January 31, 2025: How aircraft disasters are investigated, transcendent thinking in teens and an asteroid that could strike Earth in 2032. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | An illustration of an asteroid approaching Earth. James Thew/Alamy Stock Photo | | | • The number of planetary bodies that orbit the sun depends on what you mean by "planet," and that's not so easy to define. | 5 min read | | | • Polio vaccines saved America from the disease. What happens if we lose them? | 8 min read | | | • Can cynicism, which makes us less physically and mentally healthy, be replaced with hopeful skepticism? | 16 min listen | | | How Aircraft Disasters Are Investigated | Air safety officials have a clearly defined process for investigating major accidents such as the fatal collision this week between a commercial airliner and a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. To learn how National Transportation Safety Board investigators are studying what went wrong, Scientific American editor Gary Stix interviewed aviation and aerospace safety expert Kristy Kiernan, of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. After a disaster, a "go-team" immediately recovers perishable evidence, that is, material that could degrade or be carried away by the environment or recovery of wreckage. Focus then turns to the so-called black boxes, as well as voice and data recorders on the aircraft, air-traffic control radar and tapes of all communications. Evidence also is collected on the relevant operations personnel and their training records.
Why this matters: Air safety involves multiple, overlapping layers of management to protect passengers and property, such as highly trained pilots and air-traffic controllers, airplane location procedures and collision avoidance technologies. But demands are heavy these days on all such systems, especially at high-density, high-volume, fast-paced airports. Safety margins are thinner in some areas, "and those are the areas that we really have to be vigilant for," Kiernan says.
What the experts say: "There is not a smoking gun; there is not just one causal factor. Even if you found one thing, there is a reason for that one thing, and that reason is more complicated. And if you just identify the one thing, you're really not solving anything. You have to go deeper and look at the why behind it," says Kiernan. | | | Emergency response units inspect airplane wreckage in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington Airport. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images | Growing the Adolescent Mind | Analyses of teens' words and brain patterns have led Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a professor of education, psychology and neuroscience, to draw new conclusions about the importance of so-called transcendent thinking. Adolescents who can perform this "mental time travel," switching their focus away from the present and toward broad reflections on the social significance of individual actions, are more likely to build physically bigger and better-connected brains, lose gray matter at a slower rate and report enhanced well-being. The capacity for transcendent thinking allows teens to engage in more meaningful ways with their daily lives, rather than getting stuck in superficial and reactive thoughts.
Why this matters: The experience of adolescence, awash in hormonal surges and new capacities for social and emotional processing, is "essential to being human," writes Immordino-Yang. In response to these insights, some educational systems are refocusing curricula and testing to help students not only grapple with the content of material but also identify its importance.
What the experts say: "By listening closely to teenagers' reflections and observing their brain activations as they lay in a neuroimaging scanner, my colleagues and I discovered that thinking that ranges flexibly from the here and now…to the past, the future and everywhere else…seems to literally build their brains," writes Immordino-Yang. | | | If you're enjoying all the science we cover in this newsletter, dive deeper with a subscription to Scientific American. You'll have access to all our articles and will be supporting crucial science journalism. | | | • Tech giants are investing in nuclear power reactors and plants to meet the massive energy demands of performing AI calculations, raising concerns about the unresolved problem of nuclear waste. Spent nuclear fuel, stored at 77 sites in 35 U.S. states, continues to accumulate at a rate of more than 2,000 tons a year, writes physicist and historian of science and technology Michael Riordan. Renewable energy sources coupled with advances in energy storage deserve more consideration, he writes. | 4 min read | | | Do you know the answer to the first question of today's science quiz? Also, don't miss today's Spellements. If you spot any science words missing from Spellements, email them to games@sciam.com. In recent days, reader I. Kaplan of Burlington, Ontario, found rutin. Paul S. found giardiasis. Chris found agamid, aramid and digram. And Joaquin M. of Madrid, Spain, found nutation, trunnion and ungular. Nice work, everyone. | | | MOST POPULAR STORIES OF THE WEEK | | | • DNA inherited from Neandertals may influence modern human cognition. | 12 min read | • Trump abruptly cancels crucial science reviews at NIH, world's largest public funder of biomedical research. | 4 min read | • Can the president order new names for Denali and the Gulf of Mexico? A geographer explains how maps' place names are determined. | 4 min read | • Which foods are the most ultraprocessed? A new system ranks grocery store items based on their degree of processing. | 4 min read | • H5N1 avian influenza, aka bird flu, continues to spread amid commercial and backyard poultry, and additional cases have been reported in domestic cats. | 3 min read | | | A lightweight tripod-mounted telescope lately occupies a corner of our living room, as we await a clear, gust-free night to stare up at the moons of Jupiter. The gas giant currently appears close to Aldebaran in the northern hemisphere's night sky. And that naked-eye star, a red giant, itself is thought to host a " hot Jupiter" planet. It feels like a suitable time of year for star-gazing. As one of our friends likes to remark on frigid days, "It's cold enough for astronomy." | —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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