Welcome to the void

COMMENT

Try a power pose Brexit negotiations will be tough. Tricks of body and mind may boost the chance of gaining the upper hand, says William Lee Adams AS THE dust settles following the election, Brexit secretary David Davis finally begins formal negotiations on the UK’s divorce from the European Union. With a hung parliament and a much weakened Conservative government, Davis and his team are on the back foot. They will need all the help they can get. Body language and psychological strategies could give them a lift. Feeling empowered and selfassured is vital. This makes you more quick-witted and optimistic, more likely to think abstractly and make the first move. To feel powerful, research at Harvard University suggested adopting superhero-style “power poses”. Volunteers who stood like Superman for a minute or so – legs akimbo, hands on hips and elbows bent – were later rated as better performers in high-stakes situations. Team GB should

assume the position just before the talks, as it’s unclear how long effects last. If that doesn’t work, a swift standing yoga pose could have a similar effect (best to avoid looking like you’re praying for divine intervention though). As the Brits enter the ring, they should walk tall with shoulders back and heads up. That will send the message they aren’t to be messed about. Air kisses probably won’t wash, so Davis and co could offer a handshake. According to a University of Alabama study, this is more likely to win hearts if it is strong, lasts three to four seconds and includes eye contact. Davis could bolster perceptions of trustworthiness when required by deferring to team members with specific facial characteristics. Psychologists at the University of British Columbia found that more pronounced cheekbones, rounder faces and higher eyebrows can be

Welcome to the void If our part of the cosmos is oddly empty, it may solve an enduring riddle, says Geraint Lewis WE TEND to think that we live in a pretty average part of the universe, but this might not be the case after all. There is growing evidence that the Milky Way sits in a void, an immense region of near-emptiness. If true, this might help explain some gaps in our understanding of the cosmos. Rewind a bit. The universe that 24 | NewScientist | 24 June 2017

Cosmologists know about this, but tend to assume when doing their calculations that at large scales, matter is evenly distributed. Could this be leading us astray? The past few years have seen growing observational evidence that our galaxy is in a huge void several hundred million light years across. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are the latest to look into this. The fiendish mathematics of Einstein’s general relativity

emerged from the big bang was very smooth, but there were tiny ripples in matter. Over billions of years, gravity drew stuff out of regions with less in them, pooling it. This has left the universe richly structured, with dense clusters of “If this is true, we would matter joined by a network of less all have to accept our seemingly odd position dense sheets and filaments. in a cosmic backwater” Between these are cosmic voids.

means that accurately calculating the passage of light – that coming from a supernova, for example – through a lumpy universe isn’t simple. Their study relies on an approximation for a void, known as Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi spacetime. Using this, and taking in new astronomical data, they showed some peculiarities of our view of the universe can be explained if we are in a void. There are big issues at stake, in particular the rate at which the universe is expanding. This is usually encoded in the Hubble constant, which tells us how fast a galaxy a known distance from us should be moving away. That

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William Lee Adams is a London-based writer

can be worked out by using distant observations to get a global expansion measure, or using supernovae in nearby galaxies to gauge local expansion. The thing that has puzzled scientists is that the latter appears faster by a few per cent. Stuff in a cosmic void gets an extra pull from nearby dense regions, so this might explain the difference. If so, we would have to factor in the void to make sense of our observations. And we would all have to accept our seemingly odd position in a cosmic backwater. n Geraint Lewis is an astrophysics professor at the University of Sydney

INSIGHT Interplanetary comms

NADAV NEUHAUS

seen as more trustworthy. He could also turn mimicry to his advantage. Research shows that when a negotiator is copied for more than 5 minutes, they become more likely to reach an agreement with the other side. Can’t get a clear answer on postBrexit financial regulation or single market access? Again, mimicry might help. Coax the other side into revealing their cards by copying the key players’ posture and stance more closely. Fold your hands, crook your head, “um” and “ah” in time; a French study found that students were more likely to answer increasingly intimate questions if their interviewers copied such gestures. What if the Brits get backed into a corner? Take time out to have a rethink. If they can get in sync during the break they may find a way through. Stanford University research found bobbing heads in time, and moving arms and limbs in a coordinated manner led to more creative problem-solving. Ultimately, if all else fails, try a mantra, as they seem to promote brain activity that has a calming effect. Repeat “Brexit means Brexit” a dozen times and, fingers crossed, all will seem well again. n

–Colonisation plans are in peril–

We must upgrade the internet for Mars Leah Crane

Using this system to send one, high-definition colour image from Mars to Earth takes at least 30 minutes, so forget about the reality TV show. A single 22-minute episode would take nearly six days to transmit. That has serious implications for even our simpler plans: a slew of Mars missions due early next decade, including NASA’s Mars 2020 rover and SpaceX’s Red Dragon. The comms infrastructure lacks the bandwidth needed to cope with all five of the planned 2020s missions at once. Spreading the missions out won’t solve the problem because even

BY 2025, we’ll be a multiplanetary species: buying Elon Musk’s $200,000 tickets to go to Mars as those back home watch a reality show set there, while astronauts cruise around the Red Planet in buggies. Or not. These dreams are in jeopardy because of a little-known problem: the deteriorating communications infrastructure between Mars and Earth. This set-up could be inoperative by the mid2020s, leaving us unable to launch further landers and rovers, let alone get any useful scientific information “Forget about reality TV from them. We need to get serious on Mars – one 22-minute about building the interplanetary internet or, instead of colonising a new episode would take nearly six days to transmit” planet, we’ll be going nowhere fast. Right now, when either of the these limited comms will soon be current Martian rovers wants to gone. The orbiters are getting old and transmit something, it usually sends running out of fuel. Most won’t last it first to one of the five spacecraft beyond the mid-2020s. orbiting the planet, which relays it NASA has been aware of this to the Deep Space Network on problem for 20 years, but funding Earth. This set of three facilities is issues pushed it aside until recently. strategically placed around our planet In 2014, the agency issued a call for so that spacecraft communications can always reach at least one location. new orbiter ideas from companies,

while also working on its own concept for such a spacecraft. However, delays in funding for the 2017 fiscal year held back development of the orbiter even further and it’s unclear whether it could still be launched in 2022 as hoped. This means the craft won’t be there to provide data links for anything that needs to touch down on Mars. The planned missions will just have to hope that the existing infrastructure holds up. But maybe we need to think bigger. Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, started working on its spacebased equivalent in 1998. Known as the interplanetary internet, it will have routers scattered around the solar system and may use lasers and complex codes to beam communications over long distances. It won’t be ready in time to help the next Mars rovers, though: its first node in space was installed on the International Space Station in 2009, but eight years on, there are no more. Indeed, the interplanetary internet may never be ready. Its development keeps getting pushed back because of more immediate concerns. But one lesson to take from this saga is that Mars missions require more than seat-of-the-pants planning. Without communications and other basic infrastructure, everything else will fail. We should have started on it 20 years ago, but let’s at least not put it off any longer. n 24 June 2017 | NewScientist | 25