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Q&A: Lawrence Krauss on The Greatest Story Ever Told

By Clara Moskowitz

Symmetry is easily recognizable in art, architecture, even anatomy. But the concept of symmetry in physics is hard to wrap one’s head around. Yet it is here that symmetry has played one of its most important roles, unlocking the secrets of the forces in nature and of the fundamental particles that inhabit our universe. “The biggest conceptual change over the last 100 years in the way physicists think about the world is symmetry,” says theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University.

Mathematical symmetry, which Krauss describes as a kind of rule book of nature, has guided scientists to discover the quarks that make up the protons and neutrons in atoms, the gluons that bind them, and eventually the current crowning achievement of particle physics: the Higgs boson that explains how particles get their mass. It has allowed researchers to unify some of the forces in nature—for instance uniting electricity and magnetism into electromagnetism and later adding the weak force to make the electroweak interaction.

In his new book, The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far: Why Are We Here? (March 2017, Simon & Schuster), Krauss details how symmetries have led the way to the major breakthroughs of modern particle physics. Scientific American spoke to Krauss about the meaning of symmetry in science, how symmetry got “broken” in important ways during the history of the universe and what role it could play in both future research and the fate of our entire cosmos.

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This Article Won’t Change Your Mind: The facts on why facts alone can’t fight false beliefs

By Julie Beck

“I remember looking at her and thinking, ‘She’s totally lying.’ At the same time, I remember something in my mind saying, ‘And that doesn’t matter.’” For Daniel Shaw, believing the words of the guru he had spent years devoted to wasn’t blind faith exactly. It was something he chose. “I remember actually consciously making that choice.”

There are facts, and there are beliefs, and there are things you want so badly to believe that they become as facts to you.

Back in 1980, Shaw had arrived at a Siddha Yoga meditation center in upstate New York during what he says was a “very vulnerable point in my life.” He’d had trouble with relationships, and at work, and none of the therapies he’d tried really seemed to help. But with Siddha Yoga, “my experiences were so good and meditation felt so beneficial [that] I really walked into it more and more deeply. At one point, I felt that I had found my life’s calling.” So, in 1985, he saved up money and flew to India to join the staff of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, the spiritual leader of the organization, which had tens of thousands of followers. Shaw rose through the ranks, and spent a lot of time traveling for the organization, sometimes with Gurumayi, sometimes checking up on centers around the U.S.

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Texas school board can start meetings with prayer: U.S. appeals court

By Jonathan Stempel

A federal appeals court said on Monday a Texas school board may open its meetings with student-led prayers without violating the U.S. Constitution.

In a 3-0 decision, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal by the American Humanist Association, which said the practice by the Birdville Independent School District violated the First Amendment’s prohibition of a government establishment of religion.

The appeals court also reversed a lower court judge’s denial of “qualified immunity” to school board members, and dismissed the case against them. Birdville serves Haltom City, Texas, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth.

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Genome-based cholesterol drug boosts heart health

By Heidi Ledford

For years, medical researchers have hoped that a burgeoning class of cholesterol drugs targeting a protein called PCSK9 could be the next generation of blockbuster treatments. Now, a large clinical trial has demonstrated that this approach can lower the risk of heart disease. But it’s still unclear whether these drugs — which attempt to mimic a beneficial genetic mutation — will be the breakthrough that scientists and pharmaceutical companies had imagined.

The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine1 and presented at the American College of Cardiology conference in Washington DC on 17 March, show that a drug called evolocumab (Repatha) reduced the risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack and stroke by about 20% in patients who were already taking other cholesterol-controlling drugs called statins. This reduction in risk is roughly the same magnitude as patients might see from taking statins alone. On another measure that also included hospitalizations for conditions that cause reduced blood flow to the heart, evolocumab reduced the risk by 15%.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved evolocumab in 2015 for use in some patients with high cholesterol, based on data showing that the drug could lower levels of ‘bad’ low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol circulating in the blood by approximately 60%2. But researchers didn’t have evidence then that the drug could also protect against heart attacks or strokes.

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Rosetta saw cliffs collapse on comet

By Paul Rincon

The comet visited by the Rosetta spacecraft is constantly being re-shaped, sometimes in dramatic fashion.

It witnessed the collapse of entire cliffs at two locations on Comet 67P, events that were probably driven by exposure to sunlight.

The European probe documented the widespread breakdown of materials on the surface during nearly two years orbiting the 4km-wide body.

Details were presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).

Rosetta entered orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, to give its full name, in September 2014.

The mission enabled researchers to capture multiple images of the comet’s surface features over time, to study how it changed.

Repeated heating and cooling can tease the surface materials apart, leading to erosion, say the researchers.

Mohamed El-Marry and colleagues observed cliff collapses at two regions on the comet called Ash and Seth. These collapses occurred as pre-existing fractures gave way, causing sections of material tens of metres long to crumble.

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Ethical Guidelines on Lab-Grown Embryos Beg for Revamping, Scientists Say

By Karen Weintraub

For nearly 40 years scientists have observed their self-imposed ban on doing research on human embryos in the lab beyond the first two weeks after fertilization. Their initial reasoning was somewhat arbitrary: 14 days is when a band of cells known as a primitive streak, which will ultimately give rise to adult tissues, forms in an embryo. It is also roughly the last time a human embryo can divide and create more than one person, and a few days before the nervous system begins to develop. But the so-called 14-day rule has held up all this time partly because scientists could not get an embryo to grow that long outside its mother’s body.

Researchers in the U.K. and U.S. recently succeeded for the first time in growing embryos in the lab for nearly two weeks before terminating them, showing that the so-called 14-day rule is no longer a scientific limitation—although it remains a cultural one. Now, a group of Harvard University scientists has published a paper arguing that it is time to reconsider the 14-day rule because of advances in synthetic biology.

The U.S. has no law against growing embryos beyond two weeks—as long as the research is not funded with federal dollars. But most scientific journals will not publish studies that violate the 14-day rule, and the International Society for Stem Cell Research requires its members to agree to the rule in order to qualify for membership.

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Earth’s Original Crust Still Hanging Around

By Gemma Tarlach

Researchers who want to study the nature of Earth’s original crust find themselves between a rock and a hard place: Our planet’s top layer is constantly wearing down in one spot and building up in another, continents colliding or slip-sliding past each other in the great mosh pit of plate tectonics. You might have figured none of the early crust was even still around. New research shows you would have figured wrong.

Today in Science, researchers announced they’d found bits of Earth’s original crust still in place, in northern Quebec, Canada. The team believes the rocks are more than 4.2 billion years old — that’s just a couple hundred million years shy of Earth’s birth some 4.5 billion years ago. And really, what’s a couple hundred million years between friends?

Previously, researchers had turned up fragments of rock that were roughly 4 billion years old. There are also a few teensy grains of zircon from Jack Hills, Australia, dated to about 4.4 billion years old. Controversy about the accuracy of the dates for all of these old-timers abounds, however, because a number of factors can make it difficult to determine just how old the material is.

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The right to discriminate against LGBT students: A “religious freedom” bill in Kentucky is one signature away from becoming law

By Nico Lang

Kentucky schools may soon have a license to discriminate against LGBT students.

After the House passed it by a vote of 81 to 8 on Monday, a bill is sitting on Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin’s desk that could allow student-run organizations in colleges and K-12 schools to deny membership to classmates based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Known as Senate Bill 17, the stated purpose of the legislation to prevent people of faith from having their political or religious opinions silenced in schools. Comparing it to the “religious liberty” bills introduced in states like Indiana and Georgia, advocates argue that it has the potential to promote anti-LGBT bigotry in the name of faith.

SB 17, which had already passed the Kentucky Senate last month, was introduced in response to an incident when Johnson County Schools cut a Bible verse from a production of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” During a pivotal scene Linus tells Charlie Brown, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord.” Administrators at W.R. Castle Elementary School in Wittensville, Kentucky, were worried that overt references to Scripture could open the district up to a lawsuit.

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A diabetic boy in Australia died after a controversial ‘self-healing’ course. Now his parents are charged with manslaughter.

By Samantha Schmidt

In April 2015, the 6-year-old diabetic boy’s mother took him to an $1,800 week-long Chinese therapy class meant to “heal” him.

At the “self-healing” workshop in Sydney, a man named Hongchi Xiao instructed participants to follow “paida lajin” techniques, which involve slapping, stretching and fasting for days on end. By slapping parts of the body until bruising appears, long-held toxins and “poisoned blood” are released, according to the practice. These methods, Xiao claims, are capable of “curing” a number of diseases — including diabetes.

But in the days after he attended the workshop, the 6-year-old, Aidan Fenton, collapsed in the family’s hotel room. His parents’ screams prompted the staff to call police, who said the boy died on the scene.

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Pakistan asks Facebook to help fight blasphemy

BBC-Asia

Pakistan says it has asked Facebook to help investigate “blasphemous content” posted on the social network by Pakistanis.

Facebook has agreed to send a team to Pakistan to address reservations about content on the social media site, according to the interior ministry.

Blasphemy is a highly sensitive and incendiary issue in Pakistan.

Critics say blasphemy laws, which allow the death penalty in some cases, are often misused to oppress minorities.

Earlier this week Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif voiced his support for a wide-ranging crackdown on blasphemous content on social media.

In a statement on his party’s official Twitter account, he described blasphemy as an “unpardonable offence”.

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