Michio Kaku - The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2020

Copyright 2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Introduction copyright 2020 by Michio Kaku

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ISSN 1530-1508 (print) ISSN 2573-475X (ebook)

ISBN 978-0-358-07429-8 (print) ISBN 978-0-358-07424-3 (ebook)

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Cover image Jarun Ont Akrai / Shutterstock

A Journey into the Animal Mind by Ross Andersen. First published in The Atlantic, March 2019. Copyright 2019 by The Atlantic Monthly Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Used under license.

Sleep No More by Kelly Clancy. First published in Wired, January 15, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Kelly Clancy. Reprinted by permission of Kelly Clancy.

What Remains by Daniel Duane. First published in California Sunday Magazine, April 4, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Daniel Duane. Reprinted by permission of Daniel Duane.

With a Simple Twist, a Magic Material Is Now the Big Thing in Physics by David H. Freedman. First published in Quanta Magazine, April 30, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Quanta Magazine. This article is reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation.

The Eighth Continent by Rivka Galchen. First published in The New Yorker, May 6, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Rivka Galchen. Reprinted by permission of Rivka Galchen.

The Tumultuous History of a Mysterious Brain Signal That Questioned Free Will by Bahar Gholipour. First published in The Atlantic, September 10, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Bahar Gholipour. Reprinted by permission of Bahar Gholipour.

Younger Longer by Adam Gopnik. First published in The New Yorker, May 20, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Adam Gopnik. Reprinted by permission of Adam Gopnik.

Right Under Our Noses by Sara Harrison. First published in Wired, June 2019. Copyright 2019 by Sara Harrison. Reprinted by permission of Sara Harrison.

I, Language Robot by Patrick House. First published in Los Angeles Review of Books, October 21, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Patrick House. Reprinted by permission of Patrick House.

Beauty of the Beasts by Ferris Jabr. First published in The New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Ferris Jabr. Reprinted by permission of Ferris Jabr.

Ghosts of the Future by Sarah Kaplan. First published in The Washington Post, December 6, 2019. Copyright 2019 by The Washington Post. All rights reserved. Used under license.

Intelligent Ways to Search for Extraterrestrials by Adam Mann. First published in The New Yorker, October 3, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Adam Mann. Reprinted by permission of Adam Mann.

Total Eclipse by Deanna Csomo McCool. First published in Aeon online magazine, April 8, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Deanna D. McCool. Reprinted by permission of Deanna D. McCool.

We Have Fire Everywhere by Jon Mooallem. First published in The New York Times Magazine, July 31, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Jon Mooallem. Reprinted by permission of Jon Mooallem.

Vaccines Reimagined by Melinda Wenner Moyer. First published in Scientific American, June 2019, Vol. 320, Issue 6. Copyright 2019 by Melinda Wenner Moyer. Reprinted by permission of Melinda Wenner Moyer.

New Blood by Siddhartha Mukherjee. First published in The New Yorker, July 22, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

The Day the Dinosaurs Died (originally titled The Day the Earth Died) by Douglas Preston. First published in The New Yorker, March 29, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Douglas Preston. Reprinted by permission of Douglas Preston.

The Final Five Percent by Tim Requarth. First published in Longreads, October 22, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Timothy W. Requarth. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

The Next Word by John Seabrook. First published in The New Yorker, October 14, 2019. Copyright 2019 by John Seabrook. Reprinted by permission of The New Yorker.

Troubled Treasure by Joshua Sokol. First published in Science Magazine, May 24, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Joshua Sokol. Reprinted by permission of Joshua Sokol.

The Hidden Heroines of Chaos by Joshua Sokol. First published in Quanta Magazine, May 20, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Quanta Magazine. This article is reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation.

The Hunt for Planet Nine by Shannon Stirone. First published in Longreads, January 22, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Shannon Stirone. Reprinted by permission of Shannon Stirone.

A Different Kind of Theory of Everything by Natalie Wolchover. First published in The New Yorker, February 19, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Cond Nast. Reprinted by permission of Cond Nast.

The Brain That Remade Itself by Andrew Zaleski. First published in OneZero, February 27, 2019. Copyright 2019 by Andrew Zaleski. Reprinted by permission of Andrew Zaleski.

Im writing this from within a very strange time capsule, not at the moment its sealed nor at the moment its opened, but from somewhere weird in between. Im writing this from New York City in the middle of April 2020. The coronavirus pandemic feels to be in full swing, but for all I know, this could just be the early ramp-up to something still unimaginable. This years guest editor, Michio Kaku, wrote his introduction this past winter, when this virus was news but not yet the omnipresent fact of daily life around the world; youre reading this in the fall of 2020 or later and know so much thats still to come for me. Im going to read this again then, in the pages of our book instead of as Im typing it at the little desk now wedged into my bedroom, so this is a time capsule but also a letter to my future selfI hope she, and all of you, are okay. (Who knows what late 2020 will be like, but in April we are doing a lot of telling people we write to, I hope youre doing okay.)

I thought last years foreword would be the weird oneI wrote it eight months pregnant, in a fever dream of hormones and deadlines. A few months ago, thinking about this years foreword, I thought I would write about how the intervening year had changed my relationship to the stories in this anthology: about being a mother, about reading my son picture books about ocean fish and space exploration, about Ronald McNair and John Muir, and about the wonder and curiosity I hope were seeding. I thought I would write about my sons future and the world were leaving for future generations. A few months ago, those fears and questions felt pressing enough. Now its plenty to say, Were safe today, and were going to do our best tomorrow for ourselves and whoever we can help.