the sun, a middle-
claim, have shown that globular clusters of much faith. The clusters roam the aged star rich in heavy elements, much

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28 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:41 PM Page 29

seemingly encompass the sun—are spec-

tacularly wrong.
The distance to the sunlike stars in the
Pleiades, for instance, has been revised
from 424 to 378 light-years, indicating
that they are an astonishing 30 percent
dimmer than the sun. “We don’t yet un-
derstand where [the faintness] comes
from,” muses Floor van Leeuwen of the
Royal Greenwich Observatory in Cam-
TONY AND DAPHNE HALLAS Astro Photo

bridge. “And therefore it has not en-

tered as a parameter in models used to
determine the ages of clusters.” Extrap-
olating the models to globular clusters
builds on this shaky ground, so that the
ages deduced by comparing kinds of
stars—Cepheids, RR Lyraes and red gi-
ants, in addition to subdwarfs—contra-
THE PLEIADES dict one another. “People tend to dismiss
are 30 percent fainter than expected, the Hipparcos satellite finds. easily results of others that don’t fit their
The measurement casts doubt on current models of stars. own,” van Leeuwen says. “My feeling is
that it all adds up to a lot of uncertain-
different from the subdwarfs used in would be reluctant to accept any of ty.” As much as 40 percent, he guesses.
several of the comparisons. Processes these results as the final word,” he de- Such levels of systematic errors imply
not currently accounted for—such as clares. “There’s too much massaging to that the age paradox still has some life
fast rotation or the metals having sunk get things to fit.” None of the models, left. To kill it for good—which they will
out of view into the subdwarf’s center— he says, accurately explain all the ob- some day—astronomers need first to
could be skewing the conclusions. served properties of stars and thus do grasp the excruciatingly complex pro-
One of the more cautious is the Euro- not inspire great confidence. Worse, cesses occurring inside a variety of
pean Space Agency’s Michael Perry- Hipparcos data have shown that some stars. As Perryman puts it, “Watch this
man, project scientist for Hipparcos. “I stellar models—including those that space.” —Madhusree Mukerjee

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News and Analysis Scientific American December 1997 29

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:41 PM Page 32

BY THE NUMBERS

Freshwater Fish at Risk in the U.S.

O f all places on earth, rivers and lakes are the most dan-
gerous for wildlife. Their natural ecology is segmented
by dams and locks, their waters are diverted, and they are the
Within the U.S. there is a wide variation in the status of fish,
with the southern half of the country having far more imper-
iled species than the northern half; the large map below
principal depositories of civilization’s wastes. It is therefore not shows the number at risk in the 2,111 watersheds of the lower
surprising that aquatic species in the U.S. are at far greater risk 48 states. The area of greatest concern is the Southeast, par-
of extinction than mammals and birds are. Of the 822 fish spe- ticularly the region stretching from Alabama and Georgia
cies native to American rivers and lakes, as many as 21 have through Tennessee and Kentucky into southwest Virginia.
become extinct since the time of the first European settle- This region is extraordinarily bountiful (map at lower left), rival-
ment, according to the Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Va., ing the waters of tropical rain forests in the variety of its fresh-
and its partners in the Natural Heritage Network. Their data water fauna. The large number of species throughout the
show that another 297 species—36 percent of the total—are Southeast stems from the highly diverse range of its ecosys-
currently at risk of extinction. Other freshwater animals are in tems, including the Appalachian Mountains, the Appalachian
an even more perilous condition: 38 percent of amphibian, 50 Plateau, the Piedmont and the coastal plain. Also, this region,
percent of crayfish and 56 percent of mussel species are in unlike the North, did not suffer the devastating effects of Pleis-
jeopardy. Another 12 percent of mussel species are already tocene glaciation. Risk rates are higher in the Southeast than
extinct. in the North (map at lower right) largely because of the effect
The three most important threats to freshwater fauna are that water projects have on the many localized fish species.
agricultural runoff, dams and water diversion, and interfer- A second area of concern is the Southwest. This largely arid
ence from exotic species (such as the flathead catfish, which region, which has far fewer native freshwater fish species than
was introduced in the Southwest and many other places for the eastern part of the country, has been more severely affect-
recreational fishing). Such alien species compete with native ed by introduced species and water diversions. The result has
species and generally upset the balance of local ecologies. been some of the highest risk rates recorded. In California, 42
percent of the 67 native fish species
are at risk, and in Arizona the rate is
an astonishing 63 percent.
Another contributor to the high
rates in some western states, such
as California and Nevada, is the
large number of species that have a
limited range of habitat. An exam-
ple is the desert pupfish, which is
restricted to isolated and often vul-
nerable desert springs. Species with
limited ranges also account for the
high numbers of fish species at risk
in the Ozark Plateau of northern Ar-
kansas and southern Missouri and
in the Klamath region of northern
California and southern Oregon.
—Rodger Doyle ([email protected])
NUMBER OF SPECIES
AT RISK, BY WATERSHED

0 1–2 3–4 5–7 8 – 21

SOURCE: The Nature Conservancy and Natural Heritage Network in
cooperation with the Association for Biodiversity Information. All
data are from 1997; excluded are species not native to their areas.

TOTAL NUMBER
OF SPECIES PERCENT OF
SPECIES AT RISK
<100
<10
100 – 199
10 – 29.9
200+
RODGER DOYLE

30+

32 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

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to how to contend with cyberporn, the

PROFILE threat of censorship and the challenges
of safe electronic commerce—is being
Molding the Web responded to and molded by the largely
hidden hands of Berners-Lee.
It is somewhat hard to plumb the ori-
Its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, says the World Wide Web gins of Berners-Lee’s global humanism,
hasn’t nearly reached its potential because he is as protective of his privacy
as he is of the integrity of the Web. He
declines to answer questions about his
wife or his two young children, although

T he intense Tim Berners-Lee

abruptly rolls his chair away
from the central table in his
bare corner office over to two huge
computer screens and starts typing as
Consortium, or W3C, as it is called.
Composed of some 40 staff people scat-
tered around the world and 217 mem-
bers, including fiercely competing com-
munications and computer companies,
a picture of the towheaded youngsters
is the only decoration in his office.
Timothy J. Berners-Lee was born and
raised in London. His parents, Conway
and Mary Berners-Lee, are mathemati-
fast as he is speaking—for the listener, it the consortium serves as a standards or- cians, and both worked on England’s
is akin to a thick hailstorm hitting. The ganization for the Web. Just as the Inter- first commercial computer in the 1950s,
inventor of the World Wide Web is about net Society establishes protocols so that the Ferranti Mark 1. The Berners-Lees
to demonstrate how he first envisioned the Internet retains its “inter-ness,” W3C occasionally discussed imaginary num-
his creation and, by extension, how it tries to ensure that no matter what com- bers at mealtime; as a child Tim con-
has not lived up to his expectations. mercial developments unfold, all the structed a Ferranti replica, complete
With amazing speed, Berners-Lee uses Web’s strands remain interwoven. with clock and punch cards, out of card-
his original software to set up a home With his ruffled blond hair and mod- board boxes. According to a former col-
page, make links to new pages and tog- est manner, Berners-Lee hardly looks league, the family was also respectful of
gle between them. He shows how easy like the one person who can get dueling spiders: Mary Berners-Lee hung cotton
it should be to insert connections to oth- giants Microsoft and Netscape to, if threads down into the bathtub so fallen
er Web sites and how any user should not kiss and make up, at least sit in a spiders could scale the smooth sides.
be able to save comments into a docu- room together. Yet every issue arising Berners-Lee says he had a Protestant
ment—just like writing in the margin of around and about the Web—from how upbringing but rejected literal Christian-
your book, but in this case, your note fast networks can transmit information ity as a teenager because it was incom-
could transport you to the electronic
version of the place you are musing
about. “It was to be a very interactive
medium; that was the idea. But you
ain’t got that,” Berners-Lee laments.
The disappointment fizzles in a second,
though, and Berners-Lee’s freewheeling,
high-velocity, superhyperlinked brain—
the ur-Web itself—returns to thoughts
of what the World Wide Web will be-
come. He speaks almost reverently. No
matter how many interviews the seem-
ingly shy Berners-Lee agrees to, no mat-
ter how often he is asked to give a “vi-
sion” talk, no matter how hard he tries
to speak slowly, there is a point at which
the 42-year-old British physicist cannot
contain his enthusiasm. In his world,
the Web can empower people and trans-
form society by allowing everyone self-
expression and access to all informa-
tion. “The Web can help people to un-
derstand the way that others live and
love and are human, to understand the
humanity of people,” Berners-Lee ex-
pounds, almost tripping over his words.
Berners-Lee has been shaping the evo-
lution of this electronic extravaganza
from a nexus of quiet, grayish offices in
SAM OGDEN

a nondescript building at the Massachu-

setts Institute of Technology. There Bern-
ers-Lee directs the World Wide Web FORGOING WEALTH, Berners-Lee has chosen to protect the integrity of the Web.

34 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

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patible with science. He now describes it will be stable.’ They wanted to know Web. Particularly the people who make
himself as a Unitarian Universalist. “It that there will be something keeping it links,” continues Berners-Lee, picking
tackles the spiritual side of people’s lives together,” Berners-Lee recounts, ex- up speed, as he does whenever he talks
and of values and of the things you plaining the birth of W3C, his ever pre- about the philosophical underpinnings
need to live your life, but it doesn’t re- sent energy revealed in quick blasts of of the Web. “You should write and read
quire you to believe six impossible things movement—arms crossed suddenly what you believe in. And if you keep
before breakfast,” he says wryly. here, chair lowered quickly there, chin doing that, then you will create a Web
Berners-Lee graduated in 1976 with in hand for a moment, a short laugh. that is one of value. If other people read
first-class honors in theoretical physics Although the hub of the Web, the of- it, then your ideas spread. But that is
from the Queen’s College at the Univer- fices of W3C are surprisingly quiet. The not a prerequisite. The Web doesn’t force
sity of Oxford. In 1980, after various carpeted hallways are usually empty; anything down your throat. If you are
software-writing jobs, he spent six doors are pulled shut. The staff lives on worried that your children are going to
months at CERN, the European labo- the computer, the telephone or the read low-quality information, teach
ratory for particle physics near Geneva, road—working at all hours to endow the them. Teach them what to read. Teach
where he designed a calendar program Web with whatever technological stan- them how to judge information.”
called Enquire to keep track of his own dards, civility and ethics it maintains. Receiving a piece of this vision direct-
random associations; it later became Berners-Lee’s egalitarianism informs the ly from Berners-Lee is a rare commodity
the basis for the Web. He returned to modus operandi of the consortium. as W3C grows. Even though they are
CERN in 1984 as a software engineer. Each firm belonging to W3C signs a black-belt Webmasters, W3C team
The rest is ancient Web history. Bern- contract giving Berners-Lee the final say members can have a hard time commu-
ers-Lee wanted to create a means for far- in specifications for the Web. In the three nicating clearly about how to proceed
flung researchers to share one another’s years since W3C was founded, howev- on a topic or how to respond to a crisis
data and work easily together. So, in er, Berners-Lee has never ruled by fiat. with a company. The vision can also
1990, he wrote specifications for HTML “Tim doesn’t work that way,” says Carl erode under constant conversations with
(hypertext markup language), HTTP company engineers or executives whose
(hypertext transfer protocol) and the interests lie purely in code or markets.
precursor of URL (uniform resource lo- “We on the staff have a real need for
cator). The idea of hypertext had been him to project his vision,” Dan Connolly
bandied about for a long time. In 1945 says of W3C. “Some days it seems very
Vannevar Bush described the Memex important to remember: Should I do
machine, a microfilm-based system that what the companies want to do or what
could link associated information or is good for the Web?” Connolly adds
ideas through “trails.” Then, in 1965, that certain staffers wish for Berners-Lee
Theodor H. Nelson, a software design- to become rather “bold and unapolo-
SAM OGDEN

er and writer, aphorized the term “hy- getic” so that W3C can accomplish its
pertext.” Yet no one made it happen. mission—“To realize the full potential of
“We had been talking about Web-like the Web”—with less industry wrestling.
things for 20 years in the industry,” W3C STAFF Even as he says it, Connolly knows it
notes Eric Schmidt of Novell. “Why ensures the Web stays Web-like. is not going to happen. Berners-Lee
didn’t we invent it?” could have made millions by taking his
The answer may be found by follow- Cargill of Netscape. “Tim leads by his skills to the private sector; he could be
ing Berners-Lee’s conversation. “He vision. And if you disagree with his vi- ruling W3C with an iron fist; he could
speaks in hyperlinks,” notes W3C col- sion, he will talk to you and talk to you be collapsing his vision under the weight
league Sally Khudairi, no sluggish talk- until he agrees with your vision or you of commercialism; he could find a soap-
er herself. She keeps a bottle of aspirin agree with his—or both of you come to box. But then he would not be the man
handy for the days when she can’t keep a new vision.” This process is crucial who invented the Web.
up with her boss. because W3C exists through consensus. Although he has neither favorite sites
Berners-Lee and his CERN compatri- Making sure every Web user and cre- nor time to browse, Berners-Lee says he
ot Robert Cailliau put the free Web soft- ator can experience exactly the same does use the Web to buy gifts. He even
ware on the Internet in 1991. It didn’t thing is integral to Berners-Lee’s goal of ordered his parents a case of wine for
take off until 1993, when Marc Andrees- “interoperability.” The term simply Christmas, expecting that it would be
sen and his colleagues at the University means that the Web needs to be a sys- delivered by the local British supermar-
of Illinois, who had seen one of the ear- tem in which everyone, no matter their ket—as explained on the Web site. “It
ly Web browsers called ViolaWWW, equipment or software, can participate ended up being delivered, at what must
wrote the now famous Mosaic. Between equally. Interoperability, of course, is have been incredible cost, by taxi—all the
1991 and 1994 the number of Web cli- the nemesis of the commercial world: way across the country,” Berners-Lee
ents grew from about 10 to 100,000. As witness the tags on sites that say they laughs. The driver finally arrived in the
a research facility, CERN was not the are best viewed by a particular browser. middle of the night with what he must
right place for such a fast-moving en- “It is important to realize that the have thought was an emergency deliv-
terprise. “People started saying, ‘Look, Web is what we make it. ‘We’ being the ery. “I have never found out the story,”
this thing is becoming so big that our people who read, the people who teach Berners-Lee giggles. “I only paid £7,
company is completely orienting itself children how to surf the Web, the peo- that’s just $10, for delivery.”
around the Web. We want to know that ple who put information up on the —Marguerite Holloway

36 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

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TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS

ROAD WARRIORS Spey jet engines—to a new land-speed
record of 763.035 miles per hour. The
Technology and Business reports on contests demonstrating extreme ways sound barrier, which varies with temper-
of powering wheeled vehicles: one with jet engines, the other with gravity. ature, measured about 750 mph during
Green’s record-setting runs.
SHOCK-WAVE SHOWDOWN IN THE OLD WEST The supersonic milestone broke
Green’s own record of 714.144 mph, set
British car and driver break the sound barrier three weeks before. And Green did so
two days after two earlier jaunts down
the 13-mile course that also ripped

N evada’s Black Rock Desert

has become a staging ground
for the type of event that
would have difficulty finding a home
anywhere else on the planet. This vast,
can drivers launched separate attempts
to punch through the sound barrier
while keeping four wheels in contact
with the earth.
As of mid-October, this friendly com-
through the sonic barrier, but which
missed a record by a minute. To achieve
a record, the International Automobile
Federation requires two runs through a
measured mile in opposite directions
dry lake bed—a stretch of flatness that petition had turned into a triumph for within one hour of each other.
seems to extend to infinity—attracts the highly regimented British contin- During his stay at Black Rock, the
amateur rocketeers who claim to have gent—some of whom had taken leave tall, iron-confident Oxford graduate–
launched a home-built projectile into from jobs in the Royal Air Force to cum–fighter ace had also smashed the
space. Aging hippies and computer lodge themselves in this dusty corner of previous land-speed record of 633 mph
freaks have taken off their clothes here the Old West. On October 15, almost set in 1983 at Black Rock. That earlier
during the annual Burning Man Festi- exactly 50 years after American Chuck mark was held by the man who had re-
val, which culminates in the torching of Yeager broke the sound barrier, the cruited Green. Richard Noble had de-
a 40-foot-high effigy. But the most ex- British driver went supersonic in a car. cided against driving the car while de-
treme act to have occurred in these un- Andy Green, an RAF fighter pilot in his voting himself to the enormous logistical
ending reaches took place in September real job, drove Thrust SSC—the 10-ton difficulties entailed in building Thrust
and October, when British and Ameri- jetmobile powered by two Rolls-Royce SSC and financing this private, 30-mem-

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38 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

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12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:43 PM Page 39

EFFECT OF SHOCK WAVE

can be seen in the lateral stream of dust
stretching to the side of Thrust SSC.

the ground at Black Rock at about 675

mph. The Spirit of America veered into
a U-turn that barely missed a specta-
tor’s vehicle stationed on the alkaline
desert basin, known as a playa.
After the accident, Breedlove and his
MARILYN NEWTON

crew rebuilt the heavily damaged sin-

gle-engine jet car. But when it arrived at
Black Rock in early September, it con-
fronted a series of mechanical problems,
including a damaged engine, front-wheel
ber British expeditionary force. Noble sionately analytical attitude about the instability, faulty readings from onboard
and Green’s labors produced a remark- experience of driving a land-hugging car sensors and the need to replace some of
able spectacle for any visitor to this re- at a velocity higher than any commercial the tires and wheels. As of mid-October,
mote desert outpost. Spectators heard airliner but the Concorde. “It’s just like the car had reached an unofficial top
sonic booms and could see evidence of a fast jet, but less maneuverable around speed of 636 mph. Still, Breedlove vowed
the supersonic shock waves. Buildings corners,” Green says of his 110,000- to beat the British eventually.
were reported to have shaken in Ger- horsepower monster. Appropriately, this head-to-head
lach, a town some 12 miles distant. The The American competitors, headed showdown occurred in a corner of
neck-craning speed and the cloud of by Craig Breedlove, the five-time land- northern Nevada that retains much of
dust shooting from behind the car re- speed record holder, fared less well. The its frontier character. The nearest town,
called a guided missile spewing rocket team and the sleekly elegant Spirit of Gerlach, is but a few miles from a path,
exhaust while traveling in a horizontal America were still recovering from the sometimes called the Death Route, that
trajectory. world’s highest-land-speed accident. In took thousands of settlers across Black
The man who had repeatedly risked the fall of 1996 Breedlove survived when Rock’s forbidding barrenness on their
his life, meanwhile, displayed a dispas- one of the rear wheels of his vehicle left way to Oregon and California. Today

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News and Analysis Scientific American December 1997 39

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12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:43 PM Page 40

this hamlet of 350 residents, nestled at this level of record setting can no longer for the Antonov air cargo jet’s journey
an altitude of nearly 4,000 feet, has five be accomplished by mere tinkerers. Or- to Nevada came from donations from
bars but no grocery store. ganizing the Thrust team amounted to team supporters, some of whose contri-
By early October, Gerlach’s licensed staging the equivalent of a small-scale butions were solicited on the Internet.
establishments had succumbed thor- military campaign, replete with a huge One commentator in Gerlach on the
oughly to the throes of supersonic fever. Russian cargo transport to deliver the changing nature of these events was Art
The Black Rock Salloon [sic]—the main car to Reno-Tahoe International Air- Arfons, who raced against Breedlove on
after-hours gathering place for both port. Thrust SSC also proved a technical the Bonneville Salt Flats in the 1960s
teams—featured a lighted sign in the marvel. It incorporated an active sus- for the title of fastest man on earth. Af-
parking lot that supplied the highest pension that changed how loads were ter observing the preparations of the
speed attained by both the Spirit of distributed on the front and rear as it British, the 71-year-old Ohioan, who
America and Thrust SSC. And just out- neared Mach 1. And the underside of still resembles a hot rodder in his wrap-
side of town on the way to the playa, the machine was fitted with technology around sunglasses, could only express
someone had spray-painted “850,” as adapted from supersonic wind tunnels amazement. “A backyard mechanic
in miles per hour, over the often ignored that prevented shock waves from mov- could never do this anymore,” Arfons
55-mph speed-limit sign. ing about and causing structural dam- said. “This has turned into a high-tech
More than anything, the race to the age to the vehicle. business.”
terrestrial sound barrier showed that Funds for the 250,000 gallons of fuel —Gary Stix at Black Rock Desert, Nev.

NEWTON 1, EINSTEIN 0 main fuselage, explains Ossie Millican,

who runs SLAC’s machine shop and su-
High-energy physicists enter a soapbox derby—and lose pervised the vehicle’s construction, is a
vacuum chamber of the kind used to sep-
arate matter from antimatter. This par-

P article physicists may not be the

most solemn variety of scien-
tist—they did come up with
“charmed” quarks, after all—but they
are rarely seen clowning around, at least
ing alloy and positron-transmutated
whosiwhatsits. Surely such intellectual
horsepower could not fail to assemble
the detritus of a multimillion-dollar tech-
nological marvel into a winning race car.
ticular tank was a prototype and so nev-
er saw any action, Millican assures me,
adding that “we ran a Geiger counter
over it several times just to be sure.”
But what really has passersby doing
in broad daylight. So when the Stanford Imagine my surprise, then, when wan- double takes is an extra part that the
Linear Accelerator Center recently asked dering through the crowd milling this other 34 cars lack: an accelerator. Not
Scientific American to put up $1,000 September morning at the race site on the pedal type, mind you—all these rac-
so it could enter a soapbox derby to Sand Hill Road, a gentle incline that ris- ers are powered by gravity alone—but
benefit the local Peninsula Community es from Stanford University past SLAC the particle type, the kind that kicks elec-
Foundation to combat teenage alcohol and numerous venture-capital firms trons nearly to light speed, then smashes
abuse (SLAC is barred from spending that own substantial chunks of Silicon them into antielectrons to create show-
its federal funding on such events), the Valley, I happen on the SLAC pit and ers of subatomic particles so exotic you’d
prospect was too intriguing to pass up. find no breakthrough in fluid dynam- have to hang around a black hole or a
Off they went, we imagined, to hud- ics, no clever use of Earth’s magnetism big bang to see them in the wild. This
dle over supercomputers calculating the to assist gravity, but a behemoth. is just a section of the accelerator, of
optimal design from first principles, A high-tech behemoth, granted. One course; no electromagnets or antimatter
then to scavenge through piles of atom- that looks a bit like a quarter-scale Ti- here. But with a blinking, battery-pow-
smasher parts for bits of superconduct- tan rocket with wheels attached. The ered LED mounted where the beam
would go, it certainly looks cool.
DRIVER’S SEAT BORROWED That, evidently, was the goal. “We’re
FROM SLAC MOPED SECTION OF LINEAR SURPLUS VACUUM not going for speed,” Millican says, a
ACCELERATOR COLUMN CHAMBER FOR touch defensively. “We’re relying on a
MATTER-ANTIMATTER
SEPARATION
non-Newtonian exemption to win.”
As the team heaves the 1,445-pound
COPPER VACUUM racer, dubbed the Z-Mobile, up to the
CHAMBER starting line for its heat, SLAC engineer
TRANSITION Eric Bong wriggles into his motorcycle
PIECE
leathers and mounts the monster. “Usu-
ally we’re looking for high-energy colli-
sions, but not this time,” he quips.
Down at the finish line, the emcee is
DISC BRAKES FROM raising the crowd’s expectations. “The
COIL-WINDING MACHINE SLAC entry cost at least a million
bucks,” he deadpans. But wait: rolling
BRYAN CHRISTIE

WHEELS FROM CART USED into lane two is the competition, a boxy
AT PEP-II CONSTRUCTION SCAVENGED PARTS car sponsored by a legal firm, the Ven-
(“B” FACTORY)
make up the SLAC racer. ture Law Group, and made primarily

40 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

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12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:43 PM Page 42

interferometry,” to be precise. Those big

words mask what are “actually extreme-
ly simple principles of physics that have
been well understood since the 1940s,”
Sinha says. Toot a bugle, and its tubes
vibrate at one set of frequencies, the air
inside them at another. Pursing your lips
just right creates standing waves that
resonate inside the horn and emerge as
musical notes. Sinha’s sensor similarly
listens for the resonant peaks emitted by
an object as the speaker pumps sound
waves into it at frequencies that rise
gradually from one kilohertz to 15 mega-
hertz. By analyzing the peaks and val-

EDWARD CALDWELL
leys and how they change as the fre-
quency rises, Sinha’s software calculates
the density of the hidden material, the
speed of sound through it and the ma-
Z-MOBILE gets ready to roll. terial’s ability to absorb tones of differ-
ent pitches.
out of what appears to be stale foccacia raised $102,000, was an extravagant Scientists have long known how to do
bread. Could be pretzel dough. teardrop-shaped speedster that hit 47 this kind of sonic analysis under con-
As the starter raises his pistol, the mph; the venture-capital firm Mohr, Da- trolled lab conditions, using calibrated
SLAC team prepares to shove Bong and vidow reportedly sunk $10,000 into it. vessels. “What we have done is to devel-
his buggy into motion, even though “test But those capitalists probably didn’t op very efficient computer algorithms
runs showed that pushing only made a have as much fun as the physicists. After that can extract all this information
one-mile-per-hour difference over not all, Millican says, it’s not every day you from measurements of any container,”
pushing,” Millican laughs. There’s the get “the opportunity to see so many or- Sinha elaborates.
gun, and they’re off. It’s neck and neck dinarily serious scientists with lopsided “As experts, we all knew that what
for about six inches, until the lawyer grins and the glint of bad ’50s science- he set out to do was possible in princi-
pulls ahead and leaves Bong in a trail of fiction movies in their eyes”—a glint ple, but we were amazed that he had
bread crumbs. Radar guns clock the Z- that in Millican’s case looks distinctly actually succeeded in applying the fun-
Mobile at 26 miles per hour just before like an evil eye aimed at the bread car. damentals to such a variety of practical
it crosses the finish line. By way of com- “Next year,” he glowers, “they’re toast.” and messy problems,” affirms Logan E.
parison, the winner of the event, which —W. Wayt Gibbs in Menlo Park, Calif. Hargrove of the Office of Naval Re-
search. Chemical weapons identification
SENSORS is just a start: Sinha says his team has
Dipen N. Sinha and his colleagues demonstrated that the technique can be
built the sensor at Los Alamos National used to monitor water inside tanks for
X-RAY SOUND Laboratory and described it at the Amer- pollution and to detect bacterial growth
A new device sounds out ican Chemical Society meeting in Las inside milk cartons and canned coffee.
Vegas this past September. In about 20 It might even come in handy in medi-
the contents of sealed containers seconds, Sinha claims, a soldier using cine. “We put this thing up to our heads
the five-pound, battery-powered gadget
can reliably distinguish not only wheth-

H ere’s a puzzle: You’re handed

an artillery shell filled with
either ordinary explosive or
deadly nerve gas. How do you deter-
mine what it contains without risking
er a shell contains chemical weapons
but also which of the wide variety of
toxic cocktails it holds.
At first glance, the machine looks a
bit like the ultrasound imagers used in
total nervous shutdown? The question hospitals. It has one piezoelectric pad
is not as hypothetical as it may seem. that acts as a speaker and another that
United Nations inspectors enforcing the serves as a microphone. But unlike an
Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty imager, this sensor can determine the
face this problem all too often. Fortu- makeup of a hidden material. It does so
LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

nately, they now have an answer: a de- by exploiting sound in a different way.
vice that when pressed against a con- By using “swept frequency acoustic
tainer of almost any shape or size can
identify its contents using sound. The ACOUSTIC SENSOR
technique, which has already spawned distinguished chemical weapons from
12 patent applications, may have myri- conventional artillery shells at the De-
ad industrial and environmental uses. seret Chemical Depot in Tooele, Utah.

42 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

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and were able to measure intercranial to confirm how widely useful the tech- “they’re cheaper than the pump-and-
pressure in our brain cavities,” he re- nique will be in actual industrial opera- treat operations that retain the chemi-
ports. “The only other way to do that is tions. “I got very excited when we were cal.” Planting the trees involved little
to drill a hole in the skull.” able to use this technique to distinguish more than sinking foot-long cuttings—
Los Alamos has already licensed its Coke from Diet Coke,” recalls Wolf- essentially sticks—into the ground.
patents on the technology to several gang H. Sachse, a physicist at Cornell Why choose poplars? “We knew we’d
companies, Sinha says. Because the sen- University. “But then we were unable to get a lot of biomass quickly,” Gordon
sor can detect very small changes in distinguish Diet Coke from water. So I says. The hybrids at Fife, originally de-
chemical composition, he asserts, “peo- have mixed feelings about it.” veloped for the paper and pulp industry,
ple in the semiconductor industry are “Sachse used a rather crude home- can grow 15 feet a year. And the grow-
very interested in using it for quality made instrument that does not have the ing trees take up massive quantities of
control of cleaning fluids.” requisite sensitivity,” Sinha retorts. And contaminated water—at the peak of last
Sinha declines to name any potential in any case, Diet Coke doesn’t detonate. season each young tree treated at least
partners, however, so it is not possible —W. Wayt Gibbs in Las Vegas 25 gallons a day. As for the productive
poplar-TCE match, Gordon confesses,
TOXIC CLEANUP “We got lucky.” Poplars were the first
feed 30-foot-tall potted plants a steady trees his group tested.
diet of organic solvents—mimicking the Gordon’s team is leaving less to chance
POLLUTION-PURGING situation at chemical spill sites where the next time. It is working toward ge-
POPLARS contaminants travel in moving water. netically engineering poplars to handle
Perhaps the most important of these other types of organic pollutants. And
Trees that break down toxic compounds is trichloroethylene the group is searching for trees with in-
organic contaminants (TCE), a dry-cleaning and degreasing herent treatment potential better suited
solvent that is a suspected carcinogen to different climates or chemicals; can-
and one of the most common contami- didates include willow, black locust,

I n 1984 a truck carrying a load of

toxic solvent spun off an icy stretch
of Interstate 5 in southernmost Ore-
gon, near the town of Central Point. In
moments, hundreds of gallons of 1,1,1-
nants in sites targeted by the Environ-
mental Protection Agency’s Superfund.
In Fife, plots bearing trees have been re-
moving more than 97 percent of the
TCE piped in—and the numbers are
Hawaiian koa, even eucalyptus. “It’s im-
portant to get the right tree for the job,”
Newman remarks; if the lucky streak
continues, more of these gentle giants
will prove to be naturals.
trichloroethane gushed over the ground; improving with each season. —Mia Schmiedeskamp in Oregon
13 years and multiple cleanup efforts Gordon suspects two fates
later, the chemical still leaches from the for TCE in his poplars. Some
soil, feeding a spreading pool of con- may be bound up in an inert
taminated groundwater that infiltrates form in the poplars’ tissues, in
nearby drinking wells. Born in an in- which case the trees could be
stant, the spill could take decades of harvested and burned to de-
work to eliminate. stroy the chemical. The rest is
Now scientists led by Milton Gordon, broken down by the plant. Ex-
Lee Newman and Stuart Strand of the periments conducted on poplar
University of Washington propose a cells cultured in the laboratory
sylvan solution: let trees treat the con- indicate that the trees can use
tamination. In May the team took the oxidative enzymes to metabo-
first step: it planted nearly 800 hybrid lize TCE and other chlorinated
poplars in neat ranks downstream of organic compounds; the trees
the spill; the rest is simply wait and see. in Fife may be converting TCE
This approach is known as phytore- all the way to normal metabol-
mediation. In the past several years re- ic end points such as carbon
searchers have tested the power of plants dioxide and salts. (That would
to scour toxic substances from earth mark a distinct change in phy-
and water; plants have proved effective toremediation efforts: for ex-
at extracting heavy metals, including ample, in heavy-metal extrac-
isotopes of uranium, cesium and stron- tion plants simply store the tox-
tium. Now experimenters are turning ic substance.)
to trees to handle organic solvents. If the poplars work well in
DAVID J. BOYLE Earth Scenes

Although data on the young poplars the field, they should be espe-
in Oregon will not be in for a while, cially useful for cleaning spills
there is reason to be optimistic. Gordon in densely populated areas. Un-
and his colleagues have been pitting like conventional mechanical
poplars against pollutants in outdoor pump-and-strip systems, the
experiments in Fife, Wash., for the last poplars do not release appre- POPLAR TREES
three growing seasons. Seven days a ciable amounts of solvent into could be hybridized into varieties that soak up
week, from dawn to dusk, researchers the air. Moreover, Strand says, and break down toxic organic compounds in soil.

46 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
12.97.SCI.CIT.5P.DOM 8/7/98 12:44 PM Page 48

CYBER VIEW
On-line Advertising the Infoseek Network. For Infoseek, this Consider the recent reversal of America
is no small development. Whereas search Online’s plans to sell information from
Goes One-on-One engines—the dominant ad forums on- its customer database. The company
line—have typically relied on the sale of quickly backtracked in the face of wide-
key words to target ads (an automaker spread public indignation—despite the

A mid sharply increasing Internet

advertising revenues, a dizzy-
ing array of companies has
formed to serve ads better, to track users
more efficiently and to measure response
might pay to have its ads served to any
users conducting a search on the word
“car”), Ultramatch provides keyword-
level performance for all the ads.
Moreover, SelectCast is unobtrusive,
fact that magazines, charities and gov-
ernment agencies routinely sell the same
type of information with impunity.
To account for this increased sensitiv-
ity, Rip, now at Knight Ridder Ventures,
rates to on-line ad campaigns more ac- unlike the so-called collaborative filter- a venture-capital firm, points to a “sub-
curately. According to Cowles/Simba ing schemes in which users define their culture of distrust on the Internet fueled
Information, a market research compa- own preferences that are subsequently in part by the increased velocity of in-
ny, midyear revenue figures from ad stored in “cookie” files that the Web formation.” Indeed, the speed with
sales for 1997 are up more than 250 browser automatically sends to a site. which ads can be targeted to individu-
percent from last year, and the annual Because SelectCast does not rely on als is stunning, considering the sheer
figure for 1997 may top $400 million. personal registration to create profiles computational feat involved and the
Of course, that amount is still a far cry (something users are largely unwilling subtlety of the results. That advertisers
from the tremendous sums spent by may be able to exploit predilections
advertisers in the print and broadcast and impulses of which we ourselves
media. To lure dollars away, Internet are perhaps unaware recalls another
businesses have engaged in highly fo- hobgoblin of public perception: sub-
cused marketing—targeting and tai- liminal advertising. Never mind that
loring ads directly to individuals. Now the effectiveness of subliminal ads has
improved software takes that target- long been debunked in scientific cir-
ing—or insidious intrusion, depending cles; public suspicion still lingers.
on your view—to a new level, one in How, then, will the public react to a
which it may not be possible to avoid demonstrably effective and far more
the watching eyes of advertisers. complex system in which every key-
SelectCast, a program offered to word search, every page view, every
Web sites by Aptex Software in San click of the mouse is fed through an
DAVID SUTER

Diego, is perhaps the most compel- arcane black box aimed at influencing
ling. The program is a neural net- human behavior? Will neural nets be
work (software that “learns” on its used to deliver content as well? Imag-
own) and relies on the same kind of to undertake), it can target a site’s en- ine a world in which we all see a differ-
pattern-matching technology used in tire traffic. Even those surfers who dis- ent version of the newspaper, custom-
detecting credit-card fraud. For Select- able the cookies in their browsers may tailored to our interests and political
Cast’s purposes, you are what you do; be monitored without their knowledge leanings. Wouldn’t that encourage each
“affinity profiles” are generated based via session ID, which logs when the of us—paradoxically—to become more
on observed on-line behavior and adapt, user’s machine connects to a site. like ourselves, to narrow our horizons
via feedback loops, to user responses. These abilities concern privacy advo- rather than broaden them?
In this scenario, clicking on an ad ban- cates, who are hard-pressed to find a dis- As with any radically new capability,
ner amounts to a kind of positive rein- tinction between “unobtrusive” and companies in this game will ultimately
forcement by which the program learns “surreptitious.” “All the defaults are have to reckon with the public’s reluc-
about you. Likewise, “ad profiles” can set to collect,” says Lori Fena of the tance. To win its trust will require more
be created, effectively indicating what Electronic Frontier Foundation. “What openness and discourse—of which, so
kinds of users are apt to click on certain we object to,” she continues, “is the far, there have been very little. In turn,
ads. The result is a fast, effective target- collection of any user data without that the public has a choice to make as well.
ing system in which best-fit ads are se- user’s informed consent.” Without a viable revenue stream, after
lected in real time, on the fly. For its part, Aptex emphasizes that it all, the Internet cannot remain free. Sub-
Judging from the results achieved by does not know or record personal infor- scription models have not proved prac-
the search engine Infoseek, which uses mation. It gets only an “irreversibly en- ticable. Commerce still faces hurdles. But
SelectCast under the name “Ultra- coded” mathematical representation of advertising—especially one-on-one ad-
match,” the software is very effective. affinities. Aptex concedes, however, that vertising—is showing promise.
The “click-through” response rates are if a site were to use SelectCast with reg- “What it boils down to,” says Aptex’s
twice as high on average as those for all istration forms, they could correlate the John Gaffney, “is that to do one-to-one
advertising links across the rest of the two data sets, thereby obtaining more we have to learn something about you.”
Internet. For some ads, the figures are complete profiles of registered users. The public will be left to decide wheth-
as much as five times higher, according The specter of that kind of data merg- er that is a price it is willing to pay.
to Peter Rip, a former vice president of ing has already made the public leery. —Patrick Joseph in San Francisco

48 Scientific American December 1997 News and Analysis

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
 Metal Clusters
and Magic Numbers
Investigations of tiny lumps of metal
can help bridge the gap in physicists’ understanding
of the differences between isolated atoms and bulk solids

by Matthias Brack

H eat a small piece of metal

until it starts to evaporate.
Blow the vapor through a
slim nozzle into a vacuum chamber.
What happens? The spray of particles
of water or grains of sand, constitute a
fascinating new arrangement of matter.
Although most cluster experiments
involve rather tiny objects, in principle,
metal clusters can be arbitrarily large.
a theoretical physicist, clusters present a
host of intriguing questions: Why are
some clusters more stable than others?
How many atoms are needed before the
properties of a cluster begin to resem-
will condense into tiny clusters contain- These aggregates thus fall between iso- ble those of bulk matter? And how
ing anywhere from a few to several lated atoms or molecules and bulk does the structure of a cluster
SLIM FILMS

thousand atoms of the metal. These solids or liquids. In this sense, they link change as more and more
metal clusters, much smaller than drops the microcosm with the macrocosm. To atoms join together?
 But interest in
metal clusters is not
entirely restricted to
theoretical physicists. For
example, industrial chemists
know from practice that metal
clusters might make exceptionally
good catalysts. Yet metal clusters
may be difficult to harness more effec-
tively until the principles underlying abundant than other sizes. Clusters with
their formation are well understood—a these numbers of atoms predominated To understand why select numbers of
goal that has come increasingly close to because, for some reason, they proved atoms yield stability in a cluster, physi-
being realized over the past decade. exceptionally stable. cists would, ideally, want to determine
Physicists now realize that unstable the detailed configuration of all internal
The Magic of Stability clusters produced at sufficiently high ions and valence electrons—something
temperatures give off extra atoms and that is extremely difficult to ascertain. It

A fundamental characteristic of metal

clusters that scientists must explain
is why certain sizes occur preferentially.
quickly turn into smaller, more stable
clusters. Experimenters have found that
the magic number sequence for stable
turns out, however, that they can obtain
answers for a metal cluster by modeling
it as a smooth “jelly” of positive charge
Chemists grappled with a similar prob- clusters of hot sodium continues with to which the valence electrons are at-
lem more than 100 years ago, when 92, 138, 198, 264, 344, 442, 554 and tracted (a simplification known as the
they formulated the periodic table of el- higher numbers. Sodium clusters (and jellium model).
ements. They found that certain ele- those of several other metals) with these According to the rules of quantum
ments had heightened stability because numbers of atoms remain stable even mechanics, the energies of these elec-
those atoms possessed special numbers when they are so hot they cannot solidi- trons must be quantized—that is, the en-
of electrons. They called the gaseous el- fy and remain only as droplets of liquid. ergy levels are of set amounts and never
ements with 2, 10, 18, The tendency for clusters to form in occur in intermediate values. And in a
36 and 54 elec- exactly these sizes arises from the rules metal cluster, just as in an atom, the
trons “noble gas- of quantum mechanics, which dictate available energy levels for electrons are
es” because, be- that bound electrons can have only cer- not equally spaced. They are grouped
ing chemically in- tain energies. In isolated atoms, elec- into bundles of close-lying levels, sepa-
ert, these atoms trons in excess of the numbers found in rated by larger spacings. For historical
did not interact with noble gas atoms are very loosely held reasons, such bunches of energy levels
the hoi polloi sharing space and tend to stray far from the nuclei. in atoms are called electronic shells, al-
on the periodic table. During These electrons are known as valence though the electrons are not actually
this century, physicists discovered electrons and are responsible for vari- confined to shell-shaped regions. Quan-
that atomic nuclei containing 2, 8, ous chemical properties of the different tum-mechanical rules limit the number
20, 28, 50, 82 and 126 protons or elements. of electrons that can reside in each shell,
neutrons are exceptionally stable. In a cluster of metal atoms (or a larger and if the electrons fill one or more shells
Hence, they called these numbers piece of metal), these valence electrons in an atom completely, the atom does
“magic.” Lead, for example, with its do not remain attached to the particu- not react with others and thus proves
82 protons, is magically stable. (One lar atoms in which they originally resid- exceptionally stable. So the existence of
form of this element, with 126 neu- ed. Instead they flow rather freely be- magic numbers for metal clusters makes
trons, is said to be doubly magic.) tween the atoms and are said to be de- some sense: they correspond to the num-
Metal clusters, it turns out, can localized. But they stay in or around the ber of valence electrons that completely
be magic as well. In 1984 a group cluster because they are attracted to the fill one or more shells in a cluster and
of investigators at the University of now positive charges of the atoms they make it especially sturdy. (The same
California at Berkeley examined left behind. (With the valence electrons mechanism works for filled proton and
clusters formed from hot sodium removed, the positive protons in the neutron energy shells in atomic nuclei
metal. They found that clus- nuclei are no longer completely bal- and explains their magic numbers.)
ters containing 8, 20, anced by an equal number of negative The metal clusters that show the
40 or 58 atoms electrons, and the formerly neutral atom greatest stability are nearly spherical. If
were much more becomes a positively charged ion.) the available electrons cannot fill the
highest energy shell to capacity, howev-
er, the cluster can become flattened or
elongated, and it begins to resemble a
PARTICLE BEAM experiments send tiny amounts of metal pancake or a football. Or it may take up
coursing from a hot source through a long vacuum cham-
ber. Depending on the experimental conditions imposed, the
a more complicated pear, lemon or dia-
metal clusters created in this way may be small molecules mondlike shape or a configuration with
with rigid bonds holding the atoms together, large groupings of no particular symmetry. Such shapes re-
atoms packed into regular polyhedral shapes or jellylike droplets duce the total energy of the cluster,
without solid internal structure. Particularly stable examples of all making it more stable—though not as
three varieties arise in abundance, but not during a single experiment. stable as those clusters with completely

Scientific American December 1997 51

 filled electronic shells. Physicists have along straight lines. These electrons ric- also interfere with each other to produce
long recognized that many stable atom- ochet off the inner surface of the sphere large-scale clustering of energy levels,
ic nuclei also have deformed shapes. So with the angle of incidence equal to the termed supershells.
some of the theoretical tools for de- angle of reflection, a general property Supershells should, in principle, also
scribing deformed clusters come from that holds both for particles bouncing occur in atomic nuclei. But they do not,
previous work in nuclear physics. off a wall and for light waves being re- because nuclei are never large enough
flected by a mirror. This crude model to support them: it takes some 800 to
Supershells works because the valence electrons are 1,000 particles to give rise to the first
essentially free within the cluster but supershell beat, whereas the largest nu-

T he formalism of quantum mechan-

ics fully accounts for the electronic
shells of clusters and their correspond-
cannot leave it.
The periodic orbits in a spherical cav-
ity are just the trajectories that the par-
clei created so far have fewer than 200
neutrons and 120 protons. But super-
shells can in fact be found in large met-
ing magic numbers. But to many non- ticles can take: they shoot back and forth al clusters. In 1991 physicists at the
specialists, this explanation is not very along a diameter or follow around var- Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and
satisfying, because the rules of quantum ious polygons with three or more cor- at the Max Planck Institute for Solid
mechanics often appear counterintuitive ners. Physicists can derive the approxi- State Research in Stuttgart observed su-
and are hard to visualize. Fortunately, it mate distribution of allowable energy pershells for hot sodium clusters. Shortly
is possible to achieve some understand- levels by considering only the periodic thereafter, researchers at the Aimé Cot-
ing of magic numbers using classical for- orbits that have the shortest length and ton Laboratory in Orsay, France, found
mulations that correspond to one’s dai- occur most frequently. The three short- evidence for supershells in lithium clus-
ly experience with macroscopic bodies. est orbits are diameters, triangles and ters, and investigators at the University
This approach requires the periodic squares, but for subtle reasons having of Lyon-I detected supershells in galli-
orbit theory, which scientists developed to do with the geometry, the diameters um clusters.
in the early 1970s to serve as a bridge occur relatively infrequently. The periodic orbit theory for the spher-
between quantum mechanics and clas- Using only the triangles and squares, ical cavity model predicts that the cube
sical mechanics. Periodic orbit theory the calculation yields a pattern of energy root of a magic number, which corre-
allows physicists to determine, with shells that is, in a sense, periodic: when sponds roughly to the radius of the cor-
comparatively little effort, the energies plotted as a function of energy, allow- responding cluster, should increase by
for the major shells in a system contain- able levels appear at regular intervals. the same amount from one shell to the
ing electrons or other small particles. But the repetition does not occur at just next. And when researchers plot the
To visualize how periodic orbit theo- one “frequency.” Rather two different cube roots of the magic numbers ob-
ry applies to clusters, one can imagine frequencies exist, corresponding to the served for various hot metal clusters
that a large metal cluster is nothing but two dominant orbits (triangles and against the shell number, they indeed ob-
a hollow sphere containing valence elec- squares). And much as two overlapping tain a straight line with a slope of 0.61.
trons that move with constant velocity sound waves of similar frequency inter- This result agrees with the periodic orbit
fere with each other to produce lower- theory for the spherical cavity (0.603)
frequency “beats,” the two sets of shells to within about 1 percent. The fuller
SIMPLIFIED MODEL of metal clus-
ters treats them as hollow spheres
with electrons bouncing inside (right).
Using periodic orbit theory, physicists
can calculate the approximate energy
levels of the electrons (horizontal
bars). The two most important kinds
of periodic trajectories (triangles and
squares) interfere to create clusterings
of shells, called supershells. The su-
pershell pattern is seen in experiments
and in more sophisticated theoretical
models (below).
ELECTRON ENERGY
CLUSTER SIZE
SLIM FILMS

LOW HIGH TRIANGLE INTERFERENCE SQUARE

STABILITY

52 Scientific American December 1997 Metal Clusters and Magic Numbers

 ARTHUR CHRISTIE
CLUSTER SIZE, expressed as the cube root of the number of atoms present, always
grows with an increasing number of shells. But the rise (slope) depends on the temper-
25
ature of the cluster beam. Cold sodium clusters consist of icosahedral shells of tightly
packed atoms, a geometry that gives a characteristic slope of about 1.5. In contrast, the

(CUBE ROOT OF NUMBER OF ATOMS)

shape of hot sodium clusters is controlled by electronic shells, which give a slope of COLD SODIUM
about 0.6. (The offset seen at shell number 14 is caused by supershell effects and is well 20 CLUSTERS
explained by the periodic orbit theory.)

CLUSTER SIZE
15
quantum-mechanical calculation using that the magic numbers of hot metal
the jellium model, which is feasible only clusters increase with the number of
for clusters with up to a few thousand electronic energy shells. And the sharp- 10
atoms (larger clusters would require an ness of the rise, or slope, changes for HOT SODIUM
unreasonable amount of computing various kinds of cold clusters. Different CLUSTERS
time), yields exactly the slope observed. slopes, it seems, signal the presence of 5
different polyhedral shapes. For exam-
Perfect Polyhedra ple, cold clusters of sodium or calcium,
which give a slope of about 1.5, most 0
5 10 15 20
T he ancient Greek philosopher Plato
had a vision that the building
blocks of matter are regular polyhedra,
likely form icosahedra. And clusters con-
taining equal numbers of atoms of sodi-
um and iodine, or sodium and chlorine,
SHELL NUMBER

the so-called Platonic solids. Curiously, produce a slope of exactly 1.0, indicat-
in the case of cold metal clusters, he may ing that they form cubes. Why one shape form. Yet we cannot be sure—nobody
not have been far wrong. When a large occurs rather than another remains has seen the icosahedra directly. In prin-
number of metal atoms (about 1,000 or something of a mystery. ciple, the largest clusters could be viewed
more) aggregate slowly at relatively low Cold clusters of aluminum or indium with an electron microscope if they
temperatures, they form tiny solids in pose an especially interesting puzzle. On were at rest. The problem is that free
which the atoms pack themselves tightly, plotting the cube roots of their magic clusters are formed in beams of swiftly
like oranges in a grocer’s pile, to form numbers as a function of shell number, moving atoms, and they cannot be
regular geometric shapes. investigators find a slope of 0.220, stopped for a picture without altering
Physicists can deduce the geometric which is less than the value for stable their shapes.
configuration of these cold metal clus- electronic shells (0.6) but different from
ters by observing how their stability de- the slopes for atoms packed into tetra- Competing Masters
pends on their size. In 1991 researchers hedra (0.550), octahedra (0.874), ico-
at the Max Planck Institute for Solid
State Research allowed sodium atoms to
coalesce at low temperatures and found
sahedra (1.493) or cubes (1.0). In fact,
it is not possible to find a regular poly-
hedron of any kind that, when coated
I n metal clusters composed of a large
number of atoms, the two kinds of
shells (electronic energy shells and atom-
that the most stable clusters formed in with additional layers of atoms, gives ic shells forming perfect polyhedra)
completely different sizes from those that the set of magic numbers observed for compete for control over form and sta-
occur at high temperatures. That is, an these clusters. bility of the cluster. Size and temperature
entirely new set of magic numbers op- Members of the Stuttgart group have are critical in determining which type
erated. These investigators soon con- proposed one possible solution—that of shell prevails. But to measure the
cluded that the newly observed magic such aluminum or indium clusters grow temperature of isolated clusters travel-
numbers corresponded to collections of as octahedra but that in going from one ing in a beam is quite difficult; one might
atoms packed into perfect icosahedra, magic number to the next, only enough even ask whether a temperature can be
20-sided solids with triangular faces. atoms are added to cover one triangu- defined at all. Strictly speaking, temper-
In such experiments, a specific se- lar facet at a time. This behavior would ature is meaningful only for systems of
quence of magic numbers arises as larg- lead to the shallow slope that is seen. many particles in thermodynamic equi-
er and larger icosahedra form through Their explanation seems plausible, but librium. But this condition is not real-
the addition of layers of sodium that it immediately raises a new, as yet un- ized in most cluster experiments. Rather
are only one atom thick. These “atomic answered question: Why are complete each cluster formed in a beam follows
shells” resemble, in a crude sense, the octahedra not much more stable than its own path, unaffected by its neigh-
layered skin of an onion. The simple those with only one or two triangular bors. Such isolated clusters do not at-
polyhedral shapes formed in this way facets added? tain thermodynamic equilibrium. So,
are more stable than irregular arrange- Interestingly, the magic numbers aris- short of sticking a thermometer against
ments because the energy required to ing from atomic packing do not unique- a tiny cluster under study—an experi-
hold the atoms in place is reduced when ly determine the shape of the polyhedra mental impossibility—there is no easy
the number of edges is minimized. Na- involved. For example, the magic num- way to determine its temperature.
ture, it seems, likes the economy of per- bers associated with icosahedra coin- Still, the trends are clear. By heating
fect polyhedra. cide with magic numbers that would be the nozzle of the source under carefully
The magic numbers for cold metal found for cubo-octahedra (cubes with controlled conditions, the shells of neat-
clusters, when plotted in terms of their their corners cut off). Careful study of ly packed icosahedra in cold sodium
cube roots, increase with the number of cold calcium clusters has suggested to clusters seem to disappear. This transi-
atomic shells—but not at the same rate scientists that it is the icosahedra that tion presumably corresponds to the

Metal Clusters and Magic Numbers Scientific American December 1997 53

 melting of solid clusters. The melting slope of 0.220 (the number that sug- phase transition between solid and liq-
temperature in this case depends on the gests the packing of atoms on the facets uid itself becomes problematic for ob-
size of the cluster. of perfect octahedra). Instead they jects of this size. Perhaps the clusters are
Researchers have found a similar show a slope of about 0.6, which is typ- experiencing a local melting of their
transition in clusters made of alu- ical of electronic shells. It seems reason- surfaces that is sufficient to destroy the
minum. When the temperature of the able to surmise that these clusters have structure controlled by the packing of
source exceeds 500 kelvins, which is become molten, even though the tem- ions, allowing the stability conferred by
still far below the melting temperature perature of the nozzle is well below the completed electronic shells to reign.
of bulk aluminum, plots of the cube melting point of the bulk metal. But Physicists at the University of Frei-
root of magically stable cluster sizes that conclusion may be overly simplis- burg have recently observed a some-
versus shell number cease to exhibit the tic: as with temperature, the notion of a what different but related transition. To

Packing for the Cold

S cientists can explain the exceptional stability of cold metal

clusters with geometry. For example, cold clusters of sodium
prove especially stable when the atoms pack neatly into an ico-
dra, prove somewhat more difficult to explain. Stability is high
when the atoms pack into perfect octahedra (right), but maxima
also occur at intermediate sizes. The reason may be that en-
sahedron, a 20-sided solid. Hence, charts of stability as a func- hanced stability also arises when atoms cover individual faces of
tion of cluster size show distinct peaks when the number of an octahedron (red layers, below). Because adding a fourth addi-
atoms available is such that they form perfect icosahedra (left). tional face completes an octahedron of the next largest size, only
Cold clusters of aluminum atoms, which pack into tiny octahe- three intermediate stability maxima are expected. —M.B.

INTERMEDIATE MAXIMA

HIGH HIGH
STABILITY

STABILITY

LOW LOW
2,000 2,500 3,000 1,800 1,900 2,000 2,100 2,200 2,300
NUMBER OF ATOMS NUMBER OF ATOMS

SLIM FILMS; SOURCE: T. P. MARTIN Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research

891-ATOM OCTAHEDRON ONE FACE ADDED TWO FACES ADDED THREE FACES ADDED 1,156-ATOM OCTAHEDRON

54 Scientific American December 1997 Metal Clusters and Magic Numbers

 ARTHUR CHRISTIE; SOURCE: MARTIN SCHMIDT AND HELLMUT HABERLAND University of Freiburg
HIGH
PHOTOABSORPTION

8
LOW

7
6 CY
E Q UEN
R Z )
5 ER F4 ERT
LAS 101 H
35 100 120 142 164 188 209 229 249 269 380 (x
TEMPERATURE (KELVINS)

LASER PHOTOABSORPTION SPECTRA reveal that clusters clusters of sodium held at low temperatures (blue shades). But
are transformed from rigid molecules to structureless masses as at high temperatures (orange shades), the spectra smooth to show
temperature rises. The probability of photon absorption varies just two broad humps, consistent with the so-called jellium
markedly with laser frequency, a characteristic of molecules, for model that physicists use for clusters lacking internal structure.

control the temperature of small sodi- cule, whereas for temperatures above as many as 21,000 atoms. Yet it is clear
um clusters in a better way, they used a 380 kelvins, they found a spectrum with that sodium in bulk does not contain
clever trick: they embedded the clusters just two broad humps, positioned as such icosahedra. In fact, no bulk mate-
in helium gas, for which they could ad- one would predict theoretically for an rial can be built up by packing icosahe-
just the temperature quite accurately. In unstructured jelly. dra together: just as pentagonal tiles
this mixture of helium atoms and sodi- For the smallest clusters, where the cannot be made to cover a plane, icosa-
um clusters, many collisions take place. internal structure is always important, hedra lack the symmetry needed to
But because helium is a noble gas (that rigorous quantum-mechanical calcula- form extended crystals in three dimen-
is, it remains chemically inactive), it does tions that take into account all electrons sions by filling out the space complete-
not change the structure of the clusters— in each atom are possible. They reveal ly. So even the most massive sodium
at least at moderate temperatures. So the detailed molecular structure of the clusters produced so far have their at-
the helium provides an environment in clusters and can give quite precise de- oms organized quite differently from the
which a thermodynamic equilibrium can scriptions of their stability. For larger way they occur in bulk sodium.
establish itself. aggregates with some hundred atoms Part of the initial motivation for study-
What the scientists examined in this or more, such calculations take up too ing clusters was to determine how many
case were not magic numbers but the much computing time to carry out, and atoms are required for a tiny lump of
way in which sodium clusters of one physicists have to invoke the jellium material to attain the properties of the
fixed size absorb the light of a laser model. For clusters with many thou- bulk solid. Physicists have learned a
beam. The probability for light absorp- sands of atoms, researchers must aban- great deal about metal clusters and the
tion as a function of laser frequency (the don quantum mechanics and invoke the magic number sizes that bring stability
absorption spectrum) can reveal much simplified periodic orbit theory or rely to them. But we still do not know the
about the physical condition of the par- on indirect information from the magic answer to this fundamental question
ticles illuminated. In particular, the spec- numbers found experimentally. about when and how the transition to
tra for cold, rigid molecules and hot, Scientists have come a long way since the bulk solid occurs. All we can say for
liquid droplets differ. For temperatures 1984 in understanding and extending now is that the clusters of metal atoms
below 100 kelvins, the experimenters magic number sequences in metal clus- we have studied constitute a weirdly
observed a spectrum with many sharp ters. Some experiments have produced unique arrangement of matter, one that
peaks, which is typical of a rigid mole- icosahedral sodium clusters made up of surely offers more surprises to come. SA

The Author Further Reading

MATTHIAS BRACK received his educa- Semiclassical Physics. Matthias Brack and Rajat K. Bhaduri. Addison-Wesley, 1977.
tion in physics at the Niels Bohr Institute Clusters, Condensed Matter in Embryonic Form. Sven Bjørnholm in Contemporary
in Copenhagen and at the University of Physics, Vol. 31, No. 5, pages 309–324; September 1990.
Basel, where he received a Ph.D. in 1972. The Physics of Metal Clusters. M. L. Cohen and W. D. Knight in Physics Today, Vol.
He has done research on nuclear physics at 43, No. 12, pages 42–50; December 1990.
the Niels Bohr Institute, at the State Uni- The Physics of Simple Metal Clusters: Experimental Aspects and Simple Models,
versity of New York at Stony Brook and at by Walt A. de Heer, pages 611–676; and Self-Consistent Jellium Model and Semiclas-
the Laue Langevin Institute in Grenoble. sical Approaches, by Matthias Brack, pages 677–732. In Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol.
Since 1978 he has been a professor of the- 65, No. 3, Part 1; July 1993.
oretical physics at the University of Re- Shells of Atoms. T. P. Martin in Physics Reports, Vol. 273, No. 4, pages 199–242; August
gensburg in Germany. 1996.

Metal Clusters and Magic Numbers Scientific American December 1997 55

The Case for Relic
Life on Mars
A meteorite found in Antarctica offers
strong evidence that Mars has had—
and may still have—microbial life

by Everett K. Gibson, Jr., David S. McKay,

Kathie Thomas-Keprta and
Christopher S. Romanek

METEORITE TIMELINE begins

with the crystallization of the rock on
the surface of Mars, during the first 1 per-
cent of the planet’s history. Less than a bil-
lion years later the rock was shocked and frac-
tured by meteoritic collisions. Some time after
these impacts, a water-rich fluid flowed through
the fractures, and tiny globules of carbonate min-
erals formed in them. At the same time, molecular
by-products, such as hydrocarbons, of the decay
of living organisms were deposited in or near the
globules by that fluid. Impacts on the surface of
Mars continued to shock the rock, fracturing the
globules, before a powerful collision ejected the
rock into space. After falling to Earth, the mete-
orite lay in the Antarctic for millennia before it
was found and its momentous history revealed.

The Case for Relic Life on Mars

 1984

O
METEORITE COLLECTED
f all the scientific subjects that have seized
IN ANTARCTICA
the public psyche, few have held on as
tightly as the idea of life on Mars. Starting
not long after the invention of the telescope and continuing for 1993
a good part of the past three centuries, the subject has inspired innu-
merable studies, ranging from the scientific to the speculative. But com-
mon to them all was recognition of the fact that in our solar system, if a planet
other than Earth harbors life, it is almost certainly Mars.
Interest in Martian life has tended to coincide with new discoveries about the myste-
rious red world. Historically, these discoveries have often occurred after one of the pe- SAMPLE ALH84001
riodic close approaches between the two planets. Every 15 years, Mars comes within IDENTIFIED AS
about 56 million kilometers of Earth (the next approach will occur in the summer of METEORITE FROM MARS
2003). Typically, life on Mars was assumed to be as intelligent and sophisticated as that
of Homo sapiens, if not more so. (Even less explicably, Martian beings have been pop- 1996
ularly portrayed as green and diminutive.)
It was after one of the close approaches in the late 19th century that Italian as-
tronomer Giovanni V. Schiaparelli announced that he had seen great lines stretching
across the planet’s surface, which he called canali. At the turn of the century, U.S. as-
tronomer Percival Lowell insisted that the features were canals constructed by an ad-
vanced civilization. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, any lingering theories about the
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER; DIGITAL COMPOSITION BY JENNIFER C. CHRISTIANSEN

lines and elaborate civilizations were put to rest after the U.S. and the Soviet Union sent
the first space probes to the planet. The orbiters showed that there were in fact no
canals, although there were long, huge canyons. Within a decade, landers found no ev-
idence of life, let alone intelligent life and civilization.
Although the debate about intelligent life was essentially over, the discussions about
microbial life on the planet—particularly life that may have existed on the warmer, wet-
ter Mars of billions of years ago—were just beginning. In August 1996 this subject was
thrust into the spotlight when we and a number of our colleagues at the National Aero-
nautics and Space Administration Johnson Space Center and at Stanford University an-
nounced that unusual characteristics in a meteorite known to have come from Mars
could most reasonably be interpreted as the vestiges of ancient Martian bacterial life.
The 1.9-kilogram, potato-sized meteorite, designated ALH84001, had been found in
Antarctica in 1984.
Our theory was by no means universally embraced. Some researchers insisted that
there were nonbiological explanations for the meteorite’s peculiarities and that these ra-
tionales were more plausible than our biological explanation. We remain convinced
that the facts and analyses that we will outline in this article point to the existence of a
The Case for Relic Life on Mars Scientific American December 1997 59
NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

MARTIAN ROCK,
also known as ALH-
84001, is shown here (top
left) at actual size. The mete-
orite consists mostly of orthopy-
roxene, a silicate mineral. The rock
was cut, exposing a cross section (middle
left). The vertical crack slightly to the right of the
center of the cut face is a fracture through which fluid
flowed and deposited globules of carbonate minerals. A two-mil-
limeter-long chip of the meteorite (bottom left) contains several
of the globules, which are approximately 200 microns across.
The concentration of organic compounds known as polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons is highest in and around the carbonate
globules. The finding suggests that the fluid that flowed through
the fracture contained the decay products of living organ-
isms, which were trapped by the forming globules.

primitive form of life. Moreover, such

life-forms may still exist on Mars if, as
some researchers have theorized, pore
spaces and cracks in rocks below the sur-
NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

face of the planet contain liquid water.

Why should researchers even care
about the possible existence of such a
simple form of life billions of years ago
on the red planet? Certainly, the preva-
lence of life in the universe is among the
most profound scientific questions. Yet
almost no hard data exist that can be
used to theorize on that issue. Confir-
MAGNIFIED VIEW OF CARBONATE GLOBULE mation that primitive life once flour-
MAGNIFIED
VIEW OF ished on Mars would be extremely use-
METEORITE ful to those studying the range of condi-
FRAGMENT tions under which a planet can generate
the complex chemistry from which life
evolves. Then, too, the information
could help us understand the origin of
life on Earth. Ultimately, these kinds of
insights could elucidate various hypoth-
eses—which are currently little more
JOHN W. VALLEY University of Wisconsin–Madison

than guesses—about how common life

is in the universe.
CARBONATE
GLOBULES Inhospitable Planet

C onditions on Mars today are not

hospitable to life as we know it.
The planet’s atmosphere consists of 95
percent carbon dioxide, 2.7 percent ni-

60 Scientific American December 1997 The Case for Relic Life on Mars
trogen, 1.6 percent argon and only trace formed, so far as planetary scientists materials within various types of mete-
amounts of oxygen and water vapor. know, only when water comes into con- orites have unique relative abundances.
Surface pressure is less than 1 percent tact with other minerals in the rock. The finding was significant because it
of Earth’s, and daily temperatures rarely Of course, the entire argument hinges demonstrates that the bodies of our so-
exceed zero degrees Celsius, even in the on ALH84001’s having come from the lar system formed from distinct regions
planet’s warmest regions in the summer. red planet. Of this, at least, we can be of the solar nebula and thus have unique
Most important, one of life’s most fun- certain. It is one of several meteorites oxygen isotopic compositions. Using this
damental necessities, liquid water, seems found since the mid-1970s in meteor- isotopic “fingerprint,” Clayton helped
not to exist on the planet’s surface. ite-rich regions in Antarctica [see box to show that a group of 12 meteorites,
Given these realities, it is perhaps not on next two pages]. In the early 1980s including ALH84001, are indeed close-
surprising that the two Viking space Donald D. Bogard and Pratt Johnson of ly related. The combination of trapped
probes that settled on the planet’s sur- the NASA Johnson Space Center began Martian atmospheric gases and the
face, in July and September of 1976, studying a group of meteorites found to specific distribution of oxygen isotopes
failed to find any evidence of life. The contain minute bubbles of gas trapped has led researchers to conclude that the
results cast doubt on—but did not com- within glass inside the rock. The glass is meteorites must have come from Mars.
pletely rule out—the possibility that there believed to have formed during impacts
is life on Mars. The landers, which were with meteoroids or comets while the Invader from Mars
equipped to detect organic compounds rock was on the surface of Mars. Some
at a sensitivity level of one part per bil-
lion, found none, either at the surface
or in the soil several centimeters down.
of these glass-producing impacts appar-
ently imparted enough energy to eject
fragments out into space; from there,
O ther analyses, mainly of radioiso-
topes, have enabled researchers to
outline ALH84001’s history from its
Similarly, three other experiments found some of these rocks were captured by origins on the red planet to the present
no evidence of microbial organisms. Ul- Earth’s gravitational field. This impact day. The three key time periods of inter-
timately, researchers concluded that the scenario is the only one that planetary est are the age of the rock (the length of
possibility of life on Mars was quite scientists believe can account for the ex- time since it crystallized on Mars), how
low and that a more definite statement istence on our world of bits of Mars. long the meteorite traveled in space and
on the issue would have to await the Bogard and Johnson found that the how long it has been on Earth. Analysis
analysis of more samples by future lan- tiny samples of gas trapped in the glass of three different sets of radioactive iso-
ders—and, it was hoped, the return of of some of the meteorites had the exact topes in the meteorite have established
some samples from the red planet for chemical and isotopic compositions as each of these time periods.
detailed study on Earth. gases in the atmosphere of Mars, which The length of time since the rock soli-
Although the landers found no evi- had been measured by the Viking lan- dified from molten materials—the so-
dence of life on present-day Mars, pho- ders in 1976. The one-to-one correlation called crystallization age of the materi-
tographs of the planet taken from orbit between the two gas samples—over a al—has been determined through the
by the Viking craft, as well as earlier range of nine orders of magnitude— use of three different dating techniques.
images made by the Mariner 9 probe, strongly suggests that these meteorites One uses isotopes of rubidium and
strongly suggest that great volumes of are from Mars. In all, five meteorites strontium, another, neodymium and sa-
water had sculpted the planet’s surface have been shown to contain samples of marium, and the third, argon. All three
a few billion years ago and perhaps as trapped Martian atmosphere. ALH- methods indicated that the rock is 4.5
recently as several hundred million years 84001 was not among the five so ana- billion years old. By geologic standards
ago [see “Global Climatic Change on lyzed; however, its distribution of oxygen the rock is extremely old; the 4.5-bil-
Mars,” by Jeffrey S. Kargel and Robert isotopes, minerology and other charac- lion-year figure means that it crystallized
G. Strom; Scientific American, No- teristics place it in the same group with within the first 1 percent of Mars’s his-
vember 1996]. the other five Martian rocks. tory. In comparison, the other 11 Mar-
In addition, various meteorites found The distribution of oxygen isotopes tian meteorites that have been analyzed
on Earth and known to be of Martian within a group of meteorites has been are all between 1.3 billion years old and
origin—including ALH84001 itself—of- the most convincing piece of evidence 165 million years old. It is remarkable
fer tangible proof of Mars’s watery past establishing that the rocks—including that a rock so old, and so little altered
because they show unambiguous signs ALH84001—come from Mars. In the on Mars or during its residence in the
of having been altered by water. Specif- early 1970s Robert N. Clayton and his Antarctic ice, became available for sci-
ically, some of these meteorites have co-workers at the University of Chicago entists to study.
been found to contain carbonates, sul- showed that the isotopes oxygen 16, The duration of the meteorite’s space
fates, hydrates and clays, which can be oxygen 17 and oxygen 18 in the silicate odyssey was determined through the
NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

MARTIAN WATER droplet was extracted by heating a chip of tration Johnson Space Center performed the extraction in 1991.
a meteorite from Mars. Researcher Haraldur R. Karlsson and Liquid water, which existed on the surface of Mars in the past, is
his colleagues at the National Aeronautics and Space Adminis- a requirement for life.

The Case for Relic Life on Mars Scientific American December 1997 61
 analysis of still other isotopes, namely ered, the meteorite now known as ALH- distant past. Basically, the case for an-
helium 3, neon 21 and argon 38. While 84001 proved unusual and intriguing. cient microbial life on Mars is built al-
a meteorite is in space, it is bombarded In 1984 U.S. geologist Roberta Score most entirely around the globules.
by cosmic rays and other high-energy found the meteorite in the Far Western Individually, none of the features we
particles. The particles interact with the Icefield of the Allan Hills Region. Score found are strongly indicative of life.
nuclei of certain atoms in the meteorite, recognized that the rock was unique be- Collectively, however—and especially

NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

producing the three isotopes listed cause of its pale greenish-gray color. within the confines of the tiny discoids—
above. By studying the abundances and The sample turned out to consist of 98 the globules can be plausibly explained
production rates of these cosmogenical- percent coarse-grained orthopyroxene as the ancient vestiges of microbial life.
ly produced isotopes, scientists can de- [(Mg,Fe)SiO3], a silicate mineral. There The features fall into several categories
termine how long the meteorite was ex- are also relatively minor amounts of of evidence. One category centers on the
posed to the high-energy flux and, feldspathic glass, which is also known presence of tiny iron oxides and iron
therefore, how long the specimen was as maskelynite (NaAlSi3O8), olivine sulfide grains, which resemble those
in space. Using this approach, research- [(Mg,Fe)2SiO4], chromite (FeCr2O4) and formed by terrestrial bacteria. The sec-
ers concluded that after being torn free pyrite (FeS2) as well as carbonate phas- ond group revolves around the presence
from the planet, ALH84001 spent 16 es and phyllosilicates. of organic carbon molecules in and on
million years in space before falling in the globules. Finally, unusual structures
the Antarctic. Carbonates Are Key found within the globules bear a striking
To determine how long the meteorite resemblance to bacteria fossils found on
lay in the Antarctic ice, A. J. Timothy
Jull of the University of Arizona used
carbon 14 dating. When silicates are
T he most interesting aspect of ALH-
84001 are the carbonates, which
exist as tiny discoids, like flattened
Earth. Another relevant piece of evi-
dence suggests the globules formed from
a water-rich fluid below 100 degrees C.
exposed to cosmic rays in space, carbon spheres, 20 to 250 microns in diameter. NASA Johnson Space Center research-
14 is produced. In time, the rates of pro- They cover the walls of cracks in the ers, along with Monica Grady of the
duction and decay of carbon 14 balance, meteorite and are oriented in such a British Museum of Natural History and
and the meteorite becomes saturated way that they are flattened against the workers at the Open University in the
with the isotope. The balance is upset inside walls of the fractures [see illustra- U.K., performed the first isotopic analy-
when the meteorite falls from space and tion on page 60]. The globules were ap- sis of carbon and oxygen in the carbon-
production of carbon 14 ceases. The parently deposited from a fluid saturat- ate globules. The carbon analysis indi-
decay goes on, however, reducing the ed with carbon dioxide that percolated cates that the globules have more car-
amount in the rock by one half every through the fracture after the silicates bon 13 than any carbonates found on
5,700 years. By determining the differ- were formed. None of the other 11 me- Earth but just the right amount to have
ence between the saturation level and teorites known to have come from Mars come from Mars.
the amount measured in the silicates, have such globules. Most carbon on Earth is made up of
researchers can determine how long the It was within the carbonate globules 98.9 percent carbon 12 and 1.1 percent
meteorite has been on Earth. Jull’s find- that our research team found the assort- carbon 13. Various reactions, however,
ing was that ALH84001 fell from space ment of unique features that led us to can alter this ratio. For example, in gen-
13,000 years ago. hypothesize that microbial organisms eral a sample of carbon that has been a
From the very moment it was discov- came into contact with the rock in the part of an organic chemical system—

The Budget Space Probe

EXPOSED
SNOWFALL BURIED METEORITE
METEORITE
METEORITE
WIND FLOW

MOUNTAIN
EROSION
BLUE ICE ICE FLOW SURFACE
LAURIE GRACE

BEDROCK

A combination of geologic and meteorological phenomena will in time become exposed near the mountain. The reason is
gather meteorites at the bases of Antarctica’s mountains. After that the winds slowly but continuously “ablate” the ice above the
landing, the meteorites become buried in compressed snow, meteorites, turning it into a gas. Ablation exposes areas of ice
which eventually becomes ice. Sheets of ice move toward the that had been buried deep under the surface, so meteorites are
edges of the continent, carrying the meteorites with them. If a found on ice that is generally more than 10,000 years old and is
mountain blocks horizontal movement of the meteorites, they bluish in color.

62 Scientific American December 1997 The Case for Relic Life on Mars
SEGMENTED OBJECT (above, left) is 380 nanometers in length the right-hand photograph is believed to be a microfossil. The object,
and was found in a carbonate globule in meteorite ALH84001. The which is also 380 nanometers long, was found 400 meters below
minute structure resembles fossilized bacteria, or microfossils, found Earth’s surface (in Washington State) in a type of geologic formation
on Earth. For example, the vertically oriented object to the right in known as Columbia River Basalt.

say, in plant matter—is somewhat more do not survive at temperatures above We are extremely interested in the
enriched in carbon 12, whereas carbon about 115 degrees C. The NASA-U.K. age of the carbonates, because it would
in limestone is relatively enriched in team analyzed the oxygen isotopes in allow us to estimate when microbial life
carbon 13. The carbon in the globules the carbonate globules. Those findings left its mark on the rock that became
of ALH84001 is more enriched in car- strongly suggest that the globules formed ALH84001. Yet all we can say for sure
bon 13 than any natural materials on at temperatures no higher than 100 de- is that the carbonates crystallized in the
Earth. Moreover, the enrichment is dif- grees C. Earlier this year John W. Valley fractures in the meteorite some time af-
ferent from that of the other 11 Mar- of the University of Wisconsin–Madi- ter the rock itself crystallized. Various
tian meteorites. This fact suggests that son used an ion microprobe technique research groups have come up with ages
the carbon in the globules—unlike the to confirm our finding. ranging from 1.3 to 3.6 billion years;
trace amounts of carbon seen in the It should be noted that another re- the data gathered so far, however, are
other Martian meteorites—may have search group, led by Ralph P. Harvey of insufficient to date the carbonate glob-
been derived from Mars’s atmosphere. Case Western Reserve University, has ules conclusively.
Analysis of the distribution of oxygen analyzed the chemical composition of
isotopes in the carbonates can provide the minerals in the carbonates with an Biomineral Clues
information about the temperature at electron microprobe and concluded that
which those minerals formed. The sub-
ject bears directly on the question of
whether the carbonates were formed at
the carbonates formed at 700 degrees
C. In our view, Harvey’s findings are at
odds with a growing body of evidence
T he first category of evidence in-
volves certain minerals found in-
side the carbonate globules; the type
temperatures that could support micro- that the globules formed at relatively and arrangement of the minerals are
bial life, because terrestrial organisms low temperatures. similar, if not identical, to certain bio-

I n 1969 a team of Japanese glaciologists working near the

Yamato Mountains in Antarctica discovered eight meteorites
in an ice field known to be more than 10,000 years old. The dis-
solid ice converts directly to a gas, removes typically two to three
centimeters of ice per year. As ice is removed, the meteorites
within are exposed on the surface of the ice sheet. The end result
covery was remarkable because the meteorites were of four dif- is that meteorites are continuously accumulating and being ex-
ferent types, indicating that they could not have all fallen at the humed at the base of Antarctica’s mountains. Because ablation
same time, as fragments of the same meteorite. exposes areas of ice that had been buried deep under the firn,
It did not take glaciologists long to figure out how ice flows the meteorites are always found on regions of old, bluish ice.
consolidate the rocks. Meteorites landing on the Antarctic ice Nowhere else in the world does this marvelous concentration
become buried in compressed snow, called firn, which in time mechanism occur. Only the Antarctic has the necessary combi-
becomes ice. This ice eventually becomes “old” ice, which is nation of moving glaciers and mountainous barriers.
bluish in color. Over the past 28 years, scientific teams have recovered more
Propelled by gravity, masses of ice move at a rate of about two than 17,000 meteorites. The vast majority of samples came from
to three meters a year from the relatively lofty interior of the the asteroid belt, but the Antarctic harvest has also yielded 14
Antarctic continent to the edges (left). If an obstacle such as a samples from the moon and six from Mars.
mountain range impedes the flow of ice, the ice mass pushes up- Delivered as they are free of charge, meteorites have been
ward against the barrier. The ice—and the meteorites it con- called the poor man’s space probe. Before the discovery of the
tains—can make no more horizontal progress. In the meantime, Antarctic meteorite cache, the world’s meteorite collections had
as the winds blow over it, the surface layer of ice is slowly re- only between 2,000 and 2,500 different specimens.
moved by a process known as ablation. Ablation, in which the —E.K.G., D.S.M., K.T.-K. and C.S.R.

The Case for Relic Life on Mars Scientific American December 1997 63
minerals found on Earth. Inside, the and decay, they create hydrocarbons as- bodies [see photomicrographs on pre-
globules are rich in magnesite (MgCO3) sociated with coal, peat and petroleum. ceding page]. The objects are around
and siderite (FeCO3) and have small Many of these hydrocarbons belong to 380 nanometers long, which means they
amounts of calcium and manganese car- a class of organic molecules known as could very well be the fossilized remains
bonates. Fine-grained particles of mag- polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of bacteria. To pack in all the compo-
netite (Fe3O4) and sulfides ranging in (PAHs). There are thousands of differ- nents that are normally required for a
size from 10 to 100 nanometers on a ent PAHs. Their presence in a sample typical terrestrial bacterium to function,
side are present within the carbonate does not in itself demonstrate that bio- sizes larger than 250 nanometers seem
host. The magnetite crystals are cuboid, logical processes occurred. It is the lo- to be required. Additional tubelike
teardrop or irregular in shape. Individ- cation and association of the PAHs in curved structures found in the globules
ual crystals have well-preserved struc- the carbonate globules that make their are 500 to 700 nanometers in length.
tures with little evidence of defects or discovery so interesting.
trace impurities. In ALH84001 the PAHs are always Nanobacteria or Appendages?
An analysis of the samples conducted found in carbonate-rich regions, includ-
with high-resolution transmission elec-
tron microscopy coupled with energy-
dispersive spectroscopy indicates that
ing the globules. In our view, the rela-
tively simple PAHs are the decay prod-
ucts of living organisms that were car-
O ther objects found within ALH-
84001 are close to the lower size
limit for bacteria. These ovoids are only
the size, purity, morphology and crystal ried by a fluid and trapped when the 40 to 80 nanometers long; other, tube-
structures of all these magnetites are globules were formed. In 1996 a team shaped bodies range from 30 to 170
typical of magnetites produced by bac- at the Open University showed that the nanometers in length and 20 to 40
teria on Earth. carbon in the globules in ALH84001 nanometers in diameter. These sizes are
Terrestrial magnetite particles associ- has an isotopic composition suggestive about a factor of 10 smaller than
ated with fossilized bacteria are known of microbes that used methane as a food the terrestrial microbes that are
as magnetofossils. These particles are source. If confirmed, this finding will be commonly recognized as bacteria.
found in a variety of sediments and soils one of the strongest pieces of evidence Still, typical cells often have ap-
and are classified, according to size, as to date that the rock bears the imprint pendages that are generally quite
superparamagnetic (less than 20 nano- of biological activity. small—in fact about the same size
meters on an edge) or single-domain (20 In our 1996 announcement, Richard as these features observed within
to 100 nanometers). The magnetites N. Zare and Simon J. Clemett of Stan- ALH84001. It may be possible
within ALH84001 are typically 40 to ford used an extremely sensitive analyt- that some of the features are frag-
60 nanometers on an edge. ical technique to show that ALH84001 ments or parts of larger units
Single-domain magnetite has been re- contains a relatively small number of within the sample.
ported in ancient terrestrial limestones different PAHs, all of which have been ALH84001’s numerous ovoid
and is generally regarded as having been identified in the decay products of mi- and elongated features are essen-
produced by bacteria. Most intriguing, crobes. Most important, the PAHs were tially identical in size and mor-
some of the magnetites in ALH84001 found to be located inside the meteorite, phology to those of so-called
are arranged in chains, not unlike pearls where contamination is very unlikely to nanobacteria on Earth. So far lit-
in a necklace. Terrestrial bacteria often have occurred. This crucial finding sup- tle study has been devoted to
produce magnetite in precisely this pat- ports the idea that the carbonates are nanobacteria or bacteria in the
tern, because as they biologically pro- Martian and contain the vestiges of an- 20- to 400-nanometer range. But
cess iron and oxygen from the water, cient living organisms. fossilized bacteria found within
they produce crystals that naturally PAHs are a component of automobile subsurface basalt samples from
align themselves with the Earth’s mag- exhaust, and they have also been found the Columbia River basin in
netic field. in meteorites, planetary dust particles Washington State [see “Microbes
and even in interstellar space. Signifi- Deep inside the Earth,” by James
Organic Carbon Molecules cantly, ultrasensitive analysis of the dis- K. Fredrickson and Tullis C. On-
tribution of the PAHs in ALH84001 in- stott; Scientific American, October

T he presence of organic carbon mol-

ecules in ALH84001 constitutes the
second group of clues. In recent years,
dicated that the PAHs could not have
come from Earth or from an extrater-
restrial source—other than Mars.
1996] have features that are essentially
identical to some of those observed in
the ovoids in ALH84001.
researchers have found organic mole- Perhaps the most visually compelling ALH84001 was present on Mars 4.5
cules not only in Martian meteorites piece of evidence that at least vestiges of billion years ago, when the planet was
but also in ones known to have come microbes came into contact with the rock wetter, warmer and had a denser atmo-
from the asteroid belt in interplanetary are objects that appear to be the fos- sphere. Therefore, we might expect to
space, which could hardly support life. silized remains of microbes themselves. see evidence that the rock had been al-
Nevertheless, the type and relative abun- Detailed examination of the ALH- tered by contact with water. Yet the
dance of the specific organic molecules 84001 carbonates using high-resolution rock bears few traces of so-called aque-
identified in ALH84001 are suggestive scanning electron microscopy (SEM) ous alteration evidence. One such piece
of life processes. The presence of indig- revealed unusual features that are simi- of evidence would be clay minerals,
enous organic molecules within ALH- lar to those seen in terrestrial samples which are often produced by aqueous
84001 is the first proof that such mole- associated with biogenic activity. Close- reactions. The meteorite does indeed
cules have existed on Mars. up SEM views show that the carbonate contain phyllosilicate clay mineral, but
On Earth, when living organisms die globules contain ovoid and tube-shaped only in trace amounts. It is not clear,

64 Scientific American December 1997 The Case for Relic Life on Mars
 moreover, whether the clay mineral ment in the first 600 million years of of water within the pore spaces of a sub-
formed on Mars or in the Antarctic. the planet’s history. These fractures surface reservoir would facilitate their
Mars had liquid water on its surface could serve as pathways for liquid wa- survival. If the carbonates within ALH-
early in its history and may still have an ter and could have harbored any biota 84001 were formed as early as 3.6 bil-
active groundwater system below the that were adapting to the changing con- lion years ago and have biological ori-
permafrost or cryosphere. If surface mi- ditions on the planet. The situation has gins, they may be the remnants of the
croorganisms evolved during a period an analogue on Earth, where thin gaps earliest Martian life.
when liquid water covered parts of between successive lava flows appear to The analyses so far of ALH84001 are
Mars, the microbes might have spread serve as aquifers for the movement and consistent with the meteorite’s carbon-
to subsurface environments when con- containment of groundwater contain- ate globules containing the vestiges of
ditions turned harsh on the surface. The ing living bacteria. ancient microbial life. Studies of the
surface of Mars contains abundant ba- Organisms may also have developed meteorite are far from over, however.
salts that were undoubtedly fractured at hot springs or in underground hydro- Whether or not these investigations
during the period of early bombard- thermal systems on Mars where chemi- confirm or modify our hypothesis, they
cal disequilibriums can be maintained will be invaluable learning experiences
in environments somewhat analogous for researchers, who may get the op-
WATER FROST, probably only microns to those of the mineral-rich “hot smok- portunity to put the experience to use
thick, covers parts of red, rocky Martian ers” on the seafloor of Earth. in coming years. We hope that in 2005
soil in a photograph taken by the Viking 2 Thus, it is entirely possible that if or- a “sample-return” mission will be
lander in May 1979. The image was seen as ganisms existed on Mars in the distant launched to collect Martian rocks and
further evidence that water exists on the sur- past, they may still be there. Availability soil robotically and return them to
face of the planet, albeit in solid form. Earth two and a half years later. To take
off from the Martian surface for the re-

NASA JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

turn to Earth, this revolutionary mis-
sion may use oxygen produced on the
Martian surface by breaking down car-
bon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere.
Through projects such as the sample
return, we will finally begin to collect
the kind of data that will enable us to
determine conclusively whether life
came into being on Mars. This kind of
insight, in turn, may ultimately provide
perspective on one of the greatest scien-
tific mysteries: the prevalence of life in
our universe. SA

A hyperlinked version of this article

and links to underlined titles below are
available at http://www.sciam.com on
the Scientific American World Wide
Web site.

The Authors Further Reading

EVERETT K. GIBSON, JR., DAVID S. MCKAY, KATHIE Mars. Edited by Hugh H. Kieffer, Bruce M. Jakosky, Conway W.
THOMAS-KEPRTA and CHRISTOPHER S. ROMANEK were Snyder and Mildred S. Matthews. University of Arizona Press, 1992.
members of the team that first reported evidence of past biological What We Have Learned about Mars from SNC Meteorites.
activity within the ALH84001 meteorite. Gibson, McKay and Harry Y. McSween, Jr., in Meteoritics, Vol. 29, No. 6, pages 757–
Thomas-Keprta work at the National Aeronautics and Space Ad- 779; November 1994.
ministration Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tex.; Romanek, a Search for Past Life on Mars: Possible Relic Biogenic Activi-
former National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the ty in Martian Meteorite ALH84001. David S. McKay et al. in
Johnson center, is with the department of geology and the Savan- Science, Vol. 273, pages 924–930; August 16, 1996.
nah River Ecology Laboratory at the University of Georgia. Gib- Microbes Deep inside the Earth. James K. Fredrickson and Tullis
son, a geochemist and meteorite specialist, and McKay, a geologist C. Onstott in Scientific American, Vol. 275, No. 4, pages 68–73; Oc-
and expert on planetary regoliths, are senior scientists in the John- tober 1996.
son center’s Earth Sciences and Solar System Exploration Division. Water on Mars. Michael H. Carr. Oxford University Press, 1996.
Thomas-Keprta, a senior scientist at Lockheed Martin, is a biolo- Destination Mars: In Art, Myth and Science. Jay Barbree and
gist who applies electron microscopy to the study of meteorites, Martin Caidin, with Susan Wright. Penguin Studio, 1997.
interplanetary dust particles and lunar samples. Romanek’s spe- Information on meteorite ALH84001 and other SNC meteorites is
cialty is low-temperature geochemistry and stable-isotope mass available at http://www-curator.jsc.nasa.gov/curator/antmet/antmet.
spectrometry. Gibson can be reached via [email protected] htm on the World Wide Web.

The Case for Relic Life on Mars Scientific American December 1997 65
 Williams Syndrome
and the Brain
To gain fresh insights into how
the brain is organized, investigators are
turning to a little known disorder

by Howard M. Lenhoff, Paul P. Wang, Frank Greenberg and Ursula Bellugi

W hen a teenager with an IQ

of just 49 was asked to
draw an elephant and tell
what she knew about the animal, her
sketch was almost indecipherable. But
sing and play instruments with astonish-
ing persistence. Most cannot read musi-
cal notes, yet some have perfect or near-
ly perfect pitch and an uncanny sense of
rhythm. One boy quickly learned to play
her description was impressively rich, an extremely complex drumbeat in 7/4
even lyrical. As part of that description, time with one hand while drumming in
she noted, “It has long, gray ears, fan 4/4 time with the other hand. A num-
ears, ears that can blow in the wind....” ber of individuals retain complex music
In her verbal ability, that young wom- for years, remembering melodies and
an is fairly typical of people who have verses of long ballads; one even sings
Williams syndrome, a rare condition songs in 25 languages. Experienced Wil-
that has recently started to draw the at- liams musicians also sing harmonies,
tention of a range of scientists. Affected improvise and compose lyrics readily.
individuals, sometimes called Williams Such anecdotes have recently led to
people, are not all alike but often are the first systematic study of musical abil-
similar to one another. They are fre- ity in Williams children. The results in-
quently diagnosed as mildly to moder- dicate that the youngsters discriminate
ately “retarded” and generally score be- melodies well; they also show signifi-
low average on standard IQ tests. They cantly more interest in and emotional
usually read and write poorly and strug- responsivity to music than do subjects
gle with simple arithmetic. Yet they dis- from the general population. As one
play striking strengths in some realms. Williams child said, “Music is my favo-
They generally demonstrate a facility rite way of thinking.”
not only for spoken language but also Investigators are attracted to Williams
for recognizing faces. And, as a group, syndrome in part because they suspect
they tend to be empathetic, loquacious the dramatic peaks and valleys in the
and sociable. abilities of affected individuals will pro-
What is more, anecdotal evidence im- vide a new window to the organization
plies that some Williams people possess and adaptability of the normal brain.
JESSICA BOYATT

extraordinary musical talent. Even Some groups are attempting to pinpoint

though their attention span for most characteristic properties of the Williams
tasks is short, many will listen to music, brain and to determine how those prop-

PEOPLE WITH WILLIAMS SYNDROME display a striking mix of abilities and dis-
abilities. For instance, when asked to draw and describe an elephant, an adolescent
having an IQ of 49 produced a scribble that was incomprehensible without labels, yet
she offered a rich verbal description (opposite page). Some individuals also display
strong musical talent; this past summer those at the left—from top, Julia Tuttle, Brian
Johnson and Gloria Lenhoff (daughter of author Howard M. Lenhoff)—attended a
music and arts camp for Williams people, held at Belvoir Terrace in Lenox, Mass.

68 Scientific American Williams Syndrome and the Brain

 erties influence performance in intellec- means new. An investigation by one of their peers and seem to age prematurely
tual and other realms. At the same time, us (Lenhoff) suggests that Williams peo- (for instance, their hair grays and their
researchers are trying to uncover the ge- ple were the inspiration for some age- skin wrinkles relatively early).
netic abnormalities responsible for Wil- old folktales about elves, pixies and oth- Description began to give way to ge-
liams syndrome. er “wee people” [see box on page 73]. netic understanding about four years
In 1993 they learned that the disorder The medical community became ago, thanks in part to a study of SVAS
is caused by loss of a tiny piece from aware of the syndrome fairly recently, in people who did not have Williams
one of the two copies of chromosome 7 however—only about 40 years ago. In syndrome. In 1993 Amanda K. Ewart
present in every cell of the body. The 1961 J.C.P. Williams, a heart specialist and Mark T. Keating of the University
deleted piece can contain 15 or more in New Zealand, noted that a subset of of Utah, Colleen A. Morris of the Uni-
genes. As the lost genes are identified, his pediatric patients shared many char- versity of Nevada and other collabora-
scientists can begin to determine how acteristics. Beyond having related car- tors discovered that for a segment of
their absence leads to the neuroanatom- diovascular problems, they also had this population, SVAS stemmed from
ical and behavioral features already ob- elfin facial features (such as a turned-up an inherited mutation in one copy of
served. This integrated approach to the nose and a small chin) and seemed to the gene that gives rise to elastin—a
study of Williams syndrome—connect- be mentally retarded. The cardiac prob- protein that provides elasticity to many
ing genes to neurobiology and, ultimate- lems Williams observed often included organs and tissues, such as the arteries,
ly, to behavior—may become a model heart murmurs and narrowing of major lungs, intestines and skin.
for exploring how genes affect brain de- blood vessels. In particular, Williams
velopment and function. people frequently suffer from supraval- Missing Genes Are Identified
Medical scientists are interested in vular aortic stenosis (SVAS), a mild to
Williams syndrome in its own right as
well. Analysis of the genes in the deleted
region has already explained why Wil-
severe constriction of the aorta.
Since that time, physicians have not-
ed other traits, some of which can be
A ware that SVAS is common in Wil-
liams people and that individuals
with familial SVAS alone and individu-
liams people commonly suffer from cer- seen quite early in life. In infancy, babies als with Williams syndrome both suffer
tain physical ailments. It has also pro- may have difficulty feeding and may disturbances in organs that require elas-
vided a means of prenatal testing and is suffer from stomach pains, constipation ticity, the workers wondered whether
helping to diagnose the disorder earlier, and hernias. They may also sleep poorly Williams syndrome, too, involved some
so that children who are affected can be and can be irritable and colicky, behav- kind of change in the gene for elastin.
helped from infancy to live up to their ior sometimes caused by another fre- Sure enough, they found the gene was
fullest potential; lack of familiarity with quent sign: elevated amounts of calcium deleted from one of the two copies of
Williams syndrome in medical circles in the blood. As the children get older, chromosome 7 in cells. Today it is evi-
and the absence of reliable tests have they reveal hoarse voices and show de- dent that the deletion of the gene occurs
hindered prompt diagnosis in the past. layed physical and mental development. in approximately 95 percent of patients
They begin walking at an average of 21 with Williams syndrome. The loss is
Understanding Grew Slowly months, often on the balls of their feet harmful presumably because both gene
and usually with an awkwardness that copies are needed to make adequate

A lthough Williams syndrome, which

occurs in an estimated one in
20,000 births worldwide, has gained in-
persists throughout life. Fine motor
control is disturbed as well. In addition,
Williams people are extremely sensitive
amounts of the elastin protein.
The investigators knew that a reduc-
tion in the elastin supply could contrib-
creased attention lately, it is not by any to noise, are often short compared with ute to various physical features of Wil-

Drawing and Description of an Elephant by a Teen with Williams Syndrome

“What an elephant is, it is one of the ani-

mals. And what an elephant does, it lives in
the jungle. It can also live in the zoo. And
what it has, it has long, gray ears, fan ears,
Y
HEA
D BOD ears that can blow in the wind. It has a long
EAR trunk that can pick up grass or pick up hay. If
EYE they’re in a bad mood, it can be terrible. If the
NK elephant gets mad, it could stomp; it could
TRU
charge. Sometimes elephants can charge.
COURTESY OF URSULA BELLUGI

They have big long tusks. They can damage

UTH a car. It could be dangerous. When they’re in
MO
a pinch, when they’re in a bad mood, it can
be terrible. You don’t want an elephant as a
pet. You want a cat or a dog or a bird.”

Scientific American December 1997 69

 BAND 7q11.23 NORMAL CELL

NORMAL COPY OF
CHROMOSOME 7

DAMAGED COPY OF
CHROMOSOME 7

APPROXIMATE
TOMO NARASHIMA

POSITION
Known Genes in Deleted Segment OF DELETION
ELASTIN FZD3 RFC2
LIM-KINASE 1 WSCR1 WILLIAMS SYNDROME CELL

LISA G. SHAFFER Baylor College of Medicine

TINY DELETION from one of the two copies of chromosome 7 in cells is the cause of
Williams syndrome (drawing). The excised region can contain 15 or more genes, only
some of which have been identified. A diagnostic test is based on the discovery that the
gene for elastin is usually among those lost. The test flags copies of chromosome 7 with
a fluorescent green tag and flags the gene for elastin with a fluorescent red tag. Chro-
mosomes (blue) from a cell in a normal subject (top micrograph) will show two green MISSING
RED
and two red signals, indicating that both copies of chromosome 7 are present and that SIGNAL
each carries the gene for elastin. But Williams people lack one copy of the gene, and so
one copy of chromosome 7 will lack a red signal (bottom micrograph).

liams syndrome (such as SVAS, hernias rewards. That the deletion occurs in all Then, as now, scientists had difficulty
and premature wrinkling), but it could cells of the body in Williams people tells distinguishing the brain processes con-
not by itself account for the cognitive mothers nothing they did or failed to do trolling language from those controlling
and behavioral signatures. After all, during pregnancy caused their child’s reasoning, because in the general popu-
their first subjects, who had SVAS alone condition. The disorder stems from a lation, adeptness at language and cog-
without cognitive impairment, would sperm or egg that, by chance, suffers a nition usually go hand in hand. The di-
also have had low IQs if a diminution loss of genes from chromosome 7 before chotomy in the caller’s daughter suggest-
of elastin could unilaterally produce all donating its chromosomes to the crea- ed that study of Williams people might
the symptoms of Williams syndrome. tion of an embryo. That knowledge also help tease apart those processes.
This awareness led them to suspect that tells healthy siblings of Williams people Fascinated, Bellugi agreed to meet the
more genes were affected. In support of that their copies of chromosome 7 are girl and then continued to see her regu-
that idea, direct examinations of chro- free of the deletion; therefore, any chil- larly. She also sought literature detail-
mosomes from Williams patients indi- dren they bear are no more likely than ing the cognitive strengths and weak-
cated that the region deleted from chro- other children to acquire Williams syn- nesses of Williams people but found lit-
mosome 7 extended beyond the bound- drome. Finally, the microscopic tech- tle beyond general assertions. Before
aries of the gene for elastin and probably nique that originally revealed the dele- Bellugi could hope to uncover the areas
encompassed many genes. tion of the gene for elastin—fluorescent of the brain and the neurological pro-
Several of those other genes are now in situ hybridization, or FISH—has now cesses that accounted for the unique
being uncovered. Among them are three been adapted for use as a diagnostic tool. cognitive characteristics of Williams
(LIM-kinase 1, FZD3 and WSCR1) that people, she would need a finer-grained
are active in the brain—a sign that they A Cognitive Profile Emerges profile of the traits distinguishing that
could influence brain development and population from others. She and her
function. The exact activities carried out
by the encoded proteins are not known,
although Ewart and her colleagues have
W ork on the genetics of Williams
syndrome is complementing ef-
forts to specify the neurobiological hall-
colleagues therefore began to devise tests
of specific abilities and to compare the
scores of Williams people with those of
proposed that LIM-kinase 1 (which is marks of the disorder. That research, the general population and of another
invariably deleted with the gene for which today involves several laborato- cognitively impaired group: people with
elastin) may be involved in the ability ries, began about 15 years ago, when Down syndrome.
to grasp spatial relationships. This role one of us (Bellugi) answered a late-night The investigations, which continue,
could help explain why Williams peo- telephone call in her laboratory at the examine populations of adolescents
ple have difficulty drawing simple com- Salk Institute for Biological Studies in matched for sex, age and IQ level. (Wil-
mon objects accurately from memory. La Jolla, Calif. The caller knew that Bel- liams people range in IQ from 40 to
Another gene from the deleted area, lugi investigated the neurobiological 100, but their mean score is about 60.)
RFC2, specifies a protein involved in underpinnings of language and believed Early on, the team saw that Williams
replication of DNA, but its contribu- her daughter, who had Williams syn- subjects, in contrast to their generally
tion to Williams syndrome has not been drome, would interest the Salk group. weak performance on overall tests of
established. The girl, then 13, had an IQ near 50 and cognitive ability, commonly used well-
The genetic understanding of Wil- was considered mentally retarded. Con- formed grammar in their spontaneous
liams syndrome is far from complete. sistent with that profile, she read and speech. On the whole, they also per-
Still, discovery of the deletion in chro- wrote at the level of a first grader. Yet formed significantly better than the
mosome 7 has yielded some practical she spoke beautifully. group with Down syndrome did on all

70 Scientific American December 1997 Williams Syndrome and the Brain

tasks of grammatical comprehension signment and pluralization—may not be subjects do, suggesting that the deficits
and production. completely preserved in Williams peo- in the two groups may stem from dif-
Many also did well at the rather ple. (These languages are much richer ferences in brain anatomy. For exam-
complex task of constructing tag ques- in morphology than English is.) This ple, Williams people, in common with
tions, such as adding “doesn’t she?” to discovery implies that the brain regions patients who have suffered a stroke in
the statement “Leslie likes fish.” The preserved in Williams syndrome and the the right hemisphere of the brain, may
person being tested must first take the presence of an intact short-term memo- attend to components of images but fail
original statement (“Leslie likes fish”) ry for speech sounds support many ver- to appreciate the overall pattern (the
and substitute a matching pronoun for bal aptitudes but may not suffice for gestalt). Down people, however, are
the subject (“She likes fish”). Then the full mastery of language. more likely to perceive the global orga-
individual must add a conjugated auxil- In contrast to their generally good nization but to overlook many details
iary verb, negate it and contract it (“She showing on verbal tests, Williams sub- [see top illustration in box on this page],
doesn’t like fish”), omit the original verb jects typically do poorly on tasks in- just as individuals do who have suffered
and object (leaving only “She doesn’t”) volving visual processing, such as copy- left-hemisphere strokes.
and invert the word order to form a ing drawings. But they often fail on In some ways, the general profile re-
question (“..., doesn’t she?”). such tasks in different ways than Down vealed by the various cognitive tests im-
The Salk researchers further found, as
others did later, that the Williams sub-
jects frequently had vocabularies larger
than would be expected for their mental The Making of a Cognitive Profile
age. When asked to list some animals,
they often did not stick to easy words
but chose such exotic examples as yak,
A s part of an effort to pinpoint cognitive features that are characteristic of Wil-
liams people, investigators have compared subjects with Williams and with
Down syndrome on tests of specific abilities. One test (top)—which asked adoles-
Chihuahua, ibex, condor and unicorn.
cents to copy from memory a letter D that was built from a collection of small Y’s—
Beyond possessing richer vocabular-
revealed impairment in integrating details into a larger configuration. The Williams
ies, subjects with Williams syndrome
group tended to draw only Y’s, whereas the Down group tended to maintain the
tended to be more expressive than even
overall configuration but omit local details. Another test (bottom)—in which sub-
normal children were. This animation jects had to invent a story for a series of wordless pictures—revealed that Williams
was demonstrated amusingly when Wil- people can often generate well-structured narratives.
liams children were asked to provide a
story for a series of wordless pictures. As
Task:

COURTESY OF URSULA BELLUGI

they told their tale, they often altered REPRODUCE
their pitch, volume, length of words or IMAGE Williams subjects Down subjects
rhythm to enhance the emotional tone
of the story. Similarly, they added more
drama to engage their audience (“And
suddenly, splash!”; “And BOOM!”;
“Gadzooks!”) than subjects with Down
syndrome did. (Sadly, the gift of gab Task: INVENT A STORY FOR THE PICTURES
and sociability of Williams children can
mislead teachers into thinking the chil-
dren have better reasoning skills than
they actually possess; in those cases, the

COURTESY OF PENGUIN PUTNAM, INC.

children may not get the academic sup-
port they need.)
One possible explanation for the
strong verbal performance of Williams
individuals is that their chromosomal
defect, in contrast to that of Down sub-
jects, may not significantly disrupt cer-
tain faculties that support language
processing. Other researchers, for in- Williams subject, age 17, IQ 50
stance, have reported that short-term “Once upon a time when it was dark at night, the boy had a frog. The boy was look-
ing at the frog, sitting on the chair, on the table, and the dog was looking through, look-
memory for speech sounds, or “phono- ing up to the frog in a jar. That night he sleeped and slept for a long time, the dog did.
logical working memory”—a form that But the frog was not gonna go to sleep. The frog went out from the jar. And when the
seems to assist in language learning and frog went out, the boy and the dog were still sleeping. Next morning it was beautiful in
comprehension—is relatively preserved the morning. It was bright, and the sun was nice and warm. Then suddenly when he
in the Williams population. opened his eyes, he looked at the jar and then suddenly the frog was not there. The jar
Interestingly, recent studies of French was empty. There was no frog to be found.”
and Italian Williams subjects suggest Down subject, age 18, IQ 55
that one aspect of language known as “The frog is in the jar. The jar is on the floor. The jar on the floor. That’s it. The stool is
morphology—the facet of grammar that broke. The clothes is laying there.”
deals with verb conjugation, gender as-

Williams Syndrome and the Brain Scientific American December 1997 71

 a SIDE OF BRAIN PARIETAL finding cast doubt on that simplistic jects try to think of a verb that fits with
LOBE view. Williams people recognize and a given noun (such as “sit” for “chair”).
FRONTAL OCCIPITAL discriminate among pictures of unfamil- Further, tests of patients with cerebellar
LOBE LOBE iar faces (a skill that requires the right injuries reveal deficits in cognitive func-
hemisphere) remarkably well. In fact, tion, not just in motor abilities. And
they perform as well as adults from the anatomists report that the neocerebel-
general population. lum communicates extensively with a
part of the frontal cortex that, in com-
Neurological Studies Add Clarity mon with the neocerebellum, is larger
in humans than in apes.

SYLVIAN
FISSURE
T he Salk group’s examination of
brains by magnetic resonance imag-
ing and by autopsy supports the proba-
Given that humans have language
and apes do not, some observers have
proposed that the neocerebellum and
TEMPORAL CEREBELLUM bility that the chromosomal deletion re- the connected region of the frontal cor-
LOBE sponsible for Williams syndrome alters tex evolved together to support the flu-
NEOCEREBELLUM the brain in a more complicated way. ent processing of speech and may fall
The deletion seems to produce anatom- under the control of the same genes.
ical changes (such as abnormal cluster- The relative preservation of the frontal
b UNDERSIDE ing of neurons in visual areas) that yield cortex and the enlargement of the neo-
LEFT HEMISPHERE deficits in visual-spatial abilities. But the cerebellum in Williams people, together
chromosomal defect appears to spare a with the rather spared fluency in lan-
network that includes structures in the guage, lend some credence to this last
LIMBIC frontal lobes, the temporal lobe and the notion and to the idea that the cerebel-
AREAS OF
TEMPORAL cerebellum. This preserved network, lum plays a part in language processing.
LOBES then, may serve as a neuroanatomical Recent anatomical analyses have ad-
scaffolding for the unexpectedly strong ditionally identified features that could
language abilities of Williams people. help explain the apparent musical talent
To be more specific, the neuroana- of Williams people. The primary audito-
tomical studies indicate that the overall ry cortex (located in the temporal lobe)
c CUT IN PLANE OF SYLVIAN FISSURE cortical volume in both Williams and and an adjacent auditory region, the
Down people is smaller than that of planum temporale (thought to be im-
age-matched normal subjects. But the portant to language as well as musicali-
volumes of individual regions differ be- ty), are proportionately enlarged in the
tween the two groups. For instance, the few Williams brains examined so far. In
CUT LINE frontal lobes and the limbic region of addition, the planum temporale is nor-
the temporal lobes are better preserved mally more extensive in the left hemi-
in Williams people. The limbic system, sphere than in the right, but in some
which also includes other structures, is Williams people the left region is unusu-
TOMO NARASHIMA

PRIMARY LEFT HEMISPHERE

AUDITORY important for brain activities involving ally big, to an extent characteristic of
CORTEX memory and emotions; sparing of the professional musicians. These findings
limbic region may help explain why Wil- mesh well with observations by Audrey
PLANUM
TEMPORALE liams people are quite expressive and Don of the University of Windsor in
empathetic. Ontario, the investigator who carried
BASIC ANATOMY OF BRAIN in peo- Analyses of the cerebellum uncovered out the first studies of musical ability in
ple with Williams syndrome is normal, further differences between the Williams Williams people. She concludes that in-
but the total volume is somewhat re- and Down groups. Whereas its volume tact perception of auditory patterns may
duced. The areas that seem to be best
in Down subjects was small, that in Wil- account for much of the strength in mu-
preserved include the frontal lobes and a
part of the cerebellum called the neocere- liams subjects was normal. And in Wil- sic and language seen in Williams sub-
bellum (a), as well as parts of the tempo- liams subjects the neocerebellum (con- jects—a result that implies the related
ral lobes known as the limbic area (b), sidered to be the evolutionarily young- brain structures should also be intact.
the primary auditory area and the pla- est region of the cerebellum) was equal Physiological probes comparing elec-
num temporale (c). to or larger than that in age-matched trical activity in the brains of Williams
individuals in the general population people and others during specific tasks
but was reduced in Down subjects. offer more insights into how the brain
plies that the chromosomal defect in The finding that the neocerebellum is develops. In response to grammatical
Williams syndrome essentially spares preserved in Williams people is particu- stimuli, for example, normal subjects
the left hemisphere (the region most im- larly intriguing when placed in the con- show greater activity from the left hemi-
portant to language in the large majori- text of other research. Until recently, the sphere than from the right, as would be
ty of people) and disrupts the right (the cerebellum was thought to be concerned expected for language tasks. But Wil-
more visual-spatial hemisphere). But primarily with movement. Yet Steven E. liams people show symmetrical respons-
the emotional expressiveness of Wil- Petersen and his colleagues at Washing- es in the two hemispheres, a sign that
liams people (also thought to be a right- ton University have shown that the neo- the typical language specialization of the
sided function) and at least one other cerebellum becomes active when sub- left hemisphere has not occurred. Fur-

72 Scientific American December 1997 Williams Syndrome and the Brain

 Williams Syndrome: An Inspiration for Some Pixie Legends?

F olktales from many cultures feature magical “little people”— of people with Williams syndrome, who in spite of typically hav-
pixies, elves, trolls and other fairies. A number of physical ing subnormal IQs, usually display vivid narrative skills and often
PHOTOGRAPH BY KIND PERMISSION OF WILLIAMS SYNDROME FOUNDATION LTD., U.K.; ILLUSTRATION FROM In Fairyland, by William Allingham, 1870

and behavioral similarities suggest that at least some of the show talent for music. (The large pointed ears so often associat-
fairies in the early yarns were modeled on people who have Wil- ed with fairies may symbolically represent the sensitivity of
liams syndrome. Such a view is in keeping with the contention of those mythical individuals—and of Williams people—to music
historians that a good deal of folklore and mythology is based on and to sound in general.)
real life. As a group, Williams people are loving, trusting, caring and ex-
The facial traits of Williams people are often described as pix- tremely sensitive to the feelings of others. Similarly, fairies are fre-
ielike. In common with pixies in folklore and art, many with Wil- quently referred to as the “good people” or as kind and gentle-
liams syndrome have small, up- hearted souls. Finally, Williams in-
turned noses, a depressed nasal dividuals, much like the fairies of
bridge, “puffy” eyes, oval ears legend, require order and pre-
and broad mouths with full lips dictability. In Williams people this
accented by a small chin. Indeed, need shows up as rigid adher-
those features are so common ence to daily routines and a con-
that Williams children tend to stant need to keep abreast of fu-
look more like one another than ture plans.
their relatives, especially as chil- In the past, storytellers created
dren. The syndrome also is ac- folktales about imaginary beings
companied by slow growth and to help explain phenomena that
development, which leads most they did not understand—per-
Williams individuals to be rela- haps including the distin-
tively short. guishing physical and behav-
The “wee, magical people” of UNRELATED CHILDREN in the pho- ioral traits of Williams syn-
assorted folktales often are mu- tograph above all display elfin facial drome. Today researchers
sicians and storytellers. Fairies features that clinicians associate with turn to Williams people in a
are said to “repeat the songs Williams syndrome. The depiction of quest to understand the un-
they have heard” and can “en- an elf at the right is the 19th-century known, hoping to decipher
chant” humans with their melo- work of Richard Doyle, an uncle of the some of the secrets of how
dies. Much the same can be said Sherlock Holmes creator. the brain functions. —H.M.L.

ther, whereas normal adults generally forming new circuits to carry out the drome has shown that low IQ scores can
show greater activity from the right functions of the disrupted ones. mask the existence of exciting capaci-
hemisphere than the left when process- Research into Williams syndrome is ties. And it warns that other so-called
ing images of faces, Williams people just now taking off, but it is already mentally retarded individuals could have
show the opposite pattern. Such work helping to clarify how the brain is orga- untapped potentials waiting to be un-
favors the possibility that when normal nized. It is also making investigators see covered—if only researchers, and soci-
developmental processes go awry, the “mentally retarded” individuals in a ety, will take the trouble to look for and
brain often redistributes responsibilities, new light. Close study of Williams syn- cultivate them. SA

The Authors Further Reading

HOWARD M. LENHOFF, PAUL P. WANG, FRANK GREENBERG Hemizygosity at the Elastin Locus in a Developmen-
and URSULA BELLUGI offer several perspectives on Williams syndrome. tal Disorder: Williams Syndrome. A. K. Ewart et al. in
Lenhoff is professor emeritus of biological sciences at the University of Cal- Nature Genetics, Vol. 5, No. 1, pages 11–16; September
ifornia, Irvine, the father of a 42-year-old Williams syndrome musician and 1993.
co-organizer of the Williams Syndrome Music and Arts Camp, held in Cognitive and Neural Development: Clues from Ge-
Massachusetts. He is also principal investigator of a team comparing music netically Based Syndromes. U. Bellugi, E. S. Klima and
cognition in Williams people with other populations. Wang, assistant pro- P. P. Wang in The Lifespan Development of Individuals: Be-
fessor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, havioral, Neurobiological, and Psychosocial Perspectives:
studies the neurobehavioral manifestations of Williams syndrome and oth- A Synthesis. Nobel Symposium. Edited by D. Magnusson.
er genetic disorders. Greenberg, clinical consultant with the National Cen- Cambridge University Press, 1996.
ter for Human Genome Research at the National Institutes of Health, has Real-World Source for the “Little People”: The Re-
worked with Williams syndrome individuals for 20 years. Bellugi is direc- lationship of Fairies to Individuals with Williams
tor of the Laboratory for Cognitive Neurosciences at the Salk Institute for Syndrome. Howard M. Lenhoff in Nursery Realms: Chil-
Biological Studies. She heads a multidisciplinary team that has been exam- dren in the Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
ining the cognitive, neuroanatomical and neurophysiological characteristics Edited by Gary Westfahl and George Slusser. University of
of Williams syndrome for more than a decade. Georgia (in press).

Williams Syndrome and the Brain Scientific American December 1997 73

 Tracking a Dinosaur Attack
The efforts of a sculptor and a paleontologist
reveal details of a 100-million-year-old skirmish

by David A. Thomas and James O. Farlow

DINOSAUR PREDATOR,
in this case an Acrocanthosaurus,
follows in the tracks of its four-
legged herbivorous prey, a huge
Pleurocoelus that probably strayed
from a herd. These giant herbi-
vores roamed the shore using the
same gait as modern four-legged
mammals, allowing the two legs
on one side to move in such quick
succession that both front and
SANO KAZUHIKO

hind feet can be off the ground at

the same moment.

74 Scientific American December 1997

A merican paleontologists seeking di-
nosaur fossils made some notable
finds in the years just before
World War II. One of the excavations un-
dertaken during this heyday produced no
veal the wanderings of dinosaurs in now
solid rock.
Dinosaur trackways of this kind are in-
valuable to paleontologists. Although there
has been a great deal of speculation about
bones at all, but it nonetheless proved to be dinosaur behavior, fossilized footprints
rich in information about dinosaurs. That provide the only direct evidence of how di-
dig, along the banks of the Paluxy River in nosaurs actually moved. By studying exca-
central Texas, unearthed a dinosaur “track- vated trackways, paleontologists have been
way,” a collection of footprints left on an able to glean information about dinosaur
ancient mudflat. Those fossilized impres- gaits and postures. They have used such
sions owe their preservation to the sedi- fossil footprints to determine how quickly
ments that encased them, hardening and different species walked and to deduce that
then eroding 100 million years later to re- many kinds of dinosaurs traveled in herds.
 One particularly intriguing observation from the Paluxy River track-
a way was made by Roland T. Bird, who discovered this curious set of
dinosaur prints in 1938 and partially excavated them in 1940. Before
cutting huge slabs of this footprint-studded rock to ship back to his
employer, Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural Histo-
ry in New York City, Bird mapped and photographed the parallel
tracks most thoroughly. He saw immediately that one set of footprints,
from a two-footed carnivorous dinosaur (probably an Acrocanthosau-
rus, weighing perhaps two or three tons), ran parallel to the trail left by
an even larger, four-footed herbivore (most likely a giant Pleurocoelus),
which was apparently traveling in a herd. And he later noticed that the
carnivorous dinosaur seemed at one point to have taken a strange skip-
ping stride, leaving two consecutive right footprints in the mud.
Bird believed these two sets of footprints with a peculiar hop in the
b middle represented the moment the smaller carnivorous dinosaur
struck at its larger herbivorous cousin. Most paleontologists with an
interest in dinosaur tracks initially scoffed at that rather dramatic in-
terpretation. But some now think Bird may have been correct. That re-
vision in thinking came about because of an unlikely string of events
that prompted us to reevaluate this decades-old find.

Digging Up Papers

S ix years after Bird’s death, in 1984, Texas Christian University un-

dertook to publish Bird’s autobiography, Bones for Barnum Brown.
They contacted one of us (Farlow) to read the manuscript and to act as

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

its scientific editor. And it came as a surprise that Bird’s writing referred
to various charts and a film of the excavation that paleontologists had
c not known existed.
Interviews with Bird’s wife and sister revealed that he had stashed
away quite a bit of unpublished information about the Paluxy River
trackway. Bird’s nephew soon discovered a canister with the lost film
of the excavation; it was neatly stored in a basement refrigerator. A
box in Bird’s attic provided countless notes, along with some large
charts of the footprints in question. These diagrams were key finds, be-
cause the trackway had deteriorated considerably since 1940: not only
were large pieces no longer in place (Bird sent slabs both to New York
and to the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin), but seasonal flooding
of the Paluxy River had eroded the rock surface and covered it with a
mantle of sediment.
Fortunately, Bird’s charts and photographs showed the placement of
each of the prints in fine detail, enabling Farlow to study the site anew.
d That work resulted in an extensive report, published in 1987, which
stated that the two parallel tracks represented one dinosaur following
the other, just as Bird had originally surmised. But the interpretation of
the strange hop remained open to debate within the community of
professional dinosaur paleontologists—prompting a working artist to
COURTESY OF ABC/KANE PRODUCTIONS

get involved.

Sculpting Science

I n 1983 the city of Albuquerque commissioned one of us (Thomas)

to produce a life-size dinosaur statue for the New Mexico Museum
of Natural History and Science, a job that led to many further oppor-
tunities to cast dinosaurs in bronze and fiberglass for other museums
MODERN MAMMALS, such as these lions and
around the world. To give those creations realistic stances, it was nec-
Cape buffalo, show how predators often match
stride with their prey before attacking. Soon after essary to investigate how animals moved in general and how dinosaurs
joining the hunt, the lion in the foreground easily walked in particular.
picks up the cadence of the galloping buffalo: first A quick study shows that a four-legged mammal, such as an elephant,
the hind legs of the two animals move forward in routinely steps on its own tracks as it walks, with a rear foot often land-
synchrony (a), next the front legs (b) and then the ing in the spot that the corresponding front foot has just vacated. It can
hind legs again (c), just before the lion strikes at the do so because both feet on one side of the animal can be off the ground
rear of the buffalo (d). at once. But a modern reptile never places a rear foot exactly where its

76 Scientific American December 1997 Tracking a Dinosaur Attack

front foot has trod. It walks with diagonal legs moving together, so
the rear foot on one side lands before the front foot on that side leaves
the ground.
Interestingly, the tracks of four-legged dinosaurs indicate that these
creatures must have moved with gaits similar to those of living mam-
mals and distinct from those used by most contemporary reptiles. This
association is evident from the record unearthed from the banks of
the Paluxy River: the four-footed herbivorous dinosaurs left imprints
from their rear feet that commonly overlap their front footprints.
Might modern mammals have more to teach about the extinct rep-
tiles that once roamed this ancient strand? In an effort to assess Bird’s
hypothesis, Thomas studied the way mammalian predators hunt. At-
tackers typically match the speed and direction of their game before
they can strike. But often they do more. A carnivore on the attack will
usually adjust its stride until it comes into exact rhythm with the run-
ning animal that it hopes to bring down.
For example, a lion, cheetah or other swift cat will accelerate until
it has caught up with its target. The predator then changes the length
of its stride to match that of its prey. Only by keeping pace in this man-
ner can the attacker reduce its motion relative to its quarry, which fre-
quently is a much bulkier animal galloping furiously in an effort to es-
cape. Eliminating relative motion is critical. Otherwise the predator
would have difficulty striking safely and effectively when, finally, it
lunges.

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

STEVE RAWLS

FOSSIL IMPRINTS of the Paluxy River trackway were

unearthed by Roland T. Bird and his co-workers in
1940 (left). A large slab taken from the excavation was
sent to the American Museum of Natural History in
New York City for exhibit (top), where it can still be
seen by visitors. Bird also provided the Texas Memorial
Museum in Austin with a segment of the trackway, one
that contains a print showing a conspicuous drag mark
(bottom) made by the four-legged herbivore, perhaps
just after being struck.

Scientific American December 1997 77

 SLIM FILMS
Paluxy
River
Trackway
HOP
PROJECTED RIGHT TURN

RECONSTRUCTED ATTACK SEQUENCE

suggests that the carnivore ap-
proached in step with his prey.
SLIM FILMS

HOP CLOSER POSITIONING probably

URN

required the carnivore to shift

stride so that it moved its right
L EFT T

leg forward just as the herbi-

vore advanced its left legs.

In an informal study of recorded attacks of various African predators (lions, leop-

ards, cheetahs and hyenas), there proved to be only a few instances in which these an-
imals clearly did not come into rhythm with their prey. Some of these exceptional oc-
currences involved an attacker executing a sudden ambush. In such cases, the need
for surprise outweighs the desire to strike more carefully. Other examples in which
HERBIVORE the attacker failed to come into matching cadence were generally restricted to pair-
FOOTPRINTS ings of small prey and larger attackers, a combination for which it is neither practical
FRONT LEFT nor necessary for the predator to harmonize its stride.
HIND LEFT
Some caution is clearly warranted in using these observations to help understand
FRONT RIGHT
HIND RIGHT
the fossilized Paluxy River tracks. After all, modern four-legged mammals are quite
different from two- and four-legged dinosaurs. For instance, all the modern predators
CARNIVORE examined were in a gallop during the hunt, whereas the two-legged carnivorous dino-
FOOTPRINTS
LEFT
RIGHT
BIRD’S CHART shows how the tracks of the two-legged carnivore (red prints) closely
parallel one of several sets left by four-legged herbivores through a broad turn to the left.
Both dinosaurs must also have veered right where the excavated tracks end, because their
imprints do not cross the other two sets of tracks. The footprints of the predator and prey
also show a remarkable symmetry for about a dozen paces (yellow lines), where it ap-
pears that they moved in synchrony—except for one point where the carnivore apparently
hopped, leaving no left footprint (red arrow).

78 Scientific American December 1997 Tracking a Dinosaur Attack

 some steps back as it measured its quarry. The carnivore

BRYAN CHRISTIE
could then have come into rhythm by adjusting the length of
its stride, just as mammals do today. Evidence for this behav-
ior comes from a stretch of the trackway where the foot-
prints for the two dinosaurs form an amazingly symmetrical
array. For about a dozen steps, the carnivore placed its right
foot near or into the print made by the left hind foot of the
herbivore. This pattern is just what one would expect if the
carnivore was trailing the herbivore as closely as possible
without colliding—just a few steps back and slightly off to
the left.
The rest of the scenario suggested by Bird—that the carni-
vore actually struck at its prey midway along the trackway—
APPARENT HOP (two consecutive right footprints) may is more speculative, but there is good reason to believe it to
mark the point on the trackway where the carnivore be true. Hypothesizing an attack of this kind not only ex-
first struck at its prey. plains the uncanny similarity in the spacing of footprints be-
tween the two sets of tracks, it also accounts for the missing
left footprint as a hop made by the carnivore, and it eluci-
saur in question was probably in a fast walk or slow run, and dates one additional piece of the puzzle unearthed more than
the four-legged herbivorous dinosaur was in a mammallike half a century ago.
walk. Still, it would seem that in the early Cretaceous period, Bird’s original observations show that the herbivore’s right
just as today, predators must have learned the advantages of rear foot dragged at one point. This drag mark can be clearly
matching rhythm with their prey. seen in the slab housed at the Texas Memorial Museum. It
occurs a few steps ahead of the spot where two consecutive
100-Million-Year-Old Attack right carnivore tracks occur. The mark suggests that the car-
nivore indeed hopped as it set upon the larger beast walking

O ne might imagine that the two dinosaurs under consid-

eration had taken similar routes along what is now the
Paluxy River simply because both were following the ancient
slightly ahead, because it makes sense that the animal strug-
gling to escape would have faltered just as it was hit.
The drag mark and consecutive right footprints support
shoreline, with their passages separated by many hours or the notion that the carnivore and herbivore moved over this
even days. But detailed analysis of Bird’s chart of the track- patch of ground together, separated by only a few steps when
way shows that the proximity of the two sets of tracks could the carnivore struck. And the location of these features points
not have resulted from such happenstance. to a possibility that the herbivore attempted to carry out a
Not only do the two trails run parallel, detailed examina- defensive maneuver. It might have tried to throw its weight
tion reveals that the paths of the two animals wavered slight- into the attacker just before being hit, exaggerating the de-
ly and in the same fashion. So the subtle movements of one fensive motion by turning left.
animal must have influenced the other. And something that is We do not know with certainty that such an attack or de-
not seen at all provides additional evidence that the two sets fense actually happened, how many carnivores joined the
of tracks were made at the same time. Near the end of the ex- chase or why this particular herbivore was chosen to be
cavated lane, the tracks of the carnivore and herbivore both culled from the herd. Too much of the record of this intrigu-
head toward the left. Had either animal continued in that di- ing episode remains buried underground. But it now appears
rection, its footprints would have crossed into the adjacent perfectly clear that about 100 million years ago, on a limey
sets of tracks. But they do not. Both animals must have turned mudflat in what is now Texas, at least one swift carnivore
right after leaving the area that Bird ultimately excavated. So, singled out and possibly attacked a huge, lumbering herbi-
in all, the two trajectories make several jags and two broad vore. It seems that Bird was not only lucky enough to find re-
turns together. These animals were undoubtedly interacting. markable evidence of this incident of natural history but that
It indeed seems most likely that the carnivorous dinosaur he was also wise enough to recognize, document and exca-
was following the herbivore. The predator probably ap- vate part of the record of this ancient hunt left on a sodden
proached its prey from directly behind, lingering, at first, plain, now turned to stone. SA

The Authors Further Reading

DAVID A. THOMAS and JAMES O. FARLOW came to examine these dinosaur tracks Lower Cretaceous Dinosaur Tracks,
after following very different career paths. Thomas, a sculptor, cast the world’s first life-size Paluxy River Valley, Texas. James O.
bronze statue of a dinosaur in 1985 for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Farlow. South Central G.S.A., Baylor Uni-
Science in Albuquerque. Some of Thomas’s other dinosaur creations are displayed at the versity, 1987.
Anniston Museum of Natural History in Alabama, the College of Eastern Utah Museum The Dinosaurs of Dinosaur Valley
and the National Museum of Natural Science of Taiwan. His desire to make these statues State Park. James O. Farlow. Texas Parks
technically accurate led him into the study of animal gaits and tracks. Farlow, a paleontolo- and Wildlife Press, 1993.
gist, received a doctorate from Yale University in 1980. He is now a professor of geology at The Complete Dinosaur. Edited by James
Indiana-Purdue University at Fort Wayne, where he does research on dinosaur footprints O. Farlow and M. K. Brett-Surman. Indi-
and biology and on Ice Age mammals of the midwestern U.S. ana University Press, 1997.

Tracking a Dinosaur Attack Scientific American December 1997 79

 TRENDS IN PHYSICS

EXPLOITING
ZERO-POINT
ENERGY Energy fills empty space,
but is there a lot to be tapped,
as some propound? Probably not

by Philip Yam, staff writer

S omething for nothing. That’s the

reason for the gurgling water, ul-
trasonic transducers, heat-mea-
suring calorimeters, data-plotting soft-
ware and other technological trap-
pocket of nothingness. It churns with
unseen activity even at absolute zero,
the temperature defined as the point at
which all molecular motion ceases.
Exactly how much “zero-point ener-
chauvinists in the field like ourselves,
we think the 21st century could be the
zero-point-energy age.”
That conceit is not shared by the ma-
jority of physicists; some even regard
pings—some seemingly of the backyard gy” resides in the vacuum is unknown. such optimism as pseudoscience that
variety—inside the Institute for Advanced Some cosmologists have speculated that could leech funds from legitimate re-
Studies in Austin, Tex. One would not at the beginning of the universe, when search. The conventional view is that
confuse this laboratory with the simi- conditions everywhere were more like the energy in the vacuum is minuscule.
larly named but far more renowned one those inside a black hole, vacuum ener- In fact, were it infinite, the nature of the
in Princeton, N.J., where Albert Ein- gy was high and may have even trig- universe would be vastly different: you
stein and other physicists have probed gered the big bang. Today the energy would not be able to see in a straight
fundamental secrets of space and time. level should be lower. But to a few opti- line beyond a few kilometers. “The vac-
The one in Austin is more modestly ap- mists, a rich supply still awaits if only we uum has some mystique about it,” re-
pointed, but its goals are no less revolu- knew how to tap into it. These maver- marks Peter W. Milonni, a physicist at
tionary. The researchers here test ma- ick proponents have postulated that the Los Alamos National Laboratory who
chinery that, inventors assert, can ex- zero-point energy could explain “cold wrote a text on the subject in 1994
tract energy from empty space. fusion,” inertia and other phenomena called The Quantum Vacuum. “One
Claims for perpetual-motion machines and might someday serve as part of a has to be really careful about taking the
and other free-energy devices still persist, “negative mass” system for propelling concept too naively.” Steve K. Lamo-
of course, even though they inevitably spacecraft. In an interview taped for reaux, also at Los Alamos, is harsher:
turn out to violate at least one law of PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers, “The zero-point-energy community is
thermodynamics. Energy in the vacu- which aired in November, Harold E. more successful at advertising and self-
um, though, is very much real. Accord- Puthoff, the director of the Institute for promotion than they are at carrying out
ing to modern physics, a vacuum isn’t a Advanced Studies, observed: “For the bona fide scientific research.”
0
0 0 0
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MICHAEL GOODMAN

VIRTUAL PARTICLE

VIRTUAL ANTIPARTICLE

82 Scientific American December 1997

 of them obvious only to a physicist. 100 microdynes (one nanonewton) of
QUANTUM FLUCTUATIONS, One is the Lamb shift, which refers to a force. That “corresponds to the weight
ripples that form the basis for en- slight frequency alteration in the light of a blood cell in the earth’s gravitation-
ergy in a vacuum, pervade the emitted by an excited atom. Another is al field,” Lamoreaux states. The result
fabric of space and time. a particular kind of inescapable, low- falls within 5 percent of Casimir’s pre-
level noise that registers in electronic diction for that particular plate separa-
and optical equipment. tion and geometry.
The concept of zero-point energy de- Perhaps the most dramatic example,
rives from a well-known idea in quan- though, is the Casimir effect. In 1948 Zero for Zero-Point Devices
tum mechanics, the science that ac- the Dutch physicist H.B.G. Casimir cal-
counts for the behavior of particles
near the atom’s size. Specifically, zero-
point energy emerges from Heisen-
culated that two metal plates brought
sufficiently close together will attract
each other very slightly. The reason is
D emonstrating the existence of
zero-point energy is one thing; ex-
tracting useful amounts is another.
berg’s uncertainty principle, which lim- that the narrow distance between the Puthoff’s institute, which he likens to a
its the accuracy of measurements. The plates allows only small, high-frequen- mini Bureau of Standards, has exam-
German physicist Werner Heisenberg cy electromagnetic “modes” of the vac- ined about 10 devices over the past 10
determined in 1927 that it is impossible uum energy to squeeze in between. The years and found nothing workable.
to learn both the position and the mo- plates block out most of the other, big- One contraption, whose Russian in-
mentum of a particle to some high de- ger modes. In a way, each plate acts as ventor claimed could produce kilowatts
gree of accuracy: if the position is an airplane wing, which creates low of excess heat, supposedly relied on
known perfectly, then the momentum is pressure on one side and high pressure sonoluminescence, the conversion of
completely unknown, and vice versa. on the other. The difference in force sound into light. Bombarding water with
That’s why at absolute zero, a particle knocks the plates toward each other. sound to create air bubbles can, under
must still be jittering about: if it were at While at the University of Washing- the right conditions, lead to bubbles that
a complete standstill, its momentum ton, Lamoreaux conducted the most collapse and give off flashes of light.
and position would both be known pre- precise measurement of the Casimir ef- Conventional thinking explains sonolu-
cisely and simultaneously, violating the fect. Helped by his student Dev Sen, minescence in terms of a shock wave
uncertainty principle. Lamoreaux used gold-coated quartz launched within the collapsing bubble,
surfaces as his plates. One plate was at- which heats the interior to a flash point.
Energy and Uncertainty tached to the end of a sensitive torsion Following up on the work of the late
pendulum; if that plate moved toward Nobelist Julian Schwinger, a few work-

L ike position and momentum, energy

and time also obey Heisenberg’s
rule. Residual energy must therefore ex-
the other, the pendulum would twist. A
laser could measure the twisting of the
pendulum down to 0.01-micron accu-
ers cite zero-point energy as the cause.
Basically, the surface of the bubble is
supposed to act as the Casimir force
ist in empty space: to be certain that the racy. A current applied to a stack of plates; as the bubble shrinks, it starts to
energy was zero, one would have to take piezoelectric components moved one exclude the bigger modes of the vacuum
energy measurements in that volume of Casimir plate; an electronic feedback energy, which is converted to light. That
space forever. And given the equivalence system countered that movement, keep- theory notwithstanding, Puthoff and
of mass and energy expressed by Ein- ing the pendulum still. Zero-point-ener- his colleague Scott Little tested the de-
stein’s E = mc2, the vacuum energy must gy effects showed up as changes in the vice and changed the details a number
be able to create particles. They flash amount of current needed to maintain of times but never found excess energy.
briefly into existence and expire within the pendulum’s position. Lamoreaux Puthoff believes atoms, not bubbles,
an interval dictated by the uncertainty found that the plates generated about offer a better approach. His idea hinges
principle.
This zero-point energy (which comes
from all the types of force fields—elec- VIRTUAL PARTICLES can spontaneously flash into existence from the energy of quan-
tum fluctuations. The particles, which arise as matter-antimatter twins, can interact but
tromagnetic, gravitational and nuclear)
must, in accordance with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, disappear within an interval
makes itself felt in several ways, most set by Planck’s constant, h.

0 0 0

h/4π

Scientific American December 1997 83

 on an unproved hypothesis: that zero- ly be indicators of zero-point energy ity exists in any practical sense. In fact,
point energy is what keeps electrons in (rather than, one would assume, wish- physicists quite often “renormalize”
an atom orbiting the nucleus. In classi- ful thinking). equations to get rid of infinities, so that
cal physics, circulating charges like an Work in cavity quantum electrody- they can ascribe physical meaning to
orbiting electron lose energy through namics is experimentally challenging in their numbers. An example is the calcu-
radiation; what keeps the electron zip- its own right, however, so it is not clear lation of the electron’s mass from theo-
ping around the nucleus is, to Puthoff, how practical an energy supply from retical principles, which at face value
zero-point energy that the electron con- “shrinking atoms” could be. The Austin leads to an unrealistic, infinite mass.
tinuously absorbs. (Quantum mechanics institute is testing a device that could be The same kind of mathematical sleight-
as originally formulated simply states interpreted as manipulating the vacu- of-hand might need to be done for vac-
that an electron in an atom must have um, although Puthoff declines to pro- uum-energy calculations. “Somehow
some minimum, ground-state energy.) vide details, citing proprietary nondis- the notion that the energy is infinite is
Physicists have demonstrated that a closure agreements with its designers. too naive,” Milonni says.
small enough cavity can suppress the In fact, several signs indicate that the
natural inclination of a trapped, excited How Much in Nothing? amount of energy in the vacuum isn’t
particle to give up some energy and drop worth writing home about. Lamoreaux’s
to a lower energy state [see “Cavity
Quantum Electrodynamics,” by Serge
Haroche and Jean-Michel Raimond;
U nderlying these attempts to tap the experiment could roughly be consid-
vacuum is the assumption that ered to have extracted 10–15 joule. That
empty space holds enough energy to be paltry quantity would seem to be damn-
Scientific American, April 1993]. Ba- tapped. Considering just the fluctuations ing evidence that not much can be ex-
sically, the cavity is so small that it can in the electromagnetic force, the mathe- tracted from empty space. But Puthoff
exclude some of the lower-frequency matics of quantum mechanics suggest counters that Casimir plates are macro-
vacuum fluctuations, which the excited that any given volume of empty space scopic objects. What is needed for prac-
atom needs to emit light and drop to a could contain an infinite number of tical energy extraction are many plates,
lower energy level. The cavity in effect vacuum-energy frequencies—and hence, say, some 1023 of them. That might be
controls the vacuum fluctuations. an infinite supply of energy. (That does possible with systems that rely on small
Under the right circumstances, Put- not even count the contributions from particles, such as atoms. “What you lose
hoff reasons, one could effectively ma- other forces.) This sea of energy is large- in energy per interaction, you gain in
nipulate the vacuum so that a new, low- ly invisible to us, according to the zero- the number of interactions,” he asserts.
er ground state appears. The electron point-energy chauvinists, because it is Milonni replies by noting that La-
would then drop to the lower ground completely uniform, bombarding us moreaux’s plates themselves are made
state—in effect, the atom would become from all directions such that the net of atoms, so that effectively there were
smaller—and give up some energy in the force acting on any object is zero. 1023 particles involved. The low Casi-
process. “It implies that hydrogen or But just because equations produce mir result still indicates, by his figures,
deuterium injected into cavities might an infinity does not mean that an infin- that the plates would need to be kilo-
produce excess energy,” Puthoff says. meters long to generate even a kilogram
This possibility might explain cold-fu- of force. Moreover, there is a cost in ex-
sion experiments, he notes—in other tracting the energy of the plates coming
words, the occasional positive results together, Milonni says: “You have to
reported in cold-fusion tests might real- pull the plates apart, too.”
Another argument for a minuscule
vacuum energy is that the fabric of
space and time, though slightly curved
TUNGSTEN VACUUM
VACUUM FIBER FLUCTUATIONS near objects, is pretty much flat overall.
CAN Draw a triangle in space and the sum of
CASIMIR PLATES
its angles is 180 degrees, as it would be
on a flat piece of paper.
TORSION (The angles of a triangle
CASIMIR EFFECT is the motion of two
PENDULUM COMPENSATOR on a sphere, conversely,
PLATES
parallel plates because of quantum fluctu-
ations in a vacuum. The plates are so sum to more than 180
close together that only small fluctuations degrees.) Because energy
PIEZOELECTRIC fit in between; the bigger modes are ex- is equivalent to matter,
STACK cluded (above). They exert a total force and matter exerts a grav-
greater than that by the smaller modes itational force, cosmol-
and hence push the plates together. The ogists expect that an en-
VIBRATION
effect was observed by Steve K. Lamo- ergy-rich vacuum would
DAMPING reaux, now at Los Alamos National Lab- create a strong gravity
DISK AND oratory, who relied on a torsion pendu-
field that distorts space
JARED SCHNEIDMAN DESIGN

MAGNET lum (left). A current applied to the piezo-

electric stack tried to move the Casimir and time as it is seen to-
SOLENOID PLUNGER day. The whole universe
TO POSITION PLATES plate on the pendulum; the compensator
CASIMIR plates held the pendulum still. The volt- would be evolving in a
PLATES age needed to prevent any twisting served different manner.
as a measure of the Casimir effect. That argument ties into

84 Scientific American December 1997 Exploiting Zero-Point Energy

ZERO-POINT ENERGY was pur-
portedly tapped with a machine
that made use of ultrasonically gen-
erated bubbles (right). Such devices
are tested by Harold E. Puthoff (be-
low), director of the Institute for
Advanced Studies in Austin, Tex.
So far no apparatus has been found
to produce a net gain in energy.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY WILL VAN OVERBEEK

Such disagreements in science should be possible to lessen an object’s

are not unusual, especially con- inertia and hence, for a rocket, reduce
sidering how little is really the fuel burden. Puthoff and his col-
known about zero-point ener- leagues have been trying to prove this
gy. But those would-be utility inertia-origin hypothesis—a sensitive
moguls who think tapping zero- pendulum should be able to detect a
point energy is a worthwhile zero-point-energy “wake” left by a mov-
pursuit irritate some mainstream ing object—but Puthoff says they have
the cosmological constant, a concept scientists. “I was rather dismayed at the not managed to isolate their system well
that Einstein first developed, then dis- attention from what I consider a kook enough to do so.
carded. In the equations that describe community,” Lamoreaux says of his More conventional scientists decried
the state of the universe, the cosmologi- celebrity status among zero-point aficio- the channeling of NASA funds to a meet-
cal constant—which incorporates zero- nados after publishing his Casimir ef- ing where real science was lacking. “We
point energy—is in a sense a term that fect result. “It trivializes and abuses my hardly talked about the physics” of the
can counteract gravity. Astronomical work.” More galling, though, is that proposals, complained Milonni, adding
observations suggest the constant must these “pseudoscientists secure funding, that during one of the breakout sessions
be nearly zero. Consequently, if the vac- perhaps governmental, to carry on with “there was a guy talking about astral
uum energy really is large, then some their research,” he charges. projection.”
other force that contributes to the con- Puthoff’s institute receives a little gov- Certainly, there should be room for
stant must offset it. And as physicist ernment money but gets most of its funds far-out, potentially revolutionary ideas,
Steven Weinberg of the University of from contracts with private firms. Oth- but not at the expense of solid science.
Texas notes in his 1992 book Dreams ers are backed more explicitly by public “One has to keep an open mind, but the
of a Final Theory, that offset feels un- money. This past August the National concepts I’ve seen so far would violate
natural: calculations that sidestep the Aeronautics and Space Administration energy conservation,” Milonni con-
infinity terms produce a vacuum energy sponsored a meeting called the “Break- cludes. In sizing up zero-point-energy
120 orders of magnitude greater than through Propulsion Physics Workshop.” schemes, it may be best to keep in mind
the nearly zero value of the cosmologi- According to participants, zero-point the old caveat emptor: if it sounds too
cal constant, so that other force must energy became a high priority among good to be true, it probably is. SA

be opposite but identical in magnitude those trying to figure out which “break-
to the vacuum energy out to 120 deci- throughs” should be pursued.
mal places. The propulsion application depends
Puthoff replies that the connection on a speculation put forth in 1994 by Further Reading
between the cosmological constant and Puthoff, Bernhard Haisch of Lockheed
zero-point energy is more complex than Palo Alto Research Laboratory and Al- Demonstration of the Casimir Force
is often realized. “Obviously, the zero- fonso Rueda of California State Univer- in the 0.6 to 6 µm Range. S. K. Lamo-
point-energy problem and the cosmolog- sity at Long Beach. They suggested that reaux in Physical Review Letters, Vol. 78,
No. 1, pages 5–8; January 6, 1997.
ical constant, though related, are really inertia—the resistance that objects put Quantum Fluctuations of Empty Space:
different problems,” Puthoff argues, up when they are accelerated—stems A New Rosetta Stone in Physics? Har-
noting that predictions of quantum me- from the drag effects of moving through old E. Puthoff. Available at http://www.
chanics have proved correct time and the zero-point field. Because the zero- livelinks.com/sumeria/free/zpe1.html on
again and that instead something is still point field can be manipulated in quan- the World Wide Web.
missing from cosmologists’ thinking. tum experiments, Puthoff reasons, it

Exploiting Zero-Point Energy Scientific American December 1997 85

 SPECIAL REPORT
Building the
Biggest

O ur age worships small things: the micro-

chip, recombinant genes, mechanical
parts built at the molecular scale. Some-
times forgotten is a respect for what defined great
TIM DUCH

engineering works of the past. The grace and gran-

deur of tall buildings, bridges spanning broad wa-
ters and other massive creations have been monu-
ments to human ingenuity.
In this special report, Scientific American fo-
cuses on just a few of the most colossal civil engi-
neering projects of our era. Asia, with its high-
growth economies, has lately shown particular
enthusiasm for record-setting projects. The huge,
much discussed Three Gorges Dam across China’s
Yangtze River is rivaled by other gigantic con-
structions in Malaysia, Japan and Hong Kong.
Their unmatched dimensions have tested the lim-
its of construction technique, materials science,
computer simulation and wind-tunnel testing ...
but not of the imagination. —The Editors

Scientific American December 1997 87

 PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF HONSHU-SHIKOKU BRIDGE AUTHORITY

88
Scientific American December 1997
 The Longest
Suspension Bridge
The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge has broken many
records and weathered an earthquake—
even while it is being completed

by Satoshi Kashima and Makoto Kitagawa

W hen it opens to traffic in April 1998, the

Akashi Kaikyo Bridge will span almost
four kilometers—3,910 meters, to be exact.
The world’s longest suspension bridge, it will help con-
nect the island of Shikoku with the rest of Japan, while
allowing free passage to ships in the international navi-
gation channel below. Its central section will stretch
1,990 meters, its towers will soar 283 meters above the
water, and its cables will carry tensile forces of 120,000
metric tons—far more than any other bridge.
The bridge will be the crowning glory of an elaborate
system connecting Japan’s four main islands: Honshu,
Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku. The smallest, Shiko-
ku, has a population of about four million and is sepa-
rated from the largest, Honshu, by the Seto Inland Sea.
In the 1930s Chujiro Haraguchi, an engineer with
Japan’s Ministry of Interior who later became mayor of
Kobe, proposed a bridge to link the two islands. He
was inspired by American suspension bridges such as
the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, then under
construction. But in those years Japan’s economy and
engineering skills were not up to such a feat.
In 1959 the Ministry of Construction as well as Ja-
pan National Railways began to investigate plans for
bridging the two islands. The Honshu-Shikoku Bridge
Authority was established in 1970 to design, construct
and maintain a highway and railway system. Its engi-
neers decided on three prongs: the Kojima-Sakaide
route, which was completed in 1988; the Kobe-Naruto
route, featuring the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge; and the
Onomichi-Imabari route.

VITAL LINK between two Japanese islands,

the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge will be the longest
suspension bridge in the world. Because it spans
a four-kilometer-wide international navigation
channel that must never be obstructed, its con-
struction involved some unique challenges. One
problem was carrying the cable from one tower
to another, solved with the help of a helicopter
pulling a lighter lead wire (inset).
 HONSHU

JAPAN ONOMICHI
KOBE

AK
AS
HI
STR
AIT

AKASHI
AREA ONOMICHI- KAIKYO
OF MAP IMABARI KOJIMA-
BRIDGE
ROUTE SAKAIDE KOBE-
ROUTE NARUTO
SETO INLAND SEA ROUTE

SAKAIDE

SHIKOKU AWAJI
AMBITIOUS NETWORK of roads and bridges, conceived in the 1970s, con-
nects the small island of Shikoku with the larger Honshu. The link between
Kobe and Naruto cities contains the (incomplete) Akashi Kaikyo Bridge as well OHNARUTO

ROBERTO OSTI
IMABARI as the Ohnaruto Bridge, in service since 1985. The Kojima-Sakaide route was BRIDGE
opened in 1988, but several long bridges on the Onomichi-Imabari route remain
under construction. The roads should all be open by the end of the century.

Sections of the latter two routes are now partly open to high- with one of the towers, a major disaster could ensue. So they
way traffic. But along with the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge con- placed the two towers of the bridge outside the navigation
necting Honshu to Awaji Island en route to Shikoku, several channel, almost two kilometers apart. Each tower rests on
PHOTOGRAPH AND DRAWINGS COURTESY OF HONSHU-SHIKOKU BRIDGE AUTHORITY; LAURIE GRACE

long-span bridges on the Onomichi-Imabari route are still to the sandy gravel and soft rocks making up the seabed.
be completed. They should be finished within the century. Granite, a hard rock that supports most of the world’s long
The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge is estimated to cost 500 billion bridges, underlies the Awaji Island shore. But the granite bed
yen (about $4 billion) and will carry three lanes of traffic in falls rapidly away under the strait, yielding to a surface layer
each direction. Along with the 400 engineers of the bridge au- of hard mud and sandstone. Near the Honshu shore the
thority, an uncounted number of engineers in the private and seabed is lined with gravel, covered in places by soft, shifting
academic sectors contributed to its design and construction. alluvial soils. So the foundations of the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge
Even apart from the mechanical stresses on the structure re- had to be laid not on hard rock but on sedimentary rocks
sulting from its sheer length, the bridge poses several chal- and semicemented gravel.
lenges. The Akashi Strait (“Akashi Kaikyo”), which it cross- The engineers placed the two shoreline foundations of the
es, must remain open to marine traffic even during construc- bridge on dry, reclaimed ground. To design the tower founda-
tion. Engineers worried that if a ship accidentally collided tions, engineers sampled the undersea strata and confirmed

STEEL CAISSONS, on which the bridge towers rest, were fabricated and towed to their re-
spective sites (bottom left). The caissons, 80 meters wide and some 70 meters high, were filled
with water and sunk into the excavated seabed. Later a barge mixed marine concrete and SCOURING
poured it continuously for three days and nights, displacing the water and fixing the caissons in
place (bottom right). Because ocean currents threatened to scour away the gravel around the
caisson (inset), rocks weighing a metric ton each were arranged around the base. FOUNDATION DEPOSIT

SCOURING

WATER FLOW AROUND FOUNDATION

90 Scientific American December 1997 The Longest Suspension Bridge

 CLIMBING TOWER
CRANE
that the ground was strong enough to support a tower weigh-
ing 25,000 metric tons without allowing it to sink or tilt. One
DAMPER SPRING
tower was eventually placed in sandstone and the other in
gravel, so that the outer spans of the bridge came to be 960
meters each, and the central span 1,990 meters. PENDULUM
JACK
Such a long center span makes the bridge more susceptible DEVICE MECHANISM OF DAMPER
to being blown out by the wind. So aerodynamic engineers
constructed a scale model 100 times smaller than the bridge

COURTESY OF HONSHU-SHIKOKU BRIDGE AUTHORITY

and put it through repeated testing in a wind tunnel. The op-
timal design they came up with should be able to with-
stand winds of up to 290 kilometers per hour.
As a dredger, operated from the water’s surface,
excavated the seafloor and smoothed it, shipbuild-
ing factories fabricated two cylindrical caissons,
chambers used for underwater construction. The cais-
sons are about 80 meters in diameter and 70 meters
in height, the largest ever constructed. Each caisson is
double walled and, despite a gross weight of more than
19,000 metric tons, buoyant. Twelve tugboats towed TUNED MASS DAMPER
each caisson to its respective site, and during a few hours
of slack tide and relatively slow water current, workers TOWERS reaching 283 meters above
sank them by pouring water between the two walls. The sea level were constructed by a boot-
cylinders settled on the seafloor within five centimeters of strapping crane: it pulled up sections
the desired location. and placed them, then climbed on top to
The central compartment of a caisson is not sealed at the lift the next block (left). The blocks have
cruciform shapes that resist twisting and
bottom but sits directly on the seafloor. Technicians cleaned
bending. For further protection against os-
the area by sucking out soil and gravel through a pipe. Next, cillations, the towers incorporate tuned
a stable barge at the surface mixed marine concrete, a special- mass dampers, pendulums that move in the
ly developed variety that is highly fluid but does not dissolve opposite direction to the tower and thus
in water. To minimize flaws, the concrete was mixed and damp its motion (above). Truss girders (be-
poured continuously for three days and nights into the cen- low), designed in a wind tunnel to resist vi-
tral chamber of the caisson. Then engineers drained the wa- brations, were attached in sections to the tow-
ter in the outer chamber, installed reinforcing bars and poured ers. Once a girder was secured, the next sec-
concrete in there as well. The concrete castings took a year to tion was added, until the two ends of the main
finish. span met in August 1996 (sequence at bottom).
Even as the concrete was being poured, engineers were
worrying about the stability of the undersea foundations. BRIDGE CROSS SECTION
When a strong tidal current flows around a submerged struc-
35.5 METERS
ture, it forms a horseshoe eddy that scours away the soil and
gravel around it. Using laboratory tests and on-site experi-
ROAD SURFACE
ments, scientists had found that the scouring occurs when the
current flows faster than two meters per second. After the
caissons were sunk, net bags filled with gravel were laid just
around it. Later, for long-term protection, workers placed
14 METERS

rocks weighing a metric ton each over a broad area twice the VERTICAL
radius of the caisson. At present, there is no scouring except STABILIZER
at the edge of the protective layers.

Twin Towers
MAINTENANCE MAINTENANCE

T he bridge towers, 56 meters higher than those of the

Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, are of an unprece-
dented scale. They are very flexible, the tops bending easily
ROADS ROADS
COURTESY OF HONSHU-SHIKOKU BRIDGE AUTHORITY

with the motion of the cable. Inside, each tower is divided into
102 floors by horizontal diaphragms, with an elevator run-
ning up the middle. Thus, a tower is comparable to a 102-
floor high-rise with a floor area of 100 square meters, that of
an apartment.
Wind-tunnel experiments showed that a vortex around the
tower tops would make them vibrate in a direction parallel
to the bridge’s length. To reduce the oscillation, engineers de-
cided on a cruciform cross section for each tower. In addition,
tuned mass dampers were added within each tower shaft. Such

The Longest Suspension Bridge Scientific American December 1997 91

 devices, used for the first time in a bridge, contain pendulums a result, the foundations had shifted, expanding the central
that oscillate in a direction opposite to that of the tower, thus span of the bridge by 80 centimeters and the Awaji-side span
damping its motion. by 30 centimeters.
To fabricate the towers, designers divided each into 30 In designing the bridge, engineers had considered the effect
blocks, the height of a block being about 10 meters. Each of an 8.5-magnitude earthquake caused by a movement of
block was further divided into three cells, whose weight would the Pacific plate as far as 150 kilometers away. In addition,
not exceed 160 metric tons, the capacity of the crane. they had simulated the stress on the bridge of a strong wind
The tower must be vertical to within one part in 5,000, and an earthquake, of a level expected to occur only once in
meaning that its tip should be offset less than six centimeters 150 years. The designers had not, however, anticipated that
from the central vertical line. To realize this accuracy, techni- the foundations might shift because of a new fault below.
cians temporarily assembled the fabricated blocks in a shop,
then ground and polished their sectional planes to the re- Only Connect
quired flatness. Afterward, they separated the blocks and
transported them to the site.
A climbing crane erected the tower by a bootstrap method.
After it had laid each block, the crane jacked itself up to the
L uckily, the towers and cables suffered no damage, the ca-
bles adjusting easily to the increased length. But engineers
redesigned the girders so that they would add 1.1 meters to
next level and hoisted up another one. The innovative device the bridge length and, a month later, resumed construction.
minimized the use of temporary scaffoldings and therefore In hindsight, they were fortunate that the quake happened
lessened the time and cost of construction. before the bridge had been finished, because some structures
The next phase involved setting up the cables. Convention- such as the expansion joints that were later inserted might
al wires, which have a tensile strength of 160 kilograms per have been damaged. The quake relieved the earth’s stresses,
square millimeter, proved too weak. From metallurgical stud- making such mishaps less likely in the near future.
ies, engineers devised a low-alloy steel with added silicon to In designing the girders, engineers found that a particular
reach a strength of 180 kilograms per square millimeter. As a twisting oscillation, excited by the wind, was liable to pose a
result, they could use a single cable on each side to hold up problem. If this resonance was not damped, it could cause
the roadway. The simplified structure reduced the total weight the bridge to fall apart. Again utilizing a wind tunnel, they
and the construction period. designed a reinforced truss girder that did not display this
To set up the cable without disturbing the navigation chan- resonance and installed vertical stabilizing plates under the
nel, a helicopter first ferried a pilot rope across the strait. Us- median strip of the bridge to reduce the oscillations. Perforat-
ing the pilot rope to pull up stronger ropes, workers erected a ed gratings, laid on the central part and both sides of the deck
catwalk. Winches placed along the catwalk then pulled each surface, also proved to be effective.
strand tight. At midnight, when the sun’s heat would not af- In June 1995 workers lifted the truss girders onto the tow-
fect the metal, engineers adjusted the shapes of the strands so ers using a 3,500-metric-ton floating crane and installed them.
that each would carry equal weight. Then smaller truss members, preassembled into sections of
On January 17, 1995, just after the cables had been erect- 28 meters, were carried to the front of the girders and con-
ed, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck a broad area near the nected to them. Thus, the two ends of the bridge stretched
construction site. Its epicenter was a mere four kilometers toward each other until, in August 1996, they met.
away. The earthquake devastated the city of Kobe and dam- At present, workers are adding the finishing touches: plac-
aged roads, railways and other infrastructure in the area. Af- ing electrical lines, paving the roadway and so on. After its
ter surveying the region, geologists determined that a new opening this coming spring, the bridge should serve the peo-
fault had been created near the bridge, 14 kilometers deep. As ple of Japan for many decades to come.

AKASHI KAIKYO BRIDGE could at no time block marine traffic

during its construction. So its main towers were erected outside the
channel, on sedimentary rocks and semicemented gravel. In 1995
the Kobe earthquake opened a rift in the earth 14 kilometers below 297.2
LAURIE GRACE

the bridge. Fortunately, the girders had not yet been added, or else METERS
they would certainly have been damaged. The foundations of the
bridge moved, increasing the length by 1.1 meters.

ALLUVIUM
85 METERS GRAVEL
80 METERS
HARD SILT AND SANDSTONE

92 Scientific American December 1997

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
BRIDGE LENGTH AND CABLE STRENGTH
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK WORLD’S SUSPENSION BRIDGES have steadily lengthened

KOJI YAMASHITA Panoramic Images

since the first—the Brooklyn Bridge—was completed in 1885
(photographs, top to bottom). The main challenge for engineers is
holding up the enormous weight of the central span. The tensile
strength of the wires in the cables has increased in step with the
length and the weight of the span (charts). Although the Akashi
Kaikyo Bridge will remain the longest for a while to come, the
Messina Bridge, with a center span of 3.3 kilometers, is planned
for the year 2006. It would connect Sicily with mainland Italy.

VITO PALMISANO Tony Stone Images

AMBASSADOR, DETROIT
INCREASING LENGTH OF CENTER SPAN
2,000
AKASHI KAIKYO BRIDGE

CENTER SPAN LENGTH (METERS)

1,800
GREAT BELT EAST BRIDGE
1,600
HUMBER BRIDGE
1,400
GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
1,200 VERRAZANO-
GEORGE WASHINGTON, NEW YORK GEORGE WASHINGTON NARROWS BRIDGE
1,000

RICHARD LAIRD FPG International

BRIDGE
800
600
AMBASSADOR BRIDGE
400
BROOKLYN BRIDGE
200
1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
YEAR COMPLETED
GOLDEN GATE, SAN FRANCISCO
DAVID BROWN Panoramic Images

INCREASING CABLE TENSILE STRENGTH

(KILOGRAMS PER SQUARE MILLIMETER)

200
AKASHI KAIKYO
190 GEORGE WASHINGTON OHNARUTO
180 MOUNT HOPE GOLDEN GATE INNOSHIMA
KANMON
TENSILE STRENGTH

170 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

BOSPHORUS
BEAR MOUNTAIN NEWPORT
160
HUMBER, HUMBERSIDE, ENGLAND MANHATTAN
150 MACKINAC HUMBER
140 SETO-
FORTH ROAD OHASHI
Tony Stone Worldwide

130 VERRAZANO-NARROWS FATIH

WILLIAMSBURG
SIMON JAUNTEY

120 SULTAN MEHMET

110 BROOKLYN

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
YEAR COMPLETED

1,990 METERS

SEA LEVEL

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.

 The Authors
SATOSHI KASHIMA and MAKOTO KITAGAWA
contributed to the design and construction of the Akashi
Kaikyo Bridge. Kashima obtained his Ph.D. in civil engi-
neering at the University of Texas at Austin in 1973. As
the general manager of the First Construction Bureau,
Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Authority, he was engaged in
laying the foundations of the bridge. Kitagawa obtained
his M.S. degree at Tokyo University in 1969. He is the
general manager of the Tarumi Construction office, also
part of the bridge authority, and helped to design and
erect the wind-resistant girders.

Further Reading
Cable Structures. H. Max Irvine. Dover Publications,
1992. (Originally published by MIT Press, 1981.)
Super Span. Japan Economic Journal (Nihon keizai
shimbun), Vol. 31, No. 1596, pages 13–19; November
22, 1993.
Cable Supported Bridges: Concept and Design.
Second edition. Niels J. Gimsing. John Wiley & Sons,
COURTESY OF HONSHU-SHIKOKU BRIDGE AUTHORITY 1997.
Feasibility Study on Dual Cable Suspension
Bridges. N. Take, M. Kitani, H. Konishi and N. Nishi-
mura in Technology Reports of the Osaka University
(Osaka Daigaku kogaku hokoku), Vol. 47, No. 2267/
82, pages 79–88; 1997.
Proposal for Super-Long Span Suspension Bridge
and Its Aerodynamic Characteristics. K. Matsu-
da, Y. Hikami and M. Tokushige in IHI Engineering
Review (Tokyo), Vol. 30, No. 3, pages 93–100; 1997.
AKASHI KAIKYO, JAPAN

TWO CABLES, each composed of 290 strands, CABLE STRAND WIRE

hold up the roadway. Each strand contains 127 MILLIMETERS
high-strength wires (top right); the total length
59.58
5.23

of the wires would encircle the earth 7.5 times. MILLIMETERS

After the cables were strung across the gap be-
tween the towers, workers set up a catwalk and
placed winches to pull every strand to the cor-
rect shape. The cables were fixed onto the shore 67.99 MILLIMETERS
foundations by an elaborate mesh designed to
ensure that each strand carries an equal share
of the weight (bottom right). SPRAY SADDLE
1,122 MILLIMETERS
STRANDS TENSION
CABLE SECTION MEMBERS

CABLE

ANCHORAGE ANCHOR
GIRDERS
SUPPORTING FRAME

CABLE ANCHOR

80 METERS
78 METERS
GRANITE

Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.

PETER HYATT

92C Scientific American December 1997

 The World’s
Tallest
Buildings
Malaysia’s Petronas Twin Towers
serve as both a cultural and
an economic symbol

by Cesar Pelli, Charles Thornton and Leonard Joseph

T he urge to build as high as possible appears to be a

common trait of human culture. From the Great
Pyramid of Cheops to the Tower of Babel, many
civilizations tried to craft structures that stood above their
surroundings. Mesopotamian ziggurats, Chinese pagodas
and Moslem minarets became symbols of religious belief,
towers that reached toward heaven.
Today the modern obelisk is the skyscraper. For more
than a century, architects and civil engineers have applied
practical and theoretical knowledge about vertical construc-
tion techniques to transform the look of cities. Early sky-
scrapers borrowed ideas from the shape of Greek columns
and Renaissance towers. The modernist movement that
predominated after World War II avoided symbolic quali-
ties: these flat-roofed, rectangular structures were even called
high-rises, not skyscrapers. In recent years, architects have
again revived interest in the tall building as cultural em-
blem. Preeminent examples of the trend are the world’s
tallest buildings, the Petronas Twin Towers, which soar
above Malaysia’s capital city of Kuala Lumpur.
The pinnacles of the 88-story structures reach 451.9 me-
ters. The edifices, connected by a skybridge at the 41st and
42nd floors of both buildings, are more than simply an
office complex. These recently completed buildings stand as
a symbol of Malaysia’s economic growth, while emphasiz-
ing the distinctly Islamic traditions of this southeast Asian
nation of 19 million people.
 Each floor plan is a star shape with alternating round and retail and entertainment facility; a 2,600-square-meter, 850-
square-cornered points, after a design drawn from Islamic seat concert hall; 251,000 square meters of below-grade
art. Faceted outside walls repeat the same pattern. The proj- parking for 5,000 cars; and two smaller office towers with
ect is a centerpiece of what Mahathir Mohamad, the prime approximately 186,000 square meters of space.
minister of Malaysia, calls Wawasan (“Vision”) 2020, a blue- The owner of the development complex is Kuala Lumpur
print for the country’s development, which also includes a City Centre Holdings Sendirian Berhad, a partnership that
variety of other large infrastructure projects. includes Petronas, the national petroleum company, which is
Each of the tower buildings contains 213,750 square me- also a key tenant. The project developer is Kuala Lumpur
ters of floor space (equivalent to 48 football fields). Besides City Centre Berhad. What follows is an account of the archi-
offices, the space is used for a tectural and engineering deci-
petroleum exhibit center, an art sion process that began with a
gallery and state-of-the-art mul- design competition in 1991 and
timedia conference rooms. The moved through to the comple-
two buildings themselves are tion of the towers’ pinnacles.
part of a much larger complex,
J. MITSUI Cesar Pelli & Associates

Kuala Lumpur City Centre

Phase I, and are constructed on
one corner of the former site of ISLAMIC MOTIFS influenced the ar-
a racetrack, the Selangor Turf chitectural design of the Petronas
Club. The complex also encom- Towers, seen in the bottom photo-
passes a 140,000-square-meter graph from a nearby lake.

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Gateway for Malaysia

T he architectural design of
the Petronas Towers began,
as most large-scale projects do
concerns as well as aesthetic and
philosophical questions.
Later that month Cesar Pelli
today, with an international & Associates, the New Haven–
competition. Eight firms from based architectural firm, re-
Asia, Europe and the U.S. re- ceived notice that it had been
sponded to the invitation from chosen to design the first phase
the owner and developer. All ar- of the Kuala Lumpur City Cen-
chitects worked from a relative- tre project, which included the
ly short brief that described the Petronas Towers. One never
project requirements—a general knows with certainty why one
design for a shopping center and design proposal is selected. In
public spaces—and a more de- this case, the client indicated
tailed prospectus for two towers that, as architects, Cesar Pelli &
to be occupied by Petronas in Associates had answered all the
the northeast corner of the 40- practical concerns and, most
hectare complex. important, that the proposal
The towers, according to the met the desire for a uniquely
brief, would define a gateway Malaysian design.
into this new city center. They Following the decision, a team
P. FOLLETT Cesar Pelli & Associates

would create “a place that peo- was assembled that included

ple can identify as unique to Thornton-Tomasetti, structural
Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia.” engineers; Flack & Kurtz, me-
It was never specified that the chanical engineers; Adamson As-
towers should become the tall- sociates, production architects;
est buildings in the world, just Balmori Associates, landscape
that they be beautiful. designers, among others.
The competition lasted only a short time during the sum- In total, 16 firms collaborated in the design effort. This
mer of 1991. Within three weeks, each design firm had to number is not unusual for a project of this size, given that the
prepare drawings, models and rendered perspectives to send taller the building the greater the design demands of func-
to Kuala Lumpur. The developer’s technical staff spent two tion, structure, efficiency and economy. The large comple-
weeks reviewing the proposals. Then, in August, each com- ment also responded to a requirement that Western firms ex-
petitor had to make multiple presentations of its designs to perienced in design and construction practices for very tall
audiences that included the developer and Prime Minister buildings should work closely with Malaysian professionals
Mahathir. These sessions addressed technical and economic to share their technological expertise.

94 Scientific American December 1997 The World’s Tallest Buildings

 ENGINEERING DESIGN

Islands in the Sky

he basic engineering principles for tall building design
T look deceptively simple. Floor slabs and beams span from
one column to another, creating open space that can then be
partitioned into defined work areas. Columns carry the build-
ing load all the way down to the foundation. Parts of the
structural systems must also provide lateral stiffness for sta-
bility. A shear wall, for instance, can rise through multiple
floors to brace against wind and other dynamic forces, such
as earthquakes.
Demands on the structure, however, increase rapidly with
height. In a 40-story building, an average column carries a load
equivalent to 23 floors. At 80 stories, a column in the lower
40 stories absorbs an average load equivalent to 80 floors.
Doubling the height more than triples the load because of the
compounding effects of the building’s own weight.
As height increases, the area exposed to wind forces—a
critical variable in tall building design—also expands. The
lateral deflection of upper floors must be controlled. Dou-
bling a building’s height multiplies wind sway 16-fold un-
less the structure’s stiffness is increased dramatically.
Providing upper floors with air, water, electricity, com-
munications lines and sanitation takes up precious interior
space, and the room needed for these services can grow
disproportionately. Large pumps are needed in the base-
ment to push water to the top. The bottom sections of
water and air-conditioning pipes experience great pres-
sure. Some relief from this pressure buildup comes from
water storage tanks and heat exchangers dispersed
throughout the building.
Firefighting and evacuation cannot be performed above
30 meters (100 feet) from ladder trucks on a street.
Sprinklers, alarms, smoke-control systems and fire refug-
es (areas with a separate air supply) consequently be-
come vital. Ground-based construction methods are
unsuited for tall buildings: cranes, working platforms
and forms (steel boxes into which concrete is poured)
must climb with the building as construction proceeds.
The time needed to lift workers, concrete, steel and
glass can affect the project schedule. The contractors
must, in effect, plan the project as if working on an is-
land in the sky.
Despite impediments, buildings continue to grow
taller and have yet to approach practical height limits.
High-strength concrete can form compact structural
members, thereby reducing constraints on building
design imposed by column size and weight. Stronger
steels now under development might also be used
where weight limitations are critical. Wider bases are
needed to provide stability against wind. Many new
towers, in fact, are megastructures covering several
blocks.
The main limit on height is human physiology,
not structural constraints. Pressure changes and
travel times in ever higher elevator runs impose a
“vertical commuting” cost on occupants. The
financial burden involved in building tall also sets
PETER HYATT

a practical limit. These barriers, nonetheless, keep

moving slowly upward.
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN BUSTLE

A Multifaceted Star
L inking the Petronas Towers to Kuala Lumpur
and Malaysia required rethinking the char-
acter of the traditional skyscraper to unburden
it of American or European connotations. The
PERIMETER
buildings were connected to their place in sever- COLUMN
al ways. The shape of the towers has its origin in
Islamic tradition, in which geometric patterns
assume greater symbolic importance than in CORE SUPPORT
BEAM
Western culture.
In the competition, Cesar Pelli & Associates
proposed a 12-pointed star as the shape of the
building perimeter, giving the building both a
graceful form and very usable floor space. Prime
Minister Mahathir suggested that other patterns
might prove more representative of Islamic de-
sign. After being awarded the contract, we re-
searched traditional motifs and concluded that the most com-
mon design is an eight-pointed star—achieved by superim-
posing two rotated squares. Further confirmation came from
a drawing suggested by Mahathir, who proposed two inter-
locked squares. But an eight-pointed star results in an unsuit-
able floor plan; the exterior wall comes too close to the build-

THORNTON-TOMASETTI ENGINEERS
ing core, reducing flexibility in the use of the floor space.
The architects studied many variations and proposed a form
with eight semicircles superimposed in the inner angles of the
eight-pointed star, creating a 16-branched form. A structural
column occupies each of the 16 inner angles of the building,
producing floor space that is otherwise free of columns.
Almost at the same time, development work began on the
core, the hollow square of walls at the building’s center that
provides much of the structural support. The core, which STAR SHAPE characterizes the floor plan of the Petronas Towers. The
also contains elevators, stairs, mechanical shafts, fan rooms original concept for the plan consisted of two superimposed squares
and toilets, is the key to a well-functioning tall building. Its (top left detail), creating an eight-pointed star. It was modified—placing
eight semicircles in the inner angles of the star points (middle detail)—
design must work with anticipated users’ needs and floor lay-
to create more usable floor space. The final design contained 16 pro-
outs. The goal was to meet these demands with high “efficien- trusions: eight points and eight lobes (bottom detail). The core, which
cy”—a measure that describes the ratio of usable-to-gross consists of a hollow square of walls containing elevators, mechanical
floor areas. The average efficiency of a typical office floor in shafts and other services (above), connects to support beams that ex-
the Petronas Towers is between 76 and 77 percent, a good ra- tend out to perimeter columns. A smaller building, or bustle, shown as
tio for a very tall building. a top appendage in the plan, reaches the tower’s 44th floor.
Achieving a compact core required a series of careful deci-
sions. To provide efficient elevator service, each shaft accom-
modates multiple cabs. The number of express shafts that
bring passengers to upper floors is reduced by a shuttle/sky-
lobby system, similar to the one in the World Trade Center in
New York City. Visitors to the upper half of the buildings
transfer at midheight to two “local” shafts that are stacked
one on top of the other. Capacity at peak hours is further in-
creased by double-decker elevator cabs, as used in the Citi-
corp building in New York City and the Bank of Montreal
building in Toronto.
Detailed design of the exterior wall and the public spaces
started a few months later. Drawings and study models tested
every element in the building. For example, the choice of
glass for the windows and the design of the sunscreen—steel
H. YOUNG Cesar Pelli & Associates

pipes that act as shields from the tropical sun—affect the

building’s overall appearance, the type of office lighting, the
mechanical cooling equipment requirements and, ultimately,
annual operating costs. Tentative solutions for these and oth-
er design features had to be resolved with local consultants
and submitted to the client for approval.

96 Scientific American December 1997 The World’s Tallest Buildings

 ENGINEERING DESIGN
on the project to consider moving the foundations. Shifting
Building on Kenny Hill Soil both towers 60 meters southeast put at least 55 meters of soil
below each tower basement. Instead of resting on bedrock,

K uala Lumpur is ringed by low mountains, but within the

city only a small hill interrupts the level terrain. The site,
on a space occupied by the former Turf Club, is a flat green-
they would anchor within the soil. The new location provid-
ed more room between the towers and nearby streets, which
improved traffic flow and left room for off-street drop-off
sward. But the geotechnical and structural engineer of rec- lanes and parking entry ramps.
ord, Ranhill Bersekutu Sendirian Berhad, knew from experi- At the new site, the towers were to sit over opposite banks
ence that the bedrock below could be very irregular. of a filled ravine, with bedrock 80 to more than 180 meters
Exposed to millions of years of weathering, limestone bed- below. The plan called for an entirely different foundation
rock in this region contains caverns, spires, ravines and steep- system. A concrete mat would spread building weight to
shouldered mountains that, if above grade, would resemble a drilled 1.3-meter-diameter piles, structures narrower than
landscape from classic Chinese art. Sediment from erosion piers. These piles would transfer the weight of the tower to
filled the valleys. These lower strata had metamorphosed to the soil more gradually than a mat alone would. Friction be-
weak rock that weathered back into a type of stiff soil found tween the surface of a pile and surrounding soil would pre-
in Malaysia called Kenny Hill. vent the foundation supports from sinking, much as a nail
The 300,000-metric-ton weight of each tower could be stays firmly rooted in wood. Settlement would then occur in
spread over a large concrete slab called a mat. But each tower the zone of soil between the pile tips and bedrock. Varying
would exert 1,140 kilopascals of pressure, more than twice the pile lengths so that all the supports remained at about the
the weight-bearing capacity of Kenny Hill soil and enough to same distance above the sloping rock would result in even
cause the foundation to fail. To avoid such a possibility, the settlement, avoiding tilt of the foundation.
initial concept for the foundation used massive concrete-filled The use of this type of support brought a new concern.
piers, two holes filled with concrete under each column. And The solidity of Kenny Hill soil depends on interlocking grains
more piers would also sit underneath core walls. The piers of sediment, whose sand and silt had once been rock. The soil
would pass through the soil before bearing down on bedrock. in an excavation bed normally swells as digging proceeds and
As results by soil probes came in, the design team faced a the weight of the soil above is removed. The interlocking
quandary: bedrock under both towers started shallow, 15 grains of soil would decouple as the soil expanded. To avoid
meters down, but sloped steeply to deeper than 180 meters. reducing soil solidity, we decided to sink the piles from near
Excavation to a depth of 21 meters was needed for the base- ground level. The piles then would act as “soil nails” to re-
ment, which would penetrate into rock at one end. At the strain the excavation against swelling.
other end, more digging would sink piers down through the Each final foundation consisted of 104 barrettes (rectangu-
soil until they reached bedrock. Pier installation at the deep lar cast-in-place piles up to 1.2 by 2.8 meters) dug as deep as
end would be risky, slow and costly, exceeding normal con- 125 meters. Barrette construction proceeded with crews low-
struction practices. And the piers’ inevitable shortening could ering a cage of steel reinforcing bars into each hole, which
be different for each foundation support, producing unac- was then filled with concrete. Friction between the piles and
ceptable tower tilting. (Pier length diminishes from the extra the soil was enhanced by injecting grout—a sand-and-cement
loads imposed by adding upper floors and the weight bearing mixture that was pumped down embedded pipes and out the
down as tenants move into the buildings.) Any shortening side of the piles. Once hardened, the bumps of grout on the
could be evened out, but the process would require extra dig- outer surface of the barrette increased soil friction. Finally,
ging and other measures that would increase cost. each foundation was completed by casting a concrete mat
Fortunately, the site was large enough for the design team atop the barrettes. Each 4.5-meter-thick mat required 13,200
cubic meters of concrete. Casting each mat took place in a
short, intense burst of activity: a concrete truck arrived to de-
ORIGINAL a liver its contents continuously every 90 seconds for two days.
LOCATION
ON SHALLOW BUILDING INITIAL POSITION
ROCK
KENNY HILL SOIL NAILS, or friction piles, keep the foundation from sinking. If piles driven
SOIL into the bedrock had settled differently, the building would have begun to tilt
ROCK PILES (a). Instead, at a new location (b), friction between the piles and the soil was
EXCAVATION SHORTEN enhanced by forcing grout out the sides (c).
OVER TIME A computer model (right) shows the sepa-
ROCK DRILLING
ration between the piles and the bedrock. PILES
LIMESTONE BEDROCK Casting a concrete mat atop the piles com- (SOIL
pleted the foundation (photograph at bot- NAILS)
tom on opposite page).
FINAL LOCATION BUILDING b
ANCHORED IN SOIL GROUT c
INJECTION
KENNY HILL SOIL
THORNTON-TOMASETTI ENGINEERS

FOUNDATION MAT GROUT

LIMESTONE
FRICTION BEDROCK
PILES PILE
KENNY
HILL
FORMATION

LIMESTONE BEDROCK
 ENGINEERING DESIGN
local contractors. It can be lifted into place using buckets or
Concrete Monoliths pumps rather than massive cranes, and it is easy to mold into
complex shapes. Concrete also helps to damp the natural

T he earliest tall buildings had to be

made of stone, brick or conven-
tional concrete, which creates unaccept-
tendency of any tall structure to move back and forth slightly
in the wind; its ability to attenuate vibrations is twice that of
steel. These back-and-forth oscillations—one cycle of which
ably large and heavy walls and columns. occurs every nine seconds in the towers—are slower because
MAST Steel overcame this limitation at of the concrete’s mass. Both characteristics reduce the build-
the beginning of the skyscraper ing’s response to wind to a comfortable level.
era. But advances in concrete tech- Lateral strength and stiffness is essential to tall buildings.
RING
nology have again made concrete Shorter structures use the central core alone as their spine, but
BALL attractive. Adding microsilica and the compact core of the Petronas Towers would have only
other compounds to basic concrete half the strength and stiffness needed to resist deflection from
can greatly increase its strength. wind and other forces. The necessary strength comes from a
(Microsilica is a superfine dust combination of the core walls and a frame of concrete beams
that is a by-product of electron- and columns along the perimeter as well as outriggers (stiff
ics manufacturing.) This high- beams reaching from the core to the perimeter). Steel-framed
strength concrete can be used cantilevers reach beyond the perimeter columns to form star-
to form more compact struc- like protrusions, which offer the added advantage of giving
tural elements. Other mate- tenants unobstructed views.
rials also give concrete su- The facade uses one-story-tall modular panels, each four
perior properties. Super- meters tall by 1.4 meters wide, with interlocking tongue-and-
plasticizing agents make it groove joints for rapid installation. Stainless-steel and tinted
easy to pump. When wa- glass panels with self-cleaning teardrop sunshades adapt well
ter reacts chemically with to the tropical setting and provide a lightweight enclosure
cement particles and other with strong visual texture.
components to form con- Several aspects of the towers’ design reduce wind effects.
crete, heat is released. Ex- Tapering toward the top diminishes the area exposed to fast-
cessive heat can crack the er, higher-altitude winds. The columns on upper floors are set
PERIMETER concrete. Partially replac- back (shifted closer to the core) by sloping them inward.
SUPPORTING ing cement with fly ash Wind drag on the towers’ ribbed, rounded shape is less than
COLUMNS from coal power plants for a rectangular tower, though more than for a smooth
avoids the problem. cylinder. The ribbing on the buildings’ exterior also creates
Concrete is ideal for the small areas of turbulence that break up larger vortices of air
columns and core walls of that could add to the buildings’ swaying. It was discovered in
the Petronas Towers be- wind-tunnel studies that air blowing through the gap be-
cause of its familiarity to tween the structures does increase building movement, but

THORNTON-TOMASETTI ENGINEERS (top photograph); CESAR PELLI & ASSOCIATES (bottom photograph); CESAR PELLI & ASSOCIATES (drawing)
not by very much.
Luckily, Kuala Lumpur also has a benign climate for tall
buildings. It is not an area marked by seismic activity. And,
close to the equator, it is not subject to hurricanes and ty-
phoons. Tropical thunderstorms bring heavy rain and light-
ning strikes but not exceptional winds.
ELEVATOR
SHAFTS
For high buildings, the time needed to build one floor dic-
tates the schedule. Contractors sped up the schedule by im-
plementing several strategies. For building core walls, jacks
BUSTLE raised work platforms and forms (steel boxes for pouring
CORE concrete columns) as complete assemblies. The steps in build-
ing concrete-framed floors—forming, lathing (setting reinforc-
ing bars), casting, finishing and curing—take longer than for
building columns and so would have slowed the work pace.
To avoid this bottleneck, construction crews fastened steel
beams to the core and columns, placed a metal deck on them,
then poured a much thinner layer of concrete. This process
eliminated many of the steps required for an all-concrete floor.

EIGHTY-EIGHT STORIES terminate in a 63.2-meter-tall mast (left). Columns on up-

per floors are set back, allowing tapering at the building’s top that reduces the
area exposed to high-altitude winds (top photograph). The observer dwarfed by
FOUNDATION the mast’s ring ball gives a sense of the building’s scale (bottom photograph).
PILES MAT
The World’s Tallest Buildings
 ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Highlighting the Void

erhaps the most important architectural decision was
P to design the towers as skyscrapers with distinctive
silhouettes. Cesar Pelli & Associates also took the un-
usual step of making the pair a symmetrical composi-
tion. In the modern movement, architects typically at-
tempt to couple skyscrapers in asymmetrical arrange-
ments. They usually do so by making the two
structures of different heights. If equally tall, they
are set diagonal to each other—the World Trade
Center being a notable example. Like sculpture,
the modernist building becomes a free object set
in indeterminate space. As such, it avoids sym-
bolic expression.
In the final design, which breaks from the
modernist tradition, the towers are symmetri-
cal. Their arrangement creates a distinctive
space between them, adding to the symmetry.
The separation constitutes the key element in
the composition. Each tower has its own
vertical axis, but the axis of the total com-
position is the intervening space. Through
Frank Lloyd Wright, many architects have
been influenced by Lao-tzu’s teaching that
the reality of a hollow object is in the
void and not the walls that define it.
The space between the towers can be
perceived as the most real element in
the total composition. The visual pow-
er of the emptiness was enhanced by
adding a midlevel skybridge not
specified in the original client brief.
The bridge and its supporting struc-
ture create a 170-meter-high por-
tal to the sky, an element that can
be seen as a door to the infinite.
The Petronas Towers are thus
unlike any Western skyscraper.
This quality of the buildings is
not derived from Malaysian
tradition. But because it ap-
pears for the first time in
Kuala Lumpur, it will be for-
ever identified with its place.
The Eiffel Tower is synony-
mous with Paris, for in-
stance, although its struc-
ture and form were not
derived from Parisian or
French architecture.
J. PICKARD Cesar Pelli & Associates
ENGINEERING DESIGN

Bridging the Sky

T he skybridge is an essential functional compo-

nent of the Petronas Towers. Linking two sky-

THORNTON-TOMASETTI ENGINEERS
lobby levels in both towers permits easy access to
meeting rooms, a surau (prayer room), an execu-
tive dining room and other offices. The skybridge
is fire-resistant, so its midheight location provides
an emergency exit from one tower to the other.
This reduces the demand on other fire routes else-
where in the building.
After various options were studied, an arched THREE DAYS were needed to lift the 325-metric-ton skybridge
bridge supported from below was chosen. Other after lightning damaged control equipment.
possible designs considered included a structure
suspended from a cat’s-cradle-like support and
one held by cables above the bridge. The chosen arch config- requested a low-maintenance structure that could be inspect-
uration permits the use of thin walkway girders instead of ed easily inside and out, because rusting becomes a problem
trusses with crisscrossed members. in the humid tropics. The top of the building consists of three
Bridge props made of 1.1-meter-diameter steel pipes rise elements: A drum-shaped garage on the top floor encloses a
diagonally from low supports on each tower, meeting at the double-decker window-washing unit. From the wide garage,
middle of the bridge. The locations of the supports minimize a cone tapers inward. Finally, a mast provides the visual tran-
rising or sagging of the bridge floor as the towers move. sition from tower to sky. The 63.2-meter-tall mast has 14
Wind-tunnel tests of a bridge model showed that the wind- meters of its length embedded in the cone frame, with the rest
induced vibrations of these flexible legs could cause fatigue projecting above. The mast width tapers from 2.6 to 0.6 me-
cracking at some welded joints, so they were fitted with ter. At mid-height of the mast, a ball made of 14 pipes—each
damping devices that reduce movement. 300 millimeters in diameter that were curved into rings and
Bridge erection presented a special challenge. The structure attached together—symbolizes the 14 states of Malaysia, and
was fabricated in South Korea and transported in pieces to a 1.9-meter ball sits at the top of the mast.
Malaysia. The contractor who erected the bridge assembled The window-washing garage and cone consist of a conven-
most of the structure on the ground. Jacks then lifted the legs tional steel-framed skeleton with attached stainless-steel fa-
and the bridge ends. The biggest challenge was lifting the 325- cade panels. The narrow mast is made of stainless-steel pan-
metric-ton middle section, which comprised three quarters of els, plates and bolts, which avoid corrosion and minimize
the walkway length. Jacks that pulled eight high-strength ca- maintenance. A single layer for both the facade and struc-
bles could have lifted the structure in 20 hours, but the oper- tural support eases inspection from inside ladders or external
ation stretched to three days when lightning strikes twice rigging. Using short panels facilitated lifting and assembly.
burned out control equipment. The mast was assembled in small pieces within the building,
The pinnacles presented another hurdle. Considering the then jacked up in two stages. This procedure protected work-
great height of and difficult access to the pinnacles, the client ers and minimized the height of the crane required.

BRIDGE LEGS were lifted to their support bearings and strapped to each tower.
Jacks then lifted the bridge ends to the skylobby floor. Next, workers elevated
the bridge walkway (left). After welding these sections together, they swung out
the bridge legs and attached them to the bottom of the structure (center). Bear-
ings permit the bridge legs to flex as the towers move in the wind (right).

WALKWAY
BRIDGE END
THORNTON-TOMASETTI ENGINEERS

LEGS

BEARING

100 Scientific American December 1997

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Silhouettes against the Sky Defining Tall

A s each tower ascends, it tapers in six gradations. In the

upper sections the walls also tilt gently toward the cen-
ter, completing the form and visually strengthening the axis
T he Council on Tall Buildings and
Urban Habitat, a U.S.-based orga-
nization, has recently complicated the
mundi—the central vertical line of the skyscraper. The tow- definition of what constitutes the
ers’ pinnacles reach to the sky and reinforce the silhouette. world’s tallest building. The committee
Throughout their development, the buildings maintained decided on April 12, 1996, that the Pe-
the basic form and image set out in the competition but also tronas Towers deserve this designa-
changed in many ways. The 12-pointed-star plan evolved into tion, based on measurements from the
a 16-branched form; the towers acquired pinnacles and grew ground to the top of the structure.
in height until they reached 451.9 meters, becoming the tall- Then, on July 10, 1997, it muddied the
est buildings in the world. definition. In the council’s new decision,
The images that the towers create against the sky required Petronas became only one of three tall-
detailed study. We proposed a pointed but pinnacleless de- est buildings, retaining its status as
sign in the competition. The clients preferred a distinctly Ma- world’s highest building (to its “struc-
laysian top, one not derived from skyscrapers or church stee- tural top”). The council also designated
ples. We experimented with many concepts, some of which three new categories: height to tip of
were initially rejected, until the chosen pinnacle was developed. spire or antenna (held by One World
From foundation to skybridge to pinnacle, construction is Trade Center in New York City), height
now complete, and occupants are moving in. At least for a to top of roof, and height to highest oc-
while, the Petronas Towers will stand as the world’s tallest cupied floor (the latter two records go-
skyscrapers. More significantly, the towers serve as worthy ing to the Sears Tower in Chicago).
symbols of the culture and dynamism of this southeast Asian
nation. SA

The Authors
CESAR PELLI, CHARLES THORNTON and LEONARD JO-
SEPH collaborated on the design of the Petronas Twin Towers. Pelli
heads the architectural design firm of Cesar Pelli & Associates in
New Haven, Conn., which, besides the Petronas Towers, designed
the World Financial Center in New York City and the new Washing-
ton Airport terminal. He served as dean of the Yale University
School of Architecture from 1977 to 1984. Earlier in his career, he
worked in the offices of Eero Saarinen. In 1995 Pelli received the
American Institute of Architects Gold Medal. Thornton is chairman
and principal of Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers/LZA Group in New
York City. He has spearheaded the engineering design of numerous
projects, including One Liberty Place in Philadelphia, the United
Center sports complex in Chicago and the United Airlines Terminal
at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. He also assisted in the investigations
into the roof collapse of the Hartford Civic Center and the Schoha-
rie Creek Bridge failure. Thornton has taught at Manhattan College,
Pratt Institute, Princeton University and Cooper Union. He co-au-
thored with Joseph the book Exposed Structure in Building Design.
Joseph is a vice president at Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers. He has
been involved in the design of a variety of structures, among which
are buildings, bridges, piers, parking decks, hangars and factories.
His high-rise projects include the 50-story Chifley Tower in Sydney,
Australia, and the 54-story One Mellon Bank Center in Pittsburgh.

Further Reading
The Petronas Towers—The Tallest Building in the World.
Hamdan Mohamad, Tiam Choon, Tarique Azam and Stephen
Tong in Habitat and the High-Rise: Tradition and Innovation.
J. APICELLA Cesar Pelli & Associates

Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress. Edited by Lynn S. Bee-

dle. Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and the Dutch
Council on Tall Buildings, 1995.
Cosmic Pillars: Philosophy of Tall Buildings. Cesar Pelli in
Collected Papers of Habitat and the High Rise. Council on Tall
Buildings and Urban Habitat, 1996.

The World’s Tallest Buildings

 Building a
The largest public-works upgrade on
earth calls for, among other things, a new
airport, two world-class bridges and two
submerged crossings of Victoria Harbor

by John J. Kosowatz
Photographs by Andy Ryan

H ong Kong’s return to China

in July sparked widespread
speculation. People around
the world offered their predictions as to
how this tiny bastion of raw, unfettered
capitalism would change once enveloped by
the last great venue of communism. Despite the
range of opinions voiced, however, most agreed that
one thing would remain the same: Hong Kong would
maintain its status as the major gateway to China.
One reason Hong Kong will continue to serve as an entry point
to the mainland is the Airport Core Program, an ambitious $21-billion
infrastructure project due for completion next year. Only in mercantile
Hong Kong could a job of this magnitude be conceived, approved, financed, bid
and largely completed in seven short years. The scope of work is enormous. Indeed,
the Airport Core Program is the largest public-works upgrade ever undertaken.
It centers on building what will be the world’s largest airport on Chek Lap Kok off Lantau
Island, 25 kilometers west of Hong Kong’s central business district. It also calls for 34 kilometers
of new highways and railway lines, two massive bridges and two submerged crossings of Victoria
Harbor to connect Chek Lap Kok to Hong Kong proper. In addition, contractors are erecting a new

HONG KONG, now under Chinese rule once more, will remain the major gateway
to the mainland—in part thanks to its new airport at Chek Lap Kok.

102 Scientific American December 1997

New Gateway to China
 town, called Tung Chung, near Lantau to house at least 200,000 people, most of
whom will work at the airport at Chek Lap Kok.
City planners first proposed the construction in the late 1980s, because Hong
Kong was fast becoming one of the globe’s busiest destinations. The existing air-
port, Kai Tak, could not be expanded because of its location in the middle of Kow- TSING MA
loon: this district is highly congested, and airplanes must make harrowing ap- BRIDGE

proaches directly over buildings there. So, in 1989, the government approved plans
for a new facility. A year later it formed the New Airport Projects Coordination AIRPORT AT
Office, or NAPCO, which serves as the design and construction manager for the CHEK LAP KOK
AIRPORT
project’s owners: the local government, Airport Authority Hong Kong, the Mass RAILWAY
Transit Railway Corporation and Western Harbor Tunnel Company.
NAPCO officials, now headed by Tudor P. Walters, a vice president of Bechtel, a
giant U.S. engineering firm and contractor, moved quickly on the design and plan-
ning. To keep on schedule and minimize costs, they decided to award mostly lump- NORTH LANTAU
EXPRESSWAY
sum, fixed-price contracts and to shun untried systems and technology. Methods TUNG CHUNG
that had not been tested elsewhere would have posed another problem in that con- LANTAU ISLAND
tractors faced logistical extremes: the areas chosen for the airport at Chek Lap Kok

Chek Lap Kok AIRPORT DESIGN

PLATFORM
Before any construction on the
new airport could begin, con-
tractors had to create for it a
1,248-hectare platform (shown
at right). Chek Lap Kok was too
small and hilly for the massive
building and outstretched run-
ways. A joint venture among
Hong Kong’s Gammon Con-
struction, Japan’s Nishimatsu
Construction and several other
firms won the first big award on
this job, worth $1.2 billion, and
they finished up in 1995, after
only 41 months of work. To pro-
vide a base for the platform,
Gammon/Nishimatsu leveled
both Chek Lap Kok, which cov-
ers 302 hectares, and a smaller
neighboring island to a height
of six meters above sea level.
They used reclaimed land to fill
in the remainder. In all, the op-
eration redistributed some 347
million cubic meters of rock and
soil and monopolized much of
the world’s dredging fleet.

104 Scientific American December 1997 Building a New Gateway to China

 and the bridges were quite remote and lacked supply routes. And building sites in

ROBERTO OSTI
KOWLOON nearby Kowloon and Hong Kong were plagued with heavy traffic and limited space.
Engineering aside, NAPCO also had to raise the necessary funds. International
KAP SHUI MUN
BRIDGE power politics between China and the U.K. shadowed the program from the be-
ginning. China, on the verge of regaining Hong Kong, remained unconvinced of
the project’s worth for a long while. But finally, in 1995, negotiators hammered
WEST
KOWLOON out an astounding agreement: Hong Kong would fund 75 percent of the costs
LANTAU EXPRESSWAY through an equity investment in the project, drawing on fiscal reserves of $19.5
LINK billion and $57.7 billion initially set aside for foreign exchange trading. Loans
would cover the remaining quarter. NAPCO rapidly began awarding contracts.
To date, China seems impressed with the results. Officials early this year ap-
proved the construction of a second 3,800-meter runway and of the terminal’s
WESTERN HARBOR CROSSING northwest extension. This second job was not included in the core program; in-
stead it was scheduled to occur during the project’s second phase. And this time,
AIRPORT TERMINUS Chinese officials approved funding the $630-million northwest extension with a
HONG KONG more standard 3:1 debt-to-equity ratio, reflecting their increased confidence in the
ISLAND investment. Walters of Bechtel says: “I believe they like our work.”

TUNG CHUNG

DESIGN
Foster Asia, the Hong Kong–based operation of British architect Norman
Foster, designed Chek Lap Kok’s voluminous terminal. The initial plan,
drawn up by the government, called for a series of linked, concrete build-
ings. But Foster Asia wanted more natural light and open space. The design-
ers decided that a single building not only would look better but would be
easier to assemble in the short time allowed. Also, Foster Asia felt that one
building could more easily survive Hong Kong’s seasonal typhoons.
The final design calls for some 350,000 cubic meters of concrete, together
with 21,000 metric tons of steel for the roof and 2,400 metric tons of tubular
steel to support the walls and glass panes. The building extends over
516,000 square meters, roughly in the shape of a wide-bodied airplane
(photograph at left). The 490,000-square-meter concourse and main gate
area stretch out for 1.3 kilometers, and the most remote gate areas split like
a swallow’s tail. All 39 fixed gates accommodate the world’s largest passen-
ger aircraft, the Boeing 747.
The terminal has eight levels. The first, for an automated people mover,
includes a tunnel that is nearly one kilometer long, built by Gammon/Nishi-
matsu. A baggage hall, 320 by 160 meters, on the second level is closed to
the public. The remaining six levels house a large retail complex, arrivals
and departures, lounges and ticket counters. These floors have few interior
walls, enabling visitors to see clearly throughout the terminal. Glass walls
around the terminal’s 4.4-kilometer perimeter offer views of the runways.

Building a New Gateway to China Scientific American December 1997 105

ROOF
Martin Manning, director of Ove Arup and Partners, headed the design team for the
Lantau Link
roof, which dips and rolls over the length of the building. A lightweight steel lattice, cov-
ered by a fabric membrane, gives the roof this wavy profile. The lattice’s interlinked univer-
sal beams form a series of tubular, semicircular vaults—somewhat like the barrel vaults in
some medieval churches. Skylights fit into each of the 129 roof modules, which are gener-
ally 36 by 36 meters in size and weigh 120 metric tons. They are supported by interior
columns and also connect to the outer walls’ mullions, those vertical bars that separate
window units in a series. For this latter link, the engineers designed steel gaskets that al-
low the walls and the roof to shift horizontally and vertically in relation to each other—a
flexibility that serves the structure well in strong winds. TSING MA
BRIDGE

TSING MA BRIDGE
CONSTRUCTION
The $1.29-billion contract awarded to realize Foster’s plan went to a consortium of five DESIGN
British, Chinese and Japanese firms (BC J)—China State Construction Engineering Corpo- Already the Lantau Link—which
ration, Kumagai Gumi (HK), Maeda Corporation, Amec International Construction and Bal- joins Lantau Island to the mainland
four Beatty. BC J finished the job this fall, having overcome delays. Because of record rain- over a busy shipping channel leading
fall in 1994 and difficult ground conditions on Chek Lap Kok, Gammon/Nishimatsu took to the Pearl River Delta—has become a
longer than expected in turning the site over to BC J. At the peak of construction on the national symbol for China. Its center-
terminal, BC J had marshaled more than 1,600 workers. piece is the double-decked Tsing Ma
suspension bridge. At 2.17 kilometers
long, Tsing Ma is the longest suspen-
sion bridge ever built to carry both rail
and vehicular traffic. Under a $916-mil-
lion contract, the Anglo-Japanese Con-
struction Joint Venture of Trafalgar
House Construction (Asia), Costain Civ-
il Engineering, and Mitsui and Compa-
ny began building Tsing Ma in 1992
and finished last year.

DECKS
Four years is an astonishingly short
period for such an undertaking. South
China’s typhoons and Tsing Ma’s loca-
tion in a narrows called for a design
that could withstand winds upward of
300 kilometers per hour. Fifty-one aero-
dynamically shaped, double-decked
sections fit together in a sturdy hybrid
of box-shaped structures and triangu-
lar frames, or trusses. Longitudinal vents
built into each of the sections redirect

106 Scientific American December 1997 Building a New Gateway to China

 KAP SHUI
MUN BRIDGE

TSING MA TOWER (EAST)

strong winds and thereby pro- the channel. Workers built an

vide greater stability. artificial island around the foun-
Companies in Japan and the dation as added protection
U.K. fabricated these steel deck against shipping accidents.
sections and shipped them to
China, just upstream of the CABLES
project. Barges carried the as- The bridge is linked overhead
sembled 1,000-metric-ton sec- by thick cables, 1.1 meters in
tions downstream, where a diameter. Gurkhas, members
gantry crane hoisted them at of the British army, working on
low water. The sections are gen- flimsy wood catwalks at great
erally 40 meters wide, 36 me- heights, spun together some
ters long and 7.3 meters deep— 27,500 metric tons of galva-
accommodating six lanes of nized steel wire to form these
vehicular traffic on top and a cables. The contractor chose the
railway line and two emergen- tactic, called aerial spinning,
cy traffic lanes on the bottom. based on experience and cost.
Although aerial spinning
TOWERS can be dangerous, the firm felt
Two reinforced concrete tow- that cables of this size would
ers, each 206 meters tall, bol- prove too cumbersome to
ster Tsing Ma’s main span. Mit- form at the shop and then fit
sui/Costain erected the towers into place. The finished cables
using slip forms—in essence, pass over steel saddles mount-
temporary frames that can be ed on top of the towers, and
easily moved as the concrete gravity anchorages at either
work progresses. The contrac- end pull them taut. Suspended
tors completed the labor-in- cables, spaced 10 meters apart,
tensive job in just three months. hang from the main cables and
The eastern tower is secured in hold up the 1,377-meter-long
bedrock on Tsing Yi Island (close-up above). On the western end, the main span of Tsing Ma, as well as its 359-meter-long western span.
Ma Wan tower has a foundation that is tied into the bedrock below Concrete piers lie underneath the slightly shorter eastern span.

Building a New Gateway to China Scientific American December 1997 107

KAP SHUI MUN BRIDGE

KAP SHUI MUN TOWERS

KAP SHUI MUN BRIDGE

TOWERS
The adjacent cable-stayed Kap Shui Mun Bridge—the next stop
along the Lantau Link—boasts a main span that is 430 meters long.
In total, it reaches across 750 meters and has one of the heaviest
decks for its length in the world. The bridge was built under a $213-
million contract by Kumagai Gumi (HK), Maeda Corporation, Yoko-
gawa Bridge Corporation and Hitachi Zosen Corporation of Japan,
another international joint venture. Kap Shui Mun relies primarily on
two H-shaped towers, each 145 meters tall, for support.

DECKS
The bridge’s decks adopt two different structural systems. The cen-
ter of the main span is a double-box structure, formed from com-
posite steel and concrete. The contractor cast the concrete upper
and lower decks onto prefabricated steel webs at Lantau Island,
floated them out and then hoisted them into position. In contrast,
the side spans and the remainder of the center span consist of steel
girders—four plates welded into a box section—that were reinforced
with concrete and incrementally moved out into position from the
towers on either side. Because the deck was 35.2 meters wide, work-
ers needed to send out two girders at once, side by side, to match
the span. They used concrete to join each pair at the bottom and
struts to link the top slabs.
The launching noses—the front parts of the girders used to move
the sections forward into position—were left in place and incorpo-
rated into the design. They serve as transition elements between the
steel-composite main section and the concrete side sections. Where

108 Scientific American December 1997

 these two structural systems join on either side reflects the depth of water in the Kap Shui Mun channel, which had to be
deep enough to allow the heavy steel-composite units to be floated out. That point was 45 meters from each tower.

MA WAN VIADUCT
Neighboring Ma Wan Viaduct (not shown) is 504 meters long. The contractors built it by casting the concrete segments
in place, using temporary falsework towers to support them until they were strong enough to stand on their own. Six
spans, each 84 meters long, were cast in four 21-meter-long segments. These concrete beams were then compressed with
wires, or post-tensioned; stretching wires taut through the concrete gives it added tensile strength to reduce cracking.

KWAI CHUNG VIADUCT

The West Kowloon Express-
way’s Kwai Chung Viaduct pre- KWAI CHUNG VIADUCT
sented many difficulties. Be-
cause the viaduct must carry
cars and the airport train for
three kilometers, it required a
number of different designs.
“There is no typical column, and
there are no typical beams,”
notes Ian J. Jones, the senior
resident engineer for Scott Wil-
son Kirkpatrick, the highway de-
partment’s consultant firm.
Workers formed the main
road structure on top of precast,
U-shaped concrete beams that
were prestressed. To add
strength, the concrete was com-
pressed with heavily loaded
wires or bars before it was laid.
Then the concrete decks them-
selves were cast in place. The
construction crew built the rail
sections from precast concrete
segments that were post-ten-
sioned. These rail sections run
across a series of columns, which
rest on long, heavy posts bored
into the ground and on founda-
tions supported with barrettes,
another type of pile. Much of the
project is built on fill, a common
practice in Hong Kong. French
contractors had to dig 30 to 40
meters deep to find stable earth
for anchoring the piles. Further
complicating matters was that
in many places workers needed
to build the viaduct over 15 traf-
fic lanes, which could not be
shut down.

Western Harbor Crossing

A joint venture between Japan’s Nishimatsu Construction and Kumagai Gumi (HK) won the $730-million con-
tract to build the project’s final leg, an immersed crossing of Victoria Harbor into central Hong Kong. The ap-
proaches to this two-kilometer tunnel on either side of the harbor are built on reclaimed land. The Hong Kong
side proved more difficult because of large areas of marine mud. The contractor had to place diaphragm
walls—used to separate the mud and provide stability under the foundation—down to depths of 40 meters.
The Kowloon side provided better fill. For this reason, the contractor was able to secure the approach using re-

Building a New Gateway to China Scientific American December 1997 109

 TUNNEL ENTRANCE
inforced concrete box sections that were cast in place.
A seaside quarry on the other side of Hong Kong
Island formed the giant tube segments for the tunnel
itself. When the segments were assembled, the quar-
ry was flooded, and the pieces were floated out and
then towed to the site. Workers at the same location
built the sections for the rail tunnel. So that the seg-
ments could be sunk and attached to a trench-
dredging machine on the harbor bottom, they were
all fitted with ballast tanks and handlelike lugs. Once
the segments were lowered into the trench, horizon-
tal jacks drew them into position and created a seal.

WESTERN HARBOR CROSSING

Airport Line Terminus CONNAUGHT ROAD

The $528-million terminus

for the airport line sits on a six-
hectare site in front of Ex-
change Place, home of the
Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It
contains a five-level under-
ground station, numerous rail
tunnels and a building with a
steel roof that extends for 25
meters. The most complex fea-
ture of the structure is a $93-
million underground pedestri-
an walkway that links the ter-
minus to the Mass Transit
Railway Corporation’s existing
central station.
The 300-meter-long tunnel
snakes directly below the stock
exchange. Thus, workers from
Japan’s Aoki Corporation must
tunnel between the piles of

110 Scientific American December 1997 Building a New Gateway to China

 the exchange’s foundation,
AIRPORT LINE taking precautions not to cut
its fiber-optic link and other
service lines. They must fur-
thermore take care not to
make any adjustments that
might cause the exchange
building to settle, now or in
the future. The path also cross-
es under Connaught Road,
one of Hong Kong’s busiest
thoroughfares. Despite these
difficulties, though, the rail-
way line is scheduled to open
in June 1998, two months af-
ter the airport at Chek Lap Kok
begins operations.

JOHN J. KOSOWATZ is assis-

tant managing editor at Engi-
neering News-Record.

More information on the air-

port at Chek Lap Kok is avail-
able at http://www.hkairport.
com on the World Wide Web.

Building a New Gateway to China Scientific American December 1997 111

 Do We Still
Need Skyscrapers?
TTheheDigital
Industrial Revolution made skyscrapers possible.
Revolution makes them (almost) obsolete

by William J. Mitchell

O ur distant forebears could create remarkably tall

structures by exploiting the compressive strength
of stone and brick, but the masonry piles they
constructed in this way contained little usable interior space.
At 146 meters (480 feet), the Great Pyramid of Cheops is a
their bosses. Furthermore, tall buildings fitted perfectly into
the emerging pattern of the commuter city, with its high-den-
sity central business district, ring of low-density bedroom
suburbs and radial transportation systems for the daily re-
turn journey. This centralization drove up property values in
vivid expression of the ruler’s power, but inside it is mostly the urban core and created a strong economic motivation to
solid rock; the net-to-gross floor area is terrible. On a square jam as much floor area as possible onto every available lot.
base of 230 meters, it encloses the King’s Chamber, which is So as the 20th century unfolded, and cities such as New York
just five meters across. The 52-meter spiraling brick minaret and Chicago grew, downtown skylines sprouted higher while
of the Great Mosque of Samarra does not have any interior the suburbs spread wider.
at all. And the 107-meter stone spires of Chartres Cathedral, But there were natural limits to this upward extension of
though structurally sophisticated, enclose nothing but nar- skyscrapers, just as there are constraints on the sizes of living
row shafts of empty space and cramped access stairs. organisms. Floor and wind loads, people, water and supplies
The Industrial Revolution eventually provided ways to must ultimately be transferred to the ground, so the higher
open up the interiors of tall towers and put large numbers of you go, the more of the floor area must be occupied by struc-
people inside. Nineteenth-century architects found that they tural supports, elevators and service ducts. At some point, it
could achieve greatly improved ratios of open floor area to becomes uneconomical to add additional floors; the dimin-
solid construction by using steel and reinforced concrete ishing increment of usable floor area does not justify the in-
framing and thin curtain walls. They could employ mechani- creasing increment of cost.
cal elevators to provide rapid vertical circulation. And they
could integrate increasingly sophisticated mechanical systems
to heat, ventilate and cool growing amounts of interior space.
In the 1870s and 1880s visionary New York and Chicago ar-
U rban planning and design considerations constrain height
as well. Tall buildings have some unwelcome effects at
ground level; they cast long shadows, blot out the sky and
chitects and engineers brought these elements together to pro- sometimes create dangerous and unpleasant blasts of wind.
duce the modern skyscraper. Among the earliest full-fledged And they generate pedestrian and automobile traffic that
examples were the Equitable Building (1868–70), the West- strains the capacity of surrounding streets. To control these
ern Union Building (1872–75) and the Tribune Building effects, planning authorities typically impose limits on height
(1873–75) in New York City, and Burnham & Root’s great and on the ratio of floor area to ground area. More subtly,
Montauk Building (1882) in Chicago. they may apply formulas relating allowable height and
These newfangled architectural contraptions found a ready bulk to street dimensions—frequently yielding the
market because they satisfied industrial capitalism’s growing stepped-back and tapering forms that so strongly char-
BRYAN CHRISTIE

need to bring armies of office workers together at locations acterize the Manhattan skyline.
where they could conveniently interact with one another, gain The consequence of these various limits is that excep-
access to files and other work materials, and be supervised by tionally tall buildings—those that really push the enve-

Great Pyramid of Cheops Minaret of Samarra Chartres Cathedral Equitable Western Union Tribune Building Chrysler Building
Built circa 2600 B.C. Built 9th century Built 13th century Building Building Built 1875 Built 1930
Height 146 meters Height 52 meters Height 107 meters Built 1870 Built 1875 Height 79 meters Height 319 meters
Egypt Iraq France Height 43 meters Height 70 meters New York New York
New York New York

112 Scientific American December 1997 Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
 lope—have always been expensive, rare and conspicuous. So paper files. And businesses are discovering that their mar-
organizations can effectively draw attention to themselves keting and public-relations purposes may now be better
and express their power and prestige by finding ways to con- served by slick World Wide Web pages on the Internet
struct the loftiest skyscrapers in town, in the nation or maybe and Superbowl advertising spots than by investments in
even in the world. They frequently find this worthwhile, even monumental architecture on expensive urban sites.
when it does not make much immediate practical sense. We now find, more and more, that powerful corpora-
There has, then, been an ongoing, century-long race for tions occupy relatively unobtrusive, low- or medium-rise
height. The Chrysler Building (319 meters) and the Empire suburban office campuses rather than flashy downtown
State Building (381 meters) battled it out in New York in the towers. In Detroit, Ford and Chrysler spread themselves
late 1920s, adding radio antennas and even a dirigible moor- amid the greenery in this way—though General Motors
ing mast to gain the last few meters. has bucked the trend by moving into the lakeside Renais-
The contest heated up again in the 1960s and 1970s, with sance Center. Nike’s campus in Beaverton, Ore., is pretty
Lower Manhattan’s World Trade Center twin towers (417 hard to find, but www.nike.com is not. Microsoft and
meters), Chicago’s John Hancock tower (344 meters) and Netscape battle it out from Redmond, Wash., and Moun-
finally Chicago’s gigantic Sears Tower (443 meters). More re- tain View, Calif., respectively, and—though their logos,
cently, Cesar Pelli’s skybridge-linked Petronas Twin Towers the look and feel of their interfaces, and their Web pages
(452 meters) in Kuala Lumpur have—for a while at least— are familiar worldwide—few of their millions of custom-
taken the title of world’s tallest building. ers know or care what the headquarters buildings look
Along the way, there were some spectacular fantasy en- like. And—a particularly telling straw in the wind—Sears
trants as well. In 1900 Désiré Despradelle of the Massachu- has moved its Chicago workforce from the great Loop
setts Institute of Technology proposed a 457-meter “Beacon tower that bears its name to a campus in far-suburban
of Progress” for the site of the Chicago World’s Fair; like Ma- Hoffman Estates.
laysia’s Petronas Towers of almost a century later, it was Does this mean that skyscrapers are now dinosaurs?
freighted with symbolism of a proud young nation’s aspira- Have they finally had their day? Not quite, as a visit to
tions. Despradelle’s enormous watercolor rendering hung for the fancy bar high atop Hong Kong’s prestigious Pen-
years in the M.I.T. design studio to inspire the students. insula Hotel will confirm. Here the washroom urinals
Then, in 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright (not much more than are set against the clear plate-glass windows so that
five feet in his shoes and cape) topped it with a truly megalo- powerful men can gaze down on the city while they re-
maniac proposal for a 528-story, mile-high tower for the lieve themselves. Obviously this gesture would not
Chicago waterfront. have such satisfying effect on the ground floor. In the
21st century, as in the time of Cheops, there will un-

W hile this race has been running, though, the burgeon-

ing Digital Revolution has been reducing the need to
bring office workers together, face-to-face, in expensive down-
doubtedly be taller and taller buildings, built at great
effort and often without real economic justification,
because the rich and powerful will still sometimes find
town locations. Efficient telecommunications have diminished satisfaction in traditional ways of demonstrating that
the importance of centrality and correspondingly increased they’re on top of the heap. SA

the attractiveness of less expensive suburban sites that are

more convenient to the labor force. Digital storage and com- WILLIAM J. MITCHELL is dean of the School of
puter networks have increasingly supported decentralized re- Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Insti-
mote access to databases rather than reliance on centralized tute of Technology.

Empire State World Trade Sears Tower Petronas Twin Towers Microsoft HQ Beacon of Progress Mile High Tower
Building Center Built 1974 Built 1997 Started in 1986 Proposed 1900 Proposed 1956
Built 1931 Built 1972 Height 443 meters Height 452 meters Height 20 meters Never built Never built
Height 381 meters Height 417 meters Chicago Kuala Lumpur, Redmond, Wash. Height 457 meters Height 1,609
New York New York Malaysia Planned for Chicago meters
Planned
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc. for Chicago
 T H E A M AT E U R S C I E N T I S T
by Shawn Carlson

TRANSMITTER Taking Back the Final Frontier

PARACHUTE
I n my youth, nothing excited me
quite as much as spaceflight. When
Neil Armstrong’s boots first pressed
into the lunar soil in 1969, I was right
there with him, like millions of other
high temperatures and pressures. These
gases blow through a nozzle at the rock-
et’s tail and, in one of the most visible
displays of Newton’s law of action and
reaction, propel the rocket forward. The
children, dreaming of the day when I fuel and oxidizer may be liquid or solid,
OXIDIZER TANK VENT could step beyond my imagination and or a combination of both. The space
make the trip for real. By age 11, I was shuttle’s main engines, for instance, com-
a passionate rocketeer, building fleets of bust liquid hydrogen with liquid oxy-
model rockets and launching them ev- gen, whereas its solid-rocket boosters
ery other Sunday in the parking lot of burn a stiff matrix of synthetic rubber
the local baseball stadium. But I burned and aluminum powder, with ammoni-
out on model rocketry in my early teens um perchlorate grains as the oxidizer.
when I realized that the National Aero- Much smaller solid-propellant mo-
nautics and Space Administration owned tors operating on the same principle are
the monopoly on getting to space. Am- commercially available from several
ateurs could not hope to compete, and, companies. These devices range in price
indeed, few even tried. from a few hundred dollars to more
Today, however, amateur rocketry is than $100,000. Potent motors can also
LIQUID-OXYGEN TANK undergoing a renaissance. Exciting new be made at home for only a small frac-
developments in ultralightweight mate- tion of the cost to industry; a few thou-
rials and powerful rocket motors now sand dollars might fund one large
give amateurs all the tools they need to enough to go after the FINDS prize. But
venture toward the final frontier. And building your own motors could be
people are responding. At least one lethal without expert guidance. Thank
rocketeer’s creation recently reached an goodness, therefore, for the Reaction
altitude of 36 kilometers, and other at- Research Society, an amateur group
tempts to fly small payloads to 100 kilo- headquartered in Los Angeles. That or-
meters are tugging on the coattails of ganization, which has been developing
space with rockets that cost just a few and testing rocket motors of all kinds
thousand dollars. since 1943, boasts a perfect safety rec-
To hasten the progress of such enter- ord. It offers a complete course in solid-
prises, a nonprofit group called the rocket motor construction, and anyone
Foundation for the International Non- who wants to survive the challenge of
governmental Development of Space hands-on motor making would be well
OXIDIZER INJECTOR (FINDS), based in Washington, D.C., advised to take it. The three-day course
has just announced a competition that costs $475 and culminates with the stu-
could spark a small revolution: FINDS dents firing their homebuilt rocket mo-
COMBUSTION CHAMBER will pay $200,000 to the first amateur tors on the society’s testing range, which
team that can loft a two-kilogram pay- is located in California’s Mojave Desert.
SOLID FUEL load to an altitude of 200 kilometers. If you want to experiment with liq-
(The second group to accomplish this uid-fueled rockets, check out the Pacific
feat will win $50,000.) That announce- Rocket Society, also run from southern
ment has started a citizens’ space race, California. Its members have been ex-
one that is open to anyone with the de- perimenting with liquid propellants for
sire to participate. This month’s column more than 50 years and can give you
MICHAEL GOODMAN

points the way for interested amateurs practical instruction with these kinds of
to get involved quickly and safely. engines. They are currently assembling
ROCKET NOZZLE Safety is an important concern. A their most powerful creation ever, a two-
rocket motor, after all, burns a volatile stage, 10-meter, 300-kilogram monster
HYPERION I used a hybrid rocket fuel together with a separate oxidizing dubbed the Exotron. Built by the soci-
motor to capture the altitude record. agent to produce gases at dangerously ety’s president, Roderick Milliron, and

114 Scientific American December 1997 The Amateur Scientist

 $200,000 PRIZE LEVEL
200 (200 KILOMETERS)

HIGH-FLYING CRAFT usually travel mer and lifelong space enthusiast who
well below the 200-kilometer altitude delights in his group’s motto: “Ameri-
needed to earn a $200,000 prize. ca’s other space program.” Powell and
his companions have spent much of the
TYPICAL SPACE SHUTTLE ORBIT past 18 years systematically developing
Ian Furlong, the Exotron might become (175 KILOMETERS) an ingenious system to launch rockets
the first amateur rocket to fly into his- 150 from weather balloons, a trick pio-
tory. They anticipate shooting for the neered by NASA. Although Powell’s
FINDS prize in January 1998. APOLLO 16 PARKING ORBIT tests have so far been restricted to low
Constructing a heavy-duty motor is (144 KILOMETERS) altitudes, he believes he can ultimately
only part of the challenge. The winning launch his existing rocket from 30 kilo-

ALTITUDE (KILOMETERS)
rocket must be stable enough to avoid meters (about 100,000 feet) to a height
tumbling over in the first few seconds, of 80 kilometers. He intends to capture
when it is traveling too slowly for the the FINDS prize by scaling up his oper-
stabilizing fins to do their job. Also, it 100 ation and then to use the money to de-
must not veer too far from the desired velop a system that can put small pay-
flight path even as it plows through the loads into orbit.
powerful winds in the upper atmo- Although the FINDS prize is meant
sphere. And it must survive the vibra- to stimulate advances in rocket technol-
tion and stress of flight. The best way RECORD-HOLDING ogy, the new amateur space race also
to design a vehicle that can take on AMATEUR ROCKET needs electrical engineers, radio hobby-
(36 KILOMETERS)
these rigors is to learn from the experts. ists and science enthusiasts of all stripes
One source of help is the Tripoli 50 who want to help build and fly useful
Rocketry Association in Bessemer, Ala. payloads. After all, without proper in-
Tripoli is perhaps the world’s premiere struments, amateur rockets—whatever
rocketry organization. It schools and altitudes they may reach—will remain
WEATHER BALLOON
certifies its members in the art of mak- (30 KILOMETERS) little more than especially flashy Roman
MICHAEL GOODMAN

ing and safely flying high-powered rock- candles. So if you think you have some-
ets. Tripoli organizes regular gatherings, thing to contribute, find a rocketry
JETLINER
at which devotees of the sport fire their (12 KILOMETERS) group and get involved; there should be
often spectacular handiwork at so-called 0 plenty of them out there vying for the
LDRS launches (the acronym stands for FINDS prize. Even the Society of Ama-
“large and dangerous rocket ships”). motors, which combine solid fuel with teur Scientists is gearing up to join this
What strikes me most on reading Trip- fluid oxidizer. His creation, a cylindri- new amateur race into space. SA

oli’s magazine, High Power Rocketry, is cal tube 15 centimeters wide by 5.5 me-
that so many firms sell sophisticated ters tall, was powered by such a hybrid. To get involved, consult any of the
rocketry supplies. One of these compa- Launched on January 7, 1997, from the societies listed below or the Society for
nies, Rocketman Enterprises, in South NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Amateur Scientists’s World Wide Web
Bloomington, Minn., is headed by the Wallops Flight Facility, the Hyperion I site at www.thesphere.com/SAS/. You
most colorful rocketeer I know: Ky Mi- devoured its 48 kilograms of propellant may also write the society at 4735
chaelson is a 59-year-old stuntman who in just 15 seconds, passing Mach 3 be- Clairemont Square, Suite 179, San Di-
attaches rockets to everything from fore coasting upward to 36 kilometers. ego, CA 92117, call (619) 239-8807 or
skates to motorcycles. This past sum- Kline is currently building a beefed-up leave a message at (800) 873-8767.
mer he attempted to send a two-stage, version, the Hyperion II, to aim for the
136-kilogram vehicle to 192 kilometers, FINDS prize. If all goes well, he intends
just shy of the FINDS target. The second to launch late in 1998.
Resources
stage failed, but the first stage reported- A fundamental problem that Kline
ly accelerated to Mach 2.6 (2.6 times and his rockets face is atmospheric drag, The Foundation for the International
Nongovernmental Development of
the speed of sound) and topped out at which increases drastically as the veloc- Space (FINDS), 2000 L Street, N.W.,
nearly 24 kilometers. ity rises (drag is in fact proportional to Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036;
The current record for verified alti- velocity squared). By achieving its maxi- (800) 78-SPACE.
tude obtained by an amateur rocket is mum velocity quickly, while it is still low Reaction Research Society, P.O. Box
owned by the Hyperion I and its design- in the atmosphere, Hyperion I expend- 90306, World Way Postal Center, Los
Angeles, CA 90009; (310) 515-6458;
er, Korey Kline. Kline, a Tripoli member ed a great deal of energy battling the air www.rrs.org/
for more than 15 years, is director of around it, energy that would otherwise Pacific Rocket Society, P.O. Box 241993,
research at Environmental Aeroscience have lofted the rocket much higher. Los Angeles, CA 90024; (805) 824-1662;
Corporation in Miami. His company John M. Powell of JP Aerospace in [email protected]
Tripoli Rocketry Association, P.O. Box
specializes in fabricating rocket motors Davis, Calif., sidesteps this problem by
280, Bessemer, AL 35021-0280; (205)
for commercial and hobby use. Kline is avoiding most of the atmosphere alto- 424-8357; www.tripoli.org/
an expert on what are known as hybrid gether. Powell is a computer program-

116 Scientific American December 1997 The Amateur Scientist

M AT H E M AT I C A L R E C R E AT I O N S
by Ian Stewart

Cat’s Cradle Calculus Challenge uninteresting loop to more significant

shapes by making standard moves of
various kinds. One of the earliest suc-

K nots, links
and their rel-
atives have
fascinated mathemati-
cally minded people for
discuss this month. Rec-
reational mathematics
has a habit of throwing
out challenges, but this
time around I’m going
cesses in studying knots and their like
was the theory of braids, created by
Emil Artin. A braid is a system of strings
(or curves) that initially run parallel to
one another. More generally, the strings
cat’s cradle
millennia. But it was to go further and start are permitted to wind around one an-
only in the 1920s that from a recreation that other, like braids in hair. Artin devel-
mathematicians began lies, at best, on the mar- oped a kind of braid algebra, which
to slash through the elu- gins of mathematics. could distinguish topologically inequiv-
sive challenge of char- It is the well-known alent braids. If two braids had the same
acterizing knots, distin- childhood game of cat’s algebraic formula, they were equivalent;
guishing different knots cradle. if they had different formulas, they were
and generally under- I say “well known,” inequivalent. Artin’s ideas were, to some
standing what it is that but many people are extent, the inspiration for Jones’s.
makes knots knotted unaware of how rich In several respects, cat’s cradle figures
and links linked. Their soldier’s bed the game is. The com- are similar to braids. Instead of the two
investigations led to the plete cat’s cradle se- ends of a braid, we have a set of fingers
creation of topology, a quence involves eight around which the string is to be draped.
powerful tool of to- separate figures. Innu- The moves allowed in cat’s cradle are
day’s mathematics. merable other figures richer, however, than those used by Ar-
The past decade has candles can be constructed in tin: for example, several strings can
seen dramatic develop- the same general man- wrap around a given finger. This is one
ments in knot theory— ner, with a simple loop reason why braid algebra is inadequate
most of all, Vaughan of string draped and to describe cat’s cradle figures. Anoth-
Jones’s invention of twisted between the er—which may be less significant than it
what is now called the fingers of two hands. first seems—is that all cat’s cradle fig-
manger
Jones polynomial, an The game illustrates ures are topologically equivalent to a
algebraic formula asso- the extent to which the single unknotted loop.
ciated with a knot [see topology of a loop of I suspect that this problem can be got
“Knot Theory and Sta- string—the number of round by considering not just the string
tistical Mechanics,” by knots, for instance— but how it winds around the fingers.
Vaughan F. R. Jones; diamonds fails to capture its Yet another complication can be seen in
Scientific American, richer geometric prop- the standard version of the childhood
November 1990]. If erties, such as shape. game: permissible moves include a sec-
two knots have differ- It ought to be possi- ond person reaching into the middle of
ent Jones polynomials, ble to devise a neat the figure and picking it up on their
then they are topologi- calculus of cat’s cra- own hands—trading one shape on one
cally distinct, meaning cat’s eye dle, an algebra that person’s hands for a different shape on
that one cannot be continu- describes how to the other’s.
ously deformed into the oth- get from the initial To make a cat’s cradle, you need a
er. Such “knot invariants”
have been found before, but
EIGHT FIGURES form the complete sequence of cat’s
the Jones polynomial was
cradle. The game involves two persons, Angela (lighter
the first of a new generation of color) and Bill (darker color), who lift a looped loop of
superinvariants, far better at the string off each other’s hands. Instructions for creating
job than their predecessors. these patterns are given in the text.
Even the Jones polynomial,
however, cannot tell us every- clock
fish
thing we want to know about knots on a dish
and links. These objects give rise to
some questions that do not even belong
to topology—and that’s what I want to

118 Scientific American December 1997

 piece of soft, smooth string about three
feet long, with its ends tied to form a
closed loop, and a friend. Suppose An-
gela and Bill take turns removing the
loop of string from each other’s hands.
First, Angela sets up the cradle [see il-
lustration on opposite page]. There is
one basic movement in the sequence,
used at almost every step, and this is the
first place it arises. Bill stands on, say,
Angela’s right. Looking down into the
figure, he can see two crossings: he picks
these up, one in each hand, and pulls
them apart. Then he draws the strings
away from the center of the figure, over
the outside edge, down, inward and
back up through the gap in the center.
As Bill draws his hands apart and
separates his thumb and index finger,
Angela loosens the loops from her fin-
gers and lets them slip off. Now Bill can
take the new figure onto his hands. This
stage is called the soldier’s bed. If An-
gela now repeats exactly the same moves,
starting from this second figure, she
creates the third shape, known as the
candles.
To get from the candles to the fourth
figure requires a new movement. Bill
first draws aside one, then the other, in-
ner string (on opposite sides) with his
little fingers and passes the thumb and
index finger into the center of the figure
from below. This is similar to the basic
move, but no crossed strings are car-
ried. Finally, Bill opens up his thumb and
forefinger and grips the loops around
his little fingers by bending the fingers
over. The result is the manger. As a
mathematical aside, the manger is just
like the cat’s cradle, but upside down.
From the manger, another repetition
of the basic move, also performed upside
down (take the crossings from below
rather than above), leads to the soldier’s
bed, but upside down. Traditionally this
fifth shape is called the diamonds. Yet
another repetition of the basic move, this
time the usual way up, produces the cat’s
eye. Picking up slightly differently and
drawing the hands back without swoop-
ing back underneath to the center leads
to the fish on a dish.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY DANA BURNS-PIZER

The final shape is more elusive. Bill

uses his little fingers to separate the cen-
tral strings and then picks up the cross-
ings in the usual manner. Next, he turns
his thumbs and index fingers inward
and upward, to get the eighth shape,
the clock. I have no idea why the shape
1

has this name: Maybe a reader can en- (6). Slip the loops off your little fingers
lighten me? by bending the fingers and pulling your
If you use different moves, you can hands gently apart. The result (7) is
2
change the order of the sequence—for rather tangled, but from here on out it
instance, by going straight from the cra- gets simpler. Bend your little fingers to-
dle to the candles or from the soldier’s ward you, turning the hands over if you
bed to the cat’s eye. An effective cat’s wish, and bend the fingers over the first
3 cradle calculus ought to be able to ex- string they meet (from the index fingers)
plain all such variations. For instance, and under the next string after that
two specific moves might “commute”— (from the thumbs). Now straighten the
yield the same result even if their order little fingers (8).
is reversed. The objective of the theory At this stage there are two loops on
4 should be to describe the actual forms each thumb, and you should free these,
of the string figures, not just their topol- just as before. After this the string looks
ogy. A good start would be a compact a lot simpler (9), except for a tangled
notation for “positions” of the loop rel- knot in the middle, which is irrelevant.
ative to fingers and for standard moves, Pass the thumb over the two strings that
5 such as “pick up a loop from the right make a loop at the index finger, then
hand using the middle finger of the left under the nearer string of the little-fin-
hand,” or whatever. ger loop, and back to where you started
Interesting shapes can be made by a from. You may need to twist your hands
single person, too. In attempting to de- a bit here (10).
6 velop a cat’s cradle calculus, it might be The next step is unusual. Using the
best to start with this case. To show fingers of the right hand, pick up the
you how fascinating the possibilities string at the point a and lift it over the
can be, I’ll describe a figure known as left thumb, a fraction of an inch away.
Indian diamonds. It starts in a very sim- Then repeat on the other hand. Be care-
7 ilar way to cat’s cradle, but not quite ful to pick up the string above the string
[see illustration at left]. Begin with the from the little finger that crosses it. If
standard loop (1), then pick up the string you’ve done this correctly, you’ll end up
that runs across the left palm with the with (11)—again with the details of the
right index finger (2) and repeat with knotty middle omitted.
8 the other hand (3). Next, slip the loop Almost there. The final step is easier
off your thumbs by bending them in to- to do than to describe. Turn your thumbs
ward each other and gently but steadily to point toward each other, pass them
pulling your hands apart. Twist your through the holes marked b and bring
hands so that your palms face outward. them up on the near side. Then point
9 Pass your thumbs forward under all the your index finger into the holes marked
strings, hook them over the little-finger c in (12). Carefully slip the string off
string and twist your hands back, draw- the little fingers and turn your palms
ing the little-finger string toward you smoothly outward to stretch the string
(4). This motion is more natural than it out. You should, after a bit of practice,
10
sounds, and if you try it, you’ll find that get (13)—Indian diamonds in all their
the string you pick up is the “obvious” glory.
a one for this method. These two examples have merely
Next, pass your thumbs over the top scratched the surface of string figures. If
of the string immediately in front of you want to know more, take a look at
11 them, then underneath the next strings String Figures and How to Make Them,
to pick them up with the backs of the by Caroline F. Jayne (Dover Publica-
thumbs (5), to get the subsequent shape tions, 1975). It is chastening to realize
that for all its amazing capabilities, to-
b day’s topology cannot yet come to grips
12 INDIAN DIAMONDS is a sequence with an ancient childhood game. Yet I
that can be formed by only one person. have a strong suspicion that the ideas
So a calculus for this game should be
behind topology can rise to the chal-
easier to construct than for cat’s cradle.
The dots represent the fingers of two lenge. So you can accept the challenge
c hands, around which the string is and invent cat’s cradle calculus—or you
13 looped. The excruciatingly complex se- can just have fun exercising your math-
quence of moves (detailed in the text) ematical muscles by making elegant
leads to a surprisingly simple pattern. shapes from a simple loop of string. SA

Mathematical Recreations
 FEEDBACK

T he May column focused on

finding primes; its mailbag in-
cluded one idea I can’t resist telling
you about. It is from Visions of the
Future, edited by Clifford A. Pickover
(Science Reviews, Northwood, Eng-
land, 1992); the precise article (pag-
es 151–157) is “Molecular Biology
and Futuristic Problem Solving,” by
Mels Sluyser and Erik L. L. Sonn-
hammer of the Netherlands Cancer
Institute in Amsterdam.
Sluyser and Sonnhammer take
software used to study DNA and
RNA and apply it to sequences of
prime numbers. RNA sequences in-
volve four bases—A, U, C, G—that
bond in pairs to form the famous
double helix. Sequences of biologi-
cal significance are expected to pos-
sess some nonrandomness, because
patterns in the RNA can cause it to
fold into more stable configurations.
These have less “free energy” than
random, unfolded sequences.
The article shows that sequences
of primes can produce significant
results when interpreted as RNA se-
quences. A side effect is that certain
new kinds of regularity in primes
become apparent. The starting
point is the “parity” of a prime. Take
a prime, such as 23, and write it in
binary notation, 10111. Count the
number of 1’s, here 4, and deter-
mine whether that number is even
or odd. Here it is even, so 23 has
“even” parity. Take the sequence of
primes 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, ... and
split them into pairs: [2, 3], [5, 7],
[11, 13], [17, 19] and so on. Work
out the corresponding parities (I’ll
use “E” for even and “O” for odd) to
get [O,E], [E,O], [O,O], [E,O]....
Now let [O,O] = A, [E,E] = U, [O,E]
= C, and [E,O] = G, continuing along
the sequence of primes. (This choice
is arbitrary.) Here the first 20 pairs
yield CGAGUACCACAUCACACGCA.
Now use standard software to com-
pute the folded configuration of
such an RNA sequence. The free en-
ergy achieved is –256.9 kilocalories
per mole, whereas random sequenc-
es of similar length yield, on aver-
age, free energies of –243.6—signif-
icantly bigger. So RNA structure
techniques suggest that there are
patterns, of some kind, in the se-
quence of primes. —I.S.

Mathematical Recreations Scientific American December 1997 121

12.97.REVIEWS.5P.DOM 8/9/98 2:18 PM Page 122

R E V I E W S A N D C O M M E N TA R I E S
The Scientific American Young Readers Book Awards
by Philip and Phylis Morrison

Among many hundreds received, we arachnids, are here for completeness.) by which the birds navigate, including
found these two dozen or so children’s Some book! sun position and magnetic clues, the
books within science the most winning. Big and Little whole issue is far from settled. Racing
We hope our readers will choose a book BY STEVE JENKINS Homers, the most developed of all
or two to enjoy with a young person Cut-paper collages. Houghton Mifflin breeds, are rather larger than most pi-
they know. Company, Boston, 1996 ($14.95) geons, and many return as fast as 50
miles an hour when carried 500 miles
LIFE
Dragonfly Beetle Butterfly Bee
T welve pairs of animals appear
posed together here, page after
page. The crisp images are eye-catching,
away. A million people still race pi-
geons the world around. In Belgium it
is the national sport.
WRITTEN, LETTERED AND PAINTED
colored-paper cutouts on a paper-white Pigeons live their urban lives out—
BY MARYJO KOCH
ground. Each pair shown is similar in their ways summarized in the book—as
Swans Island Books, Collins Publishers
kind but contrasting in size: a big tiger quick learners, with good memories of
San Francisco, 1996 ($30)
towers over a little house cat; a rock py- visual cues; they readily find food and
thon—which winds over three pages— water and sustain only a small danger

A careful rendering of a termite in

amber, at true size and color, is
close to the first pages, and a drawing
stares at a coral snake; a gorilla watch-
es a pygmy marmoset. The scale is the
same for all, so that beginners and even
from predators. They have been with us
a very long time and are probably here
to stay as long as we do.
sequence that animates a spider making the read-to gather the important message
her orb web in 12 easy steps is near the of diversity in size. A couple of detailed Running Wild: Dispelling the Myths
end. In between, about 100 large pages pages of text provide much more infor- of the African Wild Dog
are dazzlingly filled by this poetic and mation for the better young readers. BY JOHN MCNUTT
precise artist. Apt citations abound, AND LESLEY BOGGS
from Edmund Spenser to Ogden Nash, Pigeons Color photographs by Hélène
and painstaking depictions of honey BY DOROTHY HINSHAW PATENT Heldring and Dave Hamman.
jars and bug spray containers add an Color photographs by William Smithsonian Institution Press,
insouciant immediacy to this flood of Muñoz. Clarion Books, Washington, D.C., 1996 ($45)
small paintings. A Hercules beetle ap- New York, 1997 ($16)
pears full size, an ant-lion’s pit in cross
section takes up a page, and a pollen-
carrying bumblebee as big as your hand P igeons are completely at home in
cities.” Their ancestors were wild
A t daybreak, the hungriest dog stirs
first, usually the one that received
the least from the last kill. After a while,
brings detail. For diversity, spreads show rock doves, a species of Europe, Asia all awaken, pups playing, elders rallying
us many dozens of color- and North Africa, long drawn to share and nudging, until everyone is pepped
ful images, evoking the the seed crops of humans. In turn they up. The march starts out slowly in some
natural history albums were domesticated, for some time random direction; the dogs warm up as
of the past for dragon- raised as food for people, and bred they move across broken woods and
flies, for beetles, for as well for a wide variety of traits: grasslands, first at a walk, then a trot,
wasps and bees, for but- color, behavior or plumage. The breaking soon into a long, easy, loping
terflies. flocks in cities and towns world- run, good for a few miles. The morning
All the text is engag- wide are now mainly feral. They hunt is on.
ingly hand-lettered are a mix of gray rock doves, The chase ensues, brief, acute, com-
or hand-written. once living in cliffside cavities, plex, for both hunter and quarry are fast
On one sparingly with escaped pigeons bred and numerous. Many dogs will split off,
simple page we from the wild species. “Liv- each to pursue its own impala, but any
read a maxim by ing flowers,” said one fanci- unsuccessful chase is broken off within
Emily Dickinson on er. a minute or under a mile. Some dog will
making a prairie: “It takes Trained pigeons have been have caught an impala, tearing the soft
a clover and one bee.” We used to bear wartime messag- belly open with one swift slash. Within
MARYJO KOCH

see one bee but no clover. If es since the Gallic Wars. The hom- seconds other dogs engage, until the pack
much else is missing, we don’t ing ability of pigeons is great; al- arrives to dismember the morning’s kill
know what it is. (Spider kin, the though we know some of the ways in “surprising silence.” The pack will

122 Scientific American December 1997 Reviews and Commentaries

12.97.REVIEWS.5P.DOM 8/9/98 2:18 PM Page 123

hunt a second time that day by golden maintain the presence of painted dogs, day Fred is not to be found swimming
twilight. (A photograph here catches another social species that has for two in his tank. He sits high and dry on the
one such procession.) or three million years lived in the shad- stepping-stones, an entire little frog.
This fine book is set among meadows ow of our kind. What now? Grandma and Grandpa
and lily pads in the wild Okavango Del- Tale of a Tadpole visit, experienced gardeners. They make
ta wetlands of northern Botswana. Only BY BARBARA ANN PORTE it clear: Fred is plainly a toad, a land frog.
a couple of hundred packs of painted Illustrated with watercolors by Annie Fred is set fondly outside; he digs a hole,
dogs remain in all Africa. These dogs of Cannon. Orchard Books, catches a fly and sets out on backyard
another genus resemble our domesticates New York, 1997 ($15.95) life. Sound classification has its place; of
too much to survive freely near us. A course, it’s not the name that most mat-
canine-borne distemper came to ravage
the dogs of the grassland Serengeti a few
years ago, and cattle raisers across Afri-
F rancine comes home from the na-
ture center with a tadpole the size
of the end of her little finger—and a clear
ters, but the facts, those bumps and short
legs, wonderfully drawn along with the
whole well-knit, cheerful family.
ca remain hostile to the dogs. No reports idea. She puts Fred in the goldfish bowl
of a dog attack on humans are known. and daily feeds him a little fish food. Beluga Whales
Not written for very young people, Francine is patient; in a few weeks Fred BY TONY MARTIN
this detailed and insightful story is told has grown two small legs, one on each Voyageur Press, Stillwater, Minn.,
so directly from watching the animals side of his tail. The miracle unfolds. 1996 (paperbound, $14.95)
that most readers old enough to know Fred’s arms appear and fatten; his eyes
the facts of life will be fascinated. We
humans have a little while to choose to
and grin get bigger. Only his tail—it
nourishes the rest—shortens. But one A shallow pond seen here in blue-
green appears to shelter a school
of gregarious white fish—but that’s all
wrong. This is no pond but the sea;
these are not fish but surfacing white
HANDS-ON SCIENCE
whales—small only among whales. They
average 10 to 15 feet long, weigh in at a
Zap Science
ton or more and are caught by a lens
BY JOHN CASSIDY, PAUL DOHERTY AND PAT MURPHY
Klutz Press, Palo Alto, Calif., 1997 (spiralbound, $19.95; high aloft that shows up the horizontal
festooned with pieces of cool apparatus) tell-tails of their mammalian nature.
These rather mysterious animals are

A s before, the juggling senior Klutz, John Cassidy, and his friends have made a
book as irreverent and direct as its subteen audience and as packed tight
with good science experience as a quick trip to the Exploratorium in San Francis-
a treat, now on exhibit in many land-
locked pens. Those who would admire
them in wider waters can visit Chur-
co, where Cassidy’s co-authors work. chill, Manitoba, in July and August, the
Electrostatic forces in action and change; visible passages from opaque to same Hudson Bay port that after the
transparent to color under polarized light; a burning glass made from colorful freeze accommodates polar bears by
Jell-O; vision experiments—all these possibilities open out of this text. The au- the hundred. Readers will be moved to
thors manage to avoid all but one antique piece of jargon: “likes repel, unlikes at- put in a good word everywhere to seek
tract,” and they tell you how to use that one well. Once again, here is a Klutz “fun- more icy room for the beluga.
based, dirty-hands” trip to science in a book.
LANGUAGE AND LOGIC
Exactly the Opposite
BY TANA HOBAN
Color photographs. Mulberry Books,
William Morrow & Company,
New York, 1997 (paperbound, $4.95)

T his wordless book with about a

dozen pairs of full-page color pho-
tographs holds a surprising depth of con-
“How can tent for small kids, even for the read-to.
you get one Each exemplar is sharply recognizable,
hands or sheep or a summer garden,
of these things and the power to grasp and express op-
to explode?” posites is plainly a part of gaining lan-
guage for us all. The sneaker pair is pret-
ty surely tied and untied, but are hands
PETER FOX

extended and clenched, two plants

spiny and smooth, bears big and small?

Reviews and Commentaries Scientific American December 1997 123

12.97.REVIEWS.5P.DOM 8/9/98 2:18 PM Page 124

No simple word game, even though it lips of the sage who

elicits words in all languages! Newly
reprinted as a paperback, this book is a
gem of economy of expression.
D ip your rear wheel into the sea at
a Tunisian beach, northernmost
point of the big continent, and your front
sang its volumes over
the years. Scribe and
poet bargained not
The Ring of Truth: wheel, 12,000 miles and nine months to stop until
An Original Irish Tale later, at the southernmost tip, the Cape their work was
BY TERESA BATEMAN of the Needles (to translate “Cape Ag- done. Suddenly,
Illustrated by Omar Rayyan. Holiday ulhas”). From November 1992 to Au- Ganesha’s pen
House, New York, 1997 ($15.95) gust 1993, you accompany riders as broke. Unwilling to
they bike the Africas, all six geographic risk losing any of the
A Symphony for the Sheep
regions: North Africa, the Sahara, West, immortal verse, he at
BY C. M. MILLEN
Central, East and Southern Africa. Four once broke off the
Hand-colored woodcuts by Mary
admirable, well-loaded American alu- smooth, sharp tip of his
Azarian. Houghton Mifflin Company,
minum bikes carried five regulars (no, own right tusk to use as a pen and kept
Boston, 1996 ($14.95)
not a tandem; one bike was shared by on writing. The tusk was ruined but not
two African cyclists, each man avail- the bargain. Ganesha, honorably

T hese two artful stories are set able for half the months). In between known as One-Tusk, a model and

MANIAM SELVEN
around the green hills of Donegal. came hard, hungry, even painful work, friend to all writers, helped India gain
Ring is no folktale but a delicious logi- struggle, adventure and delight. its written epic. Children hear the old
cal exercise, a fable built on the liar’s Near journey’s end in late July, they tales of folly and wisdom, right and
paradox. It begins as a well-constructed entered South Africa. Soon they were a wrong, to this day. Warm, often funny,
story about one Patrick O’Kelley, a mag- big deal in all the media, personally wel- these line drawings and readable texts
nificent liar, who went off to a blarney comed by the national leaders! It was lead right to the heart of India.
contest to win a pot of gold. What hap- campaign time for the first free election,
pens is paradox. Even the illustra- when Nelson Mandela would be elect- Growing Up in Coal Country
tions are colorful in opposing ed president. The cyclists, plainly four BY SUSAN CAMPBELL BARTOLETTI
ways: each holds a wildly roman- warm and successful partners under long Black-and-white photographs.
tic, even gro- tesque, portrayal of stress, were two white Minnesotans, an Houghton Mifflin Company,
Patrick and what he African-American physician from Ari- Boston, 1996 ($16.95)
saw, and yet most zona and a savvy black Ugandan guide.
are framed in an
evocation of the deli-
cate illumination of
A good omen at the birth of the new
multiethnic state, but no more than
what our few cyclists—and all of South
T he minehead was dwarfed by the
high breaker house. Within it a
dozen narrow iron chutes led steeply
such medieval master- Africa—deserved. down to the floor. New-mined hard
pieces as the Book of Kells. coal—this is Pennsylvania at the place
Symphony is no folktale ei- The Broken Tusk: Stories and time of anthracite—was tipped from
ther but of the Hindu God Ganesha the railcars, sized and shaken down the
an original form of verse. RETOLD BY UMA KRISHNASWAMI chutes to the floor. A number of boys sat
Good-humored, rich wood- Drawings by Maniam Selven. on boards over the lowest part of each
cuts spin out a ewe and a ram, Linnet Books, North Haven, Conn., chute, stopping the falling coal with
gentle shearing, the spinner at the 1996 ($19.95) their feet, to pick out with bare hands—
wheel, washing and carding, swifts and forbidden gloves earned a stick across
skeins, knitter and weaver. The rhythm
of the work is quietly present in the
verse. Finally, the reader is asked to
E laborate tales of the gods inform
current daily life more fluently in
Hindu India than anywhere else, and of
the knuckles—and to toss aside the rock
bits and debris that had come along.
Breaker boys were required by law to
speak the refrains to hear the beat and, all the deities none is more popular and be over 14 years old. But the state had
more, to ask four readers to make a better suited for family and children no compulsory birth registration, so a
round out of spoken meter. Here is a than great Shiva’s little son, rotund Ga- hard-strapped miner often got and filled
gift for little groups of kids and adults nesha with the elephant head. His im- in a 25-cent form to certify his son as
who have some feeling for fabric both age is everywhere as an omen of good “small for fourteen.”
in wool and in word. fortune, in homes, shops and cars, as This book is by a miner’s daughter,
OMAR RAYYAN

well as temples. Close to 20 of his leg- who has recaptured the simple human
PEOPLE AND TALES ends are here, aided by lists of names history of hard coal and hard times
and words and the characters who fill from family recollections and the print-
Africatrek: A Journey
the pages, from the river Ganga to the ed record. The chapters tell us of mine
by Bicycle through Africa
fiery-red demon Sindura. mules, mine skills and mining villages,
WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED
How did the many-armed god come of disasters, and of paydays and good
IN COLOR BY DAN BUETTNER
to break the tip of a tusk? He was sum- times, too. It closes with the great strike
Lerner Publications Company,
moned, they say, to take dictation of of 1902, five months of no work, lead-
Minneapolis, 1997 ($23.93)
the great poem Mahabharata from the ing to a real win under the solidarity

124 Scientific American December 1997 Reviews and Commentaries

12.97.REVIEWS.5P.DOM 8/9/98 2:18 PM Page 125

of poor miners, whose leaders such as the open back door. Steamy baths help world passes by below. Since John Glenn
Mother Jones and Johnny Mitchell could much, and the big wood blocks saved talked his way into permission to carry
speak for a proportion of the country’s for a rainy day are built high. Cocoa a 35-millimeter camera aloft in 1962,
population threefold larger than this and cookies, some TV, then a round all astronauts have had recognizable, if
year’s Teamster strikers at UPS. roast carved nicely by father do their not indeed enviable, handheld cameras.
Chidi Only Likes Blue: wonders. Still, it rains and rains after They shot what interested them, wheth-
An African Book of Colors dark. Very late the moon sets, and the er by long-held private plan, on timely
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS IN sun rises, and sister, brother and dog tips from the ground or, like most pho-
COLOR BY IFEOMA ONYEFULU soon awaken to go out into the renewed tographers, in the quick of the moment.
Cobblehill Books/Dutton (division sunshine we all enjoy. Experience! Their take on 56 shuttle flights during
of Penguin USA), New York, 30 years was above a quarter of a mil-
1997 ($14.99) Orbit: NASA Astronauts lion snapshots. Apt (a physicist-astro-
Photograph the Earth naut), Helfert (a climatologist) and Wil-

N neka has a little brother, Chidi.

Sister and brother often play a
game called Colors. “My favorite color
BY JAY APT, MICHAEL HELFERT
AND JUSTIN WILKINSON
Edited by Roger Ressmeyer.
kinson (a geographer), each long en-
gaged with shuttle missions, undertook
to extract from this treasure a book of
is blue,” because the sky is blue, Chidi National Geographic Society, sample images. They offer us about 130
always says, and his best shirt—we see Washington, D.C., 1996 ($40) selections, arranged and mapped by
it plainly—is blue, too. Their mother continent. Here they are, large, gleam-
wonders if he knows any other color
words. So Nneka shows him and us
many other colors around their Nigeri-
A bout 200 men and women have
flown on space shuttle orbits.
Keen and educated professionals all,
ing, painterly, full of meaning, yet with-
in the scope of what imaginative kids
who take pictures can interpret.
an village, and why she likes them. they work hard, but in their time off, Photographer Ressmeyer (overall ed-
We meet Great-Uncle in his formal red they look out of 11 windows as the itor) arranged to scan and digitize for
chief’s cap. Next we see yellow piles of
ground cassava for sale to make soup,
special tasty green leaves that wrap de- HANDS-ON SCIENCE
licious bean cakes, white chalk to mark
wishes on the floor. And when Mother ElectroWizard Inventions: Build, Build, Build
BY PENNY NORMAN
wears gold jewelry on special occasions,
Artwork by Art Huff. Norman and Globus, 1997 (Telephone: 510-222-
she looks as “pretty as the sunshine.”
2638; fax: 510-223-6953) ($19.95; boxed kit of materials with booklet)
Nneka’s was good teaching, so Moth-
er made her small daughter a beautiful
dress of all the colors she had enjoyed.
“But Chidi still likes blue best of all!”
This is a quietly engaging account of life
B uild them, and they will work: a simple spinning motor, a generator, a tele-
graph, a relay and an AM radio. But that is not all. Here all right is a well-de-
signed how-to-do it book and kit, but it is far more than that.

ART HUFF
far away, a life that both mirrors and The time-honored student motor—a simply wound coil, a ceramic magnet
contrasts with what most happy kids and some visible hardware—is yours to put together, embedded brilliantly into a
web of evidence about how
here will know.
it works. First, a variety of
coils are made familiar. Then
EARTH AND SKY step-by-step construction,
Rain visibly not hard but needing
BY PETER SPIER care, is helped by a trouble-
shooting list. Test your mo-
With 84 watercolors. Bantam Dou- tor by watching a nearby
bleday Dell Picture Yearling Books, compass deflect as you
New York, 1997 (paperbound, $5.99) move the coil by hand. Test
again, now watching a bulb

A s the gusts arrive, the rain pelts

down. You can all but hear it.
Twenty-five vivid pages are then crowd-
in a series that flickers as the
motor whirs away. Add and
subtract magnets, cells,
ed with inverted umbrellas, overflowing turns of wire. Look at your
coil ends to note that what
barrels, flooded wheelbarrows, puddles
you have is really half a mo-
covered with spreading ripple rings,
tor, inertially assisted—and
songbirds hiding, torrents running past you can prove it.
the curbstone, swans and geese sailing This box holds a triumph
downstream, until the two kids, soak- of cheerful hands-on, minds-
ing wet but utterly happy, go in at last. on teaching at a distance, a
Their retreat is complete, once they really difficult mission.
pour water out of their boots through

Reviews and Commentaries Scientific American December 1997 125

12.97.REVIEWS.5P.DOM 8/9/98 2:18 PM Page 126

reproduction the flight originals them- be electrically lit, still gleams every night cable, made by Washington’s decision
selves, thereby evading the “dupes of to New Yorkers’ admiring eyes. How out of steel wire, not of iron, is shown
dupes” that crowd and dilute all big, the East River was dotted with paddle in a precise double spread.
busy archives, to make these chosen wheelers and sailing ships of the time as The well-illustrated Bridges is a guide
views both beautiful and permanent. fireworks flared above the gala crowd to hands-on building of models of a
TECHNOLOGIES when the bridge opened in May 1883! dozen sorts. It makes clear the pushes
This compact, image-filled book cen- and pulls that underlie the mechanics
Sarah’s House
ters on the extraordinary family whose and materials of bridge design at a level
BY ERIC THOMAS
monument it has so long been. Bridge suited for grade school kids. Make a
Carousel doll’s house with press-out
builder John Roebling, with a proud suspension bridge? Collect two match-
pieces. DK Publishing, New York
record of other bridges, conceived the ing straight chairs, two pieces of string,
(distributed in the U.S. by Houghton
idea one icy night on the ferry, promot- an old cardboard carton, some heavy
Mifflin Company, Boston),
ed it for 15 years and at last designed it. books, and don’t forget the Roeblings.
1996 ($19.95)
His son, Washington, an engineer and
a Union colonel in the Civil War, be- LAB SCIENCE
O pen the large, thin book with a
little care, and you unfold a col-
orful paper dollhouse interior of eight
came chief engineer at the age of 32 af-
ter his father died in an accident a year
or two before construction began. With-
Shadow Games: A Book
of Hand and Puppet Shadows
intricately detailed rooms on two circu- in a year he himself was forced to su- BY THE EDITORS
lar floors. The stiff covers become one pervise only through binoculars from Klutz Press, Palo Alto, Calif., 1996
inner wall of four, with all the rooms his home in Washington Heights, bed- (spiralbound, $10.95; shadow cards
wide open to the visitor. An entrance ridden with the pain and paralysis of the and flashlight included)
hall displays the staircase and its ele- bends, contracted in heroic fire fighting
gant balustrade; upstairs a door opens
to the parents’ bedroom. Sarah shares
the next room with her little brother.
under high air pressure within an un-
derwater wood caisson. The rising tow-
ers astonished people—25 stories high
T urn down the lights, switch on
the flashlight and check out shad-
ow patterns your hand can cast. Add a
Open the wardrobe doors to view the in a city then mainly five-storied—and rubber glove, or a pair of picnic forks,
children’s clothing. Above Sarah’s bed the wire-spinning across the river was to see even stranger scenes; a couple of
hangs a framed set of butterflies. And long a public aerial wonder. cards of monsters with glowing eyes are
she has a tiny dollhouse all her own. Three major features of the bridge included for the younger set. A final
Downstairs the kitchen is most invit- are well served by special graphics. One pair of pages helps to model solar
ing, with its big coal stove and fine dis- page of drawings treats the caissons be- eclipses, those big shadows in the sky.
play of china. The sunroom has a door low the towers. Each was an inverted
that opens on a pleasant garden, not to wood “cup,” a big, floorless building as The Science Explorer Out and About:
be visited. The family is here in paper watertight as a ship, holding compressed Fantastic Science Experiments
press-out form, with their dog. They en- air, weighted and sunk to the riverbed to Your Family Can Do Anywhere
joy electric lamps (all paper, of course) prepare the tower foundations. A hun- BY PAT MURPHY, ELLEN KLAGES,
and a gas water heater. We would judge dred men worked by candlelight in LINDA SHORE AND THE STAFF
that this work represents a well-to-do each pressurized space, to scoop and OF THE EXPLORATORIUM
household near London about 100 years pound through long, water-filled shafts Illustrated by Jason Gorski. Owl
ago, in a cleverly truncated, portable to bedrock below. When they left, they Books, Henry Holt and Company,
form with much loving detail, even to filled the air spaces with concrete. De- 1997 (paperbound, $12.95)
silvery mirrors. spite the earlier tragic fire, the Brooklyn

The Brooklyn Bridge

BY ELIZABETH MANN
side was far easier, for bedrock was
reached only 40 feet deep. Across the
river, bedrock had not been found by
T he kitchen table is a magnet for
home experiments, given that the
kitchen is not so far different from a
Illustrated in color by Alan almost twice that depth. Washington lab. The staff of the Exploratorium in
Witschonke. Mikaya Press, New York studied the rocky soil they had brought San Francisco has put together a sensi-
(distributed in North America by up and decided that it was hard-packed ble and attractive set of more varied ac-
Firefly Books, Willowdale, Ontario), and solid enough to hold the tower. Af- tivities for families, indoors and out,
1996 ($18.95) ter a century, his foundation has not rain or shine, with what is around the
slipped. Foundation and high-arched house or what it is fun to go and get.
Bridges
tower are drawn in a foldout. The main The drawings and questions here are
BY ETTA KANER
fine models for this thoughtful search
Illustrated in color by Pat Cupples.
for new experience. Take your time. A
Kids Can Press, Toronto, 1994
small flashlight will let you shadow a
(paperbound, $10.95)
wineglass from above, maybe through
a card you cut to cast unusual shadows.
PAT CUPPLES

T hat stunning old suspension bridge

across the East River, first ever to
Language also can open lots of new ex-
periences. Try sentences without words:SA

126 Scientific American December 1997 Reviews and Commentaries

12.97.REVIEWS.5P.DOM 8/9/98 2:19 PM Page 127

COMMENTARY

CONNECTIONS
by James Burke

On Track

I was on a train the other day, sip- case, as hap-

DUSAN PETRICIC
ping a cold beer in the bar and pened to Die-
thinking how, when I was a kid, sel, of the world
railcars used to go clackety-clack, and beating a path (well,
now they just hum smoothly along. On Hiram had also devised an
continuous welded track, I believe it’s improved mousetrap). Maxim’s gun of chorography (how an area is made
called. Anyway, behind the bar on my was the deadly weapon that would up of many smaller units) and chorolo-
train was a small fridge with “Linde” change the world by removing hun- gy (how these units interreact).
written on it. And I remembered read- dreds of thousands of troops from it Ferdinand’s successor at Leipzig was
ing somewhere that Carl von Linde, during World War I. a guy named Ritter, who introduced hu-
one of the inventors of the refrigerator, Nowhere was the slaughter more he- mans into the geographical equation.
had been put up to his chilly endeavors roic than in the air, where the machine Largely a spin-off from Romanticism,
by the local brewers who wanted to gun spawned a new comic-book char- Ritter’s interest in human geography (he
keep their vats cool so they could make acter: the fighter-pilot ace. None more invented it) originated in the man-na-
their amber nectar in summer. This, celebrated than the Prussian daredevil ture relationship explicated a generation
while Linde was also working as a loco- aristocrat Manfred von Richthofen, earlier by J. G. von Herder, man of let-
motive engineer. With instant coincidenc- a.k.a. the Red Baron, who notched up ters. Ritter was also influenced by a sin-
es like that, I knew I was onto a column. 80 kills, ran a squadron known (long gle meeting with adventurer-explorer
Sure enough, Linde triggered more before Monty Python) as the Flying Cir- Alexander von Humboldt, who had, in
than trains, fridges and beer. In 1868 he cus and who was reputed to have said, 1804, just got back from five years in
started teaching at the Munich Technical South America, where he had climbed
College, and a year later he was inspir- the Andes and found the magnetic equa-
ing a student who’d had a lonely child- Well, Hiram had also devised tor, the Humboldt current and the source
hood and was fixated on fuel efficiency. of the river Orinoco, on top of carrying
Well, it takes all kinds. The young man
an improved mousetrap. out hundreds of astronomical measure-
in question did little about his fixation— ments—have I said enough? Humboldt
while selling Linde’s refrigerators—until “When I have shot down an English- also gave maps the “relieved” look they
1897, when he came up with a wonder man, my hunting passion is satisfied for have today. On his way home, by way
engine that was reputed to run on any- a quarter of an hour.” of Virginia, he dropped by Monticello
thing from coal dust to peanut oil. And In the end, Manfred won more med- to visit his guru, Thomas Jefferson, who
in petroleum-starved Europe, that was als than he could wear at one time and was, like him, an environmentalist be-
sweet music to anybody with haulage was feted by his fellow officers as the fore environmentalists.
in mind. This turned out to be every- only man who could spin out of a dog- To be fair, there was a bit more to Jef-
body from destroyer captains to farm- fight upside down and still know in- ferson than ecology. Like being third
ers. Which was why Rudolf Diesel be- stantly which way was home. president of the U.S. and designer of the
came wealthy and renowned overnight. Capitol Building in Richmond, Va. Al-
So let’s hear it for lonely childhoods and
fixations.
Much of Diesel’s sudden fortune came
I n a manner of speaking, so could his
grand-uncle Ferdinand. That is to say,
he was a geographer. Went to Califor-
though some have said the real credit
should have gone to Charles-Louis Cle-
risseau, crack French draughtsman and
from the sale of distribution rights. The nia, where he reported on the Comstock pal of Jefferson’s. Clerisseau never got
one for the British Empire was awarded Lode. Then wrote the first definitive his due from Robert Adam, either. The
to an American, Hiram Maxim, who study of China, in which he illustrated Scots architect who made neoclassicism
did so well by Britain it eventually the effect of topography on the economy. the lifestyle of the rich and famous (at
made him a Sir. In 1884 he had come Then back to Germany, where (thanks least in Britain) learned much of what
up with the first successful automatic to friends in very high places) he was he later turned to profit from Charles-
machine gun, which was then immedi- given the chair of geography at Leipzig. Louis, when the two of them spent a
ately adopted in one form or another Ferdinand’s real contribution to the sum couple of years together in Italy and
by every major military power. Another of human knowledge was his invention Continued on page 128

Reviews and Commentaries Scientific American December 1997 127

12.97.REVIEWS.5P.DOM 8/9/98 2:19 PM Page 128

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND

Connections, continued from page 127 CIRCULATION (required by 39 U.S.C. 3685). 1. Publica-
Dalmatia, sketching classical ruins. Back tion title: Scientific American. 2. Publication number:
509-530. 3. Filing date: September 25, 1997. 4. Issue
in Britain by 1758, Adam was so suc- frequency: monthly. 5. Number of issues published
cessful he was soon employing 3,000 annually: 12. 6. Annual subscription price: U.S. and its
possessions, 1 year, $34.97; all other countries, 1 year,
craftsmen on his various stately-home $47. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of
rehab jobs. His trick was to make your publication: 415 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
10017. 8. Complete mailing address of the headquar-
COMING IN THE crumbling pile look like the Parthenon. ters or general business office of the publisher: 415
One of the craftsmen Adam hired Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10017. 9. Full names
JANUARY ISSUE. . . was Matthew Boulton (later to become
and complete mailing address of publisher, editor
and managing editor: Publisher, Joachim P. Rosler,
James Watt’s partner), who specialized 415 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Editor,
John Rennie, 415 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
in ormolu and all kinds of decorative 10017. Managing Editor, Michelle Press, 415 Madison
metal frames. Boulton had a company Avenue, New York, NY 10017. 10. Owner: Scientific
American, Inc., 415 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
that made everything from shoe buck- 10017; Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Part-
les to sword hilts. This was why, in nership, 123 West 18th Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY
10011: (a) Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, Inc. (General
1786, he knew what it took to design Partner), 100 West 10th Street, Wilmington, DE; (b)
Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co. (Limited Partner),
COURTESY OF HUMPHREY MARIS

steam-driven coin-stamping machines, Gaensheidestrasse 26, 70184 Stuttgart, Germany. 11.

just at the time when counterfeiting had Known bondholders, mortgagees and other security
holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total
reached levels that worried the govern- amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities:
ment enough to think about ordering none. 12. Tax status: not applicable. 13. Publication
title: Scientific American. 14. Issue date for circulation
replacement coinage. Boulton’s ma- data below: September 1997. 15. Extent and nature of
chines could strike up to 120 coins a circulation: a. Total number of copies (net press run):
average number of copies each issue during preced-
minute, depending on design complexi- ing 12 months, 889,996; actual number of copies of
TRILLIONTH-OF-A- ty, and by 1792 he already had coinage single issue published nearest to filing date, 932,760.
b. Paid and/or requested circulation: (1) Sales through
SECOND ULTRASOUND contracts for the East India Company, dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales
the Sierra Leone Company, the Ameri- (not mailed): average number of copies each issue
by Humphrey Maris can colonies, France, Bermuda and
during preceding 12 months, 138,891; actual number
of copies of single issue published nearest to filing
Madras. Five years later the British date, 138,380. (2) Paid or requested mail subscriptions
(include advertiser’s proof copies and exchange cop-
Mint caved in and asked him to make ies): average number of copies each issue during pre-
their new twopence, penny, halfpenny ceding 12 months, 518,848; actual number of copies
of single issue published nearest to filing date,
and farthing coins. 542,870. c. Total paid and/or requested circulation
(sum of 15b(1) and 15b(2)): average number of copies
In 1816 coin design took a turn for each issue during preceding 12 months, 657,739;
MOLECULAR GEODESICS, INC.

the more elegant when the mint actual number of copies of single issue published
nearest to filing date, 681,250. d. Free distribution by
brought in an Italian engraver, Benedet- mail (samples, complimentary and other free): aver-
to Pistrucci, and he brought in a reduc- age number of copies each issue during preceding 12
months, 23,000; actual number of copies of single is-
ing machine. Pistrucci proceeded to sue published nearest to filing date, 35,700. e. Free
produce a large-scale cast-iron model of distribution outside the mail (carriers or other means):
average number of copies each issue during preced-
a new coin design and next traced out ing 12 months, 1,000; actual number of copies of sin-
the model’s contours with a pointer set gle issue published nearest to filing date, 1,000. f.
THE ARCHITECTURE Total free distribution (sum of 15d and 15e): average
on the end of a rigid arm. A spinning number of copies each issue during preceding 12
OF LIFE cutter, set farther down the arm, repro- months, 24,000; actual number of copies of single is-
sue published nearest to filing date, 36,700. g. Total
by Donald E. Ingber duced a scaled-down version of the de- distribution (sum of 15c and 15f ): average number of
sign on a life-size die. Pistrucci used the copies each issue during preceding 12 months,
681,739; actual number of copies of single issue pub-
gizmo to put St. George and the Dragon lished nearest to filing date, 717,950. h. Copies not
distributed: (1) Office use, leftovers, spoiled: average
Also in January... on the British sovereign and crown for number of copies each issue during preceding 12
the first time. The new classic look did months, 25,432; actual number of copies of single is-
sue published nearest to filing date, 34,133. (2) Return
The Placebo Effect not, however, land him the job of chief from news agents: average number of copies each is-
engraver. He was, after all, an alien. sue during preceding 12 months, 182,825; actual
The Ulysses Mission A few years after Pistrucci, a bitter number of copies of single issue published nearest to
filing date, 180,677. i. Total (sum of 15g, 15h(1) and
Leonardo and and disappointed man, passed away, 15h(2)): average number of copies each issue during
preceding 12 months, 889,996; actual number of cop-
the coin-design models were being elec-
the Wheellock troplated and the dies made of steel,
ies of single issue published nearest to filing date,
932,760. Percent paid and/or requested circulation
(15c/15g × 100): average percentage of each issue
Gene Flow thanks to the work of William Roberts- during preceding 12 months, 96.5%; actual percent-
Austen, new Master of the Mint and al- age of single issue published nearest to filing date,
between Species 94.8%. 16. Publication of statement of ownership is re-
loy freak. One of his steel alloys be- quired. Will be printed in the December 1997 issue of
Burial of Radioactive came known as austenite. And when he this publication. 17. I certify that all information fur-
nished above is true and complete. I understand that
Waste under the Seabed had finished making money making anyone who furnishes false or misleading information
on this form or who omits material or information re-
money, he went on to help make that quested on the form may be subject to criminal sanc-
train ride of mine as smooth as it was, tions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil
sanctions (including multiple damages and civil pen-
ON SALE DECEMBER 30 with steel-alloy railroad tracks. alties). (Signed) Joachim P. Rosler, Publisher. Date:
Here’s where I get off. SA September 26, 1997.

128 Scientific American December 1997 Reviews and Commentaries

 ANNUAL INDEX 1997
AUTHORS Drohan, William N., William H. Velander and p. 40.
Henryk Lubon. TRANSGENIC LIVESTOCK Joseph, Leonard, Cesar Pelli and Charles Thorn-
Agnew, Neville, and Fan Jinshi. CHINA’S BUD- AS DRUG FACTORIES; Jan., p. 70. ton. THE WORLD’S TALLEST BUILDINGS;
DHIST TREASURES AT DUNHUANG; July, Dunn, Jr., James A., and Anthony Perl. FAST Dec., p. 92C.
p. 40. TRAINS: WHY THE U.S. LAGS; Oct., p. 106. Kahle, Brewster. PRESERVING THE INTERNET;
Alleman, James E., and Brooke T. Mossman. AS- El-Baz, Farouk. SPACE AGE ARCHAEOLOGY; March, p. 82.
BESTOS REVISITED; July, p. 70. Aug., p. 60. Kaiser, Dale, and Richard Losick. WHY AND HOW
Andrews, Edmund D., Michael P. Collier and Ellman, Jonathan A., and Matthew J. Plunkett. BACTERIA COMMUNICATE; Feb., p. 68.
Robert H. Webb. EXPERIMENTAL FLOOD- COMBINATORIAL CHEMISTRY AND NEW Karl, Thomas R., Neville Nicholls and Jonathan
ING IN GRAND CANYON; Jan., p. 82. DRUGS; April, p. 68. Gregory. THE COMING CLIMATE; May, p. 78.
Baldwin, Neil. THE LESSER KNOWN EDISON; Evans, Arthur B., and Ron Miller. JULES VERNE, Kashima, Satoshi, and Makoto Kitagawa. THE
Feb., p. 62. MISUNDERSTOOD VISIONARY; April, p. 92. LONGEST SUSPENSION BRIDGE; Dec., p. 88.
Barnard, Neal D., and Stephen R. Kaufman. ANI- Ewen, John A. NEW CHEMICAL TOOLS TO Kaufman, Stephen R., and Neal D. Barnard. ANI-
MAL RESEARCH IS WASTEFUL AND MIS- CREATE PLASTICS; May, p. 86. MAL RESEARCH IS WASTEFUL AND MIS-
LEADING; Feb., p. 80. Farlow, James O., and David A. Thomas. TRACK- LEADING; Feb., p. 80.
Bayley, Hagan. BUILDING DOORS INTO CELLS; ING A DINOSAUR ATTACK; Dec., p. 74. Kennedy, John M. HOW THE BLIND DRAW;
Sept., p. 62. Feiveson, Harold A., Bruce G. Blair and Frank N. Jan., p. 76.
Beardsley, Tim. TRENDS IN NEUROSCIENCE: von Hippel. TAKING NUCLEAR WEAPONS Kephart, Jeffrey O., Gregory B. Sorkin, David M.
THE MACHINERY OF THOUGHT; Aug., p. 78. OFF HAIR-TRIGGER ALERT; Nov., p. 74. Chess and Steve R. White. FIGHTING COM-
Beckage, Nancy E. THE PARASITIC WASP’S SE- Felgner, Philip L. NONVIRAL STRATEGIES PUTER VIRUSES; Nov., p. 88.
CRET WEAPON; Nov., p. 82. FOR GENE THERAPY; June, p. 102. Kim, John, and Parviz Moin. TACKLING TURBU-
Bellugi, Ursula, Howard M. Lenhoff, Paul P. Wang Fishman, Gerald J., and Dieter H. Hartmann. LENCE WITH SUPERCOMPUTERS; Jan., p. 62.
and Frank Greenberg. WILLIAMS SYN- GAMMA-RAY BURSTS; July, p. 46. Kitagawa, Makoto, and Satoshi Kashima. THE
DROME AND THE BRAIN; Dec., p. 68. Forsyth, David, Jitendra Malik and Robert Wilen- LONGEST SUSPENSION BRIDGE; Dec., p. 88.
Bernstein, Ralph, Jean-Claude Diels, Karl E. Stahl- sky. SEARCHING FOR DIGITAL PICTURES; Kleinman, Arthur, and Alex Cohen. PSYCHIA-
kopf and Xin Miao Zhao. LIGHTNING CON- June, p. 88. TRY’S GLOBAL CHALLENGE; March, p. 86.
TROL WITH LASERS; Aug., p. 50. Friedmann, Theodore. OVERCOMING THE OB- Kosowatz, John J. BUILDING A NEW GATE-
Blaese, R. Michael. GENE THERAPY FOR CAN- STACLES TO GENE THERAPY; June, p. 96. WAY TO CHINA; Dec., p. 102.
CER AND AIDS; June, p. 111. Gaisser, Thomas K., James W. Cronin and Simon Lacob, Miriam. ELEVATORS ON THE MOVE;
Blair, Bruce G., Harold A. Feiveson and Frank N. P. Swordy. COSMIC RAYS AT THE ENERGY Oct., p. 136.
von Hippel. TAKING NUCLEAR WEAPONS FRONTIER; Jan., p. 44. Landry, Donald W. IMMUNOTHERAPY FOR
OFF HAIR-TRIGGER ALERT; Nov., p. 74. Gibbs, W. Wayt. TRANSPORTATION’S PEREN- COCAINE ADDICTION; Feb., p. 42.
Bothun, Gregory D. THE GHOSTLIEST GALAX- NIAL PROBLEMS; Oct., p. 54. Lang, Kenneth R. SOHO REVEALS THE SE-
IES; Feb., p. 56. Gibbs, W. Wayt. TRENDS IN COMPUTING: CRETS OF THE SUN; March, p. 40.
Botting, Jack H., and Adrian R. Morrison. ANI- TAKING COMPUTERS TO TASK; July, p. 82. Lanza, Robert P., David K. C. Cooper and William
MAL RESEARCH IS VITAL TO MEDICINE; Gibson, Jr., Everett K., David S. McKay, Kathie L. Chick. XENOTRANSPLANTATION; July,
Feb., p. 83. Thomas-Keprta and Christopher S. Romanek. p. 54.
Brack, Matthias. METAL CLUSTERS AND MAG- THE CASE FOR RELIC LIFE ON MARS; Dec., Leakey, Meave, and Alan Walker. EARLY HOM-
IC NUMBERS; Dec., p. 50. p. 58. INID FOSSILS FROM AFRICA; June, p. 74.
Brandon, Mark T., and Nicholas Pinter. HOW Giles, David L. FASTER SHIPS FOR THE FU- Lenhoff, Howard M., Paul P. Wang, Frank Green-
EROSION BUILDS MOUNTAINS; April, p. 74. TURE; Oct., p. 126. berg and Ursula Bellugi. WILLIAMS SYN-
Bretz, Michael, Franco Nori and Paul Sholtz. Glasheen, J. W., and T. A. McMahon. (BASILISK DROME AND THE BRAIN; Dec., p. 68.
BOOMING SAND; Sept., p. 84. LIZARD) RUNNING ON WATER; Sept., p. 68. Lesk, Michael. GOING DIGITAL; March, p. 58.
Carlson, Shawn. THE LURE OF ICARUS; Oct., Gorelik, Gennady. THE TOP-SECRET LIFE OF Leutwyler, Kristin. (BICYCLES) SPEED VERSUS
p. 116. LEV LANDAU; Aug., p. 72. NEED; Oct., p. 98.
Castleman, Deborah R., and Harold A. Rosen. FLY- Greenberg, Frank, Howard M. Lenhoff, Paul P. Liss, Tony M., and Paul L. Tipton. THE DISCOV-
WHEELS IN HYBRID VEHICLES; Oct., p. 75. Wang and Ursula Bellugi. WILLIAMS SYN- ERY OF THE TOP QUARK; Sept., p. 54.
Chess, David M., Jeffrey O. Kephart, Gregory B. DROME AND THE BRAIN; Dec., p. 68. Loftus, Elizabeth F. CREATING FALSE MEMO-
Sorkin and Steve R. White. FIGHTING COM- Gregory, Jonathan, Thomas R. Karl and Neville RIES; Sept., p. 70.
PUTER VIRUSES; Nov., p. 88. Nicholls. THE COMING CLIMATE; May, p. 78. Losick, Richard, and Dale Kaiser. WHY AND HOW
Chick, William L., Robert P. Lanza and David Gullison, Raymond E., Richard E. Rice and John W. BACTERIA COMMUNICATE; Feb., p. 68.
K. C. Cooper. XENOTRANSPLANTATION; Reid. CAN SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT Lubon, Henryk, William H. Velander and William
July, p. 54. SAVE TROPICAL FORESTS?; April, p. 44. N. Drohan. TRANSGENIC LIVESTOCK AS
Cohen, Alex, and Arthur Kleinman. PSYCHIA- Gwynne, Darryl T. GLANDULAR GIFTS; Aug., DRUG FACTORIES; Jan., p. 70.
TRY’S GLOBAL CHALLENGE; March, p. 86. p. 66. Lynch, Clifford. SEARCHING THE INTERNET;
Collier, Michael P., Robert H. Webb and Edmund Hartmann, Dieter H., and Gerald J. Fishman. March, p. 52.
D. Andrews. EXPERIMENTAL FLOODING GAMMA-RAY BURSTS; July, p. 46. Macchetto, F. Duccio, and Mark Dickinson. GAL-
IN GRAND CANYON; Jan., p. 82. Haseltine, William A. DISCOVERING GENES AXIES IN THE YOUNG UNIVERSE; May,
Cooper, David K. C., Robert P. Lanza and William FOR NEW MEDICINES; March, p. 92. p. 92.
L. Chick. XENOTRANSPLANTATION; July, Hawkes, Graham S. MICROSUBS GO TO SEA; Madigan, Michael T., and Barry L. Marrs. EX-
p. 54. Oct., p. 132. TREMOPHILES; April, p. 82.
Crandall, Richard E. THE CHALLENGE OF Haxby, William F., and Lincoln F. Pratson. PANO- Malik, Jitendra, David Forsyth and Robert Wilen-
LARGE NUMBERS; Feb., p. 74. RAMAS OF THE SEAFLOOR; June, p. 82. sky. SEARCHING FOR DIGITAL PICTURES;
Cronin, James W., Thomas K. Gaisser and Simon Hearst, Marti A. INTERFACES FOR SEARCH- June, p. 88.
P. Swordy. COSMIC RAYS AT THE ENERGY ING THE WEB; March, p. 68. Mangione-Smith, William H., and John Villasenor.
FRONTIER; Jan., p. 44. Helmreich, Robert L. MANAGING HUMAN CONFIGURABLE COMPUTING; June, p. 66.
Dannen, Gene. THE EINSTEIN-SZILARD RE- ERROR IN AVIATION; May, p. 62. Mark, Hans. TILTROTORS: STRAIGHT UP
FRIGERATORS; Jan., p. 90. Ho, Dora Y., and Robert M. Sapolsky. GENE INTO THE BLUE; Oct., p. 110.
Dean, Michael, and Stephen J. O’Brien. IN THERAPY FOR THE NERVOUS SYSTEM; Marrs, Barry L., and Michael T. Madigan. EX-
SEARCH OF AIDS-RESISTANCE GENES; June, p. 116. TREMOPHILES; April, p. 82.
Sept., p. 44. Horgan, John. TRENDS IN HEALTH CARE: Massonnet, Didier. SATELLITE RADAR INTER-
Dickinson, Mark, and F. Duccio Macchetto. GAL- SEEKING A BETTER WAY TO DIE; May, FEROMETRY; Feb., p. 46.
AXIES IN THE YOUNG UNIVERSE; May, p. 100. Matthews, Robert A. J. THE SCIENCE OF MUR-
p. 92. Horwitz, Alan F. INTEGRINS AND HEALTH; PHY’S LAW; April, p. 88.
Diels, Jean-Claude, Ralph Bernstein, Karl E. May, p. 68. Mattingly, T. K. A SIMPLER RIDE INTO SPACE;
Stahlkopf and Xin Miao Zhao. LIGHTNING Howard, Kenneth R. UNJAMMING TRAFFIC Oct., p. 120.
CONTROL WITH LASERS; Aug., p. 50. WITH COMPUTERS; Oct., p. 86. McKay, David S., Everett K. Gibson, Jr., Kathie
Doyle, Brian P. STRONG FABRICS FOR FAST Jinshi, Fan, and Neville Agnew. CHINA’S BUD- Thomas-Keprta and Christopher S. Romanek.
SAILS; July, p. 60. DHIST TREASURES AT DUNHUANG; July, THE CASE FOR RELIC LIFE ON MARS; Dec.,

Annual Index 1997 Scientific American December 1997 129

 p. 58. David S. McKay and Kathie Thomas-Keprta. D. Andrews. EXPERIMENTAL FLOODING
McMahon, T. A., and J. W. Glasheen. (BASILISK THE CASE FOR RELIC LIFE ON MARS; Dec., IN GRAND CANYON; Jan., p. 82.
LIZARD) RUNNING ON WATER; Sept., p. 68. p. 58. Wescott, Eugene M., Stephen B. Mende and Davis
Mende, Stephen B., Davis D. Sentman and Eugene Ronald, Pamela C. MAKING RICE DISEASE-RE- D. Sentman. LIGHTNING BETWEEN EARTH
M. Wescott. LIGHTNING BETWEEN EARTH SISTANT; Nov., p. 100. AND SPACE; Aug., p. 56.
AND SPACE; Aug., p. 56. Rosen, Harold A., and Deborah R. Castleman. FLY- White, Steve R., Jeffrey O. Kephart, Gregory B.
Miller, Ron, and Arthur B. Evans. JULES VERNE, WHEELS IN HYBRID VEHICLES; Oct., p. 75. Sorkin and David M. Chess. FIGHTING COM-
MISUNDERSTOOD VISIONARY; April, p. 92. Rowan, Andrew N. FORUM: THE BENEFITS PUTER VIRUSES; Nov., p. 88.
Mirsky, Steve, and John Rennie. WHAT CLONING AND ETHICS OF ANIMAL RESEARCH; Feb., Wilensky, Robert, David Forsyth and Jitendra Ma-
MEANS FOR GENE THERAPY; June, p. 122. p. 79. lik. SEARCHING FOR DIGITAL PICTURES;
Mitchell, William J. DO WE STILL NEED SKY- Sapolsky, Robert M., and Dora Y. Ho. GENE June, p. 88.
SCRAPERS?; Dec., p. 112. THERAPY FOR THE NERVOUS SYSTEM; Wouk, Victor. HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLES;
Moin, Parviz, and John Kim. TACKLING TURBU- June, p. 116. Oct., p. 70.
LENCE WITH SUPERCOMPUTERS; Jan., p. 62. Schafer, Andreas, and David Victor. THE PAST Yam, Philip. TRENDS IN PHYSICS: BRINGING
Mokhtarian, Patricia L. TELECOMMUTING: AND FUTURE OF GLOBAL MOBILITY; Oct., SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT TO LIFE; June, p. 124.
NOW THAT TRAVEL CAN BE VIRTUAL.. .; p. 58. Yam, Philip. TRENDS IN PHYSICS: EXPLOIT-
Oct., p. 93. Schneider, David. TRENDS IN CLIMATE RE- ING ZERO-POINT ENERGY; Dec., p. 82.
Morrison, Adrian R., and Jack H. Botting. ANI- SEARCH: THE RISING SEAS; March, p. 112. Yam, Philip, Gary Stix and Sasha Nemecek.
MAL RESEARCH IS VITAL TO MEDICINE; Schwarzbach, David A. IRAN’S NUCLEAR PUZ- TRENDS IN SOCIETY: SCIENCE VERSUS
Feb., p. 83. ZLE; June, p. 62. ANTISCIENCE?; Jan., p. 96.
Mossman, Brooke T., and James E. Alleman. AS- Sentman, Davis D., Stephen B. Mende and Eugene Youdim, Moussa B. H., and Peter Riederer. UN-
BESTOS REVISITED; July, p. 70. M. Wescott. LIGHTNING BETWEEN EARTH DERSTANDING PARKINSON’S DISEASE;
Mukerjee, Madhusree. TRENDS IN ANIMAL AND SPACE; Aug., p. 56. Jan., p. 52.
RESEARCH; Feb., p. 86. Seymour, Roger S. PLANTS THAT WARM Zhao, Xin Miao, Jean-Claude Diels, Ralph Bern-
Ndoro, Webber. GREAT ZIMBABWE; Nov., p. 94. THEMSELVES; March, p. 104. stein and Karl E. Stahlkopf. LIGHTNING CON-
Nelson, Robert M. MERCURY: THE FORGOT- Sholtz, Paul, Franco Nori and Michael Bretz. TROL WITH LASERS; Aug., p. 50.
TEN PLANET; Nov., p. 56. BOOMING SAND; Sept., p. 84.
Nemecek, Sasha, Gary Stix and Philip Yam. Singh, Simon, and Kenneth A. Ribet. FERMAT’S
TRENDS IN SOCIETY: SCIENCE VERSUS LAST STAND; Nov., p. 68.
ANTISCIENCE?; Jan., p. 96. Smil, Vaclav. GLOBAL POPULATION AND THE
ARTICLES, BY KEY WORDS
Nicholls, Neville, Thomas R. Karl and Jonathan NITROGEN CYCLE; July, p. 76. ADDICTION, IMMUNOTHERAPY FOR CO-
Gregory. THE COMING CLIMATE; May, p. 78. Smith, Michael E. LIFE IN THE PROVINCES OF CAINE, by Donald W. Landry; Feb., p. 42.
Nori, Franco, Paul Sholtz and Michael Bretz. THE AZTEC EMPIRE; Sept., p. 76. AFRICA AGAIN...AND AGAIN?, OUT OF, by
BOOMING SAND; Sept., p. 84. Sorkin, Gregory B., Jeffrey O. Kephart, David M. Ian Tattersall; April, p. 60.
O’Brien, Stephen J., and Michael Dean. IN Chess and Steve R. White. FIGHTING COM- AIDS-RESISTANCE GENES, IN SEARCH OF, by
SEARCH OF AIDS-RESISTANCE GENES; PUTER VIRUSES; Nov., p. 88. Stephen J. O’Brien and Michael Dean; Sept.,
Sept., p. 44. Stahlkopf, Karl E., Jean-Claude Diels, Ralph Bern- p. 44.
Ouboter, Rudolf de Bruyn. HEIKE KAMER- stein and Xin Miao Zhao. LIGHTNING CON- ANIMAL RESEARCH, FORUM: THE BENE-
LINGH ONNES’S DISCOVERY OF SUPER- TROL WITH LASERS; Aug., p. 50. FITS AND ETHICS OF, by Andrew N. Rowan;
CONDUCTIVITY; March, p. 98. Stefik, Mark. TRUSTED SYSTEMS; March, p. 78. Feb., p. 79.
Oudet, Bruno. MULTILINGUALISM AND THE Stix, Gary. DRIVING TO MACH 1; Oct., p. 94. ANIMAL RESEARCH, TRENDS IN, by Mad-
INTERNET; March, p. 77. Stix, Gary. FINDING PICTURES ON THE WEB; husree Mukerjee; Feb., p. 86.
Packer, Craig, and Anne E. Pusey. DIVIDED WE March, p. 54. ANIMAL RESEARCH IS VITAL TO MEDI-
FALL: COOPERATION AMONG LIONS; May, Stix, Gary. MAGLEV: RACING TO OBLIVION?; CINE, by Jack H. Botting and Adrian R. Morri-
p. 52. Oct., p. 109. son; Feb., p. 83.
Pelli, Cesar, Charles Thornton and Leonard Jo- Stix, Gary, Sasha Nemecek and Philip Yam. ANIMAL RESEARCH IS WASTEFUL AND MIS-
seph. THE WORLD’S TALLEST BUILDINGS; TRENDS IN SOCIETY: SCIENCE VERSUS LEADING, by Neal D. Barnard and Stephen R.
Dec., p. 92C. ANTISCIENCE?; Jan., p. 96. Kaufman; Feb., p. 80.
Perl, Anthony, and James A. Dunn, Jr. FAST Susskind, Leonard. BLACK HOLES AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY, SPACE AGE, by Farouk El-
TRAINS: WHY THE U.S. LAGS; Oct., p. 106. INFORMATION PARADOX; April, p. 52. Baz; Aug., p. 60.
Pinter, Nicholas, and Mark T. Brandon. HOW Swordy, Simon P., James W. Cronin and Thomas ASBESTOS REVISITED, by James E. Alleman
EROSION BUILDS MOUNTAINS; April, p. 74. K. Gaisser. COSMIC RAYS AT THE ENERGY and Brooke T. Mossman; July, p. 70.
Plunkett, Matthew J., and Jonathan A. Ellman. FRONTIER; Jan., p. 44. AVIATION, MANAGING HUMAN ERROR IN,
COMBINATORIAL CHEMISTRY AND NEW Tattersall, Ian. OUT OF AFRICA AGAIN...AND by Robert L. Helmreich; May, p. 62.
DRUGS; April, p. 68. AGAIN?; April, p. 60. AZTEC EMPIRE, LIFE IN THE PROVINCES
Pratson, Lincoln F., and William F. Haxby. PANO- Thomas, David A., and James O. Farlow. TRACK- OF THE, by Michael E. Smith; Sept., p. 76.
RAMAS OF THE SEAFLOOR; June, p. 82. ING A DINOSAUR ATTACK; Dec., p. 74. BACTERIA COMMUNICATE, WHY AND
Pusey, Anne E., and Craig Packer. DIVIDED WE Thomas-Keprta, Kathie, Everett K. Gibson, Jr., HOW, by Richard Losick and Dale Kaiser; Feb.,
FALL: COOPERATION AMONG LIONS; May, David S. McKay and Christopher S. Romanek. p. 68.
p. 52. THE CASE FOR RELIC LIFE ON MARS; Dec., (BASILISK LIZARD) RUNNING ON WATER,
Raman, T. V. WEBSURFING WITHOUT A p. 58. by James W. Glasheen and Thomas A. McMa-
MONITOR; March, p. 73. Thornton, Charles, Cesar Pelli and Leonard Jo- hon; Sept., p. 68.
Raoul, Jean-Claude. HOW HIGH-SPEED TRAINS seph. THE WORLD’S TALLEST BUILDINGS; (BICYCLES) SPEED VERSUS NEED, by Kristin
MAKE TRACKS; Oct., p. 100. Dec., p. 92C. Leutwyler; Oct., p. 98.
Reid, John W., Richard E. Rice and Raymond E. Tipton, Paul L., and Tony M. Liss. THE DISCOV- BLACK HOLES AND THE INFORMATION
Gullison. CAN SUSTAINABLE MANAGE- ERY OF THE TOP QUARK; Sept., p. 54. PARADOX, by Leonard Susskind; April, p. 52.
MENT SAVE TROPICAL FORESTS?; April, Velander, William H., Henryk Lubon and William BLIND DRAW, HOW THE, by John M. Kenne-
p. 44. N. Drohan. TRANSGENIC LIVESTOCK AS dy; Jan., p. 76.
Rennie, John. 13 VEHICLES THAT WENT NO- DRUG FACTORIES; Jan., p. 70. BUILDING THE BIGGEST, SPECIAL REPORT;
WHERE; Oct., p. 64. Victor, David, and Andreas Schafer. THE PAST Dec., p. 87.
Rennie, John, and Steve Mirsky. WHAT CLONING AND FUTURE OF GLOBAL MOBILITY; Oct., BUILDINGS, THE WORLD’S TALLEST, by Ce-
MEANS FOR GENE THERAPY; June, p. 122. p. 58. sar Pelli, Charles Thornton and Leonard Joseph;
Resnick, Paul. FILTERING INFORMATION ON Villasenor, John, and William H. Mangione-Smith. Dec., p. 92C.
THE INTERNET; March, p. 62. CONFIGURABLE COMPUTING; June, p. 66. CELLS, BUILDING DOORS INTO, by Hagan
Ribet, Kenneth A., and Simon Singh. FERMAT’S Von Hippel, Frank N., Bruce G. Blair and Harold Bayley; Sept., p. 62.
LAST STAND; Nov., p. 68. A. Feiveson. TAKING NUCLEAR WEAPONS CHEMISTRY AND NEW DRUGS, COMBINA-
Rice, Richard E., Raymond E. Gullison and John W. OFF HAIR-TRIGGER ALERT; Nov., p. 74. TORIAL, by Matthew J. Plunkett and Jonathan
Reid. CAN SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT Walker, Alan, and Meave Leakey. EARLY HOM- A. Ellman; April, p. 68.
SAVE TROPICAL FORESTS?; April, p. 44. INID FOSSILS FROM AFRICA; June, p. 74. CHINA, BUILDING A NEW GATEWAY TO, by
Riederer, Peter, and Moussa B. H. Youdim. UN- Wallace, Douglas C. MITOCHONDRIAL DNA John J. Kosowatz; Dec., p. 102.
DERSTANDING PARKINSON’S DISEASE; IN AGING AND DISEASE; Aug., p. 40. CHINA’S BUDDHIST TREASURES AT DUN-
Jan., p. 52. Wang, Paul P., Howard M. Lenhoff, Frank Green- HUANG, by Neville Agnew and Fan Jinshi; July,
Rillings, James H. AUTOMATED HIGHWAYS; berg and Ursula Bellugi. WILLIAMS SYN- p. 40.
Oct., p. 80. DROME AND THE BRAIN; Dec., p. 68. CLIMATE, THE COMING, by Thomas R. Karl,
Romanek, Christopher S., Everett K. Gibson, Jr., Webb, Robert H., Michael P. Collier and Edmund Neville Nicholls and Jonathan Gregory; May,

130 Scientific American December 1997 Annual Index 1997

 p. 78. INTERNET, FILTERING INFORMATION ON tingly; Oct., p. 120.
CLIMATE RESEARCH: THE RISING SEAS, THE, by Paul Resnick; March, p. 62. SUSPENSION BRIDGE, THE LONGEST, by Sato-
TRENDS IN, by David Schneider; March, INTERNET, MULTILINGUALISM AND THE, shi Kashima and Makoto Kitagawa; Dec., p. 88.
p. 112. by Bruno Oudet; March, p. 77. TELECOMMUTING: NOW THAT TRAVEL
COMPUTER VIRUSES, FIGHTING, by Jeffrey INTERNET, PRESERVING THE, by Brewster CAN BE VIRTUAL..., by Patricia L. Mokhtari-
O. Kephart, Gregory B. Sorkin, David M. Chess Kahle; March, p. 82. an; Oct., p. 93.
and Steve R. White; Nov., p. 88. INTERNET, SEARCHING THE, by Clifford TILTROTORS: STRAIGHT UP INTO THE BLUE,
COMPUTING, CONFIGURABLE, by John Villase- Lynch; March, p. 52. by Hans Mark; Oct., p. 110.
nor and William H. Mangione-Smith; June, p. 66. INTERNET: BRINGING ORDER FROM TOP QUARK, THE DISCOVERY OF THE, by
COMPUTING: TAKING COMPUTERS TO CHAOS, SPECIAL REPORT: THE; March, p. 49. Tony M. Liss and Paul L. Tipton; Sept., p. 54.
TASK, TRENDS IN, by W. Wayt Gibbs; July, IRAN’S NUCLEAR PUZZLE, by David A. TRAFFIC WITH COMPUTERS, UNJAMMING,
p. 82. Schwarzbach; June, p. 62. by Kenneth R. Howard; Oct., p. 86.
COSMIC RAYS AT THE ENERGY FRONTIER, LANDAU, THE TOP-SECRET LIFE OF LEV, by TRAINS MAKE TRACKS, HOW HIGH-SPEED,
by James W. Cronin, Thomas K. Gaisser and Si- Gennady Gorelik; Aug., p. 72. by Jean-Claude Raoul; Oct., p. 100.
mon P. Swordy; Jan., p. 44. LIGHTNING BETWEEN EARTH AND SPACE, TRAINS: WHY THE U.S. LAGS, FAST, by An-
DIGITAL, GOING, by Michael Lesk; March, p. 58. by Stephen B. Mende, Davis D. Sentman and thony Perl and James A. Dunn, Jr.; Oct., p. 106.
DIGITAL PICTURES, SEARCHING FOR, by Da- Eugene M. Wescott; Aug., p. 56. TRANSGENIC LIVESTOCK AS DRUG FACTO-
vid Forsyth, Jitendra Malik and Robert Wilen- LIGHTNING CONTROL WITH LASERS, by RIES, by William H. Velander, Henryk Lubon
sky; June, p. 88. Jean-Claude Diels, Ralph Bernstein, Karl E. and William N. Drohan; Jan., p. 70.
DINOSAUR ATTACK, TRACKING A, by David Stahlkopf and Xin Miao Zhao; Aug., p. 50. TRANSPORTATION’S PERENNIAL PROB-
A. Thomas and James O. Farlow; Dec., p. 74. LIONS, DIVIDED WE FALL: COOPERATION LEMS, by W. Wayt Gibbs; Oct., p. 54.
DRIVING TO MACH 1, by Gary Stix; Oct., p. 94. AMONG, by Craig Packer and Anne E. Pusey; TROPICAL FORESTS?, CAN SUSTAINABLE
EDISON, THE LESSER KNOWN, by Neil Bald- May, p. 52. MANAGEMENT SAVE, by Richard E. Rice,
win; Feb., p. 62. MAGLEV: RACING TO OBLIVION?, by Gary Raymond E. Gullison and John W. Reid; April,
EINSTEIN-SZILARD REFRIGERATORS, THE, Stix; Oct., p. 109. p. 44.
by Gene Dannen; Jan., p. 90. MARS, THE CASE FOR RELIC LIFE ON, by Ev- TRUSTED SYSTEMS, by Mark Stefik; March,
ELECTRIC VEHICLES, HYBRID, by Victor erett K. Gibson, Jr., David S. McKay, Kathie p. 78.
Wouk; Oct., p. 70. Thomas-Keprta and Christopher S. Romanek; TURBULENCE WITH SUPERCOMPUTERS,
ELEVATORS ON THE MOVE, by Miriam La- Dec., p. 58. TACKLING, by Parviz Moin and John Kim;
cob; Oct., p. 136. MERCURY: THE FORGOTTEN PLANET, by Jan., p. 62.
ENERGY, TRENDS IN PHYSICS: EXPLOITING Robert M. Nelson; Nov., p. 56. VEHICLES THAT WENT NOWHERE, 13, by
ZERO-POINT, by Philip Yam; Dec., p. 82. METAL CLUSTERS AND MAGIC NUMBERS, John Rennie; Oct., p. 64.
EROSION BUILDS MOUNTAINS, HOW, by by Matthias Brack; Dec., p. 50. VERNE, MISUNDERSTOOD VISIONARY,
Nicholas Pinter and Mark T. Brandon; April, MICROSUBS GO TO SEA, by Graham S. Hawkes; JULES, by Arthur B. Evans and Ron Miller;
p. 74. Oct., p. 132. April, p. 92.
EXTREMOPHILES, by Michael T. Madigan and MITOCHONDRIAL DNA IN AGING AND DIS- WASP’S SECRET WEAPON, THE PARASITIC,
Barry L. Marrs; April, p. 82. EASE, by Douglas C. Wallace; Aug., p. 40. by Nancy E. Beckage; Nov., p. 82.
FALSE MEMORIES, CREATING, by Elizabeth F. MOBILITY, THE PAST AND FUTURE OF WEB, FINDING PICTURES ON THE, by Gary
Loftus; Sept., p. 70. GLOBAL, by Andreas Schafer and David Victor; Stix; March, p. 54.
FERMAT’S LAST STAND, by Simon Singh and Oct., p. 58. WEB, INTERFACES FOR SEARCHING THE,
Kenneth A. Ribet; Nov., p. 68. MURPHY’S LAW, THE SCIENCE OF, by Robert by Marti A. Hearst; March, p. 68.
FLYWHEELS IN HYBRID VEHICLES, by Har- A. J. Matthews; April, p. 88. WEBSURFING WITHOUT A MONITOR, by T.
old A. Rosen and Deborah R. Castleman; Oct., NEUROSCIENCE: THE MACHINERY OF V. Raman; March, p. 73.
p. 75. THOUGHT, TRENDS IN, by Tim Beardsley; WILLIAMS SYNDROME AND THE BRAIN, by
GALAXIES, THE GHOSTLIEST, by Gregory D. Aug., p. 78. Howard M. Lenhoff, Paul P. Wang, Frank Green-
Bothun; Feb., p. 56. NITROGEN CYCLE, GLOBAL POPULATION berg and Ursula Bellugi; Dec., p. 68.
GALAXIES IN THE YOUNG UNIVERSE, by F. AND THE, by Vaclav Smil; July, p. 76. XENOTRANSPLANTATION, by Robert P. Lan-
Duccio Macchetto and Mark Dickinson; May, NUCLEAR WEAPONS OFF HAIR-TRIGGER za, David K. C. Cooper and William L. Chick;
p. 92. ALERT, TAKING, by Bruce G. Blair, Harold A. July, p. 54.
GAMMA-RAY BURSTS, by Gerald J. Fishman Feiveson and Frank N. von Hippel; Nov., p. 74. ZIMBABWE, GREAT, by Webber Ndoro; Nov.,
and Dieter H. Hartmann; July, p. 46. NUMBERS, THE CHALLENGE OF LARGE, by p. 94.
GENE THERAPY, NONVIRAL STRATEGIES Richard E. Crandall; Feb., p. 74.
FOR, by Philip L. Felgner; June, p. 102. ONNES’S DISCOVERY OF SUPERCONDUC-
GENE THERAPY, OVERCOMING THE OBSTA- TIVITY, HEIKE KAMERLINGH, by Rudolf de THE AMATEUR SCIENTIST
CLES TO, by Theodore Friedmann; June, p. 96. Bruyn Ouboter; March, p. 98.
GENE THERAPY, WHAT CLONING MEANS PARKINSON’S DISEASE, UNDERSTANDING, by Shawn Carlson
FOR, by Steve Mirsky and John Rennie; June, by Moussa B. H. Youdim and Peter Riederer; Catch a Comet by Its Tail. Jan., p. 102.
p. 122. Jan., p. 52. A Picture-Perfect Comet. Feb., p. 94.
GENE THERAPY FOR CANCER AND AIDS, PLANTS THAT WARM THEMSELVES, by Rog- Algorithm of the Gods. March, p. 121.
by R. Michael Blaese; June, p. 111. er S. Seymour; March, p. 104. The Joys of Armchair Ornithology. April, p. 100.
GENE THERAPY FOR THE NERVOUS SYS- PLASTICS, NEW CHEMICAL TOOLS TO CRE- When Hazy Skies Are Rising. May, p. 106.
TEM, by Dora Y. Ho and Robert M. Sapolsky; ATE, by John A. Ewen; May, p. 86. Getting Inside an Ant’s Head. June, p. 130.
June, p. 116. PSYCHIATRY’S GLOBAL CHALLENGE, by Ar- How-To’s of Butterfly Rookeries. July, p. 90.
GENE THERAPY WORK, SPECIAL REPORT: thur Kleinman and Alex Cohen; March, p. 86. Getting a Charge out of Rain. Aug., p. 84.
MAKING; June, p. 95. RICE DISEASE-RESISTANT, MAKING, by Pam- Unraveling the Secrets of Monarchs. Sept., p. 90.
GENES FOR NEW MEDICINES, DISCOVER- ela C. Ronald; Nov., p. 100. Recording the Sounds of Life. Oct., p. 138.
ING, by William A. Haseltine; March, p. 92. SAILS, STRONG FABRICS FOR FAST, by Brian Caught in a Wind Tunnel. Nov., p. 106.
GLANDULAR GIFTS, by Darryl T. Gwynne; P. Doyle; July, p. 60. Taking Back the Final Frontier. Dec., p. 114.
Aug., p. 66. SAND, BOOMING, by Franco Nori, Paul Sholtz
GRAND CANYON, EXPERIMENTAL FLOOD- and Michael Bretz; Sept., p. 84.
ING IN, by Michael P. Collier, Robert H. Webb SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT TO LIFE, TRENDS IN MATHEMATICAL RECREATIONS
and Edmund D. Andrews; Jan., p. 82. PHYSICS: BRINGING, by Philip Yam; June,
HEALTH CARE: SEEKING A BETTER WAY TO p. 124. by Ian Stewart
DIE, TRENDS IN, by John Horgan; May, SCIENCE VERSUS ANTISCIENCE?, TRENDS Alphamagic Squares. Jan., p. 106.
p. 100. IN SOCIETY, by Gary Stix, Sasha Nemecek and Crystallography of a Golf Ball. Feb., p. 96.
HIGHWAYS, AUTOMATED, by James H. Ril- Philip Yam; Jan., p. 96. Juniper Green. March, p. 118.
lings; Oct., p. 80. SEAFLOOR, PANORAMAS OF THE, by Lincoln Knight’s Tours. April, p. 102.
HOMINID FOSSILS FROM AFRICA, EARLY, F. Pratson and William F. Haxby; June, p. 82. Big Game Hunting in Primeland. May, p. 108.
by Meave Leakey and Alan Walker; June, p. 74. SHIPS FOR THE FUTURE, FASTER, by David L. The Sifting Sands of Factorland. June, p. 134.
ICARUS, THE LURE OF, by Shawn Carlson; Oct., Giles; Oct., p. 126. Squaring the Square. July, p. 94.
p. 116. SKYSCRAPERS?, DO WE STILL NEED, by Wil- Empires on the Moon. Aug., p. 86.
INTEGRINS AND HEALTH, by Alan F. Horwitz; liam J. Mitchell; Dec., p. 112. Empires and Electronics. Sept., p. 92.
May, p. 68. SOHO REVEALS THE SECRETS OF THE SUN, Two-Way Jigsaw Puzzles. Oct., p. 140.
INTERFEROMETRY, SATELLITE RADAR, by by Kenneth R. Lang; March, p. 40. Lore and Lure of Dice. Nov., p. 110.
Didier Massonnet; Feb., p. 46. SPACE, A SIMPLER RIDE INTO, by T. K. Mat- Cat’s Cradle Calculus Challenge. Dec., p. 118.

Annual Index 1997 Scientific American December 1997 131

 WORKING KNOWLEDGE
THE POLYGRAPH

by Joel Reicherter RESPONSES FROM DECEPTIVE SUBJECT

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN TOM SEETIN; PHOTOGRAPH BY GARY MOO YOUNG

Professor and Coordinator
of Human Anatomy and Physiology CHEST MOVEMENT
State University of New York DURING
at Farmingdale RESPIRATION

T
ABDOMINAL
he polygraph monitors physi- MOVEMENT
ological activity that occurs DURING
under the stress of deception. RESPIRATION
Respiration, heart rate, blood pressure
and electrical conductivity of the skin SKIN
CONDUCTANCE
alter in reaction to some types of ques-
tions perceived as threatening. That is
why a lie, if told in response to such a HEART RATE
question, can be detected by a polygraph. AND BLOOD
PRESSURE 5 SECONDS
Polygraph testing consists of three
phases: a pretest interview, the actual
CONTROL QUESTION: RELEVANT QUESTION:
recording of the subject’s physiological DID YOU EVER THINK DID YOU STAB MARY JONES
responses to test questions and an anal- OF HURTING A FRIEND? IN THE BACK?
ysis of the recorded data. A typical poly-
graph examination consists of a few
yes-or-no questions. Two or three “rele- threat or an embarrassment. The in-
vant” questions deal directly with the strumentation records physiological re-
crime or dispute that caused the test to actions to these questions. Examiners
be administered. Other queries, known then assign numerical scores to the var-
as control questions, relate to similar ious responses that signify a degree of
matters that may have occurred at an- truthfulness or deceptiveness.
other time. In the most advanced polygraph test-
The validity of polygraph tests rests on ing, a computer analyzes the waveforms
the theory that someone who is lying that represent heart rate and blood pres-
will perceive the relevant question (“Did sure, skin conductance and respiratory
you steal $500 from the office safe?”) dynamics. The computer’s algorithms
as more threatening than the vaguer have been developed based on con-
control question (“Have you ever stolen firmed polygraph test results. This ana-
something worth more than $25?”). lytical innovation reduces the potential
Meanwhile the per- for test results being tainted by an exam-
son telling the truth iner’s bias or incompetence, thus bring-
will find the control ing us one step closer to a truly objec-
question more of a tive method of lie detection.

CHEST MOVEMENT DURING RESPIRATION

ABDOMINAL MOVEMENT DURING RESPIRATION
HEART RATE AND BLOOD PRESSURE
SKIN CONDUCTANCE

POLYGRAPH TEST REACTIONS are recorded by four sensors attached to the body. A respira-
tion-monitoring device, called a pneumograph, fits across the chest and abdomen, produc-
ing separate traces from each location (green and yellow lines). Silver electrodes wrapped
around two fingers register skin conductance (white line). A cuff placed on the upper arm
monitors heart rate and blood pressure (red line). Deception is indicated if there is less of a re-
sponse to the control question (graph at top, left side) than to the relevant question (right side).
The examiner asks the questions during five-second intervals (turquoise bands).

132 Scientific American December 1997 Working Knowledge