New Planet May Be Among Most Earthlike—Weather Permitting

An artist's rendering of an Earthlike alien planet.

Illustration courtesy L. Calçada, ESO

"A new planet found about 36 light-years away could be one of the most Earthlike worlds yet—if it has enough clouds, a new study says.

The unpoetically named HD85512b was discovered orbiting an orange dwarfstar in the constellation Vela. Astronomers found the planet using the European Southern Observatory's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS, instrument in Chile.

Radial velocity is a planet-hunting technique that looks for wobbles in a star's light, which can indicate the gravitational tugs of orbiting worlds.

The HARPS data show that the planet is 3.6 times the mass of Earth, and the new world orbits its parent star at just the right distance for water to be liquid on the planet's surface—a trait scientists believe is crucial for life as we know it.

(Related: "NASA Finds Smallest Earthlike Planet Outside Solar System.")

"The distance is exactly the limit where you want to be to have liquid water," said study leader Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

"If you scale it to our system, it's a bit further out than Venus is to our sun." At that distance, the planet likely receives a bit more solar energy from its star than Earth does from the sun. (Explore an interactive solar system.)

But Kaltenegger and colleagues calculate that a cloud cover of at least 50 percent would reflect enough of the energy back into space to prevent overheating.

On average, Earth has 60 percent cloud cover, so partly cloudy skies on HD85512b are "not out of the question," she said.

Of course, clouds of water vapor depend on the presence of an atmospheresimilar to Earth's, something that can't be detected on such distant planets with current instruments.

Models of planet formation predict that planets with more than ten times Earth's mass should have atmospheres dominated by hydrogen and helium, Kaltenegger said. Less massive worlds—including HD85512b—are more likely to have Earthlike atmospheres, made mostly of nitrogen and oxygen.

(Related: "Saturn Moon Has Oxygen Atmosphere.")

New World "A Strong Candidate" for Habitability

So far, the newly detected planet is only the second rocky world outside our solar system to be confirmed in its star's habitable zone—the region around a star that's not too hot and not too cold for liquid water.

The other contender, planet Gliese 581d, was previously discovered using the HARPS instrument. This world lies just on the cool edge of its star's habitable zone. (See "Most Earthlike Planet Yet Found May Have Liquid Oceans.")

Another promising planet, Gliese 581g, was discovered in 2010 and dubbed the most Earthlike planet yet. But controversy surrounds the claim, with some experts declaring that the entire planet is actually a data glitch.

Manfred Cuntz, director of the astronomy program at the University of Texas, Arlington, noted that more information is needed before anyone can speculate whether aliens are wandering around the newfound planet.

"It's not their fault no extra information [about the planet's atmosphere] is available right now," Cuntz said of the research team. "It looks like this is a strong candidate, in principle."

In addition to size and location, HD85512b has two other points in its favor for potentially harboring life, Cuntz said.

The planet's orbit is nearly circular, which would provide a stable climate, and its parent star, HD85512, is older—and therefore less active—than our sun, which would lower the likelihood of electromagnetic storms damaging the planet's atmosphere.

(See "'Nightmare' Star Flares Dim Odds for Alien Life?")

Not only that, but in principle, the age of the system—5.6 billion years—"gives life a chance to originate and develop," he said. By contrast, our own solar system is thought to be about 4.6 billion years old.

New Planet a Great Place for Yoga?

Given current limits on space travel, it's unlikely for now that humans will get to visit HD85512b.

But if we could get there, the newfound planet might seem like a fairly alien world: muggy, hot, and with a gravity 1.4 times that of Earth's, study leader Kaltenegger said.

On the bright side, "hot yoga might be one of the things you don't have to pay for there," she quipped.

The paper describing HD85512b appears online at arXiv.org and has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics." - Rachel Kaufman, for National Geographic News.

Published August 30, 2011

Is this the face of Jack the Ripper?

On this day 123 years ago (Aug. 30th 2011), Jack the Ripper claimed his first victim. But who was this serial killer? This new e-fit finally puts a face to Carl Feigenbaum, a key suspect from Germany.

"Jack the Ripper is the world's most famous cold case - the identity of the man who brutally murdered five women in London's East End in autumn 1888 remains a mystery.

More than 200 suspects have been named. But to Ripper expert Trevor Marriott, a former murder squad detective, German merchant Carl Feigenbaum is the top suspect.

Convicted of murdering his landlady in Manhattan, Feigenbaum died in the electric chair in New York's Sing Sing prison in 1894. His lawyer suspected him of the Ripper murders too.

No photos of Feigenbaum exist. So Marriott has produced this new e-fit for BBC One's National Treasures Live, created from the description on the admittance form when he was in prison on remand in New York.

Why does Marriott think Feigenbaum is Jack the Ripper? Evidence, in the form of police documents and hundreds of letters to the authorities and newspapers, give us some clues.

The assumption has long been that Jack must have had anatomical knowledge because of the skill with which his victims' organs were removed.

But it's possible these were cut out in the mortuary, rather than by Jack at the scene. The 1832 Anatomy Act made it legal for medical personnel to remove organs for training purposes.

This theory is supported by documents on the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. The inquest report shows only 14 minutes elapsed from the time the police did their last sweep of the square in which she was killed and her body being discovered.

Was this really enough time for someone to have killed Eddowes, removed her uterus with surgical precision, and all in near complete blackness? Regardless of one's medical knowledge, this seems a stretch.

So Marriott believes Jack wasn't necessarily a surgeon after all.

He began to investigate other groups who might have been in the area. St Katharine and the London Docks are a short walk from Whitechapel, a place merchant seamen would have flocked to as it was an infamous red light district. Such close proximity would have made it easy for the killer to steal back to his ship unnoticed.

The gaps between the murders also suggest the killer may have been a traveller.

This theory fits with other facts, too. Although some suggest the killer was a resident of Whitechapel, wouldn't locals have given him up to the police? Especially after a reward was offered.

After some digging, Marriott came across records which showed the Nord Deutsche Line, a German merchant vessel group, had a ship called the Reiher docked at the time of the murders.

When Marriott investigated the seamen aboard this ship, he came across the convicted murderer Feigenbaum.

Having watched his client die in the electric chair, Feigenbaum's lawyer William Lawton told the press he believed him to be responsible for the Ripper murders in London. Feigenbaum had confessed, he said, to suffering from a disease which periodically drove him to murder and mutilate women.

What was this disease which made him undertake such brutal acts? Today, a psychiatrist is likely to describe it as a psychotic episode. Fortunately, few people with psychotic tendencies go on to become serial killers, but those who do gain an infamy matched by no other crime.

At the time, everyone believed all five women had been killed by the same man.

But having reviewed the evidence, Elizabeth Stride may have died at the hands of another killer, as everything about her murder is different to the others.

"Firstly the time the murder took place, and the knife used to cut her throat was much smaller than all of the other victims, hence the knife wound to her throat was much smaller and she had no other mutilations," says Marriott.

"The location was different to all of the others. The murder was right by the side of a workers' club which was packed with men at the time."

And now a serious question mark hangs over the death of Mary Kelly too.

"Fresh material has come to light which may suggest she was not Mary Kelly but someone else," says Marriott. "If that is the case, there is a motive and likely suspects for her murder."

As a forensic anthropologist, to review the ultimate cold case is a privilege. Initially, I thought Carl Feigenbaum was that serial killer. His profile fit.

But further evidence, outlined above, may show these murders were not all committed by the same person. Feigenbaum could have been responsible for one, some or perhaps all.

We have shed new light on this old case. But it is certainly not solved, and this dark tale has many more secrets to give up before we know, for sure, the name of the man we call Jack the Ripper." - By Dr Xanthe Mallett (Forensic anthropologist, University of Dundee), additional reporting by Megan Lane (BBC).

Start Quote

"The Jack the Ripper murders provoked a nationwide panic whipped up by press sensationalism. Violence, especially violence with a sexual frisson, sold newspapers.

But violent crime never figured significantly in the statistics or in the courts.

By the late 19th Century, developments in psychiatry and the popularity of social Darwinism led to "the criminal classes" being identified as individuals suffering from some form of behavioural abnormality, either inherited or nurtured by dissolute and feckless parents. This informed the way they were treated by the criminal justice system.

The English police took the prevention of crime as their watchword. The assumption was that the unskilled, working class constable, patrolling his beat at a regulation two and a half miles an hour, would deter offenders."

"I have for years suffered from a singular disease which induces an all-absorbing passion, this passion manifests itself in a desire to kill and mutilate every woman who falls in my way, I am unable to control myself”

What Feigenbaum allegedly told his lawyer."

• Five women were brutally killed in the East End of London in autumn 1888
• Mary Ann Nicholls, 31 August
• Annie Chapman, 8 September
• Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, 30 September
• Mary Jane Kelly, 9 November

"Age 54. Complexion med[ium]. Eyes grey. Hair dark brown. Stature 5ft 4 1/2. Weight 126 [pounds, 57kg]. Medium sized head, hat 6 7/8 or 7. Shoes 8.

Hair grows thin on top of head. Small slim neck. Eyes small and deep-set. Eyebrows curved. Forehead high and heavily arched. Nose large, red and has raw pimples. Teeth poor + nearly all gone on left sides.

Anchor in india ink on right hand at base of thumb and first finger. Round scar or birthmark on right leg below left knee." - Feigenbaum's prison admittance form.

Why Do We Have Nightmares?

"A source of confusion or anxiety for most, nightmares may serve a very beneficial purpose, according to researchers.

Nightmares are helpful to our survival or else they probably would have been done away with by evolution, said Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard University. Barrett theorizes that nightmares act as the brain's way of focusing a person's attention on issues they need to address.

"Nightmares probably evolved to help make us anxious about potential dangers," Barrett said. "Evenpost-traumatic nightmares, which just re-traumatize us, may have been useful in ancestral times when a wild animal that had attacked you, or a rival tribe that had invaded might well be likely to come back."

But this evolutionary alarm bell may not be so useful in today's world.

"With the modern dangers of house fires, car crashes, rapes and muggings unlikely to repeat soon for the same victims, this adaptive mechanism doesn’t always serve us well," Barrett exlpained. "However, some nightmares may be calling to your attention something you might do well to worry about—or something that, once you are more conscious of the concern, you can convince your unconscious to stop wasting time on."

How to stop a nightmare

How does one go about convincing their subconscious to stop repetitious nightmares?

"People can come up with a different ending to the nightmare - a mastery dream," Barrett told Life's Little Mysteries. "Some people prefer to fight off an attacker, some people would rather be rescued by someone else. Some want a realistic solution, for others, a metaphoric resolution is more satisfying."

"Once they’ve come up with their preferred ending, they can rehearse this while awake and then at bedtime, to remind themselves that they want to have this ending, should the nightmare occur again."

However, before trying to change a nightmare, Barret recommends attempting to decipher its true meaning. Sometimes, analyzing a bad dream can help a person see its correlation to their daytime worries.

Dreamscapes across cultures

Some cultures and religions, such as the Native American Lakota tribe, rely on dreams and nightmares to point them in the right direction when an important decision needs to be made, according to "The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains," (Univ of Oklahoma Press, 1994).

In 2005, Dutch-sponsored researcher Elizabeth Mohkamsing-den Boer recorded the nightmares of indigenous Surinamese and Australian tribes. She found that their dreams often correlated to significant events that the dreamers were either experiencing or anticipating in their lives.

During her research, the tribes people frequently told Mohkamsing-den Boer that "dreams prepare your emotions," as they believe that nightmares and dreams provide guidance when a difficult decision needs to be made. Mohkamsing-den Boer concluded that nightmares have a helpful role during times of change or uncertainty, and refers to them as transitional dreams.

Nightmares are a normal part of sleep, and their frequency varies from one person to the next. While it may seem that having numerous nightmares in a short period of time is a bad sign, it may be that people who often experience nightmares simply have more vivid dreams in general, according to Barrett.

"People should seek help for their nightmares if they are carrying over into their daytime mood and making them very anxious, or if they are making them afraid to go to sleep," Barrett told Life's Little Msyteries. "However, some people have frequent nightmares and don’t particularly mind them— they even find them interesting." " - By Remy Melina, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer

Days left to Stop Canada's Deadly Oil (Click here)

"Canada mines deadly oil that creates toxic sludge lakes and destroys forests in Alberta -- and Harper needs Obama's help to sell it. Our own government is captured by powerful oil interests, but Obama is wavering on building a new cross-border pipeline. If enough Canadians ask him to protect the world from our deadly oil, we could tip the balance away from pollution. 

Within days, President Obama could decide whether to allow a massive tar sands pipeline right through the middle of the U.S. -- boosting tar sands production and risking the contamination of major fresh water sources in his own country. PM Harper and his oil cronies have tarnished Canada's beauty and reputation, but Obama has the ultimate say on pipeline approval and he’s keen to strengthen his green credentials. He could override Harper's stubborn support for deadly oil.

Harper stopped listening to Canadians about climate a long time ago. Now, we have the chance to lobby the US and cut-off deadly oil for good. When we reach 50,000 signatures, we'll deliver our call directly to the White House. Let’s save Canada’s tarred image -- sign now and forward to everyone you know!" - Avaaz.org

Teen moms, get ready to go back to school with these fantastic Old Navy sales!

Source: tosh.0 blog

This teenage mother trend is clearly important enough to cause a new fashion line. What is happening to sexual health education in the U.S.?

Tell us what you think!

"House" Season Premiere Scoop!

"Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d type: House will be doing time in the pokey alongside Urkel!

Former child geek Jaleel White will guest star in the Oct. 3 season premiere of House as a fellow inmate of Hugh Laurie’s titular grouch, TVLine has confirmed.

White is, of course, best known for his iconic role as the suspenders-clad little Einstein at the center of the ’90s sitcom Family Matters. In recent years, the now-34-year-old actor has made guest appearances on The Game, Psych and Boston Legal.

The prison-set House opener, intriguingly titled “20 Vicodin,” picks up a year after the events of May’s finale and also features a guest turn by Michael Paré (Eddie and the Cruisers) as the warden." - Michael Ausiello, TV Line.

House Spoiler: First Look at House in Prison!

Kids of Older Dads Face Brain Health Risks

"Children of older fathers are more likely to be diagnosed with autism, schizophrenia and a number of other neuropsychiatric or developmental disorders, and a new study reveals why this may be.

 The results show that older male mice are more likely than younger males to have offspring with mutations in genes that correspond to human genes associated with these neurological conditions. The genomes of mice and men are roughly 85 percent identical.

"Mice do not get schizophrenia or autism," said Dr. John McGrath, senior author of the study published today (Aug.30) in the journal Translational Psychiatry. "But, we have found previously that the offspring of older mice have subtle changes in brain structure and behavior."

The new study provides "a mechanism of action" that links the known genetic clues and the increased risk of human neurological disorders faced by children of older fathers, said McGrath, a professor at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Finding the genetic link

Researchers bred older and younger male mice with female mice of the same age. The researchers then sequenced the genomes of all the mice involved, and gave the 12 offspring mice behavioral tests and analyzed their brain structure.

When digging through the mice genomes, the researchers found new mutations in the baby mice that weren't present in either parent. Offspring of the older male mice showed six new mutations that, when matched to their human equivalent genes, have been linked to autism and schizophrenia in humans. The offspring of the young male mice had none of these genetic mutations.

In behavioral tests — which included a swim test and observing how much the mice startled at loud noises — mice of older fathers showed unusual responses. And their brains showed physical differences from other mice.

There are several theories behind the connection between older dads and developmental disorders in their children, including a possible link between assisted reproductive therapy and cognitive disorders, said Rita M. Cantor, professor of human genetics and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Since scientists sequenced the human genome in 2000, researchers around the world have tried to correlate mutations with diseases. Many disorders are linked to small mutations called SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), which entail a single change of an A, T, C or G nucleotide in the DNA.

But other mutations, called copy number variations, or CNVs, are comprised of several duplicated or deleted genes. While studies of SNP mutations have not offered many clues to neurodevelopment and neuropsychiatric disorders, Cantor said research into CNVs has been more fruitful.

"We are putting a lot of effort into the CNV studies, and it would be nice to know that that risk [of having CNVs] would be increased with paternal age," Cantor said. "The study is consistent with the idea, but not a proof."

The new study, because it controlled the age of the parents and many environmental factors through a mouse model, was "a good first step" to revealing the connection between older fathers and disorders in their children, Cantor said.

Do mutations lead to disease?

Not all CNVs are harmful, so matching the CNVs in the mice to known harmful mutations in humans was a boon to the study, said Dr. John Csernansky, chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

"The homology between the mouse genome and the human genome is very, very strong. So when they say, this gene is equivalent to the human gene... I don't think there's any doubt about that," Csernansky said.

But Csernansky added that simply matching a harmful mutation in humans to a mutation in mice is "guilt by association." The researchers can't assume that a mutation that's harmful in humans is also harmful in mice.

So while the behavioral tests in the study couldn't diagnose mice with disorders, they did go further than previous work in proving that older fathers were more likely to have offspring with new, harmful mutations.

"As fathers grow older, there's a greater likelihood of having a child with many problems, including psychiatric problems," Csernansky said. "I think this [study] will help us piece together the story of how these illnesses come about."

Pass it on: The children of older fathers may be more likely to have mutations called CNVs in genes linked to neurodevelopmental disorders." - By Lauren Cox, MyHealthNewsDaily Contributor

Want your own miniature world in a bottle? Click here!

Egypt's Lost Fleet — It's Been Found

"The discovery of 
an ancient harbor on 
the Red Sea proves 
ancient Egyptians 
mastered oceangoing technology and 
launched a series of 
ambitious expeditions 
to far-off lands. 


The scenes carved into a wall of the ancient Egyptian temple at Deir el-Bahri tell of a remarkable sea voyage. A fleet of cargo ships bearing exotic plants, animals, and precious incense navigates through high-crested waves on a journey from a mysterious land known as Punt or “the Land of God.” The carvings were commissioned by Hatshepsut, ancient Egypt’s greatest female pharaoh, who controlled Egypt for more than two decades in the 15th century B.C. She ruled some 2 million people and oversaw one of most powerful empires of the ancient world.

The exact meaning of the detailed carvings has divided Egyptologists ever since they were discovered in the mid-19th century. “Some people have argued that Punt was inland and not on the sea, or a fictitious place altogether,” 
Oxford Egyptologist John Baines says. Recently, however, a series of remarkable discoveries on a desolate stretch of the Red Sea coast has settled the debate, proving once and for all that the masterful building skills of the ancient Egyptians applied to oceangoing ships as well as to pyramids.

Archaeologists from Italy, the United States, and Egypt excavating a dried-up lagoon known as Mersa Gawasis have unearthed traces of an ancient harbor that once launched early voyages like Hatshepsut’s onto the open ocean. Some of the site’s most evocative evidence for the ancient Egyptians’ seafaring prowess is concealed behind a modern steel door set into a cliff just 700 feet or so from the Red Sea shore. Inside is a man-made cave about 70 feet deep. Lightbulbs powered by a gas generator thrumming just outside illuminate pockets of work: Here, an excavator carefully brushes sand and debris away from a 3,800-year-old reed mat; there, conservation experts photograph wood planks, chemically preserve them, and wrap them for storage..." - Andrew Curry, Discover Magazine.

Black Death Bacterium Identified: Genetic Analysis of Medieval Plague Skeletons Shows Presence of Yersinia Pestis Bacteria

Yersinia pestis, direct fluorescent antibody stain (DFA), 200x magnification. (Credit: CDC/Courtesy of Larry Stauffer, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory)

ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2011) — "A team of German and Canadian scientists has shown that today's plague pathogen has been around at least 600 years.

The Black Death claimed the lives of one-third of Europeans in just five years from 1348 to 1353. Until recently, it was not certain whether the bacterium Yersinia pestis -- known to cause the plague today -- was responsible for that most deadly outbreak of disease ever. Now, the University of Tübingen's Institute of Scientific Archaeology and McMaster University in Canada have been able to confirm that Yersinia pestis was behind the great plague.

The results of the research are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Previous genetic tests indicating that the bacterium was present in medieval samples had previously been dismissed as contaminated by modern DNA or the DNA of bacteria in the soil. Above all, there was doubt because the modern plague pathogen spreads much more slowly and is less deadly than the medieval plague -- even allowing for modern medicine.

The international team of researchers has for the first time been able to decode a circular genome important for explaining the virulence of Y. pestis. It is called pPCP1 plasmid and comprises about 10,000 positions in the bacterium's DNA. The sample was taken from skeletons from a London plague cemetery. The working group in Tübingen, led by Dr. Johannes Krause used a new technique of "molecular fishing" -- enriching plague DNA fragments from tooth enamel and sequencing them using the latest technology. In this way, the fragments were connected up into a long genome sequence -- which turned out to be identical to modern-day plague pathogens. "That indicates that at least this part of the genetic information has barely changed in the past 600 years," says Krause.

The researchers were also able to show that the plague DNA from the London cemetery was indeed medieval. To do that, they examined damage to the DNA which only occurs in old DNA -- therefore excluding the possibility of modern contamination. "Without a doubt, the plague pathogen known today as Y. pestis was also the cause of the plague in the Middle Ages," says Krause, who is well known for his DNA sequencing of ancient hominin finds, which help trace relationships between types of prehistoric man and modern humans." - ScienceDaily.com

Humans Could Have Geomagnetic Sight

"The ability to see Earth’s magnetic field, thought to be restricted to sea turtles and swallows and other long-distance animal navigators, may also reside in human eyes.

Tests of cryptochrome 2, a key protein component of geomagnetic perception, found that its human version restored geomagnetic orientation in cryptochrome-deficient fruit flies.

Flies are a long, long way from people, but that the protein worked at all is impressive. There’s also a whole lot of it in our eyes.

“Could humans have this cryptochrome heavily expressed in the retina as a light-sensitive magnetoreceptor?” said University of Massachusetts neuroscientist Steven Reppert, lead author of a June 21 Nature Communications cryptochrome study. “We don’t know if the molecule will do this in the human retina, but this suggests the possibility.”

Reppert, whose laboratory specializes in the biological mechanisms underlying long-distance butterfly migration, showed three years ago that cryptochrome allowed fruit flies to geomagnetically orient themselves using light.

Before then, cryptochrome’s navigational role was a matter of inference and proposition. Since then, researchers have described how cryptochrome seems to be a quantum compass that detects infinitesimally subtle, geomagnetically-induced variations in the spin of electrons struck by photons. From those variations, animals seem able to determine their orientation in relation to Earth’s magnetic field.

Many gaps still remain in cryptochrome theory, but it’s generally thought that the cryptochrome system may be active across the animal kingdom, from fish to reptiles to birds. Humans, however, were thought to be an exception. Our own cryptochrome is considered a piece of circadian machinery, part of our molecular clock rather than any optical compass.

The new study, however, suggests that cryptochrome may be more than a clock. Seeking to test how a vertebrate cryptochrome would work in fruit flies, Reppert decided to use the human version. His team engineered flies to be cryptochrome-deficient: They struggled to orient within a magnetically-charged maze. When the researchers spliced human cryptochrome into the flies, they again found their bearings.

‘We can’t show that it will do the same in humans, but it sure restored geomagnetic sight in the flies.’

“This is a very exciting paper,” said Klaus Schulten, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign biophysicist and cryptochrome research pioneer who was not involved in the new study. According to Schulten, the findings add even more support for the general role of cryptochrome in vertebrates, and of course raise questions about cryptochrome’s role in people.

“We can’t show that it will do the same in humans, but it sure restored geomagnetic sight in the flies,” said Reppert.

Whether humans can sense geomagnetism is somewhat controversial. In the 1980s, research by British zoologist Robin Baker suggested that humans have a magnetic sense, but the findings proved difficult to replicate. More recently, however, work by German researchers hints at geomagnetic effects on vision.

Whether any of this is linked to high levels of cryptochrome in human eyes — and, if so, whether that quantum compass system still works for us — is completely speculative, but it’s speculation that Reppert welcomes. “It’s perfectly reasonable to think that humans have a magnetosensing response,” he said. “Maybe we’ve been looking at it in a way that’s not been fruitful in the past.”

Schulten, however, thinks evolution might have traded geomagnetic orientation for longevity. His own research suggests that the cryptochrome compass needs superoxide, a type of free radical oxygen molecule, to work. Free radicals tend to destroy DNA. That’s fine for a relatively short-lived animal, but not for one that intends to live for decades.

Nevertheless, said Schulten, “it might be that we humans, along with many other animals, might have been capable a long, long time ago of orienting ourselves.”

Reppert himself is now concentrating on how brains read their cryptochrome compass. “At the most fundamental level, we’re interested in how cryptochrome information is transferred to the nervous system,” he said. “Nobody knows how that occurs.”

Top image: GaelG, Flickr." - By Brandon Keim, Wired.