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Scientific American
7 days ago
- Science
- Scientific American
The LIGO Lab Is Pushing the Boundaries of Gravitational-Wave Research
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Today we're leaving the podcast studio to take you on a field trip to the LIGO Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We're going to chat with Matthew Evans, MIT's MathWorks professor of physics, all about the hunt for gravitational waves. You'll notice that the sound quality isn't up to our usual standard, but that's because we were right there in the lab, surrounded by big, loud science machines. If you want to see all that cool stuff for yourself, head over to our YouTube channel for an extended video version of this episode. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Here's our conversation with Matt. Thanks so much for joining us. Matt Evans: Thank you for having me. Feltman: So a few years ago we heard a lot about gravitational waves all of a sudden—many of us had not heard of them before that. Evans: Mm-hmm. Feltman: Could you remind us what they are and what happened that was so exciting? Evans: Yeah, so I guess that was almost 10 years ago now, so ... Feltman: Well, that's wild. I don't want to think about that [laughs]. Evans: [Laughs]2016 was when the announcement was made; 2015 was the discovery. And that was the first time that we had detected gravitational waves, despite the fact that we'd been working for many years on the detectors. That was the moment when we were upgrading to the Advanced LIGO detectors, and our first detection of gravitational waves was back in 2015. Feltman: And what is a gravitational wave? Evans: What is a gravitational wave? Well, the, the, like, really concise answer is: it's a ripple in spacetime. And then one could ask, 'Why would we care about a ripple in spacetime? How can we even detect such a thing?' You don't think of your life as going around measuring spacetime. But it turns out that for us that just means th at things move around, and so our detectors are made with big mirrors, which are heavy masses, and when these gravitational waves pass by they move the mirrors in our detectors. So fundamentally, it's a wiggling of, of space, a wiggling of our detector, that we don't explain by anything else going on around. Feltman: And so what is LIGO? How did it make it possible for us to finally detect gravitational waves? Evans: So LIGO is an interferometer. It's based on a concept from, what, the 1800s of interferometry, where you can make a very sensitive measurement of the position of some object by using light waves, and the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors are basically gigantic interferometers. And what we're interfering, in our case, are two laser beams, and they look for a change in the position of the mirrors that are far away from a beam splitter—so far away in this case is two and a half miles, or four kilometers—and a passing gravitational wave will move our mirrors around, and we're looking for that motion. So we start out with a laser, which is at our corner building—it's sort of the, sort of central location of LIGO—and we send that laser down to two buildings that are far away; these are the end stations. They're each two and a half miles away from the corner, and they're L-shaped, like this vacuum system you see behind us. Those two laser beams return back to the central station, and the two laser beams are made of electromagnetic waves, and those waves interfere on a beam splitter when they meet on that mirror. This mirror reflects half of the light in this direction and half of the light in that direction. And depending on the relative phase, or relative timing, of these two waves, the light will either go that way or go this way. And we're just detecting the amount of light that comes out one side of our detector, and that's our interferometer allowing us to measure the distance, but that measurement is on the scale of the wavelength of light, so micron scale. Feltman: And so what are we in front of right now? Evans: Yeah, so this is a prototype here, here at MIT, where we test components before they go to the LIGO observatories, and this is like a little mini LIGO here. So we have a large chamber for putting our isolation systems and our mirrors; that's where we test out the first suspension systems. These tubes [are] where we propagate our laser beams. We have a smaller chamber down there, which you'll see is not very small, but it's for testing the smaller suspension systems where we hang mirrors. Our suspensions and isolation systems are all to keep our mirrors from moving by the ground shaking, essentially, 'cause we want them to be as still as possible so that when they do move we'll know that it's from a gravitational wave and not from a truck or the Red Line or whatever else. Feltman: Yeah, can you give us a sense of how sensitive these instruments need to be to avoid picking up noise and actually find gravitational-wave ripples in spacetime? Evans: Yeah, so the answer is mind-blowingly sensitive, and I'll try to put this in, in scale. So the LIGO detectors should be able to measure a motion of the, the mirrors that are four kilometers away from the central building on a scale of about 1,000th the size of a proton, so this is—10 -18 meters is roughly the, the scale here. And it's beyond microscopic; it's [a] subatomic level of measurement. The only way that we get away with that is [we're] measuring a large surface of the mirror and we're averaging over many, many atoms, and that's how we can measure the average position to a level that's much smaller than the atomic size. Feltman: And the MIT LIGO is not the only LIGO. Can you remind us why that is? Evans: Ah, yeah, so, so first, just to be super clear, this is a place where we prototype stuff ... Feltman: Right, yeah. Evans: We don't detect gravitational waves here. So the same sort of operation is at Caltech; there's the Caltech LIGO Lab. And it's where a lot of the engineering and administrative staff are. They also have a big research staff there. And again, the idea is to build up systems, which then get delivered to the observatories. There are two of those: one is in Washington State, and one is in Louisiana. Feltman: So speaking of prototypes, what has LIGO been up to since that big detection news 10 years ago? Evans: So the big detection happened after we had gotten—some of the things you see here are the prototypes that went in to make Advanced LIGO possible, and that's what made that first detection possible. Since then we've been working on—I think the highlight for MIT is quantum technologies, so we've been working on squeezed light sources. And the idea here is that if we modify the quantum state of our interferometer, we can lower the noise at the readout and detect gravitational waves from more distant sources. Feltman: Cool, and what would that allow us to do? Evans: The farther away you can detect a source, like a binary black hole system coalescing, the more of them you can see. And we have this feature that our detection rate goes with the volume of space we're sensitive to, so if we make the detectors twice as sensitive, they also see twice as far, which gives us eight times larger volume, and we get a lot more events to look at. So right now we're at roughly an event per week, whereas when we first started we were at one event, if you're lucky, in a year. Feltman: And so for, you know, the average person who's maybe interested in space but doesn't know a ton about gravitational waves, why is it important that we look for these events? Evans: So we are detecting, right now, binary systems, and these can be pairs of, of black holes, pairs of neutron stars or a mix-and-match black hole-neutron star system, so a mixed pair. And the interesting thing about these sources is that these are the remnants of big stars ... So large stars that have burned their fuel and collapsed make neutron stars and black holes. And we can detect individual sources from very far away, so 'high redshift' in astro-speak. And with future detectors we'll be able to get really to the edge of the known universe in terms of our ability to detect these sources. These are essentially the stellar graveyard—so the place where big stars go to die. And by detecting these sources, individual sources, we can actually learn about the stellar graveyard and in, in that way about the stars that exist and existed in the universe. Feltman: Very cool. So what's next for LIGO? Evans: So LIGO is working on the next upgrade. We upgrade these detectors regularly; it's really still a new technology—it's only 10 years since the first detection. And we work on making the detectors better as a matter of course. We're always trying to make them better. The next upgrade will be to put in better mirrors. Essentially, again, we're averaging over the surface, over the mirror, to make this measurement. We need a really good surface, and that comes down to the coatings we put on the mirrors, so we're putting in better mirrors with better coatings. That's the next thing. We'll be working on improving our squeezed light source to lower the quantum noise in the detector. So basically incremental improvements to the current detectors. We'll then be working on a relatively large upgrade on a timescale of five years from now and from there incremental upgrades, essentially, for the lifetime of those detectors. And that lifetime is really until we get a next-generation detector going. Feltman: Mm. Evans: And I'm wearing the shirt of Cosmic Explorer here, which is the—our idea for the next generation of detectors. Feltman: Yeah, tell me about Cosmic Explorer. What's gonna be different about those detectors? Evans: Well, over 10 years ago now—and this is in 2014—we realized that we were never gonna be clever enough to really do everything we wanted to do with the current facilities ... Feltman: Mm. Evans: And we were going to have to build bigger detectors at some point. And so over the last—a little more than a decade we've been developing the idea of what these new, bigger detectors would look like, and that's developing this thing called Cosmic Explorer. It's like a supersized LIGO—factor of 10 larger, so 25 miles [about 40 kilometers] on a side. Feltman: Wow. Evans: And as things go roughly a factor of 10 more sensitive. With these detectors we could detect events from throughout the universe. Feltman: Wow, and what's ... Evans: Yeah, wow [laughs]. Feltman: The timeline looking at [laughs]—looking like for that? Evans: At this particular moment in history it's hard to say. Feltman: Sure. Evans: I will go ahead and be optimistic, and I'll say early 2030s we could be building and mid- to late 2030s we could be detecting. And we hope that the LIGO detectors will still be operating and turning out great results into sort of 2040 ... Feltman: Yeah. Evans: So we'd have a, a good handoff to the new detectors as they come online in the late 2030s. Feltman: What's on your wish list for, you know, the kinds of science that might become possible with Cosmic Explorer? Evans: So once we're detecting sources out to high redshift—so we really get a sample of everything that's out there in the universe—we get to learn about how, you know, stars have evolved not just around us, the local universe, but even at the peak of star formation, so z of 2, and then farther out towards the beginnings of star formation, when the first stars were being formed. The heaviest of stars came from those times. So we really get to have a kind of cross section of the evolution of the universe going back in time. And in astronomy there's always this feature that the farther away you look, the farther back in time you're looking. Feltman: Yeah. Evans: So we get to look back towards the beginning of the universe, in some sense, with gravitational waves as we look at these sources that are farther and farther away. With Cosmic Explorer we'll have not just one or two but hundreds of thousands of sources from the distant universe. So it's a really exciting way to explore the universe as a whole by looking at this stellar graveyard. Feltman: And for you personally, you know, what questions really motivate you? Why are you so curious about this? Evans: So my history is instrument science. I've always worked with the lasers and the electronics and the mechanical systems; that's where my love of the thing began. And I see Cosmic Explorer as really an extension of our first attempt. The LIGO detectors are the first attempt—first successful attempt, at least to detect gravitational waves, and Cosmic Explorer is the natural [next] iteration of that, where we get to apply all the lessons we've learned from these detectors to make the next generation, which is a much better detector technologically and, and incorporates now decades' worth of, of learning in—on, on the instrument side ... Feltman: Yeah. Evans: And of course, I'm also excited about the astrophysics we do, but for me the first love of that is really the instrument side. So it's a natural extension of everything we've learned over the last decade. Feltman: Yeah, well, and speaking of, you know, the instrument side, the data, the astrophysics, one of the things that I remember most about that initial gravitational-wave detection were just how many people were involved in the paper tied to the announcement—I think there were more than 1,000 co-authors of, of that paper. How many people are, are working on LIGO, on average? Evans: So it's a very interesting question 'cause if you go to the, the number of people you saw on the author list of that first paper, that's the LIGO Scientific Collaboration ... Feltman: Right. Evans: And also Virgo, so the detector in, in Italy. And you get a, a large group of, of scientists—the whole community, essentially, of gravitational-wave scientists is really a global affair, and we're at something like 2,000 people now in that community, depending on how you draw the, the boundaries. The, the people working on the LIGO detector is a smaller group , maybe about 200 people, and many of those are at MIT or Caltech. So the next cut-down would be: 'How many people are actually at the observatories?' And there you get an even smaller number, maybe 50 at each observatory. Feltman: Mm. Evans: And then you say: 'Who's really, like, in the control room, turning the screws, making it better, doing the instrument science in the observatories?' Oftentimes those are graduate students and postdocs. Feltman: Yeah. Evans: So there you get to an even smaller number—five or 10. And of course, all the rest of the community is necessary for that work to be fruitful, but the number of people who are, are there actually with their hands on the machine is relatively small. And I, I point this out because often people think that the—you know, the graduate students will come in and say, 'What can I ever do that's impactful in such a large organization?' Feltman: Yeah. Evans: Well, the truth is that our students and our postdocs are very impactful, and, and they're the ones who are often the ones there, you know, really with their hands on the machine doing the work. Feltman: That's really cool. So obviously, it's really exciting to think about, you know, detecting more of the kinds of phenomena we've seen, seeing them farther out. Is there also any hope of detecting stuff we've never seen before? Evans: Yeah, so let me first say that I'm super excited about the stuff that we already know exists, and we can calculate rates for them, and for every binary black hole system we detect we find some interesting feature. And as we go from 100 detections to 100,000 detections there'll be really fun corner cases that we get to explore, so there will be new things even in our current population. Of course, we also would love to detect something that we've never seen before, but I have no idea how often they happen out in the universe, right? Maybe these are, you know, some strange kinds of supernova that admit copious gravitational waves or cosmic strings or any number of other things that we have not observed. I don't know what the rate will be, but they're very exciting sources, and we'd love to detect them. Feltman: So for folks who are like, 'I'm down here on Earth; what are these gravitational waves and their detection gonna do for me?' Evans: Mm-hmm. Feltman: Are there any exciting things that we might be able to learn from gravitational waves that'll have applications on Earth, besides just the awesome science we're figuring out? Evans: Yeah, so I'm, I'm sad to say we won't be making your cell phones better anytime soon, and I don't think that we'll be transmitting or receiving gravitational waves from your radio devices or using them for wireless or anything like that. However, first, I would say: learning about the universe is, in and of itself, for me, a great objective, and I think that's true for a lot of people ... Feltman: Sure, yeah. Evans: That learning about the universe is a, is a wonderful thing in its own right. However, we also do look at the, the spin-offs that could come from our technology. And we do work on high-precision lasers; we have helped companies develop higher-precision lasers that we then use, but they're used in other applications. Our squeezed light sources are sort of broadly applicable in quantum information and quantum computing. And so we see these spin-offs as interesting things, which are not our primary objective, but yeah, there are technological spin-offs that come from the development we do to make our detectors better. Feltman: Well, thank you so much for sitting down to chat with us and for showing us around. This has been really cool, and I'm really excited to, you know, see what happens when we can look back to the beginning of the universe. Evans: Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this really exciting science. Feltman: That's all for today's episode, but it doesn't have to be. We've posted an extended version over on our YouTube channel, so take a few minutes to go check that out. We'll be back on Friday with an episode I'm super excited to share with you. It's all about Dungeons and Dragons—and also science, I promise. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. See you on Friday!
Scientific American
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scientific American
Brains Process Speech and Singing Differently
Musicologists and neuroscientists have been trying to understand what turns speech into music. By , Allison Parshall, Fonda Mwangi & Madison Goldberg Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. We're wrapping up our week of summer reruns with one of my absolute favorite Science Quickly episodes. Back in October, SciAm associate news editor Allison Parshall took us on a fascinating sonic journey through the evolution of song. What turns speech into music, and why did humans start singing in the first place? A couple of 2024 studies offered a few clues. Allison, thanks for coming back on the pod. Always a pleasure to have you. Allison Parshall: Thanks for having me. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Feltman: So I hear we're going to talk about music today. Parshall: We are going to talk about music, my favorite topic; I think your favorite topic, too—I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth. Feltman: Yeah, I'm a fan, yeah. Parshall: Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I would love to know if you have a favorite folk song. Feltman: That is a really tough question because I love, you know, folk music and all of its weird modern subgenres. But if I had to pick one that jumps out that I'm like, 'I know this is genuinely at least a version of an old folk song and not, like, something Bob Dylan wrote,' would be 'In the Pines,' which I probably love mostly because I grew up kind of in the pines, in the [New Jersey] Pine Barrens, so feels, you know, appropriate. Parshall: Will you sing it for me? Feltman: Oh, don't make me sing, don't make me sing. Okay, yes. Parshall: Yay, okay! I'm sat. Feltman (singing): ' In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don't even shine / I'd shiver the whole night through / My girl, my girl, don't lie to me / Tell me, 'Where did you sleep last night?'' That's it; that's the song. Parshall: Clapping, yay! Oh, that was lovely. Honestly, I didn't know if I expected you to sing it. Feltman: If you ask me to sing, I'm gonna sing. Parshall: I'm very happy. Well, I will not be singing my favorite folk song—I don't even know if it qualifies as a folk song—but my grandma used to sing us a lullaby, and that lullaby was 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic,' like, 'Mine eyes have seen the glory,' or whatever. Yeah, so I think that's my favorite one, but I don't know if it qualifies. [CLIP: 'Handwriting,' by Frank Jonsson ] Parshall: But I'm definitely not the only person, like, asking this question; I'm asking it to you for a reason. There's this group of musicologists from around the world that have been basically going around to each other and asking each other the same thing: 'Can you sing me a traditional song from your culture?' And they're in search of the answer to this really fundamental question about music, which is: 'Why do humans across the whole world, in every culture, sing?' This is something that musicologists and evolutionary biologists have been asking for centuries, like, at least as far back as Darwin. And this year we had two cool new cross-cultural studies that have helped us get a little bit closer to an answer. And actually they've really changed how I think about the way that we humans communicate with one another, so I'm really happy to tell you about them. Feltman: Yeah, why do we sing? What theories are we working with? Parshall: Well, okay, so there's generally two schools of thought. One is that singing is kind of an evolutionary accident—like, we evolved to speak, which is genuinely evolutionarily helpful, and then singing kind of just came along as a bonus. Feltman: That is a pretty sweet bonus. Parshall: I agree. It's like we get the vocal apparatus to do the speaking, and then the singing comes along. And the people who buy into this theory like to say that music is nothing more than, quote, 'auditory cheesecake,' which is a turn of phrase that has long irked Patrick Savage. He's a comparative musicologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Patrick Savage: It's just like a drug or a cheesecake: It's nice to have, but you don't really need it. It could vanish from existence, and no one would care, you know? So that kind of pisses off a lot of us who care deeply about music and think it has deep value. But it's kind of a challenge—like, can we show that there are any real, consistent differences between music and language? Parshall: Savage took this challenge very seriously because, if you couldn't tell, he belongs to the other school of thought about music's origins: that singing served some sort of evolutionary purpose in its own right, that it wasn't just a bonus. And if that were true, if music weren't just a by-product of language but played, like, an actual role in how we evolved, you'd expect to see similarities across human societies in what singing is and how it functions in a way that is different from speech. Feltman: Yeah, that makes sense and also sounds like an extremely massive research project. [CLIP: 'None of My Business,' by Arthur Benson ] Parshall: Yeah, I don't envy them the job of having to go around and try to perfectly represent the globe, but they made a solid attempt. They got to work recruiting colleagues to submit samples of them singing a traditional tune of their choice. And through what I can only describe as a truly heroic act of coordination—I can only imagine the e-mail threads—he and a small team of collaborators received data from 75 total participants from 55 language backgrounds and all six populated continents. Feltman: Wow. Parshall: So each participant submitted four recordings: one of them singing the traditional tune, another one where they play it on an instrument, another one where they speak the lyrics and another one where they speak naturally—just basically giving a natural language sample of them describing the song that they picked. And Savage himself picked the tune that you might recognize called 'Scarborough Fair.' Let me play that for you. [CLIP: Patrick Savage sings 'Scarborough Fair'] Feltman: It's a classic choice—can't knock it. Parshall: Yeah, and I'm not immune to a little 'Scarborough Fair.' There were also more upbeat tunes that some of the English-speaking contributors submitted. [CLIP: Tecumseh Fitch sings 'Rovin' Gambler'] Parshall: It makes me want to slap my knee and, like, play a fiddle. But that one was from Tecumseh Fitch. He's an American biologist currently at the University of Vienna. And this next one that I picked to show you comes from Marin Naruse of the Amami Islands off southern Japan. She's actually a professional singer and cultural ambassador for the region. [CLIP: Marin Naruse sings 'Asabanabushi'] Parshall: That vocal-flipping technique I just thought was so cool. And I was also totally taken by this next one from Neddiel Elcie Muñoz Millalonco. She's an Indigenous researcher and traditional singer from Chiloé Island in Chile, and here she is singing a traditional Huilliche song. [CLIP: Neddiel Elcie Muñoz Millalonco sings 'Ñaumen pu llauken' ('Joy for the Gifts')] Parshall: So that's just a little taste of what this data is like. There's way more where that came from, and it's all publicly available too, so you can check it out yourself. But the researchers after this, when they got the samples, got to work analyzing it. So hats off to Yuto Ozaki of Keio University in Japan. He's the lead author of the study, and to hear Pat Savage tell it, he spent, like, months just processing these audio files full time. So by comparing the singing samples to the speech samples and then comparing those differences with each other, the researchers found that songs tended to be different than speech in a few key ways: they were slower, they were higher-pitched, and they had more stable pitches than speech. [CLIP: 'The Farmhouse,' by Silver Maple ] Feltman: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Parshall: Yeah, like, if you think about the way that maybe a lot of us think about the differences between singing and speech—which, again, we can't fully trust because there's so many different ways to sing and speak around the world—but it generally takes more time to sing a lyric than to speak it because we're lingering on each note for longer. And because we're lingering that means we're able to settle on specific pitches, like, instead of—where I'm speaking, I have this kind of low rumble that settles for less time on any specific pitch. I could also go dooo, and that is, for the most part, like, one specific pitch. It's less upsy and downsy. And then, also, we generally sing with higher pitches than we speak. Feltman: Yeah, why is that? Parshall: Maybe because when we speak we're kind of in this narrow, comfortable window toward the bottom of our vocal range. Like, right now, the way I'm speaking, I could go a little bit lower, but I couldn't go very much lower, whereas if I'm singing, I can go, like, octaves higher, probably, than the way I'm speaking right now. I think it's partly just the way that we're built, but singing opens up that upper range to us—like, you know, the mi mi mi mi mi mi mi of it all. So these differences where we're hearing, you know, slower speeds, higher pitches, those are all interesting, but they feel kind of intuitive, and I didn't have a great way to understand what they were telling me kind of as a whole until I learned about this next study that I'm going to tell you about. Feltman: Ooh, so what did they find? Parshall: So this one actually had more of a neuroscience focus, whereas the other one was a little bit more anthropological. This one was conducted by Robert Zatorre of McGill University in Montréal and his colleagues. His team has been asking basically the same question as Savage's team but in a different way. So that's: Can we find commonalities in how cultures around the world speak versus how they sing? Robert Zatorre: Do they have some kind of basic mechanism that all humans share? Or is it rather that they're purely cultural sort of artifacts—each culture has a way of speaking and a way of producing music, and there's really nothing in common between them? As a neuroscientist, what interests me in particular is whether there are brain mechanisms in common. Parshall: And Zatorre wasn't going into this from scratch. His own research and research of others had shown that the left and right hemispheres of the brain might be involved differently in speaking versus singing. Zatorre: An oversimplified version would be to say that speech depends on mechanisms in the left hemisphere of the brain, and music depends more on mechanisms in the right hemisphere of the brain. But I say that's oversimplified because it wouldn't really be correct to say that. Parshall: So what is correct, though, according to Zatorre, is that there are certain acoustic qualities common in speech that are parsed on the left side of our brain and other acoustic qualities common in singing that are parsed on the right side. Feltman: So pretty much all I know about left versus right brain is all the debunked stuff about being, like, left-brained or right-brained as a personality type. So could you unpack the actual neuroscience here a little bit? Parshall: Yeah, the whole, like, 'Oh, I'm left-brained. Oh, I'm right-brained,' that's mostly been debunked. But it's true that parts of the two sides of the brain do specialize in totally different things sometimes, and here's what that means for processing sound. [CLIP: 'Let There Be Rain,' by Silver Maple ] Parshall: Speech contains a lot of time-based, or temporal, information, meaning that the signal of what you hear, even as I'm talking now, is changing from, like, millisecond to millisecond and, importantly, that those changes are meaningful. Like, each letter or phoneme that I'm pronouncing goes by super quickly, but if I swapped one for the other—like said 'bat' instead of 'cat'—that would totally change the meaning, and that happens super quick. So those tiny time frames really matter when we're talking about speech, and that kind of quick-changing information is processed more on the left side of the brain. Singing, on the other hand, contains a lot of spectral information, which is processed more on the right side of the brain. So when I say 'spectral,' I'm referring to the spectrum of sound waves from super low pitch to, like, super high. Those aren't at all encompassing of the spectrum. Feltman: Yeah, that was the whole spectrum of sound. Parshall: I can go way lower than—yeah, it goes way lower than what you think you're hearing and way higher than what you think you're hearing. But that information of that spectrum, it kind of contains the 'color,' or the timbre, that allows you to distinguish between, for example, a saxophone and a clarinet or even, you know, your voice and my voice if you were listening. You can really hear this difference in some audio samples that Zatorre sent over from his studies. So basically, for one of these studies, they hired a soprano to sing some melodies and then used computer algorithms to mess with the quality of her voice. So here's the original audio. [CLIP: Audio of singing from a study by Zatorre and his colleagues: 'I think she has a soft and lovely voice.'] Parshall: Then they digitally altered the recordings to degrade that temporal, or timing, information. That's kind of like the musical equivalent of slurring your speech or the audio equivalent of making an image blurry. They basically make all of those time cues that are so important for speech blur into each other. [CLIP: Same audio from the study with temporal degradation] Feltman: Ooh, freaky. Parshall: Yeah, it's, like, delightfully alien, I would say. You'll notice that you actually can't hear the lyrics, but you can still kind of hear the melody, right? You could probably distinguish it from another melody, and that's not the case when you do something different and instead of the temporal information, you degrade the spectral information—that's the sound's color. So here's what it sounds like when they take out all that spectral information. [CLIP: Same audio from the study with spectral degradation] Feltman: Whoa. Parshall: Yeah, like, the only thing I can compare it to are, like, the Daleks from Doctor Who. Feltman: Totally, yeah. Parshall: I love it, and I hate it. So in this one you can hear the lyrics, but you can't hear the melody at all. So it's kind of the inverse. And you can hear that both of these dimensions of sound—the temporal and the spectral—are really important for both song and speech. Like, you would not want to listen to my voice for very long if I sounded like a Dalek. But generally speech relies more on that temporal information, and song relies more on the spectral information. Feltman: And this is true across different cultures, too? Parshall: Yeah, so in a study published this summer, Zatorre's team found that this distinction holds true across 21 cultures, and they surveyed urban, rural and smaller-scale societies from around the world. And despite how different some of these languages and singing traditions are from each other, it held true that songs had more spectral information and speech had more temporal information overall. And so, since we can link these differences to different methods of processing in the brain, there's actually a potential biological mechanism in humans that separates music from speech. Zatorre: So the story we're trying to tell is that we have two communication systems that are kind of parallel: one is speaking; [the] other is music. And our brains have two separate specializations: one for music, one for speech. But it's not for music or for speech per se; it's for the acoustics that are most relevant for speech versus the acoustics that are most relevant for music. Parshall: Yeah, and it kind of makes sense to me that we'd have these two parallel communication systems because they basically allow us two separate channels to convey totally different types of information. And, like, imagine how long this podcast would be if I sang everything instead of speaking it. And then imagine that I couldn't incorporate language at all, like, via lyrics, and I just had to do it with notes. That's just impossible—unless we came up with some elaborate code. But then also imagine trying to sit here and explain to me your favorite song in words and all the feelings it brings up for you and why you love it. Like, could you do that? Feltman: Probably not. It would be really hard. Parshall: Probably not. It's conveying—there's, like, something extra that you're conveying with song that just resists being conveyed via speech. So all that to say, 'auditory cheesecake,' quote, unquote—music as this little accidental cherry on top of language—that doesn't seem to be the right way of thinking about why we sing. Here's Savage again. Savage: It suggests that it's not just a by-product—like, there's something that is causing them to be consistently different in all these different cultures. Like, they're kind of functionally specialized for something. But what that something is is very speculative. [CLIP: 'Those Rainy Days,' by Elm Lake ] Parshall: That speculative X factor that he's talking about, that reason why we evolved to sing, if you had to come up with a theory, Rachel, what would it be? Feltman: I mean, when I think about reasons to sing that I, like, can't imagine humanity just not doing, I don't know—I picture people soothing babies; people celebrating with each other; people, like, engaging in spiritual practice; like, standing outside a crush's window with a boom box. Singing is a thing we do to get each other's attention and share an emotional experience. Parshall: Yeah, I think that sharing feels really important, and I feel like I have a similar intuition. And that's basically what Savage thinks, too: that music has played some sort of social role. So that could be really wholesome, like the boom box or us bonding together, singing songs around a campfire. Or—I mean, it could be less wholesome. It could be, like, us singing war songs before we do battle with our enemies. This is one of those evolutionary hypotheses, as many of them are, that it's kind of impossible to fully prove or disprove. It's really hard to get evidence that would be able to say, 'Oh, we sing because it, you know, bonds us closer together.' But it's very compelling. Feltman: Yeah. So just to recap: we know that we have these two very different ways, from a neuroscience perspective, of conveying information. We've got this, you know, melodic musical, and then we've got this, like, very straightforward speech. And sure, we can't go back in a time machine and ask, you know, our distant ancestors, 'Why're you singing? Why're you doing that?' So what's next? How do we move this research forward? Parshall: It can be a little tricky, obviously, to come up with specific proof, but one of Savage's co-authors is hoping to find some clues in an upcoming experiment. So her name is Suzanne Purdy, and she's a psychologist also at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. And she's involved with something called the CeleBRation Choir. And this choir is super cool because it's made up of people [with communication difficulties, including people] who have what's called aphasia, so their ability to speak has been impacted by events like a stroke or like Parkinson's. But one of the very interesting things about aphasia is, oftentimes, people's ability to sing remains intact. So that might be because it is relying on different parts of the brain—you know, more varied parts of the brain—than speech does. Suzanne Purdy: When being with the CeleBRation Choir, with people struggling to communicate verbally, but then hearing them sing, [it's] so beautiful and amazing. And our research has shown how it's therapeutic in terms of feeling connected and valuable and able to be in a room and impress people with your singing, even when something terrible has happened in your life. Parshall: So I actually have a recording to share with you of the choir because I think it's super cool. [CLIP: The CeleBRation Choir sings 'Celebration,' by Ben Fernandez ] Parshall: So partly inspired by her experiences with the CeleBRation Choir, Purdy and her team are currently developing an experiment where they test whether singing can actually make us feel more connected to each other. So they're going to bring in students and have them sing together and then compare that to the experiences of students who have just talked together in a group. And then they'll measure their feelings of connectedness to each other. And they're planning to actually do this cross-culturally, too. So they're going to do this for groups of Māori students, Māori being the Indigenous people of New Zealand, and then students of European descent to see if there are any cultural differences in the impact of singing together. Purdy: It's the kind of thing that, you know, companies do with team-building exercises. They don't usually get people to sing, do they? But they do get people to problem-solve or to talk together. So this—part of this next phase is: Can you achieve the same level of social cohesion through just coming together with a shared purpose without singing? Or does the singing add a special quality, and is that more effective? Parshall: Okay, I can't tell if the idea of a company team-building choir sounds fun or like the worst idea ever, but I do have a feeling that it would be kind of effective. Feltman: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's not so different from a karaoke night. And, you know, what brings people together more than a karaoke night? Parshall: That's a good point. Why did I not think of karaoke night? Okay, we're gonna have to go to our boss with this one. I think it could be really fun. It is just still a hypothesis whether music really did evolve—or singing, specifically, really did evolve to bond us together. Like, again, this is not something we have necessarily a lot of proof for. And even if this study that Purdy is developing comes up and shows, you know, these groups of students did feel more bonded together when they sang versus when they spoke, that's still only just, like, a little bit of clues and proof. Feltman: Right, that could just show that we gained this incredible benefit from singing over time. It doesn't necessarily tell us that that's why it evolved. Parshall: Right. But then I'm always fighting against myself—the instinct to be like, 'Oh, but it's true,' because it feels true, right? Feltman: It does feel true. Parshall: Like, based off of my personal experience and a lot of people around me, it feels like, you know, when you're in a concert and you look around and you feel, like, the oneness of the world when you're all singing together in this packed stadium, music, regardless of what science shows, it does have these effects on us personally. Feltman: Yeah, and we can definitely get a better understanding of why it's so important. Parshall: Yeah, like, regardless of how we got here, regardless of how we evolved, we can still look at the impact it has on us now. Feltman: It's interesting, I've been thinking this whole time—my sister does shape-note singing, which is this old musical notation style that was basically created so that people who were not otherwise musically literate could, like, all come and sing together in a group at, like, a moment's notice. And it has, like, a big following these days, and people just get together and open these giant old books of, like, mostly Shaker songs and stuff. And I find the shape-note stuff very confusing. It's very confusing until you learn it, and then it's allegedly easier than reading other music. Feltman: But yeah, it's just amazing how connected people feel within, like, five minutes of sitting down together and singing together. We don't need researchers to tell us that that's a universal experience, but I think it's awesome that they're asking these questions to help us understand, you know, just why music is so important to us. Allison, thank you so much for coming in to chat about this and for sharing all of these lovely musical snippets. I think that was my favorite part. Parshall: Thank you so much for having me. Feltman: That's all for today's episode, and that's a wrap on our week of greatest hits. We'll be back next week with something new. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. Today's episode was reported and co-hosted by Allison Parshall. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great weekend!
Scientific American
07-07-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
This Astronaut's Space Photography Puts Fireworks to Shame
We spoke with NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick in an exclusive, first-ever interview from the cupola of the International Space Station. By Kelso Harper, Fonda Mwangi & Jeffery DelViscio NASA: Scientific American, this is Mission Control, Houston. Rachel Feltman: Station, this is Scientific American. How do you hear me? Matthew Dominick: Loud and clear. Welcome to the cupola on the space station. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. For the next few days we're doing something a little different. We're going to use this week to share reruns of three of our favorite episodes from the past year. First up we've got a chat with a guy who just needs a little space. Back in September we rang up the International Space Station for a live video convo with Matthew Dominick. At the time he was serving as the commander and flight engineer of NASA's SpaceX Crew-8 mission—and spent a lot of his downtime taking and sharing stunning photos, videos and time-lapses from orbit. In fact, his video call with Science Quickly marked the first ever interview from the cupola. If you wanna see the video —which, trust me, you definitely do—check out our show notes for a link to the whole interview on YouTube. Matt, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today. Dominick: So excited to do so. Feltman: Yeah, so where exactly are you, are you calling in from? Because I understand it's a, a pretty big deal—and not just because you're in space right now. Dominick: Awesome. We're trying out something new today. We're on the International Space Station, of course, but we're in the cupola, which is one of the astronauts' favorite places and—to hang out. It's a seven-windowed environment on the bottom of the space station, so when you see us, you know, we kind of look upside down relative to Earth. But that's how we come in: our head is going down towards the Earth, and we get to look out and see our beautiful Earth through these seven windows. In the view right now you're seeing four of those windows. And as we go through this conversation, we get to see a dynamic event, which is sunset. So I could take days and days to describe it, but—which is one of the reasons that drives me to do so much photography, 'cause—to just try and capture what we see. But super excited to come to you from the cupola today. Feltman: Awesome, yeah, and I understand it took some, like, special equipment, some new window filters to make this possible. Could you tell me more about why that is? Dominick: Oh, absolutely. It's incredibly bright—in fact, right now as we're going through sunset, if you're watching on video, the sun is coming up on the right-hand side of my face. It's really bright as we're getting close to sunset, and the—through the course of our conversation today, we'll go from, you know, a full day to full night. And we'll see the darkness—the 'terminator,' we call it; the day-night transition—come over the top of me, and so I'm gonna just close [laughs] one of our shutters right now to protect the right side of my face from the searing sun and turn on a light. But the cupola is really bright, and we, we recently got something shipped up to us called neutral-density filters, and [they're] these little films that we put over the windows—for photography nerds these are four stops. So these are—these provide four stops of, of exposure change that we're able to put in front of the windows to help expose—for pictures, if we want to take a picture of something both inside the cupola but also be able to see the Earth on the outside. So we're trying that out today. Feltman: Very cool. Now speaking of photography nerds, you're an engineer, a pilot and of course, an astronaut, but you're also a prolific photographer. So how did you get into photography? Dominick: So many paths led to that. I mean, to start when I was young, my dad was a photographer and a journalist and producer-director for, for local stuff growing up in Colorado. He actually started doing that in the Air Force—he was a photographer, ran a motion picture unit for the United States Air Force. And just seeing how he took photographs and, and how he composed things and, and cropped things and set up shots—I didn't do a lot of it growing up, but I was around it. And then joining NASA, we got, we got trained by our, our photo/TV department how to take pictures, and then there's some very distinct moments I remember as part of my spaceflight—now we've been up here for five or six months ago—but things that really stick in my mind: you know, obviously the rocket lifting you off the launchpad, but that first time floating out of your seat and going to the window, I immediately wanted to just spend [laughs] so much time trying to capture what I saw with my eye with a camera. I feel immense responsibility to share what we see. So few people are lucky enough to come up into space, I feel an immense obligation to take pictures and share everything we see with the world. And with the tools we have, the cameras we have up here, doing my absolute best to try and share what we see with the world. Feltman: And how different is it taking photos in space versus on Earth? Dominick: Oh, man, there are good parts, and there are hard parts. The dynamic component of the lighting is really a challenge. But you're also lucky that, you know, we—in photography they talk about the golden hour, or right there at, at sunrise or sunset. Folks like to take a lot of pictures at those times; the lighting is just incredible. And we're lucky to get 16 of those a day. We're going [about] 17,500 miles an hour. We're making a lap around the Earth every 90 minutes. So if I don't get the lighting right or the setup right on a pass, I can wait 90 minutes, and I'll get a chance to do it again. In fact, we're going through it right now—right above the top of my head, it's getting dark very quickly. The sun is searing out the right side of this hatch. But shooting in space can also be a challenge because you're shooting through windows. And so you have to manage a lot of odd reflections, and so we have shrouds that we put up around the cameras to kind of block out interior lights from reflections. Shooting through the glass can be troublesome. You know, and you have to shoot really fast shutter speeds sometimes just because we're going so fast. Folks who do astrophotography on Earth might be able to expose 10, 15 seconds without seeing star trails, depending on what lenses they're using. Up here, you know, I was [taking] pictures the other day; in a half-second exposure I was seeing streaks in city lights. So it presents some unique challenges, but we have great instructors that teach us how to do it, and it's a lot of fun. Feltman: Very cool. Do you use any special equipment? Dominick: So much—so many cool toys. I'm a giant nerd. I'm willing to admit it ... Feltman: [Laughs] Dominick: We recently, you know, we—[laughs] I'm totally willing to admit it. We have, you know, these big full-frame mirrorless cameras. This is an 85mm lens, super-fast lens: 1.4. That's super fun. You know, we have cameras that are great for taking pictures of the Earth during the daytime. This is one of those. This is a 50-500 zoom lens. Love using this guy for daytime photography—super versatile. We got a new lens, and so I've been posting a lot of images online with this lens. It's a 15mm lens that's super fast. It doesn't use f-stops, it uses T-stops, but it's about an f/1.2 or 1.4, and it's a T1.8. Love this thing. This has yielded so many incredible photographs. So lots of great equipment up here and lots of practice. And luckily it's not analog anymore, so you can shoot a lot and not feel too bad about wasting film. Feltman: Totally. So I know there are, like, pretty strict rules about how much weight an astronaut can bring up into space. Did you have to make any tough decisions about what equipment to bring with you? Dominick: Luckily all the photo/TV equipment is provided through, through the International Space Station. That's up here already. We don't bring our own equipment. It's all up here already, and we share it and pass it around, and, you know, it's a blast. We have an incredible set of equipment. In fact, these—we get new equipment all the time. This lens just came up maybe a month ago and a couple other lenses and so absolutely loving it. Feltman: Tell me more about training that you got specifically for space photography. You know, what kinds of new skills did you need to learn? What is—what does NASA want astronauts to know about taking photos in space? Dominick: I think the key to taking photos in space, or anywhere for that matter, is understanding the basics, right: how aperture, exposure, ISO and—how they all play together and how you trade those three. Because you never really quite know the exact situation you're gonna be in. NASA does a great job developing procedures for specific situations, but once you get in that lighting situation, you know, you gotta really understand how to manipulate those on the camera, what lens you're using to mix them together to get what you want. We do, you know, some artistic photography up here. I really like to take pictures of space station structure with the Earth in the background, the curvature of the Earth. In fact, watching right now, you're watching the sunset, which is amazing, right behind me. And this is a really dynamic event. You can see the darkness of night coming and taking over the day of the Earth. It's a really dynamic event. A sunset on Earth, you might have minutes. Here, you know, you have very little time to capture a sunset because you're going so fast. But NASA trains us those basics, and from those basics you can expand as far as you wanna go. They also teach us technical photography. We are up here conducting research in science. And so sometimes you have to take technical photographs to show the researchers on Earth what you're doing or what their—the result of their experiment. So we do a lot of macrophotography; we get in close. And we have a whole set of lenses and lights to take pictures both inside the space station and outside the space station. Feltman: What are some of your favorite things to photograph from the ISS? Dominick: I think my favorite thing is the thing I'm not expecting. The things that I do expect to see or hope to see a lot of is aurora. I love seeing lights from Earth reflected off station structure. I took a picture really recently that I absolutely love where aurora and city lights are reflecting off the blue solar arrays that are on the service module. I just love those reflections, the interaction of Earth lights reflecting off of station structure. But some of my favorite pictures are the ones I don't expect. I was in here with my crewmate Mike a couple weeks ago, and I don't remember what we were shooting. We were shooting something else, and all of a sudden I saw the moon getting ready to set. And I quickly grabbed a different camera, swapped the lenses, put the settings in and was shooting over Mike's shoulder and ended up getting a great exposure of, of the moon setting on the Earth and just loved it. And so the unexpected are some of my favorite shots. Feltman: Do you have a favorite photograph or time-lapse in particular from your time on ISS? Dominick: I think I'm gonna suffer from recency bias there. I have a lot of pictures. I do like to take a lot of candid pictures inside the space station of crewmates at work or, or catch them when they're having fun. But external photographs, I probably suffer from recency bias here. Just set up a time-lapse the other day, shooting one of my favorite things, which is Southeast Asia fishing boats. Actually, no, it wasn't that picture, sorry [laughs]. Shooting the Nile River. There's too many things to be excited about. I love shooting the Nile River at night or coming over Europe and seeing the Mediterranean and the Nile River. And we were coming up over Africa with lightning, and I love taking pictures of lightning. And we come up over the Nile River, and then we go over Israel—and it was a time-lapse. I was trying a new technique. I was trying to, you know, really crank the gain up and see what would happen with ISO and went to review the pictures later over the dinner table on the camera, and I was just blown away because I caught a meteor, a massive meteor, coming into the atmosphere out of just sheer luck and exploding in the atmosphere, and it just emits this giant green glow that was multiple sizes times bigger than Israel. And it was just an incredible, just lucky shot. So it's always something new. Feltman: What are you hoping that people think or feel when they see your images? Dominick: I feel like people are interested in what you're doing when you're interested in it and when you're talking about it and sharing it. And I just wanna share what we see. I feel this immense obligation to share what we're seeing up here in space. I'm super lucky to be here. Not a lot of people get to come up here, and I just wanna share with the world what humanity can do when they come together to do something. So many nations worked together to put together this International Space Station across seemingly impossible boundaries across nations, and look what we get to do and we get to see outside the window. And from the moment I first looked out the window, I wanted to try and capture what my eyeball sees, and I've yet to completely do it with the camera. It's very difficult. The human eye is really—can show such a deep dynamic range that I haven't been able to capture quite yet with the camera. But I want people to think whatever they wanna think. I just wanna share what I see. Feltman: Yeah. So you're coming to the end of your mission on ISS. What's something that you're really gonna miss when you're back on Earth? Dominick: So many things. I enjoy the short commute. I can wake up a couple minutes before the start of the day and be out of my crew quarters and at work in just a couple minutes [laughs]. And I get to float to work, which is super awesome. I love flipping. Why would you float straight when you can flip the whole time? So I spend a lot of time flipping everywhere on the space station. I'm gonna miss that immensely. I'm gonna miss having all of these cameras in my fingertips. It's amazing—I've got five or six cameras in my fingertips that I can choose from to take a shot. There, there's a lot of aspects of space I'm gonna miss. I—it's tough to nail one individual thing down. Feltman: What are you looking forward to back on Earth? Dominick: [Laughs] I mean, obviously I want to go be at home for a little bit of time with my wife and daughters. I would like to take a shower; I haven't taken a shower since March. I'm part of a research experiment where I don't use the treadmill up here, so I haven't walked since March. I'd like to walk maybe once or twice [laughs] or maybe a lot. But there's so many things. But I love, I love both places: I love the space station, and I love being on Earth. The Earth—when you look out these windows and you look at Earth, it just blows you away with its beauty. Feltman: Wow. I'd love to hear more about that research project. So how many months has it been since you walked again? Dominick: So as part of the research project, the last time I walked was when I walked into the spacecraft, the Dragon, in March. There's a treadmill up here that we use for working out, but I volunteered for a research program where I don't use the treadmill. I use our, our resistance device, our training device, and a bicycle. The reason being is a treadmill takes up a lot of space and a lot of mass that could be difficult on long-duration missions to the moon or to Mars. And so we wanna see what happens to the human body if you aren't exposed to that ambulation. Oh, by the way, the lighting is amazing right now. We're just now going through sunset here. And one of my favorite things to watch is the lighting on people's faces, so I've turned off the internal lights in here so you can just watch the lighting on someone's face during a sunset. I love watching it on my crewmates' faces. Feltman: Wow, very cool. So what do you think you're gonna photograph when you're back on Earth, you know, now that you've experienced space photography from space? Dominick: Well, NASA does this really cool thing to help us get better at photography and taking quick pictures, and that is: they let us borrow the cameras. And so I practice taking pictures of things that don't sit still, like my kids—oh, or other sporting events or those kinds of things that can be tricky. Those are kind of fun. Or just work at NASA or those kinds of things to keep your practice up. But there's so many beautiful things to take pictures on Earth, just as there are in space. Feltman: And other than photography, what's your favorite thing to do on ISS? Dominick: Favorite thing to do? I mean, other than photography—you're, you're asking me tough questions here, to rank and stack things. I really, like I said before, I love flipping and floating through the lab. I love playing in zero-g and just seeing how things react. And I don't need a lot to entertain me. A stick and some mud works on Earth sometimes. But one time I was up here just playing with a bolt and a nut and see how they spin and work together and see if you can catch the two. And it's just so much fun to play in zero-g—or play with water. Every time I talk with one of my daughters on video chat, she's always saying, 'Hey, Dad, do the water thing.' And we make big bubbles of water and play with them. And we don't just do those things when we're doing [Public Affairs Office] events; we do those things for fun 'cause it's so much fun to play with. Feltman: My last question is just: Is there anything you haven't gotten to photograph on ISS yet that you're hoping to catch while you're up there? Dominick: I'm planning to take some videos of just some basic physics things inside the space station that you can only do up here in zero-g. I'm thinking about how we're gonna do propellant transfer from one rocket to another, and I've been thinking about how you, you know, that's really important for the future of spaceflight right now. Rockets launch, and they use all their fuel, and they—you don't refuel in space as much. And we do have some small cases—in fact, the space station does on-orbit refueling—but refueling on large scales, and I've been t hinking about how you move fluids around. So making videos of how fluids move around in zero-g, among other things. I'm looking forward to making a lot of videos, to be honest. Feltman: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today and for, you know, pushing to help us see this space live. It's such a cool view, so I know I really appreciate it, and I'm sure everybody else watching does, too. Dominick: Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm, I'm super glad to share with you—you know, we started in the daytime. We went through this entire interview in the sunset, dynamic changes, and I think that really shows just kind of the environment we live in. And, you know, 30 minutes from now the sun's gonna be rising again, and we're gonna be in another sunrise. And it's super fun to be a part of and thankful that you would join us today. Feltman: That's all for today's summer rerun. Don't forget to check out an extended video version of the episode over on our YouTube channel; you can find a link to that in our show notes. If you're missing the usual Monday roundup, head on over to to read all the latest science news. We'll be back with another one of our greatest hits on Wednesday. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. NASA: Station, this is Houston ACR.
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First Post
04-07-2025
- General
- First Post
How did hot dogs become America's favourite July 4 meal?
From German street food to an American symbol, the hot dog's rise is a story of immigration, innovation and affordability. As Americans prepare to consume 150 million hot dogs this July 4, we trace how this humble sausage became the nation's favourite Independence Day meal — with Coney Island and Nathan's Famous at its heart read more People wear hot dog outfits, as they attend the 2024 Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, at Coney Island, in New York City, US, July 4, 2024. File Image/Reuters Though firmly associated with American traditions today, the hot dog's origins are rooted in centuries-old sausage culture from Europe — particularly Germany and Eastern Europe. Known in some regions as frankfurters or wieners, these encased meats made their way to the United States with German immigrants in the 1800s. Unlike modern hot dogs, which are often made of all-beef, the original German versions typically blended pork and beef. It was Jewish-American butchers, adhering to Kosher laws, who shifted to all-beef sausages — helping shape what would eventually become the standard American hot dog. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The portability and convenience of these sausages made them popular in bustling urban areas like New York, where street vendors could easily serve workers on the go. Their affordability and filling nature helped them gain a foothold among the working class, especially in industrial cities. The sausage's place in America's culinary canon was still far from secured, however. That began to change thanks to a pair of entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity on the beaches of Coney Island. The Coney Island revolution The first major step in the American hot dog story took place in 1867, when Charles Feltman, a Brooklyn baker, began selling sausages in specially designed long rolls from a converted pie cart along the shores of Coney Island. His hand-sliced buns were ideal for eating on the move, and the idea quickly caught on. According to Coney Island historian Michael Quinn, Feltman sold around 4,000 sausages during that inaugural summer. Recognising the potential, Feltman expanded rapidly, opening a large restaurant and resort complex called the Ocean Pavilion in 1873. With the help of Andrew Culver, president of the Prospect Park Railroad, a train line was extended to Coney Island, bringing thousands of New Yorkers to the area. The influx of visitors turned Coney Island into a prime destination for entertainment and leisure. Feltman's venue eventually served an estimated five million guests annually by the 1920s and reportedly sold 40,000 hot dogs daily at its peak. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Feltman's operation laid the foundation for what would become a national obsession. Yet it was a former employee of his who would ultimately take the hot dog to unprecedented popularity — and link it forever with American patriotism. The rise of Nathan's Famous In 1916, four years after arriving in the US through Ellis Island, Polish-Jewish immigrant Nathan Handwerker left Feltman's establishment and opened his own small hot dog stand, also on Coney Island. Competing directly with his former employer, Nathan made a bold move: he cut prices to just five cents per hot dog, undercutting the competition significantly. This strategy worked. 'The sidewalk out here was lined with people pushing to the counters,' said Nathan's grandson, Lloyd Handwerker, in an interview with CBS News in 2021. Nathan's approach — affordability, accessibility, and taste — resonated deeply with New Yorkers during a time of economic struggle. Over time, his business evolved into Nathan's Famous, one of the most recognised hot dog brands in the country. Today, Nathan's Famous is known not just for its food but also for its annual July 4th Hot Dog Eating Contest, which has become a cultural phenomenon. The contest was first held in 1972 and now draws participants from across the globe. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Hirofumi Nakajima (C) eats one of the 19 hot dogs he consumed on his way to his third straight victory at the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest at Nathan's on Coney Island in New York, July 4, 1998. Former World Campion Edward Krachie (L) of New York City finished third, while World Haggis Champion Barry Noble (R) of Newcastle, England, did not place. File Image/Reuters ESPN, which has been broadcasting the event for years, signed an agreement in 2022 to retain broadcasting rights through 2029, a testament to the contest's enduring popularity. What started as a humble stand on the boardwalk has now become a symbol of American summer celebrations. Each Independence Day, hot dogs aren't just eaten — they're celebrated. Why hot dogs rule the 4th of July Across the United States, holidays have become synonymous with specific foods. Pumpkin spice defines autumn. Green beer flows on St. Patrick's Day. Margaritas and tortilla chips headline Cinco de Mayo. And for the Fourth of July, the default dish is the hot dog. Hot dogs offer more than just tradition. They are quick to prepare, easy to serve in large gatherings, and endlessly customisable. Whether topped with mustard, ketchup, onions, relish, or sauerkraut, each serving can be tailored to personal taste. Their simplicity ensures that they don't distract from fireworks, parades, or family games — making them the perfect companion for July 4 festivities. According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, Americans are expected to consume 150 million hot dogs on Independence Day alone — that's just one day. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Over the course of a year, that figure skyrockets to over 20 billion hot dogs. That immense figure captures both the cultural and culinary dominance of the humble dog in the American diet. These numbers aren't just marketing fluff. They reflect a deep connection between a food and a national identity. Hot dogs have become synonymous with summer cookouts, baseball games, carnivals, and especially the Fourth of July. Hot dogs for everyone Although most people today refer to them as hot dogs, the name has varied over time and place. In the late 1800s, they were often called 'red hots' — a name that still lingers in regions like Detroit and Maine. The 'dog' part, historians say, was an early nickname possibly referring to the mystery of what exactly was in the sausage casing, mixed with a bit of American humour. What unites them all is a common trait: affordability. Whether it's a New York street vendor, a Midwestern ballpark, or a Southern backyard, the hot dog remains a food of access — cheap, filling, and comforting. Even plant-based versions have entered the market, giving vegetarians and vegans a chance to join the celebration. As the fireworks explode and US flags fly each July 4th, the smell of sizzling hot dogs on the grill is as American as it gets. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Also Watch: With inputs from agencies
Scientific American
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Scientific American
about the Legal Battles around Standing Rock
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. In 2016 a group of activists who called themselves water protectors—led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe—set up camp on the windswept plains of North Dakota. Their protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline quickly grew into one of the largest Indigenous-led movements in recent U.S. history. At the protest's height more than 10,000 people gathered to stand in defense of water, land and tribal sovereignty. The response? Militarized police, surveillance drones, and a private security firm with war-zone experience—and eventually a sprawling lawsuit that arguably aimed to rewrite the history of Standing Rock. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. My guest today is Alleen Brown. She's a freelance journalist and a senior editor at Drilled, a self-described 'true-crime podcast about climate change.' The latest season of Drilled, which premiered on June 3, digs into the shocking legal battle the pipeline's builder, Energy Transfer, launched against Greenpeace. Thank you so much for coming on to chat with us today. Alleen Brown: Yeah, thank you for having me. Feltman: So for folks who don't remember or maybe weren't paying as much attention as they should've, remind us what the Dakota Access Pipeline is. Brown: Yeah, so the Dakota Access Pipeline is an oil pipeline that travels from kind of the western part of North Dakota to Illinois. And in 2016 and 2017 it was being completed and sort of inspired a big Indigenous-led movement of people who were attempting to stop it. Feltman: Yeah, and what were their motivations for stopping the pipeline? Brown: There were a few motivations. I think the biggest one and most famous one was that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe was worried about water contamination ... Feltman: Mm. Brown: The pipeline travels underneath the Missouri River, right next to the reservation and not far from where the tribal nation has a water-intake system, so they were really worried about an oil leak. Feltman: Right, and it had actually—the route had been moved from what was initially planned to [in part] avoid that same concern in a predominantly white area; am I remembering that correctly? Brown: Yeah, there were talks early on—one of the routes that was being considered was across the Missouri River upstream from the Bismarck-Mandan community's water-intake system. And so, you know, that's a more urban area that is predominantly white. Feltman: And again, you know, reminding listeners—it has been a very eventful few years [laughs], to be fair—what exactly happened at Standing Rock? You know, this became a big sort of cultural and ecological moment. Brown: Yeah, so to make a long story short, what became known as the Standing Rock movement started with a small group of grassroots people from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Eventually the tribe itself got really involved, and what started as kind of a small encampment opposed to the pipeline turned into these sprawling encampments, a sprawling occupation that, at times, had upwards of 10,000 people—people were kind of constantly coming and going. And all of these people were there to stand behind the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and stop the construction of the pipeline under the Missouri River. In response—you know, there was a very heavy-handed response from law enforcement and the pipeline company. So, I think, when a lot of people think of Standing Rock, they think of private security dogs kind of lunging at pipeline opponents who are trying to stop bulldozers. Feltman: Mm. Brown: They think of law enforcement spraying water hoses in below-freezing temperatures at people who are protesting. You know, they might think of tear gas. So it was very, very intense for the people who were there. Feltman: So in the new season of Drilled you're digging into a lawsuit filed by Energy Transfer, the company that built the pipeline, and, you know, folks might be surprised to hear that they sued at all, given that the pipeline was built. It's sort of the opposite direction [laughs] you might expect a lawsuit to be flowing, but then the lawsuit's claims are also very surprising. Could you summarize those for us? Brown: Well, I'm not a lawyer, but I can share what I found in my reporting. I remember when this lawsuit, or another version of this lawsuit, was first filed in 2017—at that time I was working at The Intercept and had been digging into these documents from this private security company, TigerSwan. So I was talking to all kinds of people who had been at Standing Rock and looking at these reports from the private security company. I really didn't hear anything about Greenpeace and this big lawsuit, which started out as a RICO lawsuit—which is [one that regards] the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, designed to go after the Mafia—turned into a conspiracy lawsuit. The lawsuit had Greenpeace at the heart of everything. Feltman: Mm. Brown: The lawsuit was eventually overturned in federal court and refiled in state court in North Dakota, but the damages that they were originally demanding were around $300 million. Ultimately, in that state court case, [the jury] awarded Energy Transfer over $666 million. Feltman: Wow. Could you tell us a little bit more about, you know, what it means to be accusing someone of conspiracy and sort of what Energy Transfer's actually trying to say happened here? Brown: Yeah, so, you know, for there to be conspiracy you essentially have to have multiple parties kind of conspiring together to do crimes ... Feltman: Mm. Brown: And this lawsuit just morphed a number of times since it was originally filed. Again, eventually it was turned into a conspiracy suit, and the players that they were alleging were involved kind of changed over time. So by the time it became a conspiracy suit they were saying two individual Indigenous water protectors—which is what a lot of the pipeline opponents referred to themselves as well as this encampment that called itself Red Warrior Society that was maybe a little bit more kind of into doing direct actions that blocked bulldozers, for example, and Greenpeace were all conspiring together. Feltman: Hmm, and so you had already been investigating the Dakota Access Pipeline for years when this lawsuit came about. In your mind, you know, what are the sort of major points that you had uncovered in your reporting that are, are really conflicting with this narrative from Energy Transfer? Brown: I would say one thing about Standing Rock is that everyone that you talk to who was involved will say, 'I'm gonna tell you the real story of Standing Rock.' So it's like people have very diverse ideas about exactly what happened, and I think that speaks to how many people were there and how many people were kind of approaching this question of pipeline construction from different angles. There were people coming in from all over the world, and some people were really, you know, aligned with what the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe wanted; some people had their own agendas. But people had, I think, overall really good intentions. So there was a lot of diversity, a lot of chaos—you know, the National Guard was called in, and there were kind of federal-level law enforcement resources being used and a lot of pressure from private security, which was working with law enforcement that really amplified the tension in those spaces. There were these lights beaming down on the camp. There were people infiltrating the camps and there were drones flying around. I think, for me, understanding the way, I think, militarism and the war on terror were brought home and into this Indigenous-led resistance space is something that I've really focused on. Feltman: Right. So, you know, based on your reporting this Energy Transfer lawsuit had raised a lot of questions, and was even dismissed initially and had to be sort of repackaged. But then it sounds like they sort of got everything they wanted out of the lawsuit. What do you think are the larger implications of that? Brown: One thing is that a lot of people think of this lawsuit as a SLAPP suit, which stands for 'strategic lawsuit against public participation.' So there are a number of groups that have called this lawsuit a SLAPP. Um, there's this coalition called Protect the Protest Coalition, which includes legal advocacy and movement organizations, like the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Union of Concerned Scientists. [ Editor's Note: Greenpeace is also a member of the Protect the Protest Coalition. ] Another group that has called this a SLAPP is the Energy Transfer v. Greenpeace Trial Monitoring Committee, which came together to keep an eye on the trial. That group is wide-ranging, but it's mostly lawyers—so human rights attorneys, there's a First Amendment attorney, law professors, nonprofit leaders, attorneys who have represented Indigenous and environmental defenders. Um, Greenpeace, of course, considers this a SLAPP suit. So, the idea is that, you know, it's not necessarily meant to win on the merits; it's also meant to scare people and send a message and drain a lot of different people of time and resources. This jury did deliver the verdict that the pipeline company wanted, and now the pipeline company can point to that verdict, even if it's overturned, and say, 'Well, a jury in North Dakota said XYZ is true about the Standing Rock movement.' Feltman: Mm. Brown: And, you know, a big part of this case, beyond the conspiracy, were these defamation claims. And, you know, Energy Transfer was saying, 'It's defamatory to say that the pipeline company deliberately destroyed sacred sites,' which was a huge issue in this whole pipeline fight ... Feltman: Mm-hmm. Brown: 'It's defamation to say that private security used violence against nonviolent pipeline opponents.' The third one is that 'it's defamation to say that the pipeline crossed tribal land.' Feltman: Mm. Brown: So those things—two of those things are things that come directly from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe stands behind. So now Energy Transfer has this record that they can lean on ... Feltman: Mm. Brown: And we don't know exactly how they'll use that. They've really hit Greenpeace hard, and I think [this] opens the door against the environmental movement at large. Feltman: Yeah, well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about the show with us today. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more of this story over the course of the season. Brown: Thank you so much for having me. Feltman: And just a small update, listeners: Greenpeace has stated its intention to appeal the jury's verdict. That's all for today's episode. You can start listening to the latest season of Drilled wherever you get your podcasts. For more of Alleen's work, check out her newsletter, Eco Files. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. See you next time!
