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The human face of climate change
EDITORIAL
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 844 543 80 70 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588
© 2013 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Taming the final frontier We need a consensus on space mining if it’s to enrich us all EVER since we took our first steps Part of this is about principles. out of Africa, human exploration Some will argue that space’s has been driven by the desire to “magnificent desolation” is not secure resources. Now our ours to despoil, just as they argue attention is turning to space. that our own planet’s poles should The motivation for deep-space remain pristine. Others will travel is shifting from discovery suggest that glutting ourselves on to economics. The past year has space’s riches is not an acceptable seen a flurry of proposals aimed at alternative to developing more bringing celestial riches down to sustainable ways of earthly life. Earth. No doubt this will make a “Miners have much to gain few billionaires even wealthier, from a broad agreement but we all stand to gain: the on the for-profit mineral bounty and spin-off exploration of space” technologies could enrich us all. But before the miners start firing up their rockets, we should History suggests that those will pause for thought. At first glance, be hard lines to hold, and it may space mining seems to sidestep be difficult to persuade the public most environmental concerns: that such barren environments there is (probably!) no life on are worth preserving. After all, asteroids, and thus no habitats to they exist in vast abundance, and trash. But its consequences – both even fewer people will experience here on Earth and in space – merit them than have walked through careful consideration. Antarctica’s icy landscapes.
There’s also the emerging offworld economy to consider. The resources that are valuable in orbit and beyond may be very different to those we prize on Earth (see page 8). Questions of their stewardship have barely been broached – and the relevant legal and regulatory framework is fragmentary, to put it mildly. Space miners, like their earthly counterparts, are often reluctant to engage with such questions. One speaker at last week’s spacemining forum in Sydney, Australia, concluded with a plea that regulation should be avoided. But miners have much to gain from a broad agreement on the for-profit exploitation of space. Without consensus, claims will be disputed, investments risky, and the gains made insecure. It is in all of our long-term interests to seek one out. n
Bang goes the theory THE past few years have been a boom time for theoretical physicists. With few experiments to constrain them, they have been free to explore. The result is a cornucopia of awesome ideas: hidden dimensions, shadow particles and an infinity of parallel universes, to name but three. Yet our understanding of the universe is stuck in a bit of a rut.
Even the Higgs boson was merely the final hurrah in a chain of discoveries starting in the 1960s. So it is good to see that the baton is being passed back to the experimentalists to start the next phase of our effort to understand the cosmos (see page 37). This month, the Planck satellite will report long-awaited results about the early universe. Next
year we will step up the search for tiny ripples in space-time. And the LHC has only just started its work. This changing of the guard is exciting but nerve-wracking. To put it bluntly, it must deliver. Physics is enjoying a period of enormous public support. But if there is no appreciable progress, it is hard to see anyone stumping up the cash to build an even bigger particle smasher or better space probes. We must hope the theories stand up to the test. n
Holding out for a climate hero
at least in part, by climate change, the first time a humanitarian disaster has been directly linked to global warming (see page 5). It won’t be the last. If that wasn’t bad enough, our climate now seems to have passed one of the abrupt changes known as tipping points. This is another first (see page 6).
These stories are a depressing reminder of how we are damaging the planet. But they also remind us that change is possible. The famine of the mid-1980s was a tipping point of sorts too, because it thrust hunger onto the global agenda. We need a new hero. Is there a climate change Bob Geldof out there? n
EAST Africa is no stranger to crisis: who can forget the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s that killed about half a million people? But the drought that struck in 2011 was different – it was caused,
2 March 2013 | NewScientist | 3
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 844 543 80 70 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588
© 2013 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Taming the final frontier We need a consensus on space mining if it’s to enrich us all EVER since we took our first steps Part of this is about principles. out of Africa, human exploration Some will argue that space’s has been driven by the desire to “magnificent desolation” is not secure resources. Now our ours to despoil, just as they argue attention is turning to space. that our own planet’s poles should The motivation for deep-space remain pristine. Others will travel is shifting from discovery suggest that glutting ourselves on to economics. The past year has space’s riches is not an acceptable seen a flurry of proposals aimed at alternative to developing more bringing celestial riches down to sustainable ways of earthly life. Earth. No doubt this will make a “Miners have much to gain few billionaires even wealthier, from a broad agreement but we all stand to gain: the on the for-profit mineral bounty and spin-off exploration of space” technologies could enrich us all. But before the miners start firing up their rockets, we should History suggests that those will pause for thought. At first glance, be hard lines to hold, and it may space mining seems to sidestep be difficult to persuade the public most environmental concerns: that such barren environments there is (probably!) no life on are worth preserving. After all, asteroids, and thus no habitats to they exist in vast abundance, and trash. But its consequences – both even fewer people will experience here on Earth and in space – merit them than have walked through careful consideration. Antarctica’s icy landscapes.
There’s also the emerging offworld economy to consider. The resources that are valuable in orbit and beyond may be very different to those we prize on Earth (see page 8). Questions of their stewardship have barely been broached – and the relevant legal and regulatory framework is fragmentary, to put it mildly. Space miners, like their earthly counterparts, are often reluctant to engage with such questions. One speaker at last week’s spacemining forum in Sydney, Australia, concluded with a plea that regulation should be avoided. But miners have much to gain from a broad agreement on the for-profit exploitation of space. Without consensus, claims will be disputed, investments risky, and the gains made insecure. It is in all of our long-term interests to seek one out. n
Bang goes the theory THE past few years have been a boom time for theoretical physicists. With few experiments to constrain them, they have been free to explore. The result is a cornucopia of awesome ideas: hidden dimensions, shadow particles and an infinity of parallel universes, to name but three. Yet our understanding of the universe is stuck in a bit of a rut.
Even the Higgs boson was merely the final hurrah in a chain of discoveries starting in the 1960s. So it is good to see that the baton is being passed back to the experimentalists to start the next phase of our effort to understand the cosmos (see page 37). This month, the Planck satellite will report long-awaited results about the early universe. Next
year we will step up the search for tiny ripples in space-time. And the LHC has only just started its work. This changing of the guard is exciting but nerve-wracking. To put it bluntly, it must deliver. Physics is enjoying a period of enormous public support. But if there is no appreciable progress, it is hard to see anyone stumping up the cash to build an even bigger particle smasher or better space probes. We must hope the theories stand up to the test. n
Holding out for a climate hero
at least in part, by climate change, the first time a humanitarian disaster has been directly linked to global warming (see page 5). It won’t be the last. If that wasn’t bad enough, our climate now seems to have passed one of the abrupt changes known as tipping points. This is another first (see page 6).
These stories are a depressing reminder of how we are damaging the planet. But they also remind us that change is possible. The famine of the mid-1980s was a tipping point of sorts too, because it thrust hunger onto the global agenda. We need a new hero. Is there a climate change Bob Geldof out there? n
EAST Africa is no stranger to crisis: who can forget the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s that killed about half a million people? But the drought that struck in 2011 was different – it was caused,
2 March 2013 | NewScientist | 3