Book: Future Science

Described as “featuring [essays by] eighteen young scientists, most of whom are presenting their work and ideas to a general audience for the first time.”  I like short essays on cutting edge science aimed at the “general audience.”

However the very first essay, on the search for life in the oceans of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons, includes this howler:

Kevin P. Hand wrote:

The total volume of liquid water on [Jupiter's and Saturn's moons] is estimated to be more than a hundred times the volume of water on Earth. On Europa, for example, we have good evidence for a global liquid-water ocean some 100 kilometers deep, lying beneath an ice shell perhaps no more than 20 kilometers thick.  That's a tremendous amount of water, and if we've learned anything about life on Earth, it's that where you find liquid water, you generally find life.

[Emphasis added]

One essayist mentions the possibility, theoretical but plausible, of taking the virus that causes the common cold and re-engineering its DNA to make it attack cancer cells.

Meh.  A lot of crap science and well-duh research.

• chimpanzees help each other altruistically sometimes
  
• infinity means no signals can travel faster than light, but it does not prevent space-time from expanding faster than light(?!?)
  
• stress can affect your health, by affecting gene expression
  
• tagging photos on Flickr makes a dataset that describes their popularity
  
• physical attractiveness varies from culture to culture, but always trends toward the average of the culture
  
• people are more risk averse than they are gain motivated
  
• shame and guilt keep societies equinamous
  
• plants react to threats with chemical changes
  
• human speech mimics primate vocalizations
  
• emotional pain mimics physical pain (and pain killers can alleviate symptoms)
  
• people have a hard time ascribing intelligence to anything without a body
  
• children under seven focus on damage, adults focus on intent in deciding blame
  
• a tribe in Namibia called the =Akhoe Hai||om orient themselves according to north-south-east-west rather than left-right