The Best Australian Science Writing 2015 (2 page)

Dive on in and soak up what the best of the best have penned for 2015.

And Ms Russell, if you're reading this, thanks.

Introduction:
The ‘who' behind the ‘why'

Bianca Nogrady

What a fabulous job it is to write about science. We get to gatecrash laboratories, hospitals, field sites, boardrooms, workshops, expeditions and zoos; peering over shoulders, pointing at complex bits of science and asking, ‘so, what does that do?'

We rock up at that brilliant moment when a scientist's lifetime pursuit of an unseen goal finally delivers. We get to enjoy their ‘eureka!' moment without having been there for all those years of laborious, painstaking persistence and drudgery; without having seen them crumple when a trial failed, an experiment delivered a dud result, or a patient died.

But the ‘eureka' moment, while exciting and definitely newsworthy, is not what makes a great science story.

Science is most often talked about in terms of the end results; a new compound developed or creature discovered, a star revealed or disease diagnosed. But far more interesting are the personalities behind those results and their journey.

Those who work in and around the sciences are a passionate, dedicated lot. They have to be, for what else would drive someone to spend a lifetime searching for the answer to a single,
focused question; not knowing if they'll ever find that answer, not knowing if the answer will be ‘no', or if they're even asking the right question.

Their stories are what capture the heart and the imagination of a reader.

Like the developer Gillian Terzis meets, whose robotic Lego nematode wanders aimlessly around the floor of his office, or the wild-haired theoretical physicist who challenges Tim Dean to question the nature of consciousness.

It's the story of the zoo CEO Bridie Smith meets, whose recurring darkest-before-dawn fear is that one day she will hold the last living Tasmanian devil in her arms as it is euthanised. It's the mathematician delighted to have answered the very biological question of how lobsters Mexican-wave themselves around the ocean floor, as Clare Pain reports.

Sometimes we, the writers, become part of the story and enjoy our own little ‘eureka' moment, as Fiona McMillan does when she begins to wonder at the mysterious artists behind the squiggles on a beloved scribbly gum. It can be an odd moment of unexpected revelation, as Michael Slezak discovers when he realises he may yet learn to love the cane toad.

And sometimes the story is about what goes on between the lines, off-camera, behind closed doors. Lauren Fuge draws back the curtain on the forgotten ranks of women who contributed so much to the field of astronomy yet have been consigned to the shadows. Elmo Keep scratches at the bright, shiny surface of the Mars One project and finds that the questions far outnumber the answers.

Where there are scientists, there are subjects. They may be virulent single-celled pathogens on a collision course with the Next Big Antibiotic, as John Ross describes, in which case we harbour little sympathy for their demise. But they may also be individuals whose medical misfortune has thrust them into a world they would gladly have avoided.

Similarly here, the simple physiology of a subject's condition, and the steps taken to address it, are of minor interest. It's their journey, their story that sings loudly from the page; like the man desperately searching for a cure for the genetic disease that has claimed his mother and will soon claim him. A cure may arrive too late for him, as Christine Kenneally describes, but he labours on in the hope it may save others.

It's not always a good thing to be the subject of a piece of science writing, especially medical writing. Usually it means something unpleasant has happened to you. As writers, we are in the unique position of being able to articulate more clearly than most what this is like, as David Roland does in offering a gripping insight into the first bewildering days after his stroke.

* * * * *

It is the right of every anthology editor to talk about how high the quality of entries were and how difficult it was to make a decision about the final list.

But it is also a privilege to be contractually obliged to sit still and read a truckload of articles about science and scientists. I don't get to do it often, and it reveals some interesting patterns.

Where the 2014 anthology featured a number of articles on our changing climate and its repercussions, this year there were an overwhelming number of submissions about our vanishing biodiversity, and what could be or is being done about it.

It suggests a shift away from the big picture catastrophe of climate change – in the face of which many of us feel utterly powerless – towards a more specific and manageable concern about the less adaptable of our fellow inhabitants of this planet; what we have done to them, and what we might do to help them.

There were also a number of articles exploring the rapidly evolving field of robotics and artificial intelligence. We may be
mired in the impending catastrophe of climate change, habitat destruction and biodiversity loss, but our capacity for innovation and imagination is as robust as ever, particularly in Australia.

Despite being a relatively small nation, we have long held our own in the global science and technology arena. Many of the pieces in this anthology, such as Trent Dalton's piece on the pulseless artificial heart and James Mitchell Crow's exploration of the advances in field robots, are testament to Australian scientific innovation, and determination.

Notwithstanding the profound economic and societal benefits that flow from such innovation, it is especially gratifying for a science writer to be able to write about the scientific achievements of one's home team. May we look forward to many more such success stories in future anthologies.

All dressed up for Mars and nowhere to go

Elmo Keep

Josh sat cross-legged on the floor in his parents' neat, suburban home in Perth, enraptured. It was May 1996 and Andy Thomas had just stepped out of the space shuttle
Endeavour
and onto the tarmac of Runway 33 of the Kennedy Space Center. In his flight suit, bright orange against the blue of the sky, he talked in his clipped and measured British-sounding tones about seeing his hometown of Adelaide from the God-like vantage of space. These TV images would stick in Josh's mind like gum to a boot sole. He was ten years old.

Josh thought that could be him someday, speaking before the world's media, beaming out of everyone's television. He wanted then only one thing out of life: to be an astronaut.

Now Josh is 29. He has been a member of the Royal Marine Commandos. An engineer. A physicist. A blast specialist, a mining technician and, briefly, a scuba instructor. He is also a part-time stand-up comedian, playing Keith, a foulmouthed, sociopathic koala, who provides Josh a remove to exorcise a few of his demons. It's a weird show.

One day in 2012, Josh was sitting in a coffee shop when he
came across a call for volunteers for a fledgling space program. There was just one catch. The mission was one-way.

To Mars.

This was his shot. Josh filled out the application form. Could he describe a time when he had been scared? Stressed? Why was it important the mission be one-way?

He paid the registration fee, uploaded a video explaining why he should be chosen and hit send.

Then he waited.

* * * * *

Mars One, a private, not-for-profit company in Holland, might have come to your attention when it announced it had received more than 200 000 applications for the chance to be the first human on the surface of Mars.

Despite not being a space-faring agency, it claims that by 2025 it will send four colonists to the planet. Ultimately, it says, there will be at least six groups of four, a mix of men and women, who will train on Earth for ten years until they are ready to be shot into space, never to return.

It estimates the mission will cost only $6 billion: tens, if not hundreds, of billions less than any manned Mars mission proposed by NASA. Mars One admits it is ‘not an aerospace company' and ‘will not manufacture mission hardware': ‘All equipment will be developed by third-party suppliers and integrated in established facilities.' That's how it will keep costs down, by outsourcing everything to private enterprise.

It is open to anyone. These volunteers don't have to have any special qualifications – no PhDs in aeronautics, no degrees in advanced physics. They need only be in robust physical health, and willing to undertake the extremely risky mission. As the proposed program progresses, they will have to prove themselves
adept and nimble learners, able to amass an enormous amount of knowledge, not only in the high-pressure intricacies of spaceflight, but also in rudimentary surgery and dentistry, recycling resources and taking commands, in order to maintain a harmonious team dynamic for the rest of their natural lives.

Two hundred thousand applicants would seem to suggest the plan is solid – that's a staggering number of people willing to take part in an open-source, crowd-powered, corporately sponsored mission into deep space.

If only any of it were true.

* * * * *

There have been 43 unmanned missions to Mars. Twenty-one have failed.

Mars is freezing – minus 62 degrees Celsius on average, although at the height of summer, at the equator, it can get up to 20 degrees Celsius.

It is barren, free of geological features other than its frozen ice caps, vast deserts and enormous mountains, the biggest of which is Olympus Mons, standing three times taller than Mount Everest.

At 225 million kilometres from Earth, Mars is not close.

Mars has almost no atmosphere, leaving the surface exposed to deadly amounts of radiation. Roughly every five years, the planet is blanketed in a dust storm that blocks the sun for months at a time.

* * * * *

Mars One has a core staff of only three people: Norbert Kraft, chief medical officer; Arno Wielders, chief technical officer; and Bas Lansdorp, CEO. (There are a few other employees listed on the website, but when I asked Lansdorp if those people were paid, he refused to comment.) Wielders and Lansdorp are based
in their native Netherlands, while Kraft is in San Jose, where I speak with him over Skype.

Before joining Mars One, Kraft worked freelance for NASA, and for the Russian and Japanese space agencies, where his focus was on modelling psychological testing for long-haul space flights. He was tasked with whittling down the Mars One applicants. Assessing the suitability of someone who volunteers to take a slow suicide mission raises a dizzying array of questions. Can a person truly psychologically comprehend the reality of never coming back? What if the intense isolation brings on a psychotic break? How will a person stave off boredom, irritation or anger in the cramped quarters of the shuttle in the seven-to-nine months it is estimated it will take to get to Mars? What to make of a parent who volunteers for the mission? Or a spouse?

‘If they don't fill out their application, they're out. If they don't even know why they applied, if they're asking “Is it Mars? Or is it the moon?”, they're out,' Kraft says. ‘In the videos, some applied naked. I mean, how can you come to a job interview and apply naked? So that was quite easy.'

I am struck by Kraft's faith that this will all come off. ‘I want them as soon as possible to be independent from Earth. This is their goal. They will have their own constitution, their own laws, their own holidays. That's why they have to be such mature people. You have to have the right start from the beginning.'

The details of Mars One's mission remain vague. Kraft tells me that technical questions should be directed to Arno Wielders, who rebuffs requests for an interview through the press office. Instead, I am directed to the website, which states optimistically:
No new technology developments are required to establish a human settlement on Mars. Mars One has visited major aerospace companies around the world to discuss the requirements, budget, and timelines with their engineers and business developers. The current mission plan was composed on the basis of feedback received in these meetings.

Pretty much every aspect of the mission I find covered on the FAQ, from the landing unit to the astronauts' suits, is theoretical. Which is somewhat putting the cart before the horse – only the cart is a pencil drawing of a toy wheelbarrow. Here's what it says, for instance, about how they will actually get people there:
Mars One anticipates using SpaceX Falcon Heavy, an upgraded version of the Falcon 9 … The Falcon Heavy is slated to undergo test flights in 2014, granting ample time for fine-tuning prior to the Mars One missions.

In summer, a SpaceX Falcon 9 prototype broke apart over Texas after ‘an anomaly forced the destruction on the craft'. A month later, NASA lost a Russian-built rocket on launch, its fireball in the night sky over Wallops Flight Facility visible for miles. Then, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo exploded during a test flight over the Mojave, killing one pilot and injuring another. It's a fraught moment, even for private space missions far less theoretical than Mars One.

* * * * *

No human has left low-Earth orbit since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

The longest any person has spent in space was the 14 months cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov lived on the now-decommissioned Mir Space Station; another cosmonaut, Valentin Lebedev, spent 211 days in orbit in 1982, during which the elevated radiation levels resulted in the loss of his eyesight.

Exposure to galactic cosmic rays increases the likelihood of cancer and Alzheimer's, as well as immune system suppression. No craft yet exists that is capable of insulating astronauts from such deep-space radiation (including lethal amounts from solar flares that can erupt without warning) while being light enough to carry sufficient fuel.

Zero gravity has a deleterious effect on the human body; over the course of a trip to Mars, it could result in a loss of 20 per cent
of muscle mass, and the loss of 1.5 per cent bone density per month. To mitigate these effects, astronauts on long-haul missions usually engage in rigorous tethered exercise regimens.