Section:GDN 1N PaGe:17 Edition Date:190807 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/8/2019 18:56 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Wednesday 7 August 2019 The Guardian •
National^17
Ian Sample
Science editor
The most lucrative prize in science has
been awarded to three researchers for a
landmark theory that marries particle
physics with Einstein’s description of
gravity and proposes a candidate for
the mysterious cosmic goo known as
dark matter.
Daniel Freedman, Sergio Ferrara,
and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen , from
the US, Italy and Holland, respec-
tively, developed “supergravity” in
the 1970s, a mathematical feat that
wrapped Einstein’s general relativity
into a speculative theory of all the
known particles in the universe.
The work has been credited as a
driving force in string theory, physi-
cists’ most popular model of reality.
The trio share the $3m (£2. 5m)
Special Breakthrough prize in funda-
mental physics and will receive the
award at “the Oscars of science” in Cal-
ifornia in November.
They met in the 1970s when particle
physics faced a particular problem.
Research had led to the standardmodel, a quantum theory describing
how the building blocks of matter,
such as electrons and quarks (known
collectively as fermions), work with
force particles such as photons and
gluons (known as bosons). Yet the
model was incomplete; it said noth-
ing about gravity, nor the weird dark
matter that appeared to clump around
galaxies like invisible goo.
But Van Nieuwenhuizen, Freedman
and Ferrara set out to marry gravity
with supersymmetry, the theory that
postulates that all known particles had
an unseen, heavy, partner; partners of
fermions are bosons and vice versa.
Waiting for a powerful computer to
churn out fi gures, Van Nieuwenhuizenknew that if the infi nities that had
plagued past eff orts at unifi cation can-
celled out the result would be 2,
zeroes – and the theory would be on
good footing. “ All came back as zero ...
over the next few days I realised some-
thing very nice had happened.”
The theory became physicists’
fi rst bridge bet ween the quantum
fi eld theory of the “standard model”
and Einstein’s theory in which mass
curves spacetime. In supergravity the
“gravitino”, the unseen partner of the
particle said to carry the gravitational
force, is possibly a part of dark matter.
Supergravity is now a powerful
mathematical tool though there is no
evidence yet of it existing in nature.Supergravity pioneers awarded
£2.5m prize for 1970s theory
▲ Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, Sergio
Ferrara and Daniel FreedmanIan Sample
Science editor
The odds of fi nding life on the moon
have suddenly rocketed skywards.
But rather than elusive alien moon-
lings, the beings in question came from
Earth and were spilled across the land-
scape when a spacecraft crashed into
the surface.
The Israeli Beresheet probe was
meant to be the fi rst private lander to
touchdown on the moon. And all was
going smoothly until mission control-
lers lost contact in April as the robotic
craft made its way down. Beyond all
the technology that was lost in the
crash , Beresheet had an unusual cargo:
a few thousand tiny tardigrades, the
toughest animals on Earth.
Now, the organisation behind the
tardigrades’ trip, the US-based Arch
Mission Foundation – whose goal is to
fi nd a backup for Earth – has said the
organisms may well have shrugged off
the collision. “ Our payload may be the
only surviving thing from that mis-
sion,” Nova Spivack , the organisation’s
founder, told Wired magazine.
Tardigrades have fascinated
back to Earth and then add the water.
They should resurrect.”
Kaczmarek is exploring whether
the ageing process itself grinds to a
halt in dormant tardigrades. He said
it appeared that a tardigrade that
entered a tun state at one month old
emerges with the same biological age
when it is revived a decade later.
Philippe Reekie , an astrobiologist
and PhD student at Edinburgh Univer-
sity , agreed that there was no reason
to think that dehydrated tardigrades
would not survive on the moon. “The
main problem with the moon is the
vacuum and the high radiation, but
tardigrades are proven to survive those
conditions ,” he said.
But he cautioned that if the tardi-
grades were in an active state on
impact, they may well have met their
end. “In their normal state, you can
kill them quite easily,” he said. “We
accidentally killed loads by accident
because we subjected them to the
extreme cold too fast.”‘Alien’ life
may have
been left
on the
moon by
crashed
probe
▲ Artist’s impression of the Beresheet
probe landing on the lunar surface
149
C
Tardigrades were found to survive
being boiled at this temperature.
They also survived being frozenscientists since their discovery in the
18th century by the German zoologist
and pastor Johann August Ephraim
Goeze. The millimetre-long animals,
sometimes known as water bears or
moss piglets after their favoured envi-
ronment and food, resemble cheerful
eight-legged maggots with distinctly
sphincter-like faces.
But it is not their appearance that
has made their name. Tardigrades
are considered the hardiest animals
on Earth. They have been found on
mountain tops, in scorching deserts,
and lurking in subglacial lakes in Ant-
arctica. In his book The Hidden Powers
of Animals , Dr Karl Shuker claimed the
beasts survived being frozen in liquid
helium and being boiled at 149 C.
The tardigrade’s secret is the ability
to shrivel into a seed-like pod, expel-
ling nearly all of its water and lowering
its metabolism. In this “tun” state, the
animals can hunker down and sur-
vive conditions that would normally
be swiftly fatal. In 2007, scientists▼ Tardigrades, which are a millimetre
long, were named ‘water bears’ on
being discovered in the 18th century
PHOTOGRAPH: PAPILLO/ALAMYdiscovered that tardigrades are so
tough they can survive the harsh radia-
tion and frigid vacuum of space travel.
And so it came to be that there is
life on the moon – probably. Lukasz
Kaczmarek , a tardigrade expert and
astrobiologist at the Adam Mickie-
wicz University in Poznań, said the
animals may well have survived
the crash landing. “Tardigrades can
survive pressures that are compara-
ble to those created when asteroids
strike Earth, so a small crash like this
is nothing to them,” he said. The ani-
mals could potentially survive on the
moon for years, he added.
Dehydrated tardigrades have been
revived after years in an inactive state
by plunging them into water. Once
rehydrated, the animals become active
again. There is little chance of that hap-
pening to those that are lost in space,
however. “They cannot colonise the
moon because there is no atmosphere
and no liquid water,” Kaczmarek said.
“But it could be possible to bring themРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS