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HOW JUPITER MADE THE SOLAR SYSTEM

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LaunchpadSign up for reporter Leah Crane’sfabulous newsletter on spacescience. In the latest one, shelooks at newly unveiled mapsof the discs of dust and gaswhere planets form around fivenearby stars. There were a lot ofdifferences between them, butsurprisingly they all containedlots of cyanide molecules.newscientist/nslaunchpad

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ABOUT 4 billion years ago, a giganticcloud of dust and gas floating throughspace collapsed in on itself, going on toform the sun, the planets and everythingelse in our solar system. That we arereasonably certain of this fact is a triumphfor science, but our cosmic neighbourhoodhas so many more secrets for us to reveal. Take what seems like, on face value,a pretty easy question: how did theplanets get to where they are today?We know that the most obvious answer,that they formed where they currentlysit, is wrong, because the two outermostplanets, Uranus and Neptune, are toolarge to have developed at the thin edgeof the solar system’s protoplanetary disc. That is why many astronomers favoura scenario in which Jupiter, the largestplanet, throws itself about the early solar

system, knocking all the other planetshere and there until things settle down.There are a few varieties of this idea:Jumping Jupiter, Grand Tack and the Nicemodel (named for the French city, not itspleasantness). All of them have issues,but on a broad scale, they produce thesolar system as we know it today.

These models, nice as they might be,are built on a whole heap of necessaryassumptions, simply because we can’t goback in time and see if the maths checksout. But now, researchers have done thenext best thing, discovering an ancientmeteorite that seems to have telltale signs

that a Jupiter-driven mix-up reallyoccurred (see page 19). If this piece of the cosmic puzzle hasfinally fallen into place, there are stillmany looking for a home. Finding signsof past (see page 16) or present (page 15)life on another planet or moon would beincredible, but little green microbes aren’tthe only game in town. How planets putthemselves together is another favouritehead-scratcher (little by little or big bitsall at once are the main options) andtheorists are always dreaming up newones, such as the question of whetherthe moon is hiding secret signs ofancient black holes (see page 46). If you are impatient for answers,remember that many of these thingshappened billions of years ago, sowaiting a little longer won’t hurt. ❚

Our tricksy solar system

Another piece of the cosmic puzzle has fallen into place, but many mysteries remain

“An ancient meteorite seems to show signs of a Jupiter-driven mix-up in the early solar system”

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OVER the next few months, about30 million fully vaccinated peoplein the UK will be invited to have athird dose of a covid-19 vaccine.The surprise decision to run such alarge booster campaign – everyoneover 50 is included – was madeoff the back of multiple lines ofevidence, none of them definitive.So what is the rationale behind it?And if you are offered a booster,should you take it? The UK isn’t the only countrylooking to roll out third doses fora large portion of the population.Last week, the US Centers forDisease Control and Preventionendorsed the use of booster shotsfor people aged 65 and over, andfor those with underlying healthconditions or in jobs with a highrisk of exposure to the virus. The UK government’s decisionwas based on advice from the JointCommittee on Vaccination andImmunisation (JCVI), which saysthe move is “precautionary”. TheJCVI itself was largely guided byan ongoing clinical trial calledCOV-Boost, based at the UniversityHospital Southampton NHSFoundation Trust, UK. In June, COV-Boost recruited2833 people aged 30 and over whowere already double vaccinatedwith either the Pfizer/BioNTechor Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines.They all received a third dose ofone of seven covid-19 vaccines –Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax,Valneva, Janssen and Curevac –or a control, a vaccine againstmeningitis. Half of the recruitswere over 70 and a “decentnumber” of those were over 80,says chief investigator Saul Faust.Half had received Pfizer/BioNTechfor their first two doses and halfOxford/AstraZeneca. Over the next four weeks, thevolunteers kept a record of anyside effects and on day 28 came in

for a blood test to measure theirantibody levels, T-cell responsesand also a “killing assay” to seehow potent their blood was atneutralising the virus. According to Faust, some of thevaccines produced “several-fold”increases in antibody levels andalso improved T-cell responses,suggesting that they significantlystrengthen protection againstthe virus. The vaccines were welltolerated in the small numberof people in the trial. The full results from the trialare expected in October, but theJCVI evidently saw enough in theinterim results to give the greenlight to a booster campaign. Itsbooster of choice is the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, to be given atleast six months after a person’ssecond shot. A half dose of theModerna vaccine – which likePfizer/BioNTech is an mRNAvaccine – can also be used. Peoplewho can’t take an mRNA vaccine

because of adverse reactionscan have the Oxford/AstraZenecavaccine as a booster. The decision to go ahead waswidely welcomed by scientistsand medics. Neil Ferguson atImperial College London said onTwitter that the booster campaignshould help the UK avoidanother lockdown this winter. The decision doesn’t meanboosters will become an annual

event. “Our advice does not implythere will be future boosterprogrammes,” says AnthonyHarnden, deputy chair of the JCVI. We can be confident that theboosters are acceptably safe, saysFaust. “I know they [the JCVI] willbe taking the side effects intoaccount when they make theirrecommendations.” However, thetrial didn’t include enough peopleto pick up rare adverse events suchas the blood-clotting disorders

occasionally seen with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. The JCVI also considered datafrom Public Health Englandshowing that vaccine-inducedprotection starts to fade 10 weeksafter the second dose. After20 weeks, protection againstsymptomatic disease falls fromabout 90 per cent to 70 per centwith Pfizer/BioNTech and from65 per cent to 50 per cent withOxford/AstraZeneca. Protectionagainst hospitalisation also wanesslightly. The decline becomesmore pronounced with age. Booster campaigns are alsosupported by data from Israel,which started the world’s firstbooster campaign in Augustamid a surge of infectionsamong double-vaccinated people.“They were on an extremely badtrajectory,” says Sarah Walker,chief investigator of the UK’sCOVID-19 Infection Survey.“There is no doubt that afterthey introduced boosters, theirhospitalisation rate dropped.” Concerns have also been raisedthat existing vaccines don’tadequately protect against thedelta variant, which is now thedominant strain in the UK, and thatboosters may have to be modifiedto deal with it or other “variantsof concern”. These fears areunjustified, says Sharon Peaco*ck,executive director of the COVID 19Genomics UK Consortium.“The vaccines are really effectiveagainst the variants of concernthat are circulating,” she says. That also heads off anotherworry around boosters, theimmunological phenomenoncalled original antigenic sin.This is when a modified vaccinereawakens an old immuneresponse rather than provokinga new one, and it could renderbooster shots designed to targetfuture variants ineffective. So it is

“Having a booster vaccination won’t overload the immune system. It’s not a credible concern”

Coronavirus

PAUL ELLIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Should you get a booster?

As the UK and US embark on large-scale coronavirus vaccine booster campaigns,Graham Lawton considers the evidence on whether you should get another shot

A booster vaccinationbeing given in Derby,UK, last week

2 October 2021 | New Scientist | 9

good news that, for the time being,current vaccines are doing prettywell against newer variants. Concerns have been raised inthe past as well about multipledosing of the Oxford/AstraZenecavaccine, because repeatedexposure to the virus vector usedto deliver the active ingredientcould elicit a harmful immuneresponse. Results so far suggestthat this isn’t a problem witha third dose, says Faust. There is also no evidence thathaving booster vaccinations cansomehow “overload” the immunesystem or produce a diminishingresponse over time. “That’s not acredible concern. It won’t overloadthe immune system,” says SarahGilbert at the University of Oxford,who co-developed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. All of this points squarely inone direction. “If you get called upfor your booster vaccine, get it,”says Roger Kirby, president ofthe UK’s Royal Society of Medicine. The booster campaign isn’tjust about individual protection,says David Oliver, a consultantphysician at the Royal BerkshireHospital, UK, but also aboutsafeguarding public healthand preventing hospitals frombeing overwhelmed this winter. Some people, however, havechosen to decline their third dosebecause of issues around vaccineequity. So far, only 2 per cent ofpeople in low-income countrieshave received at least one dose. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,director-general of the WorldHealth Organization, has called fora moratorium on booster shotsuntil the end of the year, to enableevery country to vaccinate 40 percent of its population. But thisrequires political will fromwealthy nations – if you declineyour shot, it won’t be sent to acountry that needs it more. ❚

FOR the first time ever, you canbuy a food altered by CRISPRgene editing – at least, if you livein Japan, where the Sicilian RougeHigh GABA tomato is now on sale. “We started shipping thetomatoes on September 17,”says Minako Sumiyoshi atJapanese start-up Sanatech Seed,which is selling the tomatoesdirectly to consumers. She saysdemand for the tomatoes is“not too bad”. “It is a very significantmilestone for CRISPR foods,”says Nigel Halford at RothamstedResearch in the UK. Earlier this year, SanatechSeed also gave away seedlings toanyone who wanted to grow thegene-edited tomatoes in Japan.Around 4200 gardeners tookup the offer, says Sumiyoshi. As far as New Scientisthas been able to establish, thetomato is the first food alteredwith CRISPR to be launchedcommercially anywhere in theworld. Consumers in the US arealready eating gene-edited soyabean oil, but it was created usingan older method of gene editing. “Looking at the media,

it seems like our tomato isthe first CRISPR/Cas9 product,but we don’t know if it really is,”says Sumiyoshi. “As far as I know [it is the first],”says Jon Entine at the Geneticl*teracy Project, a US-basednon-profit organisation.“Corteva’s CRISPR corn has gottenclearance in Canada, but I’ve notheard that it’s yet released.”

A non-bruising mushroomcreated by CRISPR was approvedin the US in 2016, says Halford.“However, I do not know if itwent on sale.”The Sicilian Rouge High GABAtomato produces less of anenzyme that breaks down theamino acid GABA, or gamma-aminobutyric acid, resulting inthe tomatoes containing fivetimes as much GABA as normaltomatoes. GABA is produced inour bodies and plays a key role inthe brain and nervous system. It isalso sold as a dietary supplement.The benefits of eating extra GABAare debated, but a review of theevidence last year concluded that“GABA intake may have beneficial

effects on stress and sleep”(Frontiers in Neuroscience,doi/gxhn). Gene editing involves changingan organism’s existing DNA,whereas earlier forms of geneticengineering usually involvedadding extra bits of DNA fromother organisms. Because manychanges introduced by geneediting also occur naturally, insome countries foods producedusing this method aren’t subjectto the same rules as othergenetically modified crops. In December 2020, regulatoryauthorities in Japan decided notto regulate Sicilian Rouge HighGABA as genetically modified,paving the way for its launch.Sanatech Seed is also consideringlaunching the tomato in othercountries. The US Department ofa*griculture has already confirmedthat Sicilian Rouge High GABAwon’t be regulated in the sameway as conventional geneticallymodified crops. In the UK and European Union,the tomato would currently beregulated as genetically modified,making it prohibitively expensiveto get approval. However, the UKis expected to alter its laws soon.Sanatech Seed has previouslysaid it is “keeping a close eye”on regulations in the UK. Many other CRISPR productsare being developed. Japaneseauthorities are currentlyassessing a red sea breamthat has had its genome editedto produce up to 50 per centmore muscle. According to theYomiuri Shimbun newspaper,the gene-edited fish could beapproved this month. Field trials of a CRISPR wheatcreated by Halford’s team havebegun in the UK. Bread madefrom this wheat will have lowerlevels of the cancer-causingsubstance acrylamide. ❚

These geneticallyengineered tomatoesare available in Japan

Genetics

Michael Le Page

COURTESY OF SANATECH SEED

4200

Number of gardeners givengene-edited tomato seedlings

Tomatoes made with CRISPR

gene editing go on sale

THE man charged with leading asuccessful climate change summitin five weeks’ time insists he isno environmentalist – but isnow convinced of the urgencyof tackling global warming. “I’m a normal person, right, I’mnot someone who’s some greatclimate warrior coming into this,”says Alok Sharma, the president ofthe COP26 meeting, who took upthe job in February 2020. “But ithas given me a real appreciationand understanding of why it isso vital that we get this right.” Sharma says this understandingis also spreading, citing a recentchat with a nurse performing a

routine covid-19 test. “She said:‘Thank you for what you saidabout taking care of the climateyesterday on the news’. This isresonating with ordinary peoplelike me, who weren’t focusedon this necessarily. We have toget this right, for our generationand future generations.” It is an attitude shared by hisboss, UK prime minister BorisJohnson. “I am not one of thoseenvironmentalists who takes amoral pleasure in excoriatinghumanity for its excess,” Johnsontold the UN General Assembly ina speech on 22 September, wherehe called the COP26 summit inGlasgow, UK, this November a“turning point” for humanity. COP26 is seen as the mostimportant climate meeting since2015, when the world adoptedthe Paris Agreement to holdglobal warming to below 1°C

at best and well below 2°C at worst. A hundred world leaders havesaid they will attend the summit,making it the largest politicalgathering the UK has ever hosted.Sharma says that number willgrow, although key players suchas Chinese president Xi Jinpinghaven’t yet confirmed whetherthey will attend. US president JoeBiden has said he will be there,along with high profile figuresincluding Pope Francis. Sharma says he had veryconstructive but frank discussionswith China’s top climate diplomat,Xie Zhenhua, when he visitedChina last month. “I said it’s goodto get these commitments fromthe president, what we now needto see is the detailed policy. I hopesome of that may come forwardbefore COP – the ball is verymuch in China’s court.” Sharma also insists the summitcan keep the 1°C target in reach,despite a recent UN reportshowing that global emissionsare expected to rise by 2030 ratherthan almost halving as requiredto meet the temperature goal. “I think keeping 1°C alive hasto absolutely be the aim,” he says.“[But] the UN report was prettysobering.” It did contain brightspots though, he says: some

countries are on track to cuttheir emissions by more than atenth by 2030 and many of thebiggest polluters have yet to setout a revised emissions reductionplan, leaving the door open forfurther action before COP26. “If all the biggest emitters wereto follow suit, we would make abig dent on where we need to beby the end of this decade,” he says.G20 countries delivering on thepromise of more ambitious planswill be key, he adds. Several, Indiaincluded, have yet to submit one. While Sharma won’t be drawnon which countries Johnson willvisit in the final weeks before

COP26, he says the prime ministeris keen to make it a success: “WhatI can tell you is he’s been investedin this process in the calls he’s hadbilaterally with world leaders.” Sharma also wants to see richnations deliver on a promise,made 12 years ago, to give$100 billion a year of climatefinance to poorer ones by 2020.In 2019, these funds were still$20 billion short, but they aregrowing. Last week, PresidentBiden announced a doublingof US climate finance, to$11 billion a year, a stepSharma says provides a big boost. “This $100 billion figure hasbecome absolutely a matter oftrust in politics, but particularlyin climate politics. Trust is prettyfragile. We need to rebuild thistrust if we’re going to get everyoneon the same page,” says Sharma. He has travelled to dozensof countries in the past yearto build support for the climatesummit. Sharma said a visit inJuly to the Caribbean island ofBarbuda, where he witnessedthe destruction left by HurricaneIrma in 2017, was one of themost moving experiences. “The place is still devastated,literally it felt like a hurricanecame in a few weeks ago. It’s beenreally very, very challenging forthem. You’ve seen migration takeplace. This is one of the challengeswith climate change: as thingsget worse, migration is goingto become a real issue,” he says.The Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change projects thatmigration will grow this centurybecause of the changing climate. Sharma says a representative ofanother small island state has toldhim that climate change meantthey soon wouldn’t have a placeto call home. “It is as stark as thatfor millions and millions of peoplearound the world,” he says. ❚

2 October 2021 | New Scientist | 11

Climate change

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

COP26 is for ordinary people

Efforts to tackle climate change aren’t just the concern of environmentalists

any more, COP26 president Alok Sharma tells Adam Vaughan

Alok Sharma is thepresident of the COPclimate meeting

####### News

$100bn

Annual climate finance fundspromised by rich nations

The aftermath ofHurricane Irma onBarbuda in 2017 SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

14 | New Scientist | 2 October 2021

THE US military has begun to useAI to guide its air strikes, accordingto Secretary of the Air Force FrankKendall. Speaking at the Air ForceAssociation’s Air, Space & CyberConference in National Harbor,Maryland, on 20 September,Kendall said that the US Air Force(USAF) had recently “deployedAI algorithms for the first timeto a live operational kill chain”. Kendall said this userepresented “moving fromexperimentation to real militarycapability”, but didn’t give detailsof the strike, such as whether itwas by a drone or piloted aircraft,or if there were civilian casualties. The kill chain is the processof gathering intelligence,analysing it and directing weaponsto destroy a target. The AI wasincorporated into the Air ForceDistributed Common GroundSystem (DCGS), which combinesdata from various sources,including MQ-9 Reaper drones.DCGS collects and analyses morethan 1200 hours of video perday and the USAF is seeking toautomate parts of this laboriousprocess, for example with

automated target recognition. Human analysts can also makedeadly mistakes. In one recentcase, a car in Kabul, Afghanistan,supposedly full of explosives wastargeted. It was actually loadedwith water, and the resultingdrone strike killed 10 innocentpeople, including seven children. With the recent withdrawalof US troops from Afghanistan,President Joe Biden announced

the US will rely on more “over-the-horizon” operations in whichstrikes are carried out withoutforces on the ground to confirmtargets. While the new AI can’torder a strike, the fact that it isidentifying possible targets forhuman approval representsa significant inroad into thedecision-making process, andthe lack of details on the systemmakes it difficult for experts toevaluate. The USAF told NewScientist it wouldn’t be able tocomment before publication. “Originally, automated target

recognition was about identifyingand tracking well-defined militarytargets,” says Jack McDonald atKing’s College London. “We don’tknow what kinds of objects orpatterns of activity these systemsare now trying to recognise.” Arthur Holland at theUnited Nations Institute forDisarmament Research in Geneva,Switzerland, says that althoughexpected, use of AI for targetingraises serious policy questions. “How does one test suchalgorithms and validate that theyare reliable enough to be used inlife-or-death missions?” he asks.“How can operators know whento trust the AI system and when tooverride it? If an erroneous strike islaunched in part on the basis of anerroneous AI system’s output, doesthat affect the balance of humanresponsibility and accountability?” McDonald says that thetechnology eventually becomingaccessible more widely, as hashappened with drones, is also aconcern. “I’m much more worriedabout if or when this sort oftechnology gets in the hands ofmilitias and non-state actors.” ❚

Military technology

David Hambling

U. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE ARCHIVE/ALAMY

US Air Force has started using

AI to choose targets to strike

Marine biology

THE Antarctic fur seal populationhas grown and shrunk over the past50,000 years as the climate haschanged, a genetic analysissuggests – and the finding couldhelp us predict where the marinepredators will live in the future. Today, Antarctic fur seals(Arctocephalus gazella) appearloyal to the same islands. Duringthe annual breeding season, somereturn to within a few metres of the

same spot on the shore each year. Alison Cleary at the BritishAntarctic Survey examined the furseals’ history while at the Universityof Agder in Norway. With hercolleagues, she sequenced DNAsamples from four populationson South Georgia, Bouvet Islandand the South Shetland Islandsin the south Atlantic Ocean andon the Kerguelen Islands in thesouthern Indian Ocean. They then used software thatanalyses genetic data and estimateshow an animal species’ populationsize has changed through time,and when two or more distinct

populations today were last partof a single, larger population. They found that despite seals’tendency not to move to new areas,populations have grown and fallenthrough time. For example, beforethe last glacial maximum, whichoccurred 26,000 to 13,300 yearsago, the seals seemed to existas one global genetic populationin which any two animals couldinterbreed. But then, seal numbers

shrank and the population in thesouthern Indian Ocean becamegenetically isolated and distinctfrom the others (Ecology andEvolution, doi/gxgk). “You see that the populationsdecline when the ice increases,then you see them moving out tonew colonies as the ice decreasesagain,” says Cleary. She says that tracking theway Antarctic fur seal populationshave moved in the past could helpconservationists predict where theymight move under future climatescenarios, and help protect them. ❚

Antarctic sealnumbers rose andfell with climate

####### News

A US MQ-9 Reapermilitary drone onthe ground

“Populations decline when the ice increases, then you see them moving to new colonies as it decreases” Joshua Rapp Learn

2 October 2021 | New Scientist | 15

Analysis Phone chargers

EVERY new smartphone, tablet,camera and handheld gamesconsole sold in the EuropeanUnion will have to use a standardUSB-C charger, should a newproposal designed to slashe-waste become law. The European Commission (EC)says this would make chargingmore convenient and reducethe environmental footprintof producing and disposing ofchargers. Some 11,000 tonnesof charging equipment is ditchedannually in the EU, it claims. The law would also forcemanufacturers to offer newdevices for sale without chargers,as the common standard wouldmean that most householdsalready have them. The proposedcommon charger format wouldreduce e-waste by almost1000 tonnes annually acrossEurope, claims the EC. Laptopsand other large devices won’tbe covered by the legislation. Most smartphone modelssold around the world already usethe USB-C standard, but somecompanies, most notably Apple,are resisting. Apple told NewScientist that it is “concerned thatstrict regulation mandating justone type of connector stiflesinnovation rather thanencouraging it, which in turnwill harm consumers in Europeand around the world”. Apple has a long history ofsidestepping industry standardsand developing proprietaryconnectors. When the firstiPhone launched in 2007, itwas equipped with a 30-pinconnector designed by Apple.Other smartphones at thetime used Micro USB or otherproprietary connectors. This 30-pin connector wasreplaced in 2012 with anotherApple invention, the Lightning port,which had a symmetrical form,

allowing cables to be plugged inboth ways up, unlike previous USBcables that have to be inserted thecorrect way. USB-C appeared twoyears later, also with this feature. Future EU legislation couldallow new standards to beadopted, although there is noautomatic provision for that inthe proposed regulations. In anycase, any potential pace of changewould almost certainly be slowerthan if technology companieswere free to change wheneveradvantages were possible. The EC has suggested thatcompanies would have two yearsto make the switch to USB-C,but Apple says it is concernedthis is too fast despite its rapidreplacement of models almostevery year. It argues that olderversions of its phones tend toremain on sale as cheaperalternatives for customers,sometimes for several years. Any change would probably bemade to models sold around theglobe, rather than manufacturinga different version for Europe. In 2009, the EC consideredsimilar proposals mandating

Micro USB ports as standard onall mobile phones, but this wasultimately watered down to avoluntary agreement signedby manufacturers. That wassuccessful in reducing around30 proprietary connectors on themarket to just three: USB-C, MicroUSB and Lightning. However,that is where progress halted. Apple signed the 2009voluntary agreement at the time,along with Nokia, RIM (now known

as BlackBerry) and others, but heldout for another two years beforecomplying. Its solution met thewording of the deal, but perhapsnot the spirit, by offering customersthe option to buy a separate MicroUSB to 30-pin adaptor andcontinuing to ship phones withits own proprietary connector. Margrethe Vestager, whooversees IT and telecoms policyat the EU, said in a statement thisweek that industry had been given“plenty of time to come up withtheir own solutions”, but thatnow legislation was needed. Although the proposalsfrom the EU wouldn’tnecessarily be binding in theUK post-Brexit, there is at leastsome support for the idea fromUK politicians. Philip Dunne,chair of the UK parliament’sEnvironmental Audit Committee,says: “There are 140 milliondiscarded and unused cables in UK homes, enough to circle theEarth five times. To reduce thewasteful production of newcables, manufacturers shouldcoalesce around a commonstandard, enabling us to re-useexisting cables when replacingNIKKIMEEL/ALAMY our electronic devices.” ❚

USB-C cables (left) andLighting cables (right)are used for charging

11,

Tonnes of EU e-waste from oldor unused chargers per year

European Union powers ahead with charger plan Lawmandating USB-C connections on portable devices wouldcut e-waste, but Apple is unhappy, says Matthew Sparkes

Solar system

Jonathan O’Callaghan

WE SHOULD be able to detect signsof life like amino acids on Saturn’smoon Enceladus without destroyingthem in a high-speed collision. In 2005, NASA’s Cassinispacecraft found evidence thatplumes of water ice were eruptingfrom Enceladus, with imagesshowing clear evidence they werecoming from the moon’s south poleregion. Later studies suggestedthese plumes originated from asubsurface ocean, located beneathan icy shell, which could hostconditions right for life. Cassini itself wasn’t able to lookfor life in the plumes, lacking thenecessary instruments, so RichardMathies at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, and his teamperformed experiments to see if afuture mission might be able to doso. By firing ice particles into metalfoil with a gas gun at speeds of up toseveral kilometres per second, theteam simulated how a spacecraftflying through the plumes mightbe able to capture material. Their experiments showed thateven at speeds of up to 3 kilometresper second, a spacecraft couldcapture sufficient material tobe studied on board to look forevidence of life, such as amino acidsor sugars. “The organic moleculessurvive the impact,” says Mathies. A craft orbiting Saturn would beable to travel at speeds of less than3 kilometres per second as it flewpast Enceladus to sample theplumes. If it orbited the moon, itwould be even slower – 200 metresper second – making sample captureeven more efficient (The PlanetaryScience Journal, doi/gxdt). No mission to Enceladus iscurrently in development, howeverMathies and his team hope theirfindings might inform the planningfor one. “Enceladus presents anoutstanding opportunity, becauseit basically presents a sample to usautomatically,” he says. ❚

Speeding probe

could grab signs of

life on Enceladus

18 | New Scientist | 2 October 2021

AROUND 25 million years ago,our ancestors lost their tails.Now geneticists may havefound the exact mutation thatprevents apes like us growingtails – and if they are right, thisloss happened suddenly ratherthan tails gradually shrinking. “You lose the tail in one fellswoop,” says Itai Yanai at NYULangone Health in New York. His colleague Bo Xia sayshe used to wonder why peopledidn’t have tails like otheranimals. “This question wasin my head when I was a littlekid,” he says. “I was asking,‘Where is my tail?’.”

More recently, Xia injuredhis coccyx – a bit of bone at thebase of the spine that is a vestigeof mammalian tails – in a caraccident. “It was really painful,”he says. “It kept reminding meabout the tail part of our body.”Any mutations involved intail loss should be present inapes, but not monkeys. Xia andhis colleagues compared ape andmonkey versions of 31 genesinvolved in tail development.They found nothing inthe protein-coding regions,so they looked in the bits ofjunk DNA found inside genes.If you think of proteins asflat-pack furniture, the geneticinstruction booklets for makingthem come with lots of pages ofgibberish that must be removedbefore the instructions work.These extra bits, called introns,are cut from the mRNA copies ofgenes before proteins are made.What Xia found is that in theancestor of apes, in a tail genecalled TBXT, an Alu element

landed smack bang in themiddle of an intron. Aluelements are genetic “parasites”that copy and paste themselvesall over the genome. “We have1 million Alu elements litteringour genome,” says Yanai. Normally, an Alu in an intronwould make no difference – itwould get edited out with theintron. But in this case, there isanother Alu element nearby, butit is in reverse order. Becausethe two sequences complementone another, they bind together,forming a loop in the mRNA. That effectively glues severalpages of instruction booklettogether, meaning that whenextra pages are cut out, someof the instructions are often losttoo. This means the assembledfurniture – the TBXT protein –often has a key piece missing. The researchers didexperiments to demonstratethis. For instance, they showedthat mice with this mutationproduce a mixture of full-lengthand missing-bit TBXT proteins,

like apes do, and that thisusually results in complete tailloss (bioRxiv, doi/gw3t). “It may tell us why all ofa sudden when we see theapes [emerge] they have notails,” says Carol Ward at theUniversity of Missouri. There isno evidence of a slow reductionin tail length in the fossil record,says Ward, but for now we havetoo few fossils to rule it out. What the finding cannot tellus is why evolution selected forthis mutation. Most proposedexplanations involve tails beinga disadvantage when early apesstarted moving in a differentway, such as walking uprighton branches. But fossils suggestthat the first tailless apes stillwalked on all fours, says Ward. Xia and Yanai think theremust have been a strongadvantage to losing tailsbecause this mutation doesalso have a disadvantage.Some mice developed spinalabnormalities resembling spinabifida. They speculate that therelatively high rate of spinabifida in people is a lingeringrelic of the loss of our tails allthose millions of years ago. ❚

Genetics

Michael Le Page

SHUTTERSTOCK/ALEXWILKO

1 million

Number of Alu genetic parasitesin the human genome

How our ape ancestors

lost their tails

THE US Army Corps of Engineerscan now print concrete barracks,bunkers and other structuresin challenging environments.Its Automated Construction ofExpeditionary Structures (ACES)programme has also drawn upplans to create the world’s first3D-printed vehicle bridge, andprototype printers should be inthe field next year. “Our priority was to developa capability utilising 3D printingtechnology for use in anexpeditionary environment,specifically suited for militarypurposes,” says Megan Kreiger,programme manager foradditive construction at theUS Army’s Engineer Researchand Development Center inVicksburg, Mississippi. “That means it has to shipin a container, it has to use localmaterials, it has to work in a dirtyenvironment and it needs to beable to take a beating while stillremaining reliable,” she says. Commercial printers forconcrete-like materials lackthis robustness, says Kreiger.For instance, they typicallyrequire special mortar. TheACES technology can 3D printconcrete made with locallysourced aggregate. According to the US ArmyCorps of Engineers, some ACEStechnology can build a samplestructure in one day rather thanfive, with a crew of three ratherthan eight. “You can createcomplex shapes very easily at littleto no added cost,” says Kreiger. She notes that the benefits ofusing the ACES technology will bemost helpful in remote areas. Thisincludes disaster relief situationswhere housing, bridges and otherstructures are needed fast. Kreiger’s team now plans furtherdemonstrations, including the firstever 3D-printed vehicle bridge. ❚

Technology

David Hambling

US army to 3D printconcrete bridgesin disaster areas

####### News

Fossils suggest thefirst tailless apeswalked on all fours