Smithsonian.com

Emperor penguins - © Samuel Blanc / www.sblanc.com

Can cuteness save the Emperor penguin? These adorable birds received plenty of attention when the documentary March of the Penguins was released in 2005, but this week came a study in PNAS that predicts the population could be near extinction by the end of the century. The cause is a familiar one—climate change. Their numbers are predicted to decline from about 6,000 breeding pairs to only 400 by 2100. The researchers write:

To avoid extinction, Emperor penguins will have to adapt, migrate or change the timing of their growth stages. However, given the future projected increases in [greenhouse gases] and its effect on Antarctic climate, evolution or migration seem unlikely for such a long lived species at the remote southern end of the Earth.

And this was only one of many depressing climate change studies released in the past week or so:

• Antarctica is warming at a faster rate than had been previously thought.
• The rate of tree death in the western U.S. has doubled in the past few decades, and scientists blame warming temperatures.
• Climate change could lead to a massive expansion of ocean dead zones.
• Scientists now say climate change is unstoppable.
• Want to keep reading? Find more of the sad stuff at A Few Things Ill Considered.

You can choose where the Hubble telescope will look next!

In honor of the International Year of Astronomy—an effort led by UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union “to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery”—the managers of the Hubble Space Telescope are letting us, the public, choose the bit of space that the telescope will observe during the IYA’s 100 Hours of Astronomy on April 2-5. They’ve narrowed the choices to these six:

• NGC 6634, a star-forming region that promises some beautiful pictures
• NGC 6072, a planetary nebula that, despite the name, doesn’t contain planets—it’s the remains of a dead star
• NGC 40, another planetary nebula
• NGC 5172, a spiral galaxy containing more than 100 billion stars
• NGC 4289, another spiral galaxy, but one that is viewed from the edge of the disk so its spiral nature is hidden
• Arp 274, a pair of galaxies just beginning to merge (and the current favorite)

Votes will be collected at http://YouDecide.Hubblesite.org until March 1. Even if your pick isn’t chosen, you might win—100 names will be randomly selected to receive a Hubble photo of the celestial body imaged in April. (Hubble photos, at least some of them, make beautiful art; my father has one hanging in his study. So you might want to take the beauty factor into consideration when making your choice.)

Orion nebula, as seen by Hubble (Credit: NASA,ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team)

The AP reported earlier this week that the Indian pharmaceutical industry is spewing a drug soup into the waters of a town near Hyderabad. I’m not all that surprised by this news, though, because an article in the November 2007 Smithsonian documented the crazy levels of pollution (raw sewage, toxic metals, even rotting bodies) in the sacred Ganges.

The Ganges in the morning (courtesy of Flickr user amanderson2)

From A Prayer for the Ganges:

A blue stream spews from beneath brick factory buildings in Kanpur, India. The dark ribbon curls down a dirt embankment and flows into the Ganges River. “That’s toxic runoff,” says Rakesh Jaiswal, a 48-year-old environmental activist, as he leads me along the refuse-strewn riverbank in the vise-like heat of a spring afternoon. We’re walking through the tannery district, established along the Ganges during British colonial rule and now Kanpur’s economic mainstay as well as its major polluter.

I had expected to find a less-than-pristine stretch of river in this grimy metropolis of four million people, but I’m not prepared for the sights and smells that greet me. Jaiswal stares grimly at the runoff—it’s laden with chromium sulfate, used as a leather preservative and associated with cancer of the respiratory tract, skin ulcers and renal failure. Arsenic, cadmium, mercury, sulfuric acid, chemical dyes and heavy metals can also be found in this witches’ brew. Though Kanpur’s tanneries have been required since 1994 to do preliminary cleanup before channeling wastewater into a government-run treatment plant, many ignore the costly regulation. And whenever the electricity fails or the government’s waste conveyance system breaks down, even tanneries that abide by the law find that their untreated wastewater backs up and spills into the river.

A few yards upstream, we follow a foul odor to a violent flow of untreated domestic sewage gushing into the river from an old brick pipe. The bubbling torrent is full of fecal microorganisms responsible for typhoid, cholera and amoebic dysentery. Ten million to 12 million gallons of raw sewage have been pouring out of this drainpipe each day, Jaiswal tells me, since the main sewer line leading to the treatment plant in Kanpur became clogged—five years ago. “We’ve been protesting against this, and begging the [Uttar Pradesh state] government to take action, but they’ve done nothing,” he says.

Admittedly, it may seem that antibiotics such as Ciprofloxacin and other pharmaceuticals wouldn’t be as bad as raw sewage. Wouldn’t the drugs counteract the microorganisms? But the chemicals bring their own problems, as the AP noted:

The discovery of this contamination raises two key issues for researchers and policy makers: the amount of pollution and its source. Experts say one of the biggest concerns for humans is whether the discharge from the wastewater treatment facility is spawning drug resistance.

“Not only is there the danger of antibiotic-resistant bacteria evolving; the entire biological food web could be affected,” said Stan Cox, senior scientist at the Land Institute, a nonprofit agriculture research center in Salina, Kan. Cox has studied and written about pharmaceutical pollution in Patancheru. “If Cipro is so widespread, it is likely that other drugs are out in the environment and getting into people’s bodies.”

(Hat tip to the Knight Science Journalism Tracker)

On this blog, several of the staff of Smithsonian magazine have been debating who was more important, Abraham Lincoln or Charles Darwin. T.A. Frail and Mark Strauss argued for Lincoln and Laura Helmuth for Darwin. And now it’s my turn.

I’m not going to take up Mark’s challenge and attempt to argue that Darwin would win the kickboxing match (Lincoln may have an advantage with his long limbs, but anyone who sailed around the world in the early 1800s couldn’t have been a sissy—that was no pleasure cruise). And though Lincoln made tremendous progress toward equality, some would say that we didn’t reach our destination until last week (and maybe not even then).

Fundamentally, the difference between them is that Lincoln’s greatness is largely confined to the United States. Slavery and bondage, sadly, continue throughout the world. Lincoln’s words and ideas have spread, but other countries may need their own Lincolns to lead them out of the darkness and into the light of freedom.

Darwin, however, changed the way humanity thought about life itself. No longer was the world static, its creatures unchanged since time began. Darwin convinced people—and still makes new converts—that life is and has been evolving. Thousands of years of common knowledge upturned in (nearly) an instant. This was such a paradigm shift that today people still find the idea not only controversial but even dangerous, too dangerous to introduce to innocent, impressionable children.

That leaves the question of whether Darwin was fundamental to the spread of this idea, or would anyone have been able to popularize it. Others had preceded Darwin with ideas similar to natural selection, but they never caught on. And Darwin’s own ideas when first introduced didn’t make much of a splash; that didn’t happen until he published On the Origin of Species.

This is where Darwin’s true greatness shines. He was not only a great scientist but also an amazing science communicator. Origin, The Descent of Man and many of his other writings continue to be read today all over the world. His writing was clear, his tone respectful and friendly. The books are relentlessly logical, rich in description and painstakingly researched. (Kurt Vonnegut, in Galapagos, summed it up nicely, describing Origin as “the most broadly influential scientific volume produced during the entire era of great big brains.”) And in addition to becoming the basis for all of modern biology (would we have progressed as far as we have in science without them?), these works have had profound influences in other areas, such as literature and religion.

So, who wins the debate? Well, Darwin, of course. (You really thought Lincoln had a chance? It’s my blog. Science was always going to win.)

Think I’m wrong? Vote below and make your case in the comments.

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Last week we asked: Who was more important, Abraham Lincoln or Charles Darwin? T.A. Frail took up the fight for Lincoln, and Laura Helmuth argued for Darwin. Today, senior editor Mark Strauss, the grand organizer of all of our recent Lincoln coverage in the magazine, takes the helm.

Please add your own arguments to the comments. Make a convincing case and I might recruit you into our little office blog war.

Mark Strauss:

All good points, but aren’t we just avoiding the real issue: Who would prevail in a kickboxing match? (Lincoln was a former rail-splitter—and with those long legs of his, I’m betting that Darwin would have gone down in two.)

As for the more mundane question of who was more influential, I think there’s a third variation on the way Laura approaches the debate: How would history have been different if either of these men had never been born? (Otherwise known as the “It’s a Wonderful Life” theory of human history.)

If Darwin had never been born, I genuinely believe it would have been only a matter of time before someone else introduced the theories of natural selection and evolution. Would the case for the “Great Idea” have been as meticulously researched and logically argued as Darwin presented it? Probably not. In that regard, he was truly one of a kind. But, once the idea was out there, it still would have eventually gained widespread acceptance, following years of additional research, arguments and counter-arguments. (Lest we forget, even Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was controversial in its day.)

But if Lincoln had never been born, I’m convinced that I would need a passport today to visit Virginia. Such was Lincoln’s political and military genius that I have a difficult time imagining how any other leader in his position could have saved the Union and recreated the nation. (Before the Civil War, people said, “The United States are…” After Lincoln, they said, “The United States is….”)

I don’t know how a Confederate States of America and a United States of America would have gotten along. (I’ll leave such conjecture to the alternate history buffs.) But, I do think that both nations would have been worse off without the other—and one does not have to be U.S.-centric to argue that the United States had a profound and beneficial impact on the 20th century. (Who else would have turned the tide against the Axis Powers? Who else had the resources to contain the Soviet Union?)

And while I do agree that slavery would have eventually collapsed on its own, I also believe that—absent Lincoln’s bold and visionary decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation—it could have been decades before the Confederacy’s “peculiar institution” was finally banished. (And, subsequent advances in civil rights would have likewise been delayed.) For the four million people in bondage, the 13th Amendment couldn’t come soon enough—indeed, it was centuries too late.

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Recently, someone here at Smithsonian asked: Who was more important, Abraham Lincoln or Charles Darwin? Yesterday, senior editor T.A. Frail took up the fight for Lincoln. Today, our blog overseer, senior editor Laura Helmuth, argues for Darwin.

Please add your own arguments to the comments. Make a convincing case and I might recruit you into our little office blog war.

Laura Helmuth:

Abe Lincoln? Love him. Best president ever. The most inspiring spot in Washington, D.C. is the Lincoln Memorial–stand there in a crowd sometime and read the Second Inaugural etched into the wall and listen to all the sniffles.

There are two ways to approach this debate: either argue about whose accomplishments were more important or argue about how necessary each man was to those accomplishments. To take the last point first, it’s true that the abolition movement was growing stronger and eventually would have prevailed without Lincoln. (I’m not going to wade into the debate about whether the Union would have survived without him.) Likewise, knowledge of the natural world was growing and somebody would have (and Wallace pretty much did) figured out evolution by natural selection if Darwin hadn’t. (But it sure helped that Darwin gathered data meticulously and presented his case so logically. Even though his carefulness was due in part to the fact that he knew his Great Idea had the potential to upset the church, the scientific establishment, and the missus (Emma Darwin was devout).)

I prefer the first line of argument. And how to say this nicely… Lincoln may matter in our measly little lives, but Darwin matters to the entire world and all time. He explained everything that came before him and explains everything that has been learned since. Lincoln worked wonders with his one country, but Darwin allowed us to make sense of all of life on Earth (and presumably any other planet).

Mark, Sarah, and commenters–you guys go ahead and clear this up for us. I’m going to the Galapagos to find some finches.

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Eastern Himalaya Mountains (NASA/USGS)

The recent cold spell is getting a lot of attention, but we should all remember that it could be worse. At least we don’t live in the Himalayas where, for example, the temperatures in June at the Everest Base Camp are just around freezing (and -13 degrees Fahrenheit at the summit!).

This picture, though, isn’t of the great mountain but of the mountain ridges of the eastern Himalayas in southwestern China. The 2001 photo was taken by the ASTER instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite and can be found in the USGS Earth as Art 2 collection of satellite imagery.

Next month we celebrate an odd double anniversary—the 200th anniversaries of the births of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Yes, they were born on the same day. And being that history and science are two of our favorite topics at Smithsonian, someone asked: Who was more important, Lincoln or Darwin?

Over the next week or so, we’ll attempt to answer that question. (Newsweek took a swipe at it last summer. Their conclusion? Lincoln.) Siding with Lincoln are two of the magazine’s senior editors, T.A. Frail and Mark Strauss. And arguing for Darwin will be senior editor and blog overseer Laura Helmuth and myself. Who will win?

Please add your own arguments to the comments. Make a convincing case and I might recruit you into our little office blog war.

First up, T.A. Frail:

Lincoln outweighing Darwin, in the historical-grativas department? Darwin outstripping Lincoln? It’s like arguing Lennon/McCartney versus Jagger/Richards. But I think the question is inevitable: when you have giants striding the earth at the same time, they’re going to bump into each other, metaphorically or otherwise.

And I vote for: It depends.

Oh, wait—I meant Lincoln. Yes, Darwin came up with the means to explain life on earth. He exemplified the modern scientific modern. He keelhauled humankind’s understanding of itself on a scale not seen since Copernicus. But his work was about life in the abstract—processes and aeons. I prefer Lincoln because his work was about living—about nations and relations. Like Darwin, his work raised the question of who we are, but in the context of how we were going to get along with one another. Darwin explained how life became. Lincoln set a course for what we could become. I’ll go with that….

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