Siddhartha Mukherjee - The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013

Copyright 2013 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Introduction copyright 2013 by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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ISSN 1530-1508

ISBN 978-0-544-00343-9

e ISBN 978-0-544-00348-4
v1.1013

The Life of Pi, and Other Infinities by Natalie Angier. From the New York Times, December 31, 2012, copyright 2012 by the New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this content without express written permission is prohibited.

The Larch by Rick Bass. First published in Orion, September/October 2012. Copyright 2012 by Rick Bass. Reprinted by permission of Rick Bass.

The Measured Man by Mark Bowden. First published in The Atlantic, July 2012. Copyright 2012 by Mark Bowden. Reprinted by permission of Mark Bowden.

Autism Inc. by Gareth Cook. First published in the New York Times Magazine, November 29, 2012. Copyright 2012 by the New York Times. Reprinted by permission of Gareth Cook.

Beyond the Quantum Horizon by David Deutsch and Artur Ekert. First published in Scientific American, September 2012. Copyright 2012 by Scientific American. A Division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

The Wisdom of Psychopaths from The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton. First published in Scientific American, October 2012. Copyright 2012 by Kevin Dutton. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, and Doubleday Canada.

The Sweet Spot in Time by Sylvia A. Earle. First published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 2012. Copyright 2012 by Sylvia A. Earle. Reprinted by permission of Sylvia A. Earle.

Shattered Genius by Brett Forrest. First published in Playboy, September 2012. Copyright 2012 by Brett Forrest. Reprinted by permission of Brett Forrest.

Polar Express by Keith Gessen. First published in The New Yorker, December 24 and 31, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Keith Gessen. Reprinted by permission of Keith Gessen.

The T-Cell Army by Jerome Groopman. First published in The New Yorker, April 23, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Jerome Groopman. Reprinted by permission of Jerome Groopman.

The Last Distinction? by Benjamin Hale. First published in Harpers Magazine, August 2012. Copyright 2012 by Benjamin Hale. Reprinted by permission of Benjamin Hale.

The Patient Scientist by Katherine Harmon. First published in Scientific American, January 2012. Copyright 2012 by Scientific American. A Division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Recall of the Wild by Elizabeth Kolbert. First published in The New Yorker, December 24 and 31, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Elizabeth Kolbert. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Kolbert.

Our Place in the Universe by Alan Lightman. First published in Harpers Magazine, December 2012. Copyright 2012 by Alan Lightman. Reprinted by permission of the author.

False Idyll by J.B. MacKinnon. First published in Orion, May/June 2012. Copyright 2012 by J.B. MacKinnon. Reprinted by permission of J.B. MacKinnon.

Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? by Stephen Marche. First published in The Atlantic, May 2012. Copyright 2012 by Stephen Marche. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Is Space Digital? by Michael Moyer. First published in Scientific American, February 2012. Copyright 2012 by Scientific American. A Division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Which Species Will Live? by Michelle Nijhuis. First published in Scientific American, August 2012. Copyright 2012 by Scientific American. A Division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

The Artificial Leaf by David Owen. First published in The New Yorker, May 14, 2012. Copyright 2012 by David Owen. Reprinted by permission of The New Yorker.

Machines of the Infinite by John Pavlus. First published in Scientific American, September 2012. Copyright 2012 by Scientific American. A Division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. English translation of Kurt Gdels letter to John von Neumann is reprinted by permission of Michael Sipser from his original paper The History and Status of the P versus NP Question.

Out of the Wild by David Quammen, from Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen. Copyright 2012 by David Quammen. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. First published in Popular Science, October 2012.

Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality? by Nathaniel Rich. First published in the New York Times Magazine, December 2, 2012. Reprinted by permission of Nathaniel Rich.

Altered States by Oliver Sacks. Copyright 2012 by Oliver Sacks. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc., for permission. First published in The New Yorker, August 27, 2012.

Super Humanity by Robert M. Sapolsky. First published in Scientific American, September 2012. Copyright 2012 by Scientific American. A Division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

The Deadliest Virus by Michael Specter. First published in The New Yorker, March 12, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Michael Specter. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Crisis of Big Science by Steven Weinberg. First published in the New York Review of Books, May 10, 2012. Copyright 2012 by Steven Weinberg. Reprinted by permission of Steven Weinberg.

Talk to Me by Tim Zimmermann. First published in Outside, September 2012. Copyright 2012 by Tim Zimmermann. Reprinted by permission of Tim Zimmermann.

O N AN AUTUMN night 404 years ago, a struggling mathematics professor at the University of Padua aimed a crude, three-foot-long wood and leather telescope at the night sky. Galileo Galilei didnt invent the telescope; a trio of Dutch eyeglass makers had done that a year before Galileo used one to observe the sky over Tuscany. Nor was he the first to turn a telescope toward the heavensan Englishman named Thomas Harriot, who sketched the moon in July 1609, claimed that honor. But Galileo was the first to truly see what the heavens held.

Unlike Harriot, whose drawings depicted the moon as two-dimensional, Galileo, who had had formal training as an artist, understood that the moon was not flat and smooth. By carefully studying the nightly changes in light and shadow on the lunar surface, Galileo realized that the moon had valleys, mountains, and plains not wholly unlike those on Earth. His remarkable sketches of the moon, published in 1610 in a pamphlet called