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Vanishing vaquita
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Time to start packing? Stephen Hawking says we must colonise another planet within 100 years to ensure survival. Why the rush, asks Dirk Schulze-Makuch STEPHEN HAWKING says that the human species has 100 years to populate another planet to ensure its survival. His claim, on BBC science TV show Tomorrow’s World, has sparked controversy. The big question is why he has so drastically revised his previous estimate, voiced just last year, that we have a more leisurely 1000 years to hatch an escape plan. Sure, politically the world feels edgier than a year ago, and certainly scarier than at the end of the cold war and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But do we have scientifically valid reasons to say that the existential threat has risen dramatically of late? The chances of being hit by a big asteroid or fried by a nearby star going supernova have not increased. Contact with potentially hostile aliens does not seem any more likely. There is no evidence so far of intelligent life
out there and we are beaming fewer deliberate signals to other stars to try to attract attention. So Hawking’s reasoning must lay somewhere else. Perhaps he fears nanotechnology will take on a life of its own and transform Earth into grey goo? Or he has pondered the rise of AI smarter than humans, which could deem us a threat and extinguish us. The biggest threat we face is probably from a pandemic. It scored 7.5 out of 10 in terms of likelihood on the catastrophometer David Darling and I devised for our book Megacatastrophes! Nine strange ways the world could end. The rise of antibiotic resistance and the Ebola outbreak in west Africa underline this threat. Alternatively, carbon emissions continue to fuel global warming, which could unleash dangerous climate change. These last two scenarios differ
Vanishing vaquita Captive breeding is the final roll of the dice for the marine mammal, says Olive Heffernan YET another vaquita has turned up dead, meaning there is one less of the world’s most endangered cetacean. With numbers estimated to be as few as 30 earlier in 2017, it is a poster child for conservation – not least because its decline has been obvious for decades. In a last-ditch move, scientists 22 | NewScientist | 20 May 2017
Gulf of California, off Mexico, has been a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1993. Despite that, the area continues to be plundered by both legal and illegal fishing. The big issue is poachers using gill nets to snare fish. These nets are very dangerous for vaquitas. But Mexican officials consistently ignore scientific advice to permanently ban them, instead opting for short-term measures, such as a two-year emergency ban that is about to end.
are now preparing to capture some of the remaining vaquitas to breed in captivity. It may sound extreme, but further losses are reinforcing the need for urgent action. So far this year, four have “The vaquita’s waters, washed up dead after becoming despite being a UNESCO entangled in fishing nets. reserve, are still plundered This seems astonishing given by legal and illegal fishing” the vaquita’s home in the upper
The captive-breeding plan is on the cusp of being put into action. Monitoring this summer will allow new estimates of numbers. Then in October, a $4 million effort will begin to track and herd survivors into a holding area with the help of trained dolphins. Once deemed to be coping well, they will be moved to a sanctuary. Advocates point to the skies nearby, where California condors soar, as evidence that this approach works. This species was down to just 27 individuals in 1987, at which point all wild birds were placed in captivity. There are now 270 back in the wild. But equally, marine species such as
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
Dirk Schulze-Makuch is a professor at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, and an affiliate of the SETI Institute
the northern elephant seal have been saved without captive breeding. In each case, success hinged on removing whatever threatened the species’s survival. There is no doubt that captive breeding will be risky. No one knows how vaquitas will respond. And even if it works, there is still the question of what happens next. Will the animals be returned to a precarious existence in heavily poached waters? Unless the exploitation that caused the decline is dealt with, this species will vanish for good. n Olive Heffernan is a freelance environment writer
INSIGHT Politics
THOMAS DWORZAK/MAGNUM
from the rest. Both could end human civilisation but are unlikely to wipe out our species. Maybe Hawking isn’t drawing a hard line between the two. Most would regard a return to the caves as akin to the end of our “species” – the demise of “Homo sapiens technologicus”. Importantly, we can influence threats that do not come hurtling out of the blackness of space. Will it be possible to advance technologies but circumvent the dangers they may raise? Will we manage our planet and its biosphere so it will still be the blue marble for future generations? Maybe Hawking, against a gloomier backdrop, has simply become more downbeat about our ability to do this. I agree that we should colonise a planet within the next 100 years, but see a more mundane reason to get on with it: the risk posed by an increasingly virtual world. Why bother building a spaceship and making the arduous journey to Mars when you can experience anything in a simulation? In which case, all may seem OK, until someone pulls the plug. n
–Hackers targeted Emmanuel Macron–
Politicians must learn from French hacking Matt Reynolds
to stop the hackers getting in, Macron’s campaign accepted that an attack was inevitable and found ways to limit its success. It was a smart move. If you’re not powerful enough to stop the hackers gaining access to your accounts, you can still make things tricky for them when they do get in, says Helen Nissenbaum at New York University. The hackers had to waste time verifying email addresses and sifting fake documents from real ones. This might explain the 11th-hour timing of
WHEN the inevitable happened, Emmanuel Macron was ready. A giant haul of emails stolen from his presidential campaign and leaked online less than 48 hours before France went to the polls failed to tip the vote in favour of Marine Le Pen. No doubt, luck played a part. But Macron’s team had pre-empted the leak by spamming hackers with decoy emails. When 9 gigabytes of emails were finally stolen, the ploy prevented the president-elect’s campaign being “This is the new normal. derailed by fake news in the crucial Hackers will try to subvert period before the election. Other European leaders facing elections over democratic processes however they can” the coming month should take note. Macron’s team was beset by sophisticated phishing attacks – emails the leak, which failed to kick up much that try to trick recipients into entering of a media storm despite the efforts of their login details and thus giving away alt-right propagandists. access to their accounts – as early as Even WikiLeaks, which was first to December 2016. They responded by release hacked emails from the US flooding the phishing addresses with Democratic National Committee in July bogus email accounts full of fake 2016, was unprepared for the Macron emails and documents. leak and had to spend time verifying This is resistance through the authenticity of the emails. obfuscation. Instead of concentrating While the alt-right rallied online to limited resources on tighter firewalls dig up dirt in the huge dump of mostly
innocuous files, Macron’s campaign responded quickly with a statement saying that hackers may have planted their own fake documents in the trove to spread “doubt and misinformation”. This is the new normal. The US and French elections have shown us that candidates are happy to use fake news to discredit their opponents and drown out reasonable political discussion. Hackers will attempt to subvert democratic processes and destabilise campaigns by releasing whatever information they can. The head of the German intelligence agency has confirmed that hackers are already targeting the country ahead of its elections in September. As a strong, liberal leader, Angela Merkel is thought to be particularly under threat. Hillary Clinton aside, there are few politicians who provoke such vitriol from alt-right groups. Online trolls are already sharpening their knives, and Merkel can be sure of a sustained onslaught of fake news and hacks in the coming months. Other European leaders, including those standing in the UK general election this June, may not be as lucky as Macron. The last-minute timing of the French email leak helped dampen its impact, and early indications are that the attackers were sloppy, leaving clues in the files that suggest connections to Russian-linked groups behind the US hacks. Next time, the hackers will be better prepared – and our politicians must be too. n 20 May 2017 | NewScientist | 23
Time to start packing? Stephen Hawking says we must colonise another planet within 100 years to ensure survival. Why the rush, asks Dirk Schulze-Makuch STEPHEN HAWKING says that the human species has 100 years to populate another planet to ensure its survival. His claim, on BBC science TV show Tomorrow’s World, has sparked controversy. The big question is why he has so drastically revised his previous estimate, voiced just last year, that we have a more leisurely 1000 years to hatch an escape plan. Sure, politically the world feels edgier than a year ago, and certainly scarier than at the end of the cold war and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But do we have scientifically valid reasons to say that the existential threat has risen dramatically of late? The chances of being hit by a big asteroid or fried by a nearby star going supernova have not increased. Contact with potentially hostile aliens does not seem any more likely. There is no evidence so far of intelligent life
out there and we are beaming fewer deliberate signals to other stars to try to attract attention. So Hawking’s reasoning must lay somewhere else. Perhaps he fears nanotechnology will take on a life of its own and transform Earth into grey goo? Or he has pondered the rise of AI smarter than humans, which could deem us a threat and extinguish us. The biggest threat we face is probably from a pandemic. It scored 7.5 out of 10 in terms of likelihood on the catastrophometer David Darling and I devised for our book Megacatastrophes! Nine strange ways the world could end. The rise of antibiotic resistance and the Ebola outbreak in west Africa underline this threat. Alternatively, carbon emissions continue to fuel global warming, which could unleash dangerous climate change. These last two scenarios differ
Vanishing vaquita Captive breeding is the final roll of the dice for the marine mammal, says Olive Heffernan YET another vaquita has turned up dead, meaning there is one less of the world’s most endangered cetacean. With numbers estimated to be as few as 30 earlier in 2017, it is a poster child for conservation – not least because its decline has been obvious for decades. In a last-ditch move, scientists 22 | NewScientist | 20 May 2017
Gulf of California, off Mexico, has been a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1993. Despite that, the area continues to be plundered by both legal and illegal fishing. The big issue is poachers using gill nets to snare fish. These nets are very dangerous for vaquitas. But Mexican officials consistently ignore scientific advice to permanently ban them, instead opting for short-term measures, such as a two-year emergency ban that is about to end.
are now preparing to capture some of the remaining vaquitas to breed in captivity. It may sound extreme, but further losses are reinforcing the need for urgent action. So far this year, four have “The vaquita’s waters, washed up dead after becoming despite being a UNESCO entangled in fishing nets. reserve, are still plundered This seems astonishing given by legal and illegal fishing” the vaquita’s home in the upper
The captive-breeding plan is on the cusp of being put into action. Monitoring this summer will allow new estimates of numbers. Then in October, a $4 million effort will begin to track and herd survivors into a holding area with the help of trained dolphins. Once deemed to be coping well, they will be moved to a sanctuary. Advocates point to the skies nearby, where California condors soar, as evidence that this approach works. This species was down to just 27 individuals in 1987, at which point all wild birds were placed in captivity. There are now 270 back in the wild. But equally, marine species such as
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
Dirk Schulze-Makuch is a professor at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, and an affiliate of the SETI Institute
the northern elephant seal have been saved without captive breeding. In each case, success hinged on removing whatever threatened the species’s survival. There is no doubt that captive breeding will be risky. No one knows how vaquitas will respond. And even if it works, there is still the question of what happens next. Will the animals be returned to a precarious existence in heavily poached waters? Unless the exploitation that caused the decline is dealt with, this species will vanish for good. n Olive Heffernan is a freelance environment writer
INSIGHT Politics
THOMAS DWORZAK/MAGNUM
from the rest. Both could end human civilisation but are unlikely to wipe out our species. Maybe Hawking isn’t drawing a hard line between the two. Most would regard a return to the caves as akin to the end of our “species” – the demise of “Homo sapiens technologicus”. Importantly, we can influence threats that do not come hurtling out of the blackness of space. Will it be possible to advance technologies but circumvent the dangers they may raise? Will we manage our planet and its biosphere so it will still be the blue marble for future generations? Maybe Hawking, against a gloomier backdrop, has simply become more downbeat about our ability to do this. I agree that we should colonise a planet within the next 100 years, but see a more mundane reason to get on with it: the risk posed by an increasingly virtual world. Why bother building a spaceship and making the arduous journey to Mars when you can experience anything in a simulation? In which case, all may seem OK, until someone pulls the plug. n
–Hackers targeted Emmanuel Macron–
Politicians must learn from French hacking Matt Reynolds
to stop the hackers getting in, Macron’s campaign accepted that an attack was inevitable and found ways to limit its success. It was a smart move. If you’re not powerful enough to stop the hackers gaining access to your accounts, you can still make things tricky for them when they do get in, says Helen Nissenbaum at New York University. The hackers had to waste time verifying email addresses and sifting fake documents from real ones. This might explain the 11th-hour timing of
WHEN the inevitable happened, Emmanuel Macron was ready. A giant haul of emails stolen from his presidential campaign and leaked online less than 48 hours before France went to the polls failed to tip the vote in favour of Marine Le Pen. No doubt, luck played a part. But Macron’s team had pre-empted the leak by spamming hackers with decoy emails. When 9 gigabytes of emails were finally stolen, the ploy prevented the president-elect’s campaign being “This is the new normal. derailed by fake news in the crucial Hackers will try to subvert period before the election. Other European leaders facing elections over democratic processes however they can” the coming month should take note. Macron’s team was beset by sophisticated phishing attacks – emails the leak, which failed to kick up much that try to trick recipients into entering of a media storm despite the efforts of their login details and thus giving away alt-right propagandists. access to their accounts – as early as Even WikiLeaks, which was first to December 2016. They responded by release hacked emails from the US flooding the phishing addresses with Democratic National Committee in July bogus email accounts full of fake 2016, was unprepared for the Macron emails and documents. leak and had to spend time verifying This is resistance through the authenticity of the emails. obfuscation. Instead of concentrating While the alt-right rallied online to limited resources on tighter firewalls dig up dirt in the huge dump of mostly
innocuous files, Macron’s campaign responded quickly with a statement saying that hackers may have planted their own fake documents in the trove to spread “doubt and misinformation”. This is the new normal. The US and French elections have shown us that candidates are happy to use fake news to discredit their opponents and drown out reasonable political discussion. Hackers will attempt to subvert democratic processes and destabilise campaigns by releasing whatever information they can. The head of the German intelligence agency has confirmed that hackers are already targeting the country ahead of its elections in September. As a strong, liberal leader, Angela Merkel is thought to be particularly under threat. Hillary Clinton aside, there are few politicians who provoke such vitriol from alt-right groups. Online trolls are already sharpening their knives, and Merkel can be sure of a sustained onslaught of fake news and hacks in the coming months. Other European leaders, including those standing in the UK general election this June, may not be as lucky as Macron. The last-minute timing of the French email leak helped dampen its impact, and early indications are that the attackers were sloppy, leaving clues in the files that suggest connections to Russian-linked groups behind the US hacks. Next time, the hackers will be better prepared – and our politicians must be too. n 20 May 2017 | NewScientist | 23