New Spanish-language version of Knowable Magazine launches
Knowable Magazine can now be read in Spanish at Knowable en español. The website features translations of many beloved Knowable Magazine articles as well as original articles commissioned by the site’s editor, Costa Rica-based science journalist Debbie Ponchner. You’ll find English versions of these stories on our site as well.
Knowable en español debuts with an article by the Argentine writer Federico Kukso on how truffles took root around the world. (English-speaking truffle lovers don’t despair: The story is also available in English.) The line-up also includes translations of over 30 Knowable Magazine articles, including: The science of habits, The ancient origins of glass and Genetic tricks of the longest-lived animals.
Please explore the new website and share with your Spanish-speaking friends, family and colleagues. And if you want to become one of Knowable en español’s earliest fans, you can sign up for the new Spanish newsletter and follow the publication on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
New from Knowable Magazine
How truffles took root around the world
By Federico Kusko For centuries, the wild delicacy grew only in Europe. But improved cultivation techniques have enabled the pricey, odorous fungus to be farmed in new landscapes. Read more
Pricing groundwater will help solve California’s water problems
By Ellen Bruno OPINION: The state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is a great opportunity — if it goes far enough Read more
Registration now open
Event: Rethinking cities in the face of extreme heat
Wednesday, October 26, 2022 | 9am Pacific | 12pm Eastern | 4pm GMT
Cities have recently experienced extreme heat waves, causing preventable illness and death. How can we protect people from dangerous heat while also reducing carbon emissions?
From the archives
Last week the MacArthur Foundation announced their 2022 fellows, each of whom will receive $800,000, no strings attached, for showing “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” Read our interviews with two of this year’s cohort, environmental engineer Jenna Jambeck and historical demographer Steven Ruggles.
The pileup of plastic debris is more than ugly ocean litter
By Kenneth R. Weiss A solid-waste specialist offers ways to halt the plague of pollutants choking the seas Read more
The story of families, wrested from big data
By Eryn Brown Records tell the story of the decline of the patriarchy, the rise and fall of marrying young, and pandemic fallout; digitizing the data could reveal even richer tales Read more
What we’re reading
Murder in the Amazon
In June 2022, two men — activist Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips — were murdered on the Itaquaí River in the Amazon rainforest. They were ambushed and shot by local poachers, their bodies hidden. In a multimedia-rich story, Terrence McCoy — the Washington Post’s Rio de Janeiro bureau chief and a friend of Phillips’ — details his unsettling journey to learn more about what led to the killings. McCoy examines how tensions played out between local river dwellers, Indigenous groups and Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency, against an alarming backdrop of government negligence and weakened institutions. It’s a deftly told story of the death of a friend and colleague that also “betrays the broader forces fueling the destruction of the Amazon.”
Whack-an-asteroid
What does it feel like to crash a spacecraft into a killer asteroid? Exhilarating, to be sure, if you’re safe in a control room on Earth. But anxiety mounted in the lead-up to NASA’s DART mission, which aimed to send a spacecraft careening into the asteroid Dimorphos. For one thing, the target failed to materialize when the rendezvous was only minutes away, reports David W. Brown in a behind-the-scenes take for the New Yorker. Humankind’s first test of deflecting celestial bodies was years in the making, over in moments and a success: On September 26, the craft struck its target at almost 22,000 kilometers per hour, changing the asteroid’s orbit more than would have been needed had it actually been on a collision course with Earth.
A final gift
On several college campuses, there are secluded, wooded areas where bodies are decomposing. Known as body farms, these research programs allow microbiologists, anthropologists and other scientists to examine how a person becomes mere bones. The scene might seem ghoulish, but Abby Ohlheiser’s story for MIT Technology Review — which details steps from donation to decomposition — reveals the respect shown to each donor and what their gift can teach the living.
Art & science
CREDIT: RANDY FULLBRIGHT / FULLBRIGHT STUDIOS
Bone to pick
If a dinosaur died and were quickly covered by mud — perhaps because the creature lived in the water — it might be fortunate enough to last an eternity. The spongelike pockets within its bones and teeth would fill with moisture, carrying particles of minerals. If that water were particularly rich in silica, the bone might become quartz, which is what you see arcing and undulating in this photo of a 60-times magnified fossil.
Snapped by Randy Fullbright of Fullbright Studios in Utah, the image took 13th place in this year’s Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. Every winner is an extreme close-up, often exposing the ordinary as extraordinary: A 63-times magnification of a human tongue cell shows a swarm of bacteria; a 10-times magnification of moth eggs could pass for a delicate and expensive dessert. Peruse these and other winners yourself and read more about some of the images at Science News.
