Discover, January 31, 1994

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No one likes to be the bearer of bad tidings. But Alan Ferrenberg, a physicist at the University of Georgia, has discovered that bad news is a great way to draw people to talks. This past year Ferrenberg got the rapt attention of fellow physicists by showing them how science’s supply of random numbers is badly contaminated with order.

Random numbers are as crucial to science as they are to a game of craps; they form the basis for computer simulations of everything from collapsing stars to expanding universes, from the aerodynamics of fluids to the vagaries of stock market fluctuations.

Continue reading “Infected with Order” →

Discover, December 1, 1993

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Half the CO2 we pump into the atmosphere doesn’t stay there, which is good. But climatologists wish they knew where it’s going.

Climatologists have a rather large problem with their bookkeeping. Human beings release about 7 billion metric tons of carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere each year. (A metric ton equals 2,204 pounds.) Yet the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rises annually by only 3.4 billion tons. Where does that remaining 3.6 billion tons go? This is not just a problem for climatological green eyeshades: the fate of the missing CO2 could bear directly on the course of global warming in coming decades.

Continue reading “The Case of the Missing Carbon” →

Discover, November 1, 1993

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Bugs don’t need flowers as much as flowers need bugs: insects were fruitful and diversified long before the first flower bloomed.

Over the past two summers of digging in Arizona’s Petrified Forest, Stephen Hasiotis and Russell Dubiel of the United States Geological Survey have unearthed numerous hunks of sandstone filled with miniature tunnels, ramps, and chambers–all trademarks of termite nests. What makes the nests remarkable is that they are 220 million years old.

Continue reading “Insects Ascendant” →

Discover, October 1, 1993

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The ozone hole over Antarctica is likely to get worse before it gets better: it seems to lead a self-reinforcing life of its own.

Spring is returning to the Antarctic, and with it the hole in the stratospheric ozone layer. Last year’s hole was the deepest ever; this year’s is expected to be as bad and possibly worse. Although 74 nations have committed themselves under the Montreal Protocol to ending the production of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of 1995, ozone-destroying chlorine from the compounds already in use will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere for another decade after that.

Continue reading “Son of Ozone Hole” →

Discover, October 1, 1993

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When one sense is impaired, another may do. Researchers are building devices that let the blind hear images and the deaf touch sounds.

For decades many researchers have dreamed of giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf with surgically implanted devices. Yet the blind and deaf themselves have developed a completely different strategy: training another sense to do the job. People who read braille, for instance, can process written information as quickly through their skin as others do with their eyes. Sign language, although purely visual, is as rich and complex as any spoken language and is processed in the same regions of the brain.

Continue reading “Substitute Sensations” →