4 Scientific American, December 2021 Illustration by Nick HigginsFROM
THE EDITOR Laura Helmuth is editor in chief of Scientific American.
Follow her on Twitter @laurahelmuthBOARD OF ADVISERS
Robin E. Bell
Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,
Columbia University
Emery N. Brown
Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering
and of Computational Neuro science, M.I.T.,
and Warren M. Zapol Prof essor of Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School
Vinton G. Cerf
Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
Emmanuelle Charpentier
Scientific Director, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology,
and Founding and Acting Director, Max Planck Unit for the
Science of Pathogens
Rita Colwell
Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland College Park
and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Kate Crawford
Director of Research and Co-founder, AI Now Institute,
and Distinguished Research Professor, New York University,
and Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research New York City
Nita A. Farahany
Professor of Law and Philosophy, Director,
Duke Initiative for Science & Society, Duke UniversityJonathan Foley
Executive Director, Project Drawdown
Jennifer A. Francis
Senior Scientist and Acting Deputy Director,
Woodwell Climate Research Center
Carlos Gershenson
Research Professor, National Autonomous University of Mexico
Alison Gopnik
Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor
of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
Lene Vestergaard Hau
Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics,
Harvard University
Hopi E. Hoekstra
Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Harvard University
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Co-founder, Urban Ocean Lab, and
Co-founder, The All We Can Save Project
Christof Koch
Chief Scientist, MindScope Program, Allen Institute for Brain Science
Meg Lowman
Director and Founder, TREE Foundation, Rachel Carson Fellow,
Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, and Research Professor,
University of Science MalaysiaJohn Maeda
Global Head, Computational Design + Inclusion, Automattic, Inc.
Satyajit Mayor
Senior Professor, National Center for Biological Sciences,
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
John P. Moore
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology,
Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Priyamvada Natarajan
Professor of Astronomy and Physics, Yale University
Donna J. Nelson
Professor of Chemistry, University of Oklahoma
Lisa Randall
Professor of Physics, Harvard University
Martin Rees
Astronomer Royal and Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics,
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge
Daniela Rus
Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science and Director, CSAIL, M.I.T.
Meg Urry
Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Yale University
Amie Wilkinson
Professor of Mathematics, University of ChicagoLong-Range
Forecast
What does the future hold? Ultimately that’s determined by grav-
ity. Our Milky Way galaxy is destined to collide with our closest
large neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, in about five billion years.
There’s no stopping it, but we can predict what’s going to happen,
and thanks to powerful new telescopes, we can even watch pre-
views by studying other galaxy mergers. In our cover story this
month ( page 32 ), astronomers Aaron S. Evans of the University of
Virginia and Lee Armus of the California Institute of Technology
foretell how our two galaxies will become one, creating energetic
new star-forming regions and smashing their central black holes
together in a burst of gravitational waves. We won’t be around to
watch, but we will get a great view of other galaxies’ collisions
(including a triple merger!) if the James Webb Space Telescope
(JWST, which some astronomers call the Just Wonderful Space
Telescope to focus on the space rather than the former nasa admin-
istrator) launches successfully in the next weeks or months.
Our sun will be a red giant by the time we merge with
Andromeda, engulfing Mercury and Venus and then Earth as it
grows to a diameter as large as Earth’s current orbit. But the sun
can cause a lot of trouble for us well before that time, as space
journalist Jonathan O’Callaghan explains on page 60. You may
have heard of the Carrington Event, a massive geomagnetic
storm in 1859 that fried telegraph lines. It and a similar solar
eruption in 1921 were mostly curiosities in their times, but now
they are recognized as warnings that a blast from the sun could
cause catastrophic fires and meltdowns in our electrical infra-
structure and satellite networks. That would be bad, but it could
be worse: In 2012 scientists discovered a solar flare from the year
775 that was 10 or 100 times more energetic. Now researchers
looking for odd isotopes in ice cores have found evidence for two
more superflares, from 5259 and 7176 before the current era.
Someday it’ll happen again, and we are not yet prepared.
If you’re reading about these ominous events within view of
a surveillance camera, it might—well, so boosters claim—be able
to pick up on any distress, engagement or amusement on your
face. The field of “emotion AI” is moving quickly, and its appli-
cations are moving even faster, with marketers using the tech-
nology to gauge customer behavior and some companies using
it to screen job applicants. But as with any artificial intelligence
trained on human data sets, emotion and facial-recognition AI
reinforce biases, as author John McQuaid writes on page 40. The
research has brought new attention to the nature of emotion and
whether human facial expressions are truly universal.
If you’ve been meaning to catch up on your health checkups
(that’s on my to-do list), please read our Innovations In package
about cancer screening to understand how and why this would
be a good time to schedule an appointment (page S1). Colon can-
cer rates are going up in people younger than 50, and there are
life-threatening racial and other disparities in access to all kinds
of cancer screening. The COVID pandemic delayed regular tests
for many people, and we’ll be seeing the consequences of those
missed screenings for years to come.
This year marks our 10th collection of the Top 10 Emerging
Technologies of the year, a collaboration run by Scientific Amer-
ican emerita editor in chief Mariette DiChristina with the World
Economic Forum and a group of experts from around the world
( page 48 ). It’s an inspiring collection, full of actionable ideas to
fight climate change, improve food systems, treat diseases, and
more. We’re looking forward to covering the successes of some
of these technologies in the future.