Discovery Channel Magazine - November 2014 In

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04
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

In the age of social media, why
do sociologists believe people
are lonelier now than ever
before? And as a race that’s on
the threshold of having humanlike robots work our everyday
lives, why are we nagged by an
insecurity that these machines
may eventually take over?
No, I’m not talking Spielberg-style sci-fi
here. In the world of robotics, as these
thinking, contemplating, evolving machines
take shape, a not-so-silent fear continues
to emerge. That robots can make human
beings lazy is old news. That they may limit
social interaction is still being debated.
Could there be a time when we get so
dependent on these machines, that we lose
control of our very basic faculties to exist?
Can dependence signal surrender?
Our cover story this month is
interspersed with stylish images of prettylooking machines doing every job we
hate so much. But it also poses poignant
questions. If you’re from a pre-mobilephone
generation, think of your life before,
and whether you could do without your
cellphone now. If you’re younger, think of
life without Facebook, or email...
Robots are intriguing. Almost as much
as Scarlett Johansson was in her movie,
Her. In the film, the actress didn’t appear at
all (shame!); her voice played the role of an

operating system that can feel human-like
emotions. As the story unfolds, she finds
love, a guy to fall in love with, then discovers
she can love hundreds at the same time
because of her ability as a machine to do so.
That, ladies and gents, was a movie starring
Scarlett Johansson with an *.
The future is exciting, as is this issue.
You will also find features on Mary, one of
the largest ships in the sea; a mystery story
chronicling those suicide bridges
and conspiracy theories that you’d have
thought have no connect to science; and
one that takes a close look at the villain of
the sea, the shark, and what it has done to
deserve its evil reputation.
We can’t promise every question of
yours will be answered, but you’ll surely
be incited enough to ask more. That’s
Discovery with an *.

Jamal Shaikh
Editorial Director
twitter.com/JamalShaikh
instagram.com/JamalShaikh

CONTENTS
ISSUE 11/14

FRONTIERS

DEPARTMENTS

TERROR HOUSE

12

If you thought Paris was the
only place to skip to give the
catacombs a miss, think again!
NEWS

TASTE BLIND

14

16

18

Do you take pride in being a
connoisseur of fine food? Read
on as we prove you wrong
WORLD BUILDERS

COOLIES

16

Coolies were not just the easilyavailable cheap labour back in
the day, but they did play a role
in reshaping world culture
THE TWO SIDES OF

CLOWNS

18

They are not part of popular
culture and crowd favourites
for no reason!

19

SO YOU WANT TO SET FOOT IN

21

There are plenty of ways to
work in Tinseltown. Dressing
up superstars is one of them.
And not that difficult too!

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

20

12

WOW 10 THIS HISTORY-MAKING
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE IS A LARGE
LIMESTONE CAVE ON THE ISLAND OF
FLORES, INDONESIA

HISTORY 16 PENNSYLVANIA'S
DECISION TO ABOLISH SLAVERY IS
NOT QUITE AS MAGNANIMOUS AS IT
FIRST APPEARS

ADVENTURE 20 BEING A JET FIGHTER
PILOT MIGHT NOT BE AS COOL AS YOU
MIGHT HAVE IMAGINED IT TO BE IN
YOUR CHILDHOOD FANTASIES

NEWS 23 IF YOU SPOT A POOL OF
BLOOD AS IN A HORROR MOVIE, TAKE
A CLOSER LOOK. IT SIMPLY MIGHT BE
CONTAMINATED WATER

THE GRID 13 AFTER TATTOO ARTISTS
IT IS THOSE WHO HELP GET RID
OF THE INK WHO ARE THE UP AND
COMING NEW PROFESSIONALS

OBSESSIONS 19 LITTLE KNOWN
FACTS ABOUT MONEY AND
CURRENCIES FROM AROUND THE
WORLD THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND

HISTORY 22 TAKING A SELFIE MIGHT
NOT BE CHILD'S PLAY AFTER ALL.
GETTING THE MOST LIKES CAN BE
TRICKY BUSINESS

WHAT'S ON 102 FROM SURVIVING IN
THE WILD TO BREAST IMPLANTS - A
PEEK INTO ALL THAT'S NOVEL
AND INTERESTING

06
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

COVER IMAGE GETTY IMAGES

BOLLYWOOD

40

08
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

94

52

FEATURES
ISSUE 11/14
COVER STORY

ALMOST HUMAN

26

Let their uncanny human resemblance not
creep you out anymore. There are endless
reasons why you should hug, not fear, these
mechanical helpers
MIND GAMES

DREAM READER

40

Decoding dreams entails much more than
what your favourite search engine results
reveal. Be ready to be amazed
NUMBER MANIA

FRACTAL POWER

26

68

52

You might not know what a fractal is yet, but
this mathematical concept underlies some
beautiful natural shapes
SHARK FACTS

FINNED FRIENDS

68

They have a ferocious design, an evil repute
and make us the most vulnerable to attacks.
But do sharks really deserve the terrible
treatment they are subjected to?
SCI-TECH

QUEEN OF THE SEA

84

To take a full view of her, you might have
to crane your neck. So simply step on the
deck of the largest ship in the world for an
unforgettable, dizzying experience
MYSTERIES

UNEXPLAINED
CHRONICLES

94

Alien visitations, nuclear conspiracies and
suicide-causing bridges - real, myth or
simply part of inexplicable urban legends?

09
NOVEMBER 2014

Liang Bua, a large limestone
cave on the island of Flores,
Indonesia, is a research site
for the Smithsonian National
Museum of Natural History.
The fossil species Homo
floresiensis — the “hobbit” of
evolution — was discovered
here in 2003. Since 2010,
Smithsonian researchers and
partners have been excavating
Liang Bua, which means “cool
cave” in the local Manggarai
language, to understand more
about the world at the time
Homo floresiensis was alive.
The 3D scans of the cave help
researchers better understand
its pre-history, while also
providing a public education
tool that allows people to
virtually “visit” this worldrenowned archeological site.
10
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PHOTO SMITHSONIAN DIGITIZATION PROGRAM OFFICE

GETTING TO
KNOW YOU
BETTER IN 3D

WOW

11
NOVEMBER 2014

FRONTIERS

ILLUSTRATION QUENTIN GABRIEL

ISSUE 11/14

HOUSE OF DEATH CREEPY SPIDER
WASPS THAT BUILD CATACOMBS!
Oh boy. Where to start with the spider wasp, also known as the
“bone-house wasp”. It builds its nest with a special chamber
crammed with dead ants. That explains the latter name. The
former stems from the fact that wasp mothers paralyse spiders
with a wicked sting, then drag the victim back to the nest where
they lay an egg in the body. When the egg hatches, it has a lovely
living meal to feast on.
Spider wasps were previously known, but the bone-house
sub-species, Deuteragenia ossarium, was only recently
discovered in south-east China. Its name comes from

12
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

an ossuary, a site where skeletons are stored. The dead
ant wallpaper may release some chemicals that deter or
camouflage wasp nests from predators. So, it seems, this
creature is not just clever but equally creepy as well.
Disgusted? Maybe don’t visit Paris. Walk the streets, and
you’re walking above catacomb walls stacked with the bones of
six million corpses, moved centuries ago from an overflowing
graveyard. You can even visit the catacombs, where an
inscription reads: “Stop! This is the empire of death!” The
bone-house wasp would be proud.

NEWS

THE GRID

EUROPE

MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA
CHAMELEONS ARE
HIDING In 2005, English

SNAPPING TURTLES

Iyrtodactylus vilaphongi, a
native gecko of Laos, which
looks like a mini-alligator
wearing a zebra hide, recently
became the 10,000th reptile to
be catalogued by scientists.
Reptiles are the second-largest
vertebrate group after fish,
which number over 32,000
species. Online catalogue,
the Reptile Database, hopes
that the milestone can be a
spur towards encouraging
further initiatives in reptile
conservation.

It turns out the terrible recent
movie Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles got one thing right:
turtles can talk to each other.
Researchers at the National
Insitute of Amazonian Research
in Manaus, Brazil, analysed
the vocalisations of Giant
South American river turtles
communicating with each other.
Even baby turtles talk to each
other, and while they are still
in their eggs. It is thought
this helps them synchronise
hatching times.

LONGHAIRDONTCARE

AN ARM AND A LEG

A new trend is taking off on
Chinese social media. Weibo,
one of the country’s most
popular social networks, has
been flooded with shots of
women posting selfies, proudly
display their unshaven, hairy
armpits. It is part of a contest to
promote positive body image and
acceptance of body hair, and may
have been spurred on by a selfie
Madonna posted earlier this
year, with what looked like Tom
Selleck’s mustache in her armpit.

The poor are 10 times more
likely to lose a limb due to
diabetes, according to a study
by the University of California.
Analysing amputation hotspots
based on affluence, they found
as many as 10.7 out of 1,000
diabetic adults lost a lower limb
due to diabetes complications, as
opposed to 1.5 per 1,000 in richer
neighbourhoods. The researchers
think the disparity boils down
to difficulties that poorer people
face in accessing care.

IN THE HOT SUIT In the
US, 200 people a day go to the
ER with fireworks injuries from
Independence Day celebrations.
Many end up amputating a finger.
Perhaps that’s why Colin Furze, a
British inventor, recently created
an inflatable suit that would
allow him to withstand the force
of a fireworks display while he
was inside it. He emerged with
all ten fingers, thanks to the steel
material. Which also made him
look like Groot, from Guardians
of the Galaxy.

RULE OF THUMB There’s
no doubt that musicians get
ticked off with music piracy .
But a Nigerian artist may have a
solution that goes a little too far:
amputation. Speaking to the News
Agency of Nigeria, musician Stella
Monye said that simply fining
users for downloading tunes on
the sly is not harsh enough. Her
solution? “Cutting their fingers off
will stop them,” she told press. “By
the time you cut off two people’s
fingers, others will stop.” Avoid
Monye, ye pirates!

TAT STATS Tattoo
removal is a career that is
suddenly booming. The
Cosmetic Physicians Society
of Australisia has announced
that it is currently fielding
300 percent more calls from
people wanting to de-ink. They
also estimate that one in four
Aussies over the age of 20 have
a tattoo — and one third of that
number regret it. While laser
tattoo removal is effective, for
bigger tattoos it can take a year
of regular sessions, and cost
close to US$5,000.

PERSPIRATION POWER

KEEP A COOL HEAD

Researchers at the University
of California in San Diego
have developed a temporary
tattoo which responds to
lactate, a by-product of sweat.
By leeching electrons from
the lactate, it can generate an
electric current. At present,
the sensors collect just a few
microwatts of power, far less
than a smartphone requires.
You’d have to be sweating like
a panda in a sauna and covered
in sensors just to send a text —
but give it time.

The UK’s most tattooed man
recently took part in the Ice
Bucket challenge, in his own
special way. In the interests
of saving water, he opted to
instead have an image of a
bucket inked on his neck just
below his hairline. What else
would you expect from a guy
who legally changed his name
from Matthew Whelan, to King
Of Ink Lank King Body Art The
Extreme Ink. To date, Whelan
has spent US$50,000 marking
his body.

PRIVATE PARTS The
United Arab Emirates (UAE)
has just introduced mandatory
national service — and for
doctors, this will mean a spike in
tattoo removals. Why? Certain
branches such as the army and
police have a ban on body art.
Though tattooing is considered
haram, or forbidden, by Muslim
scholars, it has become more
common for locals who have
lived or studied abroad. Nearly
10,000 Emiratis are being
considered for the first batch
of conscripts.

REPTILES

TEN-GRAND GECKO

LIMBS

AMERICAS

TATTOOS

A S I A- PAC I F I C

STRANGE AND SERIOUS EVENTS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD

A Bite
to Eat?

biologist Julian Bayliss was
messing around on Google
Earth when he came across
a rainforest in Mozambique
that had never been explored
before. Could there be
new species lurking in the
mountainous area, known
as “sky islands”? Yes indeed.
In four mountains alone,
biologists discovered four new
species of pygmy chameleons
— each we understand, cuter
than the last.

HERE’S A FACT THAT WOULD GIVE INDIANA JONES, A NOTED OPHIDIOPHOBE (SNAKE HATER), THE QUIVERS.
EVEN WHEN DECAPITATED, A SNAKE’S HEAD CAN CONTINUE TO MOVE AND DELIVER POISONOUS BITES UP
TO AN HOUR AFTER BEING SLICED. IT’S A FACT THAT PENG FAN, A FAMED CHINESE CHEF, RECENTLY FOUND
OUT TO HIS PERIL. TWENTY MINUTES AFTER CHOPPING OFF THE HEAD OF A SPITTING COBRA, THE ANIMAL
WAS ABLE TO BITE AND KILL CHEF PENG, AS HE SET ABOUT PREPARING SNAKE SOUP IN HIS GUANGDONG
PROVINCE RESTAURANT.

13
NOVEMBER 2014

NEWS
SMOKED SALMON, ANYONE?
DAMMED RIVERS ARE
DESTROYING THE MIGRATION
ROUTES OF SALMON. HOW
DO YOU GET THEM TO THE
SPAWNING GROUND? SHOOT
THEM OUT OF A CANNON,
SUGGESTS AMERICAN FIRM
WHOOSHH INNOVATIONS

35 KM 40FISH
THE SPECIALISED SALMON
CANNON FIRES FISH
AT 35 KILOMETRES PER
HOUR OVER DAMS

IT CAN FIRE 40 FISH
A MINUTE OUT OF
THE CANNON

9 METRES
THE SWIMMERS CAN
REACH HEIGHTS OF
NINE METRES, YET LAND
UNHARMED

WHEN PÂTÉ
& DOG FOOD
AREN'T ANY
DIFFERENT!
Brand loyalty vs taste buds

14
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

Smoking
Out Ebola
Quote
Unquote

"REMEMBER
REPORTS OF
UNUSUAL
ACTIVITY IN THE
SKIES IN THE ‘50S?
THAT WAS US."

Scientists in Germany are developing a
cure for the ebola virus, using the nicotiana
benthamiana plant, a close relative of
tobacco. Here, indicator proteins glow
under ultraviolet light on the plant leaves.

When the Central
Intelligence Agency
joined Twitter
earlier this year,
they did so in the
most understatedly
awesome way
possible. “We can
neither confirm
nor deny that this
is our first tweet.”
It seems their goal
is to humanise the
oft-demonised
agency, and even let
a few half-secrets
out of the bag. This
included the spate of
“UFOs” Norwegians
had reportedly seen
in their skies — this
was actually tests of

the advanced U-2 spy
plane, to see how the
reconnaissance
craft fared close to the
Soviet border.

MORE CHEEKY
@CIA TWEETS
No, we don’t know
where Tupac is
No, we don’t know
your password, so we
can’t send it to you.
#sorrynotsorry
Sorry for not
following you back,
@TheEllenShow. But
if you visit us maybe
we can take a selfie?

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES (NICOTIANA BENTHAMIANA PLANT); WWW.COLINFURZE.COM (OPPOSITE IMAGE, FIREWORKS)

A recent blind taste test
by the Stockholm School
of Economics found that
we are brand-loyal and
taste-blind. When 138
volunteers had samples
of Budweiser, Heineken
and Stella Artois beer, the
vast majority couldn’t
tell the difference.
It seems a brand’s
success has nothing to
do with how intrinsically
delicious it is. In the
UK, Heinz ketchup has
a whopping 80 percent
share of the market, but
in a blind taste test, it
finished second from last
in terms of quality.
This is true for fancy
stuff too. Publishing
what we think is the
best study title ever, the
American Association
of Wine Economists
bluntly asked: "Can
People Distinguish Pâté
from Dog Food?" Short
answer, no.
The fact is, our taste
buds are very fickle.
Pregnancy, stress,
mood, colour, cutlery,

medication and ageing
are just some of the
factors that can affect
our perception of taste. A
high level of background
noise, for example,
affects your brain’s
ability to gauge sweet and
salty food.
Remember the
much-talked-about
Pepsi Challenge from the
1970s, which reinforced
brand loyalty? It
inspired a similar study
by the management
department at the
Karnatak University,
India, in December
2013. A blind taste test
(followed by an open
test) for Pepsi and Coke,
was conducted with
the university’s MBA
students as subjects.
During the blind test
61% preferred Pepsi,
but the open test results
favoured Coke.
“Though preferences
differ from person to
person, overall it is seen
that brand consciousness
plays a much bigger
role than taste and
quality when it comes to
consumer choices,” says
Dr N. Ramanjaneyalu,
Assistant Professor, MBA
department, Karnatak
University, Dharwad,
who led the study.

HISTORY
HIT THE HAY

KID 200 KID 500 2 HOURS 4 MINUTES
SAID:
SAID:
LATER, LAST KID SAID:

THE WORLD'S LARGEST
GAME OF CHINESE WHISPERS
WAS A CHARITY EVENT IN
2008 INVOLVING 1,330 KIDS.
THE WHISPER STARTED AS
"TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE
A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE!"

“WE’RE BREAKING A
RECORD!”

COOLIES:
WORLDBUILDERS
Reshaping world culture

Who: So-called 'coolies'
were cheap labourers,
usually Chinese, who
emigrated to earn a living
in the 1800s
What: The work in mining or agriculture was
extremely hard. In some
cases, the indentured
servitude came close
to slavery. The Chinese
translation of ku li means
‘bitter labour’
Why: The abolition of
the Atlantic slave trade
created a need for cheap
workers. The opening of
Chinese ports after their
defeat in the Opium Wars
provided the means

A NEW LINGO
While being recruited as
coolies across the British
colonies, Indians
adopted a unique
lifestyle, culture and
language which was a
mix of their own and
that of the locals. For
instance, the Fiji-Hindi
language that the IndoFijians spoke. Although
almost all Indians have
now assimilated into the
Fijian culture, they still
maintain this unique
language, which is
formed of Awadhi and
Bhojpuri Hindi along
with the local Fijian!

How: Without coolies,
America would never
have built its transcontinental railroad linking
the east and west coasts.
Nine out of ten workers
on the railroad were Chinese. Over 2,500 were
also imported to build
the Panama Canal, one of
the biggest engineering
feats of the 20th century.
16
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

“EVERYBODY
IS EVIL!”

“HAAA!”

The Year
That Was:
1780

Captain Cook

Estimated world population: 900 million. Pennsylvania becomes the first
state to abolish slavery — but only for newborns. Irish murderess Elizabeth
Dolan escapes her hanging by agreeing to become an executioner herself.
A contemporary account notes she would use a burnt stick to draw “upon
the walls of her apartment, portraits of all the persons she executed.” A
mysterious daytime blackness enfolds New England, terrifying the populace
who take it as a sign of Judgment Day. It is now thought the cause was
smoke from a massive forest fire. Captain Cook’s ship returns to England
without him (because he had been eaten by Hawaiian natives the year
before). The British suffer their worst-yet military defeat on Indian soil at the
Battle of Pollilur, thanks to India’s rocket artillery, which had an impressive
range of 2,000 metres.

Quote
Unquote

"FURTHERMORE
NEVER FART WHEN YOU
ARE DANCING; GRIT
YOUR TEETH AND
COMPEL YOUR BOTTOM
TO HOLD BACK
THE FART."

ANTONIUS DE
ARENA
16th century Dance
Theorist
The advice of this
French judge and poet
is oozing with wisdom.
“Do not have a dripping
nose and do not dribble
at the mouth. And
refrain from spitting
before the maidens,
because that makes one
sick and even revolts
the stomach. If you
spit or blow your nose
or sneeze, remember
to turn your head
away after the spasm;
and remember not to
wipe your nose with

your fingers. Do it
properly with a white
handkerchief. Do not
eat either leeks or
onions because they
leave an unpleasant
odour."

Our Questions
for De Arena:
“Turn your head
away after the
spasm”? Not
sneezing into her
face, surely?
M’accorderiez vous
cette danse? (May I
have this dance?)

THE TWO
SIDES OF

Joseph Grimaldi is one
of the most famous
performers of all time.
His motto was: “I make
you laugh all night but
I am Grim-All-Day.”
Maybe because he was
a workaholic. Aged 44,
Grimaldi had 200,000
performances under his
polkadotted belt

CLOWNS

They’re often portrayed as a manic personification of evil,
but clowns have their good side, boys and girls

All clownfish are born
male, but have the
ability to change sex.
Which makes watching
Finding Nemo slightly
more confusing

Ronald McDonald, in
his first appearance
circa 1963. Gah!

Krusty: the best character
in The Simpsons?
And in his own words, a
stereotypical sad clown.
“I work like I drink:
alone, or with a monkey
watching”

In India, probably no one made clowns as popular as Raj
Kapoor did in his 1972 movie Mera Naam Joker. Deemed
as a classic, the film narrates the story of a circus clown
(Kapoor) and his many heartbreaks. The title song Jeena
Yahan..., which is on the lines of The Show Must Go On, is
still a favourite among movie-lovers

Insane Clown Posse
is a funky hip-hop
duo, but their followers, Juggalos, are
violent enough that
the FBI dubbed them
a “hybrid gang”

18
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

Heath Ledger’s
performance of the “psychopathic, mass-murdering, shizophrenic clown
with zero empathy”, Joker
in The Dark Knight made
him a legend. The film
released six months after
his death

We typed our name
into an online
Clown Name
Generator. Result:
Frumpy Darling
the Clown, which
made us sick in our
mouths a little bit

That scene in
Octopussy when Roger
Moore proves that,
yes, 007 can be unsexy.
He’s dressed as a clown
while trying to defuse
a nuclear bomb

If you want to make
a movie scarier,
throw a clown in
there. Think Pennywise from It,
the bike-riding doll
in Saw, and the clowns
in Funnyman
and Clownhouse

PHOTOS GETTY IMAGES (JAMES COOK, ROGER MOORE, SAMSUI WOMAN); HUSTER (QUOTE UNQUOTE)

Native American clowns
known as Heyoka did everything backwards, like
shivering when it was
hot. Their antics were
part of a sacred duty to
help the tribe look at the
world with fresh eyes.
John Fire Lame Deer, a
Sioux, recalls: “When we
were dying like flies from
white man's disease,
when we were driven
into reservations, when
the government rations
did not arrive and we
were starving, watching
the pranks and capers of
Heyoka were a blessing”

OBSESSIONS
CASH COWS

MONEY
MATTERS
Little known facts about
currencies around the world
It’s a world of bucks, bitcoins and baht. We delve
into the world of cash and ponder the question,
why oh why don’t we laminate our money? Money
makes fools of us all — why else would we dither
about buying a `99 health app that we can keep
forever, yet happily shell out about the same
amount to watch a Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, even
though it plays endlessly on TV, and another 100
bucks for lukewarm popcorn? And no, we assure
you, the oddities don’t stop there.

What does
US$1 buy you?
US DOLLARS
Amount that it costs to produce a single US$1 bill: five
cents. Cost to produce a single US$1 coin: 18 cents.
The estimated average lifespan of a single bill: 4.8 years.
Average lifespan of a single coin: 30 years.

Last year, the World Bank
asked people from around
the world to tweet what
they could purchase for
one dollar. Why? To raise
awareness for the fact that
one billion people live on
less than US$1.25 a day

Turkey
Two simit, a pastry

France
INDIAN RUPEE
The rupee goes back to the 15th century, when Sher Shah
Suri introduced it. Then, 40 copper pieces were equal to
a rupee. In the 19th century, the smallest minted coin in
India, the pie, constituted of 1/3rd of a pice. 3 pies made a
pice; 4 pice made an anna, 16 annas made a rupee.

One pencil

Senegal
A can of
concentrated milk

Malaysia
An ice-cream cone








BITCOINS
NAZI COUNTERFEITS
Operation Bernhard was an audacious plan to
forge British currency, and flood England with
fake currency, thereby wreaking havoc with
the economy. The counterfeiters were Jewish
prisoners, held in Sachsenhausen concentration
camp. Altogether, an astonishing 134 million
pounds were created, and they are considered
among the most accurate fake notes made in
history. But luckily, the plan never came to fruition.
The Nazis did use some of the currency to pay for
goods and services though. Elyesa Bazna, a German
spy codenamed Cicero, was paid with fake pounds.
After the war, he daringly sued the government for
outstanding pay, but lost the case.

Monetary value graphs are always a bit dry and
confusing, so here’s a story about bitcoin, the digital
currency that is currently a hot commodity. In 2010, a
programmer paid for two pizzas with 10,000 bitcoins.
Today, those bitcoins are worth US$4.75 million.

Flipis
philoso m: A fictional
phy
in a 195 that appeare
3 Dona
d
ld Duck
comic
decisio , whereby majo
ns
r
flip of a are decided b
ya
coin. W
e bet th
Donald
a
a
ever we sked, “Should t
ar pant
s again I
?”

THE MILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION
Most of us have probably played the “how much would I have to pay you to [insert some horrible task here]”
game. It’s always a laugh, especially when you find out that your colleague would eat a worm for the price of a
pizza, say. In Are You Normal About Money, the author quotes a survey about what people would do for US$10
million. The results? “One quarter would abandon all their friends and church, or become a prostitute for a
week, or change their race or sex. And seven percent would even murder for that amount.” So just be careful
exactly what you find out, the next time you play.

Uganda
Two used T-shirts

India
One unlimited, basic
South Indian thali

South Korea
A small packet of
cotton swabs

Denmark
One toilet roll

Madagascar
Two tabs of paracetamol

Venezuela
Seven to 50 litres of
gasoline
19
NOVEMBER 2014

ADVENTURE

Choose your sport!

KABBADI

Jet fighter pilot. These are three awesome words
put together. The coolest job in the world, right?
Sure... Just be sure to watch your back, literally

DRONE WARS

PEE AT MACH 3

They say in the trade:
“The last fighter pilot has
already been born”. As
drones advance more, the
need for human decreases.
It costs the US Air Force
about US$6 million to
train one pilot, who can
only withstand about nine
Gs of force

There’s not much room
for a loo in an F-15 cockpit. When most pilots
want to urinate, they
have to fly and unbuckle
their harness at the
same time — a cramped,
difficult manoeuvre that
has caused at least two
recorded crashes

PEE AT MACH 3,
PART 2
To avoid nature’s call, pilots avoid drinking before
or during a flight, causing
dehydration that can make
them prone to G-forces.
They might be forced to
go inside their flight suits
rather than an exterior
“piddle pack”

COST PER
FLIGHT HOUR

DDAKJI
A South Korean game popular with kids. Players
fold thick origami paper disks, which they slam on
opponents’ disks on the floor. If the other disk flips,
the slammer then gets to keep it
Difficulty: 4/5. It takes a mix of brute force,
physics and accuracy
Cool factor: 2/5. Teams often choose a
throwing player via Rock- Paper-Scissors.
And when televised, announcers’ running
commentary ain't exactly riveting

F-16C Viper Fighter:

US$22,514
EJECTING IS HELL

TIP THE MECHANIC

According to a
researcher, you have
a one in three chance
of breaking your spine
when using the eject
button. Thanks to the
rockets that fire your seat
out at 16 times normal
gravitational force.
About eight percent of
pilots don’t survive

In 2009 it was revealed
that the F-22 fighter cost
US$350 million each,
and required 30 hours of
maintenance for every
hour of flight. A Defense
Department insider
snorted, “It's a disgrace you
can fly a plane an average
of only 1.7 hours before it
gets a critical failure”

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

F-15agle Fighter:

US$41,921
F-22A Raptor Fighter:

US$68,362
MQ-1B Predator Drone:

US$3,679

MUGGLE QUIDDITCH
Yeah, Harry Potter fans, it’s a real sport now! At last
year’s Quidditch World Cup VI, over 1,500 players
and 12,000 spectators gathered in Florida
Difficulty: 4/5. The game
is as rough as in the books.
Dislocations, bruises and even
concussions are the norm
Cool factor: -500. The snitch,
which if caught wins the game, isn’t a
magical winged ball. It’s a player dressed
in yellow (or golden spandex) with a
tennis ball in a sock hanging out of
his butt

ANNOUNCER 1: HE DID NOT FLIP IT
ANNOUNCER 2: PERHAPS HE WILL FLIP IT NEXT TIME?
ANNOUNCER 3: PERHAPS

TOP GUN, NO FUN

PRIC
DICE EY,
DEHYDY AND
RATING

One of India’s oldest sports is half-tag,
half-wrestling. Teams send a ‘raider’ into enemy
territory, who must tag as many players as he can —
while holding his breath and chanting ‘kabbadi’
Difficulty: 5/5. Try saying ‘kabbadi kabbadi kabbadi’
while jogging; see how long you last. Plus, the Kabbadi
Federation needed to instate a rule that players
can't stifle anyone's chant “by shutting his mouth or
throttling.” Gulp
Cool factor: 5/5. Kabbadi soared high on the
coolness quotient in July this year, when the Pro
Kabbadi League (on the lines of Indian Premier
League) was launched, giving it a chic (yes!) avatar.
And with Bollywood biggies rooting for it, the sport is
a brand new favourite for all

HORIZONS
OCCUPATIONS

WANT TO DRESS UP THE WHO'S WHO
IN BOLLYWOOD?
The Indian film industry produces about 1,000 films annually. But does everyone have to
act? Or are there other options? We explore an interesting one
Think that SRK will look
better if you style him?
Sure he might, provided
you manage to get a
toe-hold in the world of
Bollywood fashion. Not as
easy as watching him strut
across the screen, but not
impossible either! Here is
what will get you in
the industry and in the
biggies’ line of vision.

Rewards Rewards! Jaya
informs us that some
production houses have
very low (or no) budget for
designers and stylists, in
which case they pick newbies
to work with. Or at times your
boss might hog the limelight,
ignoring your effort. “But
perseverence pays well here,
and there is no way you
won’t get noticed if you stick
around,” she adds. Once you
have a few noted names on
your portfolio, there’s no
stopping you!

Costume Designer
and Stylist
Starting off The safest way to
begin treading this path is to get
hold of your fashion design degree.

Do not fret!
Seems like a toughie?
Well, don't lose heart.
With the number of movies
the Indian film industry
boasts of producing every
year, there's no dearth of
production houses looking
for costume designers.
Don't believe us? Supran
Sen, Secretary General,
Film Federation of India,
throws some light on the
massive numbers of movies
produced in the year
2013-2014, in the highestgrossing languages:

No degree? No worries!
“So what if you haven’t had
formal training in fashion? You
can always start by assisting
established designers/stylists in
the industry,” shares Jaya Anand,
former stylist and designer with
Balaji Telefilms.
For how long?“Eternity (in some
unfortunate cases!)...haha. I did
for seven long years,” she reveals.
But look at the brighter side - that
is how you build solid contacts and
impress the stars you work with.
Juggle a bitAs a newbie, you
might want to have interests other
than fashion. For instance, your
profile might include important
tasks like fetching coffee, laundry,
running with samples to and from
studios, or even practicing VRPH
small talk!

AGAINST ALL ODDS
NOT EVERY ONE TASTED
SUCCESS AT FIRST SHOT.
A LOOK AT SOME OF THE
FAMOUS FIRST JOBS

FRUIT SELLER
TO BOLLYWOOD
ICON
DILIP KUMAR

Total films produced: 1966
Hindi: 263
Tamil: 326
Malayalam: 201
Bengali: 162
Punjabi: 48

COOLIE CUM BUS
CONDUCTOR
TURNED MEGA
STAR
RAJINIKANTH

WAITER AND
DISHWASHER
TURNED ACTION
KING
AKSHAY KUMAR

FROM VACUUM
CLEANER SALESMAN
TO ACE DIRECTOR
RAKEYSH OMPRAKSH
MEHRA

WORKING AS A
CHEMIST AND
WATCHMAN LED HIM
TO FAME NAWAZUDDIN SIDDIQUI

21
NOVEMBER 2014

HISTORY
INVENTIONS THAT ARE OLDER THAN YOU THINK

1868

A BRITISH RAILROAD SIGNALS
ENGINEER INVENTS THE FIRST
TRAFFIC LIGHT, THREE DECADES
BEFORE THE WIDESPREAD
ADVENT OF THE CAR

1927

THE VIDEOPHONE IS
CREATED BY BELL
LABORATORIES. IT
OPERATES AT 18
FRAMES PER SECOND

1600S

AN ITALIAN ARTIST NOW KNOWN AS "THE MASTER
OF THE BLUE JEANS" PAINTS WORKING CLASS
COUNTRYMEN WEARING DENIM FABRIC BACK
IN THE 17TH CENTURY, 200 YEARS BEFORE LEVI
STRAUSS MANUFACTURED BLUE JEANS

1843

SCOTTISH INVENTOR
ALEXANDER BAIN CREATES
THE FAX MACHINE. IT
PREDATES THE INDIAN
MUTINY, THE AMERICAN CIVIL

SELFIE SCIENCE Monkey Business
Five ways to get more
likes on your Instagram
photos, culled from
more than one scientific
study. #DepressedNow

SELFIES VS
THE CLASSIC

Face It
Pictures with faces get
38 percent more likes
and 32 percent more
comments than
those without.
#HashtagsRule
In one study, shots
with zero hashtags had
less than a 15 percent
like rate. Shots with 30
hashtags zipped to
25 percent.

“
“

A classic for some, this
work of art is a sure fail
for a selfie-lover!

Sex and Violence
(SADLY) Sells
Researchers ranked
1,000 objects shown in
photos based on their
popularity. Their results
were so predictable
they might as well not
have done their study.
Strong positive
impact Miniskirt,
bikini, cup, brassiere,
perfume, revolver
Strong negative
impact Spatula,
plunger, laptop,
golfcart, space heater

Colour much? Or does it
need more sharpness?

Rainbows Suck
Shots with a single
dominant colour get 17
percent more likes than
psychedelic ones.
Woohoo, Blue!
If the dominant colour
is blue and not red, it
will get 24 percent
more likes.

This might fare much
better than the rest.
Blue does the trick?

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

A tail told in puns
To paraphrase rapper
The Notorious B.I.G:
“Mo’ monkey, mo’
problems”. That’s what
a photographer found
when a photo taken on
his camera by a wild
crested black macaque
caused a stir. In a
copyright dispute after
the photo was posted
online, Wikipedia
sided with the monkey.
The company said the
shot belonged to the
aping animal, who took
the photo. Some days
later, the United States
Copyright Office settled
the debate, saying that
nobody owns the photo.
The photographer,
David Slater, is
probably going
bananas right now. In
retrospect, he should
have taken a leaf out

of an Indian city’s
book. This summer,
New Delhi became
so overrun by legions
of macaques that the
council hired men to
wear monkey masks
and howl, to scare the
animals away. The local
municipal authority
chairman said the
“very talented” young
men “hide behind the
trees and make these
noises to scare away the
simians.” Then if that
doesn’t work, it’s on like
Donkey Kong: stronger
tools are employed
like slingshots, or guns
that fire rubber bullets.
It’s unclear whether
the aped crusaders
also employ monkey
wrenches.
Why are they
resorting to gorilla

warfare? The army of
some 30,000 macaques
have hitched rides
in subway carriages,
rampaged through
the prime minister’s
office, stolen topsecret government
documents, and even
picked pockets. As a
serious note, they have
also caused deaths. In
2007, the city’s deputy
mayor tried to shoo
some monkeys from his
balcony, fell, and died.

Happy Timeline of Child Mortality
Pessimistic as mankind can often be, it may seem that statistics hammer home
how bad things are getting — how the world is going down the tubes, and how
things used to be better. Not so, says Melinda Gates, wife of Bill Gates and
co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
As she recently wrote on the foundation’s blog, UNICEF
reports bring good news like clockwork. The number of
children dying worldwide has gone down, writes Gates, “Every
single year — for at least the last 50 years.”
There is not much else that improves with such regularity,
she duly points out. “Sprinters keep getting faster, but they
don’t set new records every year. The 100-metre record set in
1968 didn’t get broken until 1983,” she adds.
Gates, who calls the improving child mortality figure “the
most important statistic in the world”, notes that 300,000
fewer children died this year than last. “To give a longer view,
that’s six million fewer than 1990.” Hear hear. Something to
cheer about, indeed.

PHOTOS OPPOSITE USAF (DRONE, F-15 COCKPIT, EJECTED PILOT, MECHANIC)
IMAGES CORBIS (THE SCREAM); BEN MOUNSEY (SPORTS ILLUSTRATIONS)

Acing a selfie just got easier

NEWS
EVERYBODY DO THE DUMBPHONE DANCE

1 IN 4

IN 2012, ONLY A QUARTER
OF JAPANESE OWNED A
SMARTPHONE. NOW, HALF THE
POPULATION HAS ONE

95% BLIND

WHEN ‘DUMBWALKING’, OR WALKING WITH A SMARTPHONE,
YOUR FIELD OF VISION DROPS TO 5 PERCENT OF THE NORM.
SO WHAT WOULD THIS MEAN FOR SHIBUYA, THE BUSY TOKYO
STREET CROSSING?

446

NTT DOCOMO RELEASED AN
APOCALYPTIC SIMULATION OF 1500
'DUMBWALKERS' IN SHIBUYA. THE
RESULT? 446 COLLISIONS

LUNAR LOOT:
THE NEW
COLLECTIBLE

Moon walk worth a million bucks!

Some people look at the
moon and see beauty.
Some see potential
piles of cash. In all, 12
men have walked on the
lunar surface, leaving
some nifty artefacts
behind. What condition
are these in? And what
might they be worth?
Take the family
photo that Charlie Duke
left on the surface.
Nostalgic gold, right?
Maybe not. “The photo
is almost certainly
unrecognisable today,”
explains space historian
Robert Pearlman.
Exposure to extreme
heat, frigid cold, and

unfiltered UV sunlight
for over 40 years
have likely ruined it,
he explains. Objects
that have been on the
moon are indeed the
holy grail among space
artefact collectors,
says Pearlman. Duke
carried several copies
of that family photo
to the moon. “One of

those photos sold at
an auction in 2011 for
US$5,887.” Assuming
its lunar mate is not a
pile of dust right now,
we asked Cassandra
Hutton, a space history
expert at the auction
house Bonhams,
for a valuation. Her
response, “I would
probably place an
estimate of US$8,000 to
$10,000, and expect it to
do better.”
Experts agree that
the first American flag
placed on the Moon
would be the big ticket
item, even though
bleached white by the
sun now. It is the item
Philippe Garner, a
photographic specialist
at Christie’s, would
nab if he could, he
admits. “I was brought
up with the ‘American
Dream’ largely intact. ”
According to Pearlman,
“Were it Apollo 11’s flag,
the first flag planted
on the moon (and the
only one to fall over)
I’d expect a significant
premium over other
flags.” Somewhere
between US$2 and
US$5 million, maybe.
The most ever paid
for a space artefact was
about US$2 million
— and that was for a
complete spacecraft.

The Red
Parade

This might look like a scene from a grisly horror
movie, but in fact, it’s a contaminated river in
Wenzhou county, Zhejiang province in China.
Contaminated with what?! Don’t worry, it’s not
blood. Just innocuous red dye.

me here”. And much
like some first dates
for vegetarians, tearing
strips from leaves with
your teeth is a
flirtatious gesture.

Quote
Unquote
“Take your stinking
paws off me, you
damned dirty ape!”
So goes the famous
line from cult classic
Planet of the Apes,
which a vanquished
human bellows at
his monkey captors.
It’s a classic fictional
moment of human-ape
interaction. But real
chimp-to-chimp chatter
is equally fascinating.
Researchers studying
chimpanzees in Uganda
recently documented
5,000 interactions,
and came up with a
lexicon of what their

"GROOM ME
HERE, PLEASE!"
MORE APE LINGO
A DIRTY CHIMP

body language signifies.
Altogether they have
decoded 19 specific
messages made up of
66 gestures. So a chimp
nudging a particular
part of their body to a
buddy means, “groom

A mother showing the
sole of the foot to her
child = “Climb onto
my back”
A nudge with the
back of the hand =
“Budge up!”
“The world is now ours,
puny human! Peel me a
banana, post-haste” =
Planet of the Apes has
come true

23
NOVEMBER 2014

FEATURES

52

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

68

PAGE 26 A CLOSE ENCOUNTER
WITH COOL ROBOTS

PAGE 68 BUSTING MYTHS
ABOUT SHARK ATTACKS

PAGE 40 A PEEK INTO WHAT
YOUR DREAMS REALLY MEAN

PAGE 94 FIND OUT HOW
PARANOID YOU ARE!

PAGE 52 THE MATHEMATICS OF
NATURE DECODED

40

26

94

25
NOVEMBER 2014

A RECEPTIONIST
ROBOT, PRODUCED
BY JAPAN'S ROBOT
MAKER KOKORO

Whether you are threatened by robots
or creeped out by their uncanny human
resemblance, the fact is that robots are here,
and they are making our lives better. From
the comforting android butlers that will keep
millions of Japanese pensioners happy, to the
flying machines that watch over endangered
species, Eric Talmadge seeks out the gadgets
that are going to help humanity
26
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

ROBOT

PHOTO AFP

ROBOMANIA!

27
NOVEMBER 2014

REMEMBER THE FURBY? THOSE
LITTLE FURRY CREATURES THAT
LOOKED KIND OF LIKE A HAMSTER
CROSSED WITH AN OWL? BACK IN
1998, THEY WERE ALL THE RAGE.
CUTE AND CUDDLY, FURBIES
WERE ABLE TO LIFT THEMSELVES
OFF THE GROUND, CLOSE THEIR
EYES, PRICK UP THEIR EARS, OPEN
THEIR MOUTHS — AND SPEAK!
NOT JUST PLAY A RECORDED
MESSAGE, BUT ACTUALLY
BABBLE, FIRST IN FURBISH, THEN
GRADUALLY IN SIMPLE ENGLISH
WORDS AND PHRASES. AND
LATER, IN 24 OTHER LANGUAGES.
AS A HUMAN CHILD LEARNS TO
SPEAK, IT SEEMED THE FURBY
WAS DOING THE SAME. ABOUT
40 MILLION OF THEM WERE SOLD
AROUND THE WORLD.

OPPOSITE THE FURBY IS
CONSIDERED THE FIRST
SUCCESSFUL CONSUMERFRIENDLY HOME ROBOT

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES

THE UNITED STATES' FIRST
FULL-HEIGHT, FREE-WALKING
HUMANOID ROBOT, CHARLI

ROBOT

f you don’t
remember Furby,
that’s okay. But
history just might.
The humble
Furby is widely
considered to be
the first successful
consumer-friendly
home robot,
opening the door to what
is almost certainly going to
be an integral and probably
inescapable part of humanity’s
future. Yes, robots are here, my
friends. And they are getting
smarter, more efficient and
better equipped to accomplish
all kinds of tasks that we
once thought only we could
do. Already, we have robots
working on our production
lines, that’s nothing new. But
robots are also going deep
under our seas, high in the
skies, exploring volcanoes
and reporting back to us from
radioactive disaster sites.
Researchers are already
looking into hybridising
insects, so that they can be
controlled like miniature
robots — and are perfecting
combat robots, aka “packbots”,
and bomb squad robots.
And depending on how you
define robot, you could also
include driverless cars and
drone aircraft on that list. The
science of artificial intelligence
has reached the point where
computer programmes can
pass themselves off pretty well
as thoughtful conversation
partners, aka “chatbots”.
They can win at chess. They
can scour the internet with
incredible speed to pull up
data. The United States
government even uses one as a
military recruiter. He’s called
Sergeant Star. But let’s let him
introduce himself.

“Hello, I’m Sergeant
Star,” he says in a macho but
somewhat bemused and oddly
engaging voice, to prospective
recruits who visit his site. “My
training allows me to answer
almost any question about
what life is like in the US Army.
Interacting with me is simple.
Just type in your question as
though you were chatting with
a live recruiter.” Let’s face it.
We're not alone. Robots are
everywhere — and we might as
well get used to it.

THE REPLICANTS
According to a study by Oxford
University academics, the
rise of the robots is not about
to slow anytime soon. Dr
Carl Benedikt Frey of Oxford
University’s Programme on the
Impacts of Future Technology,
and Michael A. Osborne,
of Oxford’s Department of
Engineering Science, predict
that within just a decade or
two, humans will be made
increasingly superfluous in
nearly half of all jobs in the
United States. These jobs will
be automated, computerised
or otherwise done by our
technological children.
The booting out of people
from many kinds of work
has been underway for
quite some time. Assemblyline workers, telephone
operators, bookkeepers,
seamstresses, paralegals — all
are fields that automation
and computerisation now
fill. In the near future, Frey
and Osborne predict that
what factory jobs still remain
will dwindle further, along
with openings for humans
as telemarketers, librarians,
tax preparers and, yes, even
insurance underwriters.
This was presciently the
29
NOVEMBER 2014

suspected position of one of
the androids that needed to
be “retired” in Philip K. Dick’s
dystopian classic novel, Do
Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep? which spawned the
movie Blade Runner.

DO WE FEAR
WHAT ROBOTS
MIGHT BECOME
AS THEY ARE
SUCH OBVIOUS
SYMBOLS
OF OUR OWN
PSYCHES,
INCLUDING
OUR MYRIAD
DARKER
SIDES?
As algorithms and
technology advance, we
are already seeing nonhumans performing tasks
like diagnostics, surgery and
news reporting. Among the
last to go, the Oxford experts
believe, will be professions
responsible for our own safety,
like firefighters, mental health
and social workers — and
even managers. Yet how are
humans, emotional creatures
that we are, supposed to feel
about this?

One could, of course, argue
that it’s a huge step forward
for human civilisation. Look
at all the wonderful creations
we have come up with to
do so many different and
varied tasks for us. Clearly,
robots — and other related
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

technologies— do a lot of
things that humans should
be grateful for. Dangerous,
strenuous, boring, repetitive
jobs. And the jury is still out
on whether the ultimate
economic impact of these
technology-driven changes in
the work-place will be good or
bad. The creative destruction
principle of capitalism would
suggest that, in the end, it’s all
for the better. The principle
says that although innovations
and change do often lead to the
demise of older, less efficient
jobs and approaches, they also
drive the engine of progress,
and potentially greater profit.
That's happening. We should
be patting ourselves on the
back, right?

I AM ROBOT
From the very start, the idea
of robots has made us uneasy.
The word itself was introduced
into our lexicon by a gloomy
science fiction play written
by Czech playwright Karel
Capek in 1920. The drama,
called Rossum’s Universal
Robots, explored what has
now become a staple of
Hollywood’s dystopian visions.
Capek’s robots at first serve
their purpose beautifully,
and seem to even enjoy it, but
gradually become disgruntled
with their lot and stage a
rebellion that leads to the
extinction of the human race.
Robots have been rebelling,
attacking and destroying their
human creators ever since, at
least on the big screen.
But what is it, exactly,
with robots that instills such
excitement, and fear, in us
humans? Do we fear what they
might become because they
are such obvious symbols of
our own psyches, including our
myriad darker sides? Might
our problem with robots really
be less about them maturing to
the point where we can’t trust
or control them, but rather our
fear in our very gut that we are
the ones who can’t be trusted?

ROBOT

And that, for trying to assume
the role of Creator, we deserve
to be put in our place?
Maybe it’s time to take
a deep breath and give our
inventive selves a break. Many
of the top researchers and
engineers working on robotics
are well aware of our fears,
and are creating machines
that they hope will be both
our helpers, and possibly our
friends. And DCM has checked
and been reassured, unlike
the movie version of this plot,
tha it doesn’t have to end in a
robot rebellion.

MAN’S NEW BEST FRIEND

PHOTOS AFP (MAIN); GETTY IMAGES (CAR FACTORY); CORBIS (JUMPING ROBOT);

Just one year after Furby
was released, Japan’s Sony
Corporation gave the world
Aibo — taken from Artificial
Intelligence roBOt, but
also the Japanese word for
companion. Aibo is a dog-like
robot whose “personality”
develops from that of a puppy
to full-grown adult through
interactions with its owner
and environment. Aibo was a
massive success, considering
its high price of over US$1,000
and Sony’s intention of
making them primarily as a
kind of upscale gimmick toy.
Innovation for innovation’s
sake, as some reviewers put
it — not for mass production.
By 2003, the Robodog could
chase balls, obey commands
or capriciously choose not to,
then roll over and go to sleep.
ABOVE A WOMAN WATCHES
A FULL-SCALE FIGURE OF
A TERMINATOR ROBOT AT A
JAPANESE ROBOT EXHIBITION
FOR THE RELEASE OF THE
FOURTH FILM IN THE SERIES
LEFT SPARKS FLY AS ROBOTS
WELD THE FRAMES ON THE
ASSEMBLY LINE AT THE HONDA
MANUFACTURING PLANT IN
ALABAMA, US
FAR LEFT THE 1920 SCI-FI PLAY
ROSSUM’S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS
INTRODUCED THE WORD ROBOT
TO THE WORLD. HERE, A SCENE
FROM THE PLAY SHOWS THE
ROBOTS IN REBELLION
RIGHT A JUMPING ROBOT
INSPIRED BY A GRASSHOPPER
31
NOVEMBER 2014

ROBOT ROUND-UP
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION MEANT AN
EXPLOSION IN THE NUMBER OF MACHINES THAT
HUMANKIND NOW RELIED UPON. IT IS PERHAPS
HERE WHERE THE SEEDS OF ROBOT DISTRUST
WERE BORN. OVER THE YEARS, ROBOTS HAVE
SWARMED INTO OUR COMIC BOOKS, MOVIES,
SONGS AND HEARTS. SOME ARE EVIL, OTHERS
PLAYFUL. AND SOME JUST MAKE YOU WANT TO
POP AND LOCK IT LIKE IT'S HOT, BABY

AUTOMATON ONE
Behold a French short film directed by the famed
Georges Méliès (the same man who helmed the
1902 classic A Trip to the Moon). Filmed in 1897,
Gugusse and the Automaton is so old that the
word robot hadn’t even entered our vocabulary
yet. The short scene features Gugusse the clown,
amazed at the antics of a small mechanical
creature. In their book Things to Come: An
Illustrated History of the Science Fiction Film,
authors Douglas Menville and R. Reginald
suggest this “may be the first true sciencefiction film”. Alas, all copies have been lost

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES(MAIN); LONPICMAN (SHERLOCK STATUE)

BACK IN BLACK
“KITT, I need you buddy!” our hero says into his
watch radio. “Right away, Michael,” replies his
trusty sidekick. To men of a certain age, this
exchange sends tingles up and down their spine.
Knight Rider featured David Hasselhoff before
Baywatch, and his super-intelligent talking car —
essentially a robot encased in a Pontiac Firebird
Trans Am. with smart cars and smart watches
now hitting the markets, we’re hoping it won’t be
long until we can live out these 1980s fantasies
STATUE CHAT
Tales of statues coming to life have appeared as
early as the days of Plato, the Talmud and Pliny.
But it’s not just a device for fiction anymore:
the UK has introduced a project where famed
statues in London and Manchester
actually speak. You swipe your
smartphone across a tag and a
'statue’, from Issac Newton to
Sherlock Holmes, will call and speak
a recorded message. “It’s the ugliest
man in England here,” snaps 18th
century parliamentarian
John Wilkes.
“But leave me alone with your wife
or daughter, and you would better be
back within 20 minutes or I’ll have
talked my face away and we’ll
be upstairs”
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

A US ARMY BOMB SAPPING
ROBOT OPERATED BY
SOLDIERS FROM THE
EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE
DISPOSAL COMPANY
ATTEMPTS TO DISMANTLE
AN IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE
DEVICE, IN BAGHDAD

ROBOT

Despite Sony’s low
marketing ambitions, Aibo’s
designers won numerous
awards and Aibo became
a pop culture icon. What
its designers realised, and
breathed into Aibo, was
that by making its program
complex enough it would seem
unpredictable and remain
interesting and entertaining
to its owners. Though Sony
stopped production of the
Aibo series in 2006, it was
definitely onto something.
To be truly useful in the
mainstream of human
activity, robots need to be
approachable and appealing,
provide services that meet
human needs and function
in ways that are easily
understood by the people
using them. And it certainly
doesn’t hurt if they can be
companions whose company
we can truly enjoy.
But that doesn’t mean
robots need to look or act
precisely like humans.
Leila Takayama, a research
scientist, recently noted in
MIT’s Technology Review that

MAYBE
SOMEDAY AN
ACTROID AND
AN ASIMO WILL
MEET IN A BAR
AND WE
WILL HAVE
HUMANOID
ROBOTS
AMONG US
the commonly held concept
that advanced robotics will
produce androids of the type
that populate the movies is not
necessarily true. She argues
that humanoid robots, may, in
fact, have very limited value,
mostly as entertainment, or
in the medical realm. There
just aren’t that many practical
reasons why we should build
machines that have the same

ROBOT ROUND-UP
WHAT THE HAL?
“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Was
there ever an AI programme as malicious as
the murderous, soft-spoken HAL 9000 of 2001:
A Space Odyssey? And while the red-eyed robot
might be fictional, we’ve all got a HAL in our
pocket. Her name is SIRI, and whenever we ask
her to bake us a cake she says she can’t do
that either. Sigh
CHIB IN DA CRIB
Ochibi-robo: plug into an adventure! came out
on the now-retro Nintendo Gamecube in 2005,
but its plot becomes ever more relevant. Chibi
is a 10-centimetre tall household robot who
collects ‘Happy Points’ by doing chores for his
human masters. He’s basically a way cuter
version of a Roomba, the automated vacuum

SECRETING A SECRET
We hope the band Styx will forgive
us for dropping this truth-bomb:
Mr. Roboto is a terrible song. High
pitched synths squeal all over the
place, there’s too little beat and
too many purple jumpsuits, and
when the back-up singers wail,
“Secret secret, I’ve got a secret,” it sounds like
“Secrete secret, I’ve gotta secrete.” But they also
introduced the words “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto”
to the world, a catchphrase that echoes to this
day. So they secreted something good into pop
culture, at least

DO THE ROBOT!
We’re not done with Styx yet. Their music video
features an early version of The Robot, a dance
move invented sometime in the sixties for
people who can’t dance. For that, we are forever
grateful. Domo arigato, boys

CARTOON CLEANERS
Sweet and charming with
a mothering quality, the
housemaid from The Jetsons
proved that you didn’t have
to be human to have a heart
of gold. When talking robot
maids eventually make it into
our homes, we hope they’re
like her. She was hilariously
spoofed in Futurama, where a
similar female robot beeped:
“Everything must be clean.
Very clean. That’s why the dog
had to die. He was a dirty dog.
Also that boy Elroy. Dirty. Dirty”
33
NOVEMBER 2014

kind of physical design we
already have.
Takayama points out that
people interact beautifully
with service dogs, although
they certainly don’t look
like little humans and don’t
communicate in the language
their human companions
do. In the design and
development of robots that
will interact with people in
more sophisticated ways
as robotics progresses, this
is an important concept to
keep in mind. Takayama also
notes that although there are
important ongoing projects
aimed at giving functional
robots a more human look,
the more a machine looks like
us, the more we expect it to
be like us. Thus, we are more
likely to get frustrated with
its shortcomings — the things
that aren’t actually human.

IT MIGHT BE
A BETTER
IDEA FOR
DESIGNERS TO
DELIBERATELY
BUILD ROBOTS
THAT LOOK
LIKE, WELL,
ROBOTS.
TO FASHION
THEM IN A
WAY THAT
IS NEITHER
THREATENING
NOR REALLY
ATTRACTIVE IN
ITS OWN RIGHT
THE UNCANNY VALLEY
Although creating a machine
that can pass itself off as
human is great fodder for
science fiction, and does have
some potential uses in the real
world, it might be a better idea
for designers to deliberately
build robots that look like,
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

THE LEGGED SQUAD
SUPPORT SYSTEM
IS A DISMOUNTED
WARFIGHTER CAPABLE
OF CARRYING ALMOST
45 KILOGRAMS OF GEAR

well, robots. To fashion
them in a way that is nonthreatening and attractive in
its own right.
This idea is called the
problem of the “uncanny
valley.” Put forth in
essentially its current form
by researchers like Masahiro
Mori way back in the 1970s,
it posits that people tend to
feel more and more empathy
and have a generally better
feeling toward humanoid
robots that look closer and
closer to what we expect

humans to look and act like.
But only up to a point.
Once that point is
crossed, the robot becomes
“uncannily” close to human,
but somehow dissimilar, and
people start to feel strong
revulsion to it. In other words,
“almost human” is too creepy.
For developers going for the
human look, this will be a
significant problem in the
years ahead. They are, in fact,
already getting close enough
for creepy to be a problem.
Enter Actroid. Developed

by Osaka University and first
revealed to the public at the
International Robot Exhibition
in 2003, Actroid looks, in still
photos at least, like a very
attractive young Japanese
woman. She blinks, moves a
little, appears to breathe and
can talk. Her silicone skin
looks soft and warm. She’s
interactive in important ways.
She can respond to touch,
tilt her head coquettishly,
maintain eye contact and
change her expressions to
match the situation. In later

ROBOT

PHOTOS REUTERS (ASIMO ROBOT); DARPA (ROBOT BULL);
WARNER BROS (JETSON'S ROBOT)

HONDA'S LATEST
VERSION OF THE
ASIMO HUMANOID
ROBOT HAS ENHANCED
INTELLIGENCE AND
HAND DEXTERITY

versions, her face has been
altered to reflect average
human composites, a mixed
up version of numerous
faces that when combined
have been proven to appear
more attractive than your
typical individual. From a
technological standpoint,
Actroid is a real masterpiece.
But in person, so to speak,
Actroid is not quite there
yet — which, for our human
brains, is a big red flag. To
most of us, she is an uncanny
valley girl.

As Actroid demonstrates,
a lot of work still needs to be
done before robotics will be
able to seriously challenge
the uncanny valley barrier
and still more before we will
be able to confidently cross
over it. For now, a Barbie doll,
which comes nowhere near
being a real girl, is a lot more
comforting and natural to our
human sensitivities than even
the most advanced Actroids,
which come impressively, but
disconcertingly, close. By the
way, for those who are feeling

a bit turned off by the seeming
sexism of creating only cute
young women as prototypes,
it should be noted that the
Geminoid HI-1, which came out
in 2006, was modeled after its
male creator, Hiroshi Ishiguro.

ALMOST HUMAN
Taking a different tack on the
humanoid front, even before
Sony unleashed Aibo, Honda
was working on a robot called
Asimo which has reached a
number of milestones. The
project was started in 1986

with the goal of creating a
robot that could walk on two
legs. Today, Asimo, which
Honda claims is the world’s
most advanced humanoid
robot, can not only walk, it
can run, climb stairs and
reach out and grasp objects.
Although Asimo remains a
kind of showcase for design
and engineering — rather than
a hit consumer product —
Honda has had a great deal of
publicity with Asimo’s many
tricks and skills, and still holds
out the possibility that future

35
NOVEMBER 2014

A LARGE ROBOT FROM THE ROBOT
RESTAURANT IN TOKYO JAPAN
THAT HOLDS CABARET-STYLE
DAILY PERFORMANCES WITH A
HOST OF LARGE SCALE ROBOTS
AND VEHICLES CONTROLLED
WITH REMOTES BY STAGEHANDS
DRESSED AS NINJAS

PHOTO CORBIS

ROBOT

versions may be able to assist
the elderly, along with people
in wheelchairs or confined to
their beds. Wisely, perhaps,
Honda has made no attempt to
challenge the uncanny valley
problem. Asimo has a classical
man-in-a-spacesuit look, with
no face. Maybe someday an
Actroid and an Asimo will
meet in a bar and we will have
humanoid robots among us who
can clear the uncanny barrier.
In the meantime, big
strides are being made toward
resolving the problem of how
to meld advances in friendly
robotics with packaging that
isn’t obsessed with imitating
humans but rather with
maximising their compatibility
with human users.
Case in point: the “Jibo”
project. About 28 centimetres
tall and weighing around three
kilograms, Jibo has a big round
“head” on a “bust”. But beyond
that, this little robot isn’t
intended to appear human. It
is a kind of bridge between the
smart phones or tablets that
we have already adopted into
our daily lives and the robotic
assistant of the future. Like
robotic vacuum cleaners or lawn
mowers — who, it should be
noted, have yet to start a robot
uprising — Jibo is promoted as a
stylish appliance, something you
would feel comfortable putting
on the dining room table or on
the kitchen counter.
But as a complete package,
it is much more than a simple
home appliance. It combines
several useful functions
into a physical form that its
users can relate to on a more
personal-feeling level than the
disembodied experience of
using something like Siri on our
iPhone. You talk to it,
it talks right back. And sometimes it will lean forward to look
as though it’s really interested.
Jibo’s developers, led by
MIT Media Lab’s Personal
Robots Group head Cynthia
Breazeal, are calling Jibo the
world’s first family-friendly
37
NOVEMBER 2014

robot and say it will have
something to offer all ages.
It will be a storyteller and
playmate for little kids,
an attentive and watchful
companion for seniors and
a social coordinator and
personal manager for adults.

JIBO CAN
REMIND YOU
OF EVENTS
ON YOUR
SCHEDULE,
DELIVER
MESSAGES,
TAKE PHOTOS
AND VIDEOS,
DISPLAY
INTERACTIVE
GRAPHICS
AND TURN
ITS “FACE” TO
LOOK IN YOUR
DIRECTION
Its skillset is a combination
of a lot of stuff that we already
use — it can remind you of
events on your schedule,
deliver messages, take photos
and videos, display interactive
graphics and turn its “face” to
look in your direction using a
see-and-track camera. Rather
than technological innovation,
Jibo’s significance lies in its
potential for bringing our
online connectivity activities,
plus some of the other laptop
tasks, together in a way that's
more resonant as a “human”
experience. Jibo will be able
to know who it is talking
to, with future versions
expected to have the facial
recognition capabilities to
read our expressions and
respond to our moods. When
the first units ship from
December 2015, many will
watch whether this new robot
companion catches on — and
just how long it puts up
with us.
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

ROBOT

GOODBYE, BOOMER

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM MAIN GETTY IMAGES; DARPA(DRC HUBO, DARPA ROBOTICS CHALLENGE); CORBIS

IT’S A DANGEROUS JOB, BUT SOMEONE’S GOT
TO DO IT. NOWADAYS, THAT SOMEONE IS MOST
LIKELY A ROBOT

ABOVE BANDIT IS A ROBOT DESIGNED TO
ENGAGE WITH CHILDREN WITH AUTISM
FAR LEFT PROFESSOR HIROSHI ISHIGURO
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OSAKA WITH THE
SILICONE ANDROID HE DESIGNED
TO RESEMBLE HIMSELF
LEFT AND RIGHT THE DARPA ROBOTICS
CHALLENGE SEES ROBOT SYSTEMS AND
SOFTWARE TEAMS COMPETING TO DEVELOP
ROBOTS CAPABLE OF ASSISTING HUMANS
WHEN RESPONDING TO NATURAL AND MANMADE DISASTERS

It’s common for soldiers and police to develop
intensely strong bonds with their animal
counterparts. Should a K-9 handler’s trusty
drug-sniffing dog die after many years of faithful
service, it can feel like just like they’ve lost a
human partner.
But as robots increasingly become part of our
lives and the battlefield, we are also learning to
attribute human characteristics to the machines
that roll into firefights alongside us. During the
Iraq War, an explosive-seeking machine known
as a MARCbot — but nicknamed Boomer by his
comrades — was shot to pieces in combat. His
stricken team awarded Boomer a Purple Heart,
a Bronze Star Medal, and a 21-gun salute. “Some
people got upset about it,” a soldier in another unit
recalls. “But those little bastards can develop a
personality, and they save so many lives.”
Julie Carpenter, a PhD student in education
at the University of Washington, interviewed
23 explosive ordnance disposal personnel who
regularly used robots. As we become increasingly
close with these tools, it could have unforeseen
consequences, she notes. “You don’t want
someone to hesitate using one of these robots
if they have feelings toward the robot that goes
beyond a tool. If you feel emotionally attached to
something, it will affect your decision-making.”
Bomb disposal is perhaps the most high-profile
job robots do, but they can be found everywhere
nowadays. The “Ninja” robot climbs the exteriors
of high-rise buildings, carrying out inspections
with its suction-cupped limbs. But a platoon
of “Spider-bots” can top that. In 2009 several
were choppered in and lowered into the volcanic
crater of Mount St. Helens. Operating in extreme
temperatures, they communicated with each other
and a NASA satellite to warn of possible eruptions.
And right now, dozens of kinds of robot, each
specialised to a task, are currently scouting
around the Fukushima nuclear plant, mapping
data and helping with the cleanup. One poor
mechanical soul has already been written off after
it became lost in the plant. In some parts of the
doomed facility, even a human in a protective suit
would receive fiveyears' worth of an acceptable
amount of radiation in just 60 minutes.
39
NOVEMBER 2014

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

MIND GAMES

TELL ME
YOUR
DREAMS

PHOTO CORBIS (LEFT)

SWEATY, CLAMMY AND BREATHLESS. OR A
HALF-REMEMBERED FACE AND A SLIGHT SMILE ON
YOUR LIPS. OUR DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES ALWAYS
MAKE US CURIOUS ABOUT THE HOWS AND WHYS OF
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER WE FALL ASLEEP. DOES WILD
IMAGINATION LEAD TO HORRIFYING NIGHTMARES? OR
DOES A ZEN-LIKE PERSONALITY ENSURE SOOTHING
DREAMS? PRIYA PATHIYAN DECODES DREAMLAND

41
NOVEMBER 2014

MIND GAMES

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES

I’m alone on the beach, watching
the waves cresting and crashing.
It’s peaceful, almost soporific.
Suddenly, I sense something
wrong. Somehow I know there’s
a massive wave gathering its
strength and coming towards
me. I don’t wait to find out what’s
going on; why a tidal wave is
hitting a Mumbai beach. I just
start to run. I can hear the sibilant
swell of the wave as it pursues me
up the familiar palm-lined path.
At this point, I always pause to
ponder why there are fir trees at
the beach. But then the panic hits
again and I’m desperately running
for my life. If that wave engulfs
me, I’m done for...

ome nights it does. And I wake
up feeling forlorn. Other nights
I escape and greet the day with
a great sense of relief. But these
constantly recurring dreams
of tidal waves are something
I’ve learnt to live with. I often

ask myself why I have these
on loop. Is my brain so boring
that it just prefers to rehash
the same dream night after
night? Extensive research
(read Wikipedia and dubious
dream analysts) hasn’t told
me much that I didn’t already
know: ‘Symbolising welling
emotions and a sense of being
overwhelmed, supposed to be a
result of putting off confronting
problems head on’. As a bit of
psychobabble, that’s all effective.
But is it really scientific?
Sudhir Kakar, eminent
Goa-based psychoanalyst, who
has studied at the Sigmund
Freud Institute in Frankfurt,
Germany, and taught at
Harvard University and IIM,

43
NOVEMBER 2014

INSIDE A DREAM
While the act of dreaming is
physiological, the content of a
dream is purely psychological.
The mysterious images,
emotions and activities of
our dreams are a product of

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES (RIGHT); CORBIS (BOTTOM LEFT); DREAMSTIME (BOTTOM CENTRE & RIGHT)

Ahmedabad, apart from having
authored 17 books of non-fiction
including On Dreams and
Dreaming, explains, “Virtually
all mammals sleep according
to regular cycles known as
REM (Rapid Eye Movement)
and non-REM sleep. For
humans, a typical eight-hour
sleep will include four or five
cycles of REM and non-REM
sleep, with a total REM time
of around two hours. Dreams
occur mostly, though not
exclusively, in the REM cycle.
REM sleep is accompanied by
increased respiration, heart rate
and genital arousal, leading to
erections in men and clitoral
swelling in women. Remember
that we spend almost one-tenth
of our life dreaming!”
Sleep researchers, who have
noted the changes in the physical
body during REM sleep, as
mentioned by Kakar, also believe
that we dream during REM
sleep as a result of excited brain
activity and the paralysis of major
voluntary muscles. This REMassociated paralysis is meant to
keep the body from acting out
the dreams that occur during this
intensely cerebral stage (so that
our body doesn’t start behaving
like our pet’s paws do while
they’re hunting in their sleep!).

DECODING DREAMS THE VARIOUS TYPES OF DREAMS AND WHAT TO EXPECT
NIGHTMARES

A FRIGHTENING OR DEEPLY UPSETTING
INTENSE DREAM CAUSING STRONG
FEELINGS OF FEAR, HORROR AND DISTRESS.
ABOUT FIVE-10 PER CENT OF ADULTS HAVE
NIGHTMARES ONCE A MONTH OR MORE
FREQUENTLY. FA LLING, ARRIVING LATE,
DEATH, TEETH FALLING OUT, FLYING AND
CAR ACCIDENTS ARE THE MOST COMMONLY
REPORTED ONES.

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

LUCID

ALSO KNOWN AS A CONSCIOUS
DREAM, IT’S ONE WHERE THE
DREAMER BECOMES AWARE
THAT HE IS DREAMING WHILE
THE DREAM IS IN PROGRESS. AS
A LUCID DREAM CONTINUES, THE
WAKING MIND GAINS CONTROL.
REMEMBER INCEPTION? IT WAS
BASED ON THIS CONCEPT.

MIND GAMES

our unconscious mind. As
Mumbai-based psychologist
Seema Hingorrany puts it,
“There’s simply no limit to what
you can dream about.”
According to Kakar, there
are four views on why we
dream. “First, dreams mean
nothing; they are random noise
in the neurological system.
Second, dreams predict the
future. Third, dreams aid the
creative process and fourth,
dreams are indicators of
major personal concerns.

THE ACT
OF DREAMING IS
PHYSIOLOGICAL
BUT THE
CONTENT OF
THE DREAM IS
PSYCHOLOGICAL.
THE MYSTERIOUS
EMOTIONS IN
OUR DREAMS
ARE PRODUCTS
OF OUR
UNCONSCIOUS
MIND AT WORK
The first view is a minority
position, rejected by empirical
dream researchers and
psychotherapists of almost all
persuasions. The dominant
view is that dreams address
personal concerns, whether in
the present or from the past.
They are messages from the

unconscious to the conscious
part of the mind which
constitutes only five
per cent of our mental life.
They address our wishes and
fears which are not conscious
for one reason or the other. For
instance, if I am angry with my
father but consciously permit
myself only a slight feeling of
irritation, a dream could reveal
to me the full range of my
anger in images of an exploding
volcano or a being a witness of
a murderous attack. The dream
then reveals the full range of my
experience. The major function
of the dream can be said to be
expansion of consciousness,
of making the brain grow,”
he elaborates
Kakar explains that
predictive dreams constitute
a challenge to the dominant
view even though many
predictive dreams fall into
the first category. “Thus, for
instance, it is not a predictive
dream if I am worried about
the serious illness of a
relative and then dream of the
relative’s death and the relative
actually dies in the next few
days. Also, as in astrological
predictions, we only tend
to remember those dream
predictions that come true and
forget the false ones. But, even
granting all this, there are a
few predictive dreams which
carry accurate information
about a future event that is
unknown and unknowable to
the conscious self and pose a
challenge,” he admits.

COMMON

THEY TEND TO HAVE TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF MEANINGS: A GENERAL MEANING
WHERE THE DREAM IS TOLD AS A SYMBOLIC STORY, AND AN INDIVIDUAL MEANING, WHICH
IS SPECIFIC TO THE DREAMER. COMMON DREAMS OFTEN MIRROR REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCES.
HOWEVER, THEY CAN ALSO INCLUDE FANTASIES. ALSO, COMMON DREAMS CAN OFTEN
LINK TO MANY ACTUAL EXPERIENCES AND SENSATIONS. FOR INSTANCE, WHEN A PHONE IS
RINGING IN REALITY THE DREAMER MIGHT HEAR THIS IN THEIR DREAM. SUCH
EXPERIENCES ARE NOT RARE. ANOTHER PECULIAR THING TO NOTE IS THAT SEVERAL STUDIES
OF COMMON DREAMS HAVE FOUND THAT ABOUT THREE QUARTERS OF DREAM CONTENT OR
EMOTIONS ARE NEGATIVE.

45
NOVEMBER 2014

MIND GAMES

PHOTO CORBIS

CARL JUNG
THOUGHT THAT
A FAVOURABLE
END TO A
DREAM HAD A
QUIETENING
EFFECT AND
DIRECTED THE
DREAMER TO
CONSTRUCTIVE
WAYS OF
SOLVING
PROBLEMS
Kekule, one of the principal
founders of modern organic
chemistry, who is said to
have dreamt about a snake
biting its tail in 1858, which
then revealed to him the true
structure of the benzene ring,
which showed that carbon can
link with itself to form long
chains. Kakar says that such
instances offer a challenge.
“Many such dreams need an
explanation. Not in the sense
of ideas and images seen in
the dream which are then
transformed into art. No, the
challenge is to instances of
inexplicable scientific and
artistic achievement in a
dream,” he says.

SWEET DREAMS ARE
MADE OF THIS…

DO MEN AND
WOMEN DREAM
DIFFERENTLY?

Most modern-day
psychologists agree that
the majority of dreams are
composed of four parts.
These are usually arranged
like a typical theatrical play.
First, is the establishment
of the scene, the time of the
dream and the entrance of the
characters involved, who may
already be headed towards a
central conflict. Next is the plot
advancement, where something
new occurs, leading the dream
into the third phase, a climax
where the most important
things occur. According to
Swiss psychotherapist Carl
Jung, this was so because we
cannot consciously influence
the outcome, and dreams so
reflect the real situation. He
famously said, “Nature is often
obscure or impenetrable, but
she is not, like man, deceitful.
We must therefore take it
that the dream is just what it
pretends to be, neither more
nor less. If it shows something
in a negative light, there is no
reason for assuming that it is
meant positively.”
Jung discriminated
between favourable and
unfavourable dreams, as he
thought a favourable end had a
quietening effect and directed
the dreamer to the most
constructive ways of solving
problems. Unfavourable
endings contained a warning
of, perhaps life-important,
negative changes, he thought.

YES, SAYS DREAM EXPERT
PATRICK MCNAMARA!

Women tend to recall their
dreams more often than men
and women tend to report more
frequent and more intense
nightmares than men

Men dream more often about
other men rather than women,
whereas women dream equally
often about men and women.
For instance, 67 per cent of
characters in men’s dreams
are other men whereas 48 per
cent of characters in women’s
dreams are other women.

Men tend to dream about
aggressive encounters with
other men (typically strangers)
while women tend to dream
about interactions with familiar
others that take place in
familiar surroundings.

TONIGHT’S MARES:
TOOLS FOR
TROUBLESHOOTING
TOMORROW?
Jung envisaged dreams as
windows into the unconscious,
which contained all we needed
to know about the causes of our
psychic troubles. He postulated
that the unconscious, through
dreams, is not concerned merely
with putting right the things that
have gone wrong in us. It aims
at our well-being in the fullest

PHOT0S DREAMSTIME

Discussing dreams as an aid
to the creative process, Kakar
cites well-known examples.
Our very own mathematical
genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan,
who said he used to see the
goddess Nammakal write down
the solutions for intractable
mathematical problem in his
dreams. Or famous Surrealist
painter Salvador Dali, who
frequently described his
paintings as ‘hand-painted
dream photographs’. Or
ex-Beatle Paul McCartney,
who claimed that he heard
the entire song Yesterday in
a dream before penning the
music and lyrics. And then
there’s the legendary dream
of German chemist August

47
NOVEMBER 2014

possible sense; its goal is
nothing less than our complete
personal development, the
creative unfolding of the
potentialities that are contained
in our individual destiny. As
writer Edgar Allan Poe is
attributed to have said, ‘All that
we see or seem, is but a dream
within a dream’.
Hingorrany, who has
authored Beating the Blues: A
Complete Guide to Overcoming
Depression, would certainly
agree. “Dreams, and especially
nightmares, are a clear
indicator that the person
is suffering an emotional
disturbance of some sort. Many
times, there are thoughts which
are stuck in the memory but not
processed. During the clinical
interview, we always ask about
the patient’s dreams as they
provide an insight into the
person’s psyche.”
Is it also true that people
suffering from depression
dream almost three times as
much as those who are not?
Hingorrany replies, “Yes,
people who are depressed
usually do complain of
nightmares. It’s often a sign
of their insecurity and the
negative thought process. It
could be anything from planes
crashing to their house being
on fire to the death of a family
member. They remember the
feeling of extreme fear but not
necessarily the exact details.
Sometimes, they dream about
things that are stored as a
dysfunctional memory. For
example, a woman who has
undergone sexual abuse in the
past may dream that another
woman is getting molested. As
she hasn’t spoken about it, and
may have been suppressing the
memory all her life, it could
manifest itself this way.”

AND HERE IT
COMES AGAIN…
According to Patrick
McNamara, who has over 15
years of experience working
directly on the nature and
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

MIND GAMES

DO MEN AND
WOMEN DREAM
DIFFERENTLY?
FIVE MINUTES
AFTER THE END OF
A DREAM,

50
PERCENT

OF THE CONTENT
IS USUALLY FORGOTTEN
AND AFTER 10 MINUTES,
YOU WILL REMEMBER ONLY
ABOUT

10
PERCENT

CHILDREN
DREAM
MORE OFTEN
OF ANIMALS THAN
ADULTS DO.

WOMEN

TEND TO
REMEMBER
MORE DREAMS
THAN MEN DO.

MEN’S DREAMS
TEND TO BE MORE

AGGRESSIVE
AND MORE
SEXUAL
THAN WOMEN’S DREAMS.

PHOTO CORBIS

FALLING

DREAMS ARE MUCH MORE
COMMON THAN

FLYING
DREAMS.

49
NOVEMBER 2014

50
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

MIND GAMES

function of dreaming and has
published over 30 scientific
papers on dreams as well
as several books, there is a
“popular misconception”
about what causes repetitive
nightmares. McNamara, who
is Director of the Evolutionary
Neurobehaviour Laboratory in
the Department of Neurology
at the Boston University School
of Medicine, says, “Most people
seem to think that frequent
nightmares are caused by some
sort of emotional trauma or
haunted past. But that is not
really the case. Certainly there
is a class of nightmare sufferers
who have experienced trauma
and their nightmares are clearly
linked to it. But there is another
class of sufferers who do not

PHOTO DREAMSTIME

A WOMAN
WHO HAS
UNDERGONE
SEXUAL ABUSE
IN THE PAST
MAY DREAM
THAT ANOTHER
WOMAN
IS BEING
MOLESTED.
SUPPRESSED
MEMORY
COULD OFTEN
LEAD TO THIS
fit the stereotype. There are
many people who experience
frequent nightmares who have
no special histories of any
trauma. So we need to look at
other potential causative factors.
In my 2008 book on nightmares
(Nightmares: The Science and
Solution of Those Frightening
Visions During Sleep), I
suggested that one overlooked
factor was the balance
between REM and NREM
sleep amounts the individual
experiences on a nightly basis.”
McNamara cites the research of
Borbély and Wirz-Justice, who
modelled the normal balance

between REM and slow-wave
NREM sleep (SWS) back in
1982. He avers that their model
has been widely successful in
capturing the need to catch up
on lost sleep when the balance
between REM and NREM is
upset due to sleeplessness or
other perturbation.
“In the case of nightmares,
the available data suggest that
there is too much REM and too
little SWS and thus, the REM/
SWS balance is lost. There was a
recent report from a Hungarian
group (Simor et al) in the
European Archives of Psychiatry
and Clinical Neuroscience,
where the authors investigated
the sleep architecture of 17
individuals with frequent
nightmares and 23 control
subjects. The authors claim that
they found that the subjects with
nightmares evidenced a reduced
amount of slow-wave sleep,
increased nocturnal awakenings,
and longer durations of REM
sleep. The basic finding is clear:
people with frequent nightmares
have a measurable decrease in
slow-wave sleep and an increase
in REM sleep and the latter was
related with negative effect,” says
McNamara, who is currently
studying (among other subjects)
the evolution of REM and
NREM and writes a scientific
blog called Dream Catcher in
Psychology Today.
“Whether or not one can
argue that the imbalance
between SWS and REM in
nightmare sufferers is causative
or contributory it may be that
one avenue of treatment for
frequent nightmares is to restore
the REM/NREM balance. That
can be done pharmacologically
or sometimes merely by shifting
sleep schedules (i.e. treating
the nightmare disorder as a
disorder of circadian rhythms)
and observing strict sleep
hygiene habits. I do not wish to
make things sound so simple
but there may be a number
of nightmare sufferers who
respond to these simple
interventions,” he concludes.
51
NOVEMBER 2014

IN PLAIN
SIGHT
HOW LONG IS THE COAST OF INDIA?
ALMOST INFINITE, ACCORDING TO
FRACTAL THEORY. WHAT STARTED AS
AN INTELLECTUAL EXERCISE BY BENOIT
MANDELBROT OPENED THE DOOR TO A
WHOLE NEW BRANCH OF MATHEMATICS,
AND REVEALED THE ORDER THAT
UNDERLIES ALMOST EVERY PART OF
NATURE. RTACHEL SULLIVAN EXPLORES
THE MATHEMATICS OF THE WORLD
52
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PHOTOS: NASA (OPPOSITE), CORBIS

NATURE’S ART

WHETHER IT'S GLACIER
MOVEMENTS (OPPOSITE)
OR TREES, FRACTAL
GEOMETRY IS FOUND
ALMOST EVERYWHERE IN
NATURE — KEEP YOUR
EYES PEELED AND YOU'LL
SEE IT IN SOME TRULY
STRANGE PLACES

A CLOSE-UP OF A
MANDELBULB, A THREEDIMENSIONAL ANALOGUE
OF THE MANDELBROT
SET, CREATED WITH A
PROGRAM KNOWN AS
CORONA RENDERER

NATURE’S ART

PHOTO: ONDREJ KARLÍ

ACCORDING TO ONE RELIABLE SET OF
MEASUREMENTS, INDIA’S COASTLINE IS
7,000 KILOMETRES, AUSTRALIA’S IS 25,760
KILOMETRES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM’S
IS 12,429 KILOMETRES. ANOTHER EQUALLY
RESPECTABLE SET OF MEASUREMENTS
GIVES INDIA A VALUABLE ADDITIONAL
516 KILOMETRES (FOR A TOTAL OF 7,516);
AUSTRALIA GETS A WHOPPING EXTRA
40,770 KILOMETRES TO ITS NAME, AND THE
UNITED KINGDOM A MORE MODEST BUT
STILL IMPRESSIVE 7,288 KILOMETRES EXTRA.
SO WHY THE DISPARITY?

t all depends on the
unit of measurement.
If you measure in lots
of 50 kilometres then
you get the first set of
measurements. But
because a land mass has
features at scales that
range from hundreds of
metres to the nanoscale,
the smaller the unit of
measurement, the longer
the coastline will appear
to be. So even though
logically a coastline has
a finite length, from a
mathematical perspective
it is infinite.
This paradox left cartographers
scratching their heads, until Polish-born
mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot

brought a new approach to the table. In
attempting to accurately measure the
coastline of Great Britain, Mandelbrot
found something that had apparently
eluded conscious human minds for
millennia — the numerical order that is in
fact underlying nature’s apparent chaos.
Mandelbrot could n’t measure the
length of every nook and cranny either,
but he did recognise that coastlines, like
clouds, mountains, trees and many other
natural objects, are made of irregular
shapes that endlessly repeat themselves
at different scales. He found a way to rate
their roughness, and opened the door to
a whole new branch of mathematics.
Unlike the geometrically smooth
surfaces like one-dimensional lines,
two-dimensional triangles or threedimensional spheres, Mandelbrot
found that the so-called fractal shapes
55
NOVEMBER 2014

or the irregular patterns reproduced
infinitely at all scales to produce natural
phenomena, fall somewhere between two
and three dimensions. He also discovered
that the rougher the surface, higher is the
fractal dimension of it.
Speaking at a TED talk shortly before
his death in 2010, the Yale mathematician,
a citizen of France and the US, used the
example of a romanesco cauliflower to
illustrate the concept of fractals, and
of self-similarity. Self-similarity is one
of fractals’ most important underlying
principles, and arises from endless
repetition of a simple pattern.

“A cauliflower is both very
complicated and very simple at the
same time,” he said. “If you cut one of
the florets with a sharp knife and look
at it, you see the whole cauliflower, but
smaller. And then you cut again, and
again, and again… and each time u you
see smaller cauliflowers. Humans have
always recognised that some shapes have
this peculiar property, where each part is
like the whole, only smaller.”
In geometric terms a coastline is a
fractal, which remains similar-looking at
all scales. Like the distance around a lake,
he noted, "The concept of the length of a
coastline should be straightforward. It is
published in many places — but is in fact a
complete fallacy because each time you get
closer, the longer the distance becomes.”

PRACTICAL DESIGN
Fractal shapes are found everywhere in
nature and at all scales, from the rings of
Saturn and the spiral shapes of galaxies,
to the beat of the human heart; from the
branching of our blood vessels, nervous
system and DNA, to the structure of
mountain ranges, river deltas and
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PHOTOS: CORBIS (MAIN, UKICHIRO NAKAYA); UKICHIRO NAKAYA (SNOWFLAKE)

FRACTAL SHAPES
ARE FOUND
EVERYWHERE IN
NATURE AND AT
ALL SCALES, FROM
THE RINGS OF
SATURN AND THE
SPIRAL SHAPES
OF GALAXIES, TO
THE BEAT OF THE
HUMAN HEART

DISEASE
DETECTORS
Fractals are being used
as a non-invasive marker
of the progress of diseases like
Alzheimer’s. Scientists recognise
that the central nervous system and
the activities it controls have an intrinsic
fractal structure, with similar patterns,
whether monitored in minutes or hours.
These activity patterns change with age
and disease, and Harvard scientists have
recently discovered that as Alzheimer’s
disease progresses in a patient, the
disruption to their fractal activity
patterns increase, giving doctors
additional insight into the
insidious disease.

NATURE’S ART

RECREATING
NATURE'S ARTWORK

Japanese physicist Ukichiro Nakaya (below)
has been credited as being the first person
to create an artificial snowflake in the lab.
Nakaya's obituary in the journal Arctic
stated, "At the time Nakaya took over the
new department of physics [in Japan's
Hokkaido University], there was a minimum
of equipment and few funds available for
research. But he did have a microscope
and an unlimited number of natural snow
crystals during the long winters."
In total, Nakaya captured around 3,000
images of natural snow crystals, and later
proposed a general classification system for
snowflakes. Afterwards, he began trying to
recreate nature's artwork in the laboratory.
In 1933, he succeeded, growing the world's
first artificial snowflake on a single rabbit
hair, by circulating water vapour in a cooled
chamber. This discovery would allow
scientists to study snowflakes more closely
under controlled conditions, helping them to
understand how the crystals form.
His 1954 book, Snow Crystals: Natural and
Artificial, has been out of print for years,
but as SnowCrystal.com (a website created
by a professor of physics at the California
Institute of of Technology, in the United
States) puts it: "Nakaya's book offers a
superb look at a scientific investigation
which begins with almost nothing, and
proceeds through systematic observation
towards an accurate description of a
fascinating natural phenomenon."

ABOVE A RESIN CAST OF THE
HUMAN LUNGS AND BRONCHIAL
TREE. THE AIRWAYS OF EACH
LOBE OF THE LUNG HAVE BEEN
CAST IN A DIFFERENT COLOUR.
THIS LARGE NETWORK OF
AIRWAYS GIVES THE LUNGS
A HUGE SURFACE AREA FOR
OXYGEN TO ENTER THE BLOOD
AND CARBON DIOXIDE TO EXIT

57
NOVEMBER 2014

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PHOTOS: KARI/ESA

NATURE’S ART

SOUTH KOREA'S KOMPSAT-2
SATELLITE CAPTURED BOTH THIS
IMAGE, FEATURING ROLLING HILLS
OF FARMLAND IN THE US STATE
OF WASHINGTON, AND THE IMAGE
OPPOSITE, WHICH PICTURES THE SAND
SEAS OF THE NAMIB DESERT IN SOUTH
AFRICA. THE BLUE AND WHITE AREA IS
THE DRY RIVER BED OF THE TSAUCHAB.
BLACK DOTS OF VEGETATION ARE
CONCENTRATED CLOSE TO THE RIVER’S
MAIN ROUTE, WHILE SALT DEPOSITS
APPEAR BRIGHT WHITE

59
NOVEMBER 2014

WITH BOTH FRACTALS AND
PRINTING TECHNOLOGY NOW
GOING THREE-DIMENSIONAL,
ONE DAY YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO
PRINT EDUCATIONAL FOOD ITEMS,
SUCH AS FRACTAL CEREAL, FOR
YOUR CHILD'S BREAKFAST

NATURE’S ART

seashells. Electrical impulses travel
across wires in a fractal pattern, whether
they are high-tensile wires or nanowires.
And researchers in the US state of
Arizona have found that the ratio of large
trees to small ones in a forest exactly
matches the ratio of large branches to
small ones in the trees that make up the
forest — and so on, even down to the
cellular level.
“There are two types of fractals,”
explains Dr Richard Taylor, professor of
physics, psychology, and art, and director
of the Materials Science Institute at
the University of Oregon in the United
States, who is currently developing
fractal energy circuits in retinal implants
and solar cells.
“One is exact, where a pattern is
repeated precisely at different scales
such as the Mandelbrot set or Koch
snowflake (bottom right),” he says.
“The other is a natural fractal, which
is more subtle. In natural fractals the
pattern doesn’t repeat precisely but
the general quality, known as statistical
self-similarity, is repeated at smaller and
smaller scales.”

PHOTO: JANNE KYTTANEN, CREATIVE DIRECTOR 3DSYSTEMS (MAIN)

FRACTALS IN MOVIES
ARE APPLIED TO
CURVED SURFACES
AS A WAY TO MAKE
ROCKS OR PEBBLES
IN A STREAM MORE
INTERESTING
Taylor notes, “Nature in the raw can
be mind-bogglingly complex, but when
you look beyond and think about how
the complexity was created, it is
remarkably easy.”
Nature’s functions, he says, rely
on taking a simple pattern, and then
repeating the pattern over and over
again. “You need only two pieces of
information — one that describes the
basic pattern, and another that describes
how to repeat it. This simple formula
allows something as complicated as a
tree or a cloud to be built,” he explains.
“Out of such complex, rough objects you
get amazing functionality that smoothshaped objects don’t have.”
“It is no coincidence that lungs and
trees share a similar shape,” adds Dr
Adam Micolich, Taylor’s colleague and an
associate professor with the University

of New South Wales in Australia. “They
represent a way of getting a large surface
area to exchange resources — in this
case oxygen and carbon dioxide — with a
small volume cost.”
Micolich, who works on
nanoelectronics, says this principle
is being used to create ultra-efficient
batteries that maximise the size of the
anode/cathode interface without taking
up a lot of space. Elsewhere, fractal
antennas are widely used in mobile
phones, to maximise the amount of
surface area that can receive a signal.
Chemical engineers too, are applying
their understanding of the fractal nature
of combustion processes to reduce the
number of volatile gases released when
burning coal. And in nanoelectronics,
fractally branching patterns of energy
dispersal have led to the design of highly
efficient energy circuits for solar cells
and nanoscale objects.
“If you want a big area to transfer lots
of stuff and you don’t want to contribute
volume because of cost, using a fractal
design is a great way to achieve it,”
Micolich says.

FAMOUS FRACTALS
MANDELBROT SET
As well as measuring natural shapes,
Mandelbrot is perhaps best known for
popularising a shape that had never before
been seen. He generated the eponymous
pattern by feeding complex numbers into
a very simple equation that he created,
plotting the resulting number geometrically
and then plugging the number back into
the equation, and iterating the process
thousands of times.
This 1979 discovery was only made possible
because Mandelbrot had access to the
processing power of computers at IBM,
where he worked at the time. Since that
time, images of the Mandelbrot set have
appeared everywhere, from clothing and
car stickers to Cambridge crop circles.

DIGITAL MAGIC
Fractals also hide in plain sight in
movies as well, thanks primarily to Pixar
Animation’s co-founder and senior
scientist Loren Carpenter. Using his
knowledge of fractals to develop image
synthesis, the fundamental technology
that is behind digital film-making,
Carpenter's groundbreaking fractals
work would eventually go on to earn him
an Academy Award.
“I started out as a computer
programmer back in the ‘60s when
computers were hard to come by,” he
explains, adding that while studying
computer science he worked at Boeing
on rendering algorithms that showed
how concept aircraft might fly.
“Everything Boeing puts out has
a mountain in the background. It
implies the aircraft is safe because it is
flying over mountainous terrain,” he
says. To display the concept aircraft in
classic Boeing style, he wanted to make
pictures of aeroplanes passing in front of
mountains.
“Then in 1979 I found a book by
Benoit Mandelbrot, describing the math
behind fractals and containing some
intriguing pictures of fractally-generated
landscapes,” he recalls. “I chewed

THE KOCH SNOWFLAKE
First described in 1904 by Swedish
mathematician Niels Fabian Helge von
Koch, the shape and complexity of the Koch
snowflake allegedly inspired Mandelbrot in
his quest to measure the British coastline.
Using an equilateral triangle as its base,
each side of the triangle has another
triangular kink added in its centre, with
each side of the triangular kink equivalent
to one-third of the length of the original
side. Kinks can be added at smaller and
smaller scales on each side of the triangle
to create a snowflake pattern.

61
NOVEMBER 2014

over this for a couple of months and
came up with a family of algorithms
to generate fractals to create naturallooking animated landscapes.”
Natural landscapes have a lot of
randomness, he explains. If you make
an image of a static object it has no
randomness, so to make it appear
realistic you need to add randomness.
“Computers can generate random
numbers by scrambling a set of numbers
and then giving them back. You can do
this repeatedly and use these numbers to
plot points on a plane (surface) that will
defy predictability and create a picture,”
he says. “But when you move the camera,
or the image is viewed from another
angle it doesn’t make sense, because
when you said you wanted random, you
got random.”

PHOTOS: AFP (MAIN PHOTO) ; CORBIS (TREE); GETTY IMAGES (POLLOCK, FEATHERS)

THE ABILITY TO
DETECT PEOPLE THAT
AREN’T RIGHT IS AN
EVOLUTIONARY
THING, KNOWN IN
ANIMATION AS THE
“UNCANNY VALLEY”
When creating artificial landscapes or
other natural-looking images, consistent
randomness is required, Carpenter adds.
“To create a natural-looking image you
zoom in very closely on an image and then
add new bits of randomness in the cracks
in the image using fractal geometry.”
Using his algorithm, Carpenter made
a film, Vol Libre, showing a flyover
of a mountain range that appeared
remarkably realistic compared with the
kinds of animation available then. To
put it in perspective, Pac-Man, the gold
standard animated video game of its
time, didn’t come out until a year later.
“It was exciting because I figured
out how to make movie-quality images
at a time when animation was limited
to crude video game images,” he says.
Shortly afterwards he was hired by
Lucasfilm to establish a computer
division that would complement their
special effects business.
The first major project for the fractalbased image rendering software he
created was for the movie Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan, where Carpenter and
his team created an entire planet. “In the
movie, the Genesis device was intended
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

NATURE’S ART

to convert dead planets into living ones.
We wanted to realistically simulate this
and not have people focusing on bad
special effects.”
To create the planet, they generated a
fractal landscape and fly-by paths that u
u allowed the image to remain realistic
even as the viewpoint changed.
“The film-makers were so happy with
the result that they used the sequence in
the next two or three movies,” he laughs.
Now, Carpenter says, there are lots of
fractals in movies. They are applied to
curved surfaces as a way to make rocks
or pebbles in a stream more interesting.
They are used to create reflectivity,
bark on trees, and dirt on the ground.
Simulated waves use fractal systems,
while lighting programs simulate
reflections off wrinkled surfaces. Some
software specialises in smoke production,

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT
A BLACK OAK TREE IN THE
YOSEMITE VALLEY IN THE UNITED
STATES, WITH A GRANITE WALL
AS A BACKDROP. THE FRACTAL
PATTERN IS PLAINLY VISIBLE;
JACKSON POLLOCK'S
UNDULATING PATHS, MADE IN
1947; TAYLOR SAYS POLLOCK
DELIBERATELY IMBUED HIS
ARTWORK WITH A FRACTAL
QUALITY; ROMANESCO
CAULIFLOWERS, WHICH HAVE
A NATURALLY FRACTAL SHAPE,
LOOK ALMOST TOO PRETTY TO
EAT; THE ELABORATE FEATHERS
OF A MALE PEACOCK'S TAIL
ARE A STUNNING EXAMPLE OF
FRACTALS IN NATURE.

others in making water move realistically.
But while extraordinarily realistic
animation can be achieved thanks to
the use of fractals, generating realisticlooking people that don’t have the
audience squirming in their seats is
another matter.
“At Pixar, where up to a million hours
are spent on each film, our dinosaurs or
imaginary landscapes are rendered so that
people accept them as a valid world for the
characters,” he says. “However, if you have
a cartoon human, people are quite happy
to buy the caricature, so we make the skin
of our characters look plastic.”
But to make a realistic-looking
human is much harder, he says. “It can
be achieved at some scales, such as
when the person is only a quarter the
height of a screen, but when it comes to
facial or hand close-ups, not everyone
buys it and it becomes creepy — and
the last thing we want is for viewers to
move between happy and creepy.”
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NOVEMBER 2014

NATURE’S ART

He notes that the human
ability to detect people
that aren’t right is an
evolutionary thing, known
in the animation business
as the “uncanny valley”.
“The term was coined by
Japanese robotics professor
Masahiro Mori in 1970, along
with a theory that says when
human features look and
move almost, but not exactly,
like natural human beings, it
causes human observers to
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

feel a certain revulsion.” The
“valley” refers to the dip in a
graph of the comfort level of
people viewing the not-quitehuman features.
“The human visual
system is drawn to naturallooking objects, and the eye
is a natural and powerful
fractal detector, much
more powerful than a
computer,” says Taylor. “At
an unconscious level, our
bodies are trained to respond

to fractal patterns, which we
find soothing.”

FRACTAL DETECTION
So if fractals are everywhere,
why did it take so long to
for them to be recognised?
“It’s one of those big
embarrassments,” he
laughs. “In the mid-1800s
mathematicians started to
generate patterns based on
layering. They called them
‘pathologicals’ and thought

their patterns superior to
anything found in nature,
which they thought was
generated by random,
haphazard processes.”
Taylor notes, “It’s a matter
of conditioning to what we
consider to be shapes. We
are brought up both in maths
and art to recognise patterns
that use Euclidean geometry.”
That is, shapes like circles,
squares, spheres and cubes.
“We are not consciously

PHOTOS: USGS/ESA

THIS LANDSAT IMAGE SHOWS
THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA,
IN THE UNITED STATES.
THE WAY THE RIVER CUTS
THROUGH LAND TO REACH
THE SEA LOOKS VERY SIMILAR
TO THE SPREAD OF A TREE'S
BRANCHES OR THE SHAPE OF
A LIGHTNING BOLT

NATURE’S ART

trained to look at messes and see
patterns,” he adds. “One of the huge
contributions of fractal geometry is that
it has made us reassess exactly what is a
pattern, and has given us a language to
understand patterns in nature.”
As to why we missed fractals, Micolich
feels this is understandable. “How did
we miss gravity when it was right in front
of our face?” he asks. “People finally got
around to studying these natural features,
and Mandelbrot pulled it all together.”
While Micolich currently works
on nanoscale electronic devices, his
discovery of the way electric current
travels fractally in nanodevices (it
branches like a river system) later
resulted in unmasking a hoard of fake
Jackson Pollock artworks.
Taylor was Micolich’s PhD supervisor
back in the 1990s. By day they worked
on nanoelectronics and by night they
analysed the compelling patterns and
organic shapes of Jackson Pollock’s
work, a source of fascination to Taylor
since he was a child.
“There is a strong relationship
between maths and art.” After
completing a PhD in physics, Taylor
went to art school, where he pondered
the works of “Jack the Dripper”.
“I knew about fractals from the study
of physics, and once back at art school
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

thought a lot about Pollock. The defining
moment came when I built a pendulum
structure filled with paint that was
blown about by the wind, which has its
own fractal motion.” “When the artwork
was finished, I noticed it looked a lot
like a Pollock painting, so once Adam
[Micolich] came up with a technique
to analyse fractal patterns, we decided
to put it to the test by applying it to
Pollock’s Blue Poles.”
They found that not only is there an
underlying fractal character to Pollock’s
work, the artist knew exactly what
he was doing when he created them.
“Pollock’s natural style of painting
repeats general qualities, rather than
the intricate iterations that characterise
fractal imagery like the Mandelbrot set,”
says Taylor.
“He may have started pouring with
different intentions, and he may not
have understood the patterns, but he
understood their quality,” he continues.
“Pollock spent 10 years refining his
technique, and docked his canvases to
focus on the central, most fractal part
of the work — the fractal quality of the
paintings deteriorates towards the edge
of the paintings.”
Taylor’s expertise on Pollock was later
called upon in what became known as
the “Matter Matter”, one of the longest

running and most contentious art
controversies of the 2000s. A treasure
trove of supposed Pollock paintings
were found in a storage locker by a
man named Alex Matter, but their
authenticity was almost immediately
called into question. Taylor used the
Pollock pattern analysis methodology he
had created with Micolich to determine
whether the newly discovered paintings
were consistent with the style the artist
used in his other works.
Unpopularly, Taylor’s analysis found
significant differences between those
paintings and established Pollocks. “This
was bad news for a lot of people, and
controversy over the findings raged for
around a year until a group of scientists
from Harvard showed that some of the
pigment used in the paintings dated from
the 1980s. Pollock himself died in 1956,
which put the matter to rest.”
But just as this scandal was finally
going away, another Pollock scandal was
arising, with a famous private gallery
in New York’s collection of Pollock
artworks being found to have been
painted by a Chinese artist.

NOT ONLY IS THERE
AN UNDERLYING
FRACTAL
CHARACTER TO
POLLOCK’S WORK,
THE ARTIST KNEW
EXACTLY WHAT HE
WAS DOING WHEN
HE CREATED THEM
“Pollock is a double-edged sword,”
Taylor says. “At a superficial level people
are convinced that they can paint
in his style, but there is an amazing
equilibrium and composition that can’t
be replicated, and fractals play a key role
in creating this.”
He adds, “These events show that
there is a bright future for computer
scientists working in the area of art
authenticity. A scholar might know
whether a work is authentic or not, but
without quantitative evidence might not
be able to convince a jury. But while it will
never replace scholarship, science, and
in this case fractal analysis, can quantify
the materials and processes artists use to
create their work — and help ensure that
the truth comes to light.”

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES (ROMANESCO CAULIFLOWER)

ROMANESCO
BROCCOLI CLOSE
UP, FRACTALS
REVEALED

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

SHARKS

BEYOND
THE BITE
THERE ARE FEW CREATURES IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM THAT CAUSE
US TO FEEL AS VULNERABLE TO ATTACK, AS THE SHARK DOES.
THEIR FEROCIOUS DESIGN AND OMINOUS PRESENCE CAN ALSO LEAD
TO SOME TERRIBLE TREATMENT OF THIS MAJESTIC CREATURE. AS
RACHEL SULLIVAN WRITES, EVEN THOSE OF US WHO LIVE WITH
THEIR PRESENCE ARE SEEKING BETTER WAYS FOR SHARKS AND
PEOPLE TO COEXIST

69
NOVEMBER 2014

nowing he was in for the fight
of his life, de Gelder tried to
slash at the shark’s face with
his right hand, only to discover
the shark had him by the wrist
too. “I tried to jab it in the eye
with my left hand, but couldn’t
reach. Instead I madly lunged
to heave its head off me, but
that only served to push the
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

teeth of its lower jaw deeper
into my flesh,” he says in his
book, No Time to Fear.
Finally, summoning every
last bit of strength, he punched
it on the nose as hard as he
could. Shaken ferociously in
response, the shark suddenly
freed him. De Gelder fought
for the surface, afraid that the
shark would return to finish
him off — possibly with a
pack of more sharks. Unable
to feel his leg, it was only
when he started swimming
that he realised neither his
lower arm nor his leg were
there anymore.

FIGHTING THE MYTHS
Shark attacks are big news,
and the media feeding frenzy
that inevitably follows any

attack could give you the
impression that beachgoers
are under constant assault.
Any shark sighting grabs
headlines: as DCM writes,
the story of a five-metre
great white shark being
spotted cruising almost half
a kilometre off a beach near
Perth, in West Australia, is
headline news in Sydney.
But while shark encounters
— which range from seeing
one in the distance or
swimming with a whale shark
to stepping on a harmless
wobbegong in the shallows —
are certainly on the rise, this
has more to do with increasing
population and growing
numbers of water-based
activities, than any imminent
Sharknado-style scenario.

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES

Early one overcast February
day in Sydney Harbour in 2009,
Australian navy clearance diver
Paul de Gelder was engaged in
counter-terrorism exercises when,
suddenly, something hit his leg. For
a moment de Gelder thought he had
got too close to the boat — until he
looked down through the murky
water into the inky black eye of a
big bullshark. The shock didn’t end
there, because it had something
between its teeth. His right leg.

SHARKS

GREAT WHITE SHARK SIGHTINGS CAN
RESULT IN A MEDIA FEEDING FRENZY
ABOUT POSSIBLE ATTACKS. HOWEVER,
IN 2013 THERE WERE 72 UNPROVOKED
SHARK ATTACKS ON HUMANS
WORLDWIDE — A SMALL NUMBER OF
CASUALTIES WHEN COMPARED TO
OTHER NATURAL OCCURENCES

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NOVEMBER 2014

DESPITE THE
FACT THAT
PEOPLE ARE
MORE LIKELY
TO BE KILLED
BY FALLING
INTO A
SINKHOLE,
CONTROVERSIAL
APPROACHES
LIKE CULLING
SHARKS WITH
BAITED DRUM
LINE ARE ON
THE RISE
There were 47 attacks in
North America (including 13
in Hawaii), 10 in Australia,

five in South Africa, three
in Reunion, a French island
near Madagascar, two in
Jamaica and one each in
Brazil, Diego Garcia in the
central Indian Ocean, New
Caledonia in the south-west
Pacific Ocean, New Zealand
and the Republic of Seychelles.
In total, 10 fatalities resulted
from unprovoked attacks in
2013, up from the 2012 total of
seven. Australia's 10 attacks,
including two fatalities, was
its lowest annual total since
2008, and was lower than its
10-year average of 12.3 attacks
per year.
“Effectively, the shark
attack rate hasn’t changed,
but within the last two years
it has increased,” says shark
researcher Professor Shaun
Collin from the University of
Western Australia (UWA).
“It happens periodically in
different parts of the world
and on different coastlines.
We don’t have a definitive
answer on why there can be a
concentration of attacks, but
overfishing, changes in
water currents, climate change
and whale migration patterns
are all avenues of enquiry,”
he says.
While little comfort to the
families of those injured, the
figures for Australian shark
bite injuries and fatalities
are nevertheless minor
in comparison with those
related to other recreational
activities undertaken at the
almost 12,000 beaches around

Australia’s coastline, such as
drownings, with 291 people
drowned in waterways in 2013.
Similarly, in the United States,
people are more likely to be
killed by falling into a sinkhole
or getting caught in a tornado.
Despite such evidence,
governments have responded
to public safety fears with
controversial approaches
including shark nets that
catch not only sharks but also
dolphins, seals and migrating
whales and culling sharks with
the use of baited drum lines.

FORCE FOR GOOD
So what happens when
you take sharks out of the
equation? Even if removing a
number of large sharks could
reduce attacks on humans in
the short-term, over the longer
term the consequences may
have far greater environmental
and economic significance.
According to Dr Mark
Meekan, principal research
scientist in fish biology at
the Australian Institute of
Marine Science, the presence
of sharks actually exerts a
positive influence on the local
environment, and even makes
coral reefs healthier.
“The presence of sharks on
reefs constrains the behaviour
of smaller predatory species,
but when the cat’s away the
mice do play,” he says. “Without
sharks present to keep them in
line, smaller fish change their
diets and engage in riskier
predatory behaviour.”

PHOTO CORBIS

According to the
International Shark Attack
File, which is maintained
by the Florida Museum of
Natural History, in 2013
there were 72 unprovoked
shark attacks on humans, the
lowest global total since 2009.
Unprovoked encounters are
those where a shark is in its
natural habitat and has made
a determined attempt to bite
someone without provocation.
Provoked encounters, on the
other hand, occur when, for
instance, a diver is injured
after grabbing a shark, or
a fisherman is bitten while
removing a shark from the
water or hook.

10 REASONS TO LOVE SHARKS
AGE-OLD ANIMALS

TAN FANS

THERE’S A REASON SHARKS HAVE REMAINED
UNCHANGED FOR SO LONG — THEY ARE EVOLUTION AT
ITS FINEST, AN ORGANISM PERFECTLY CRAFTED FOR ITS
ENVIRONMENT. NOT ONLY THAT, SHARKS AS A SPECIES
ARE OLDER THAN MOST THINGS IN NATURE, INCLUDING
TREES. THE EARLIEST TREE-LIKE SPECIES LIVED ABOUT
350 MILLION YEARS AGO. SHARKS HAVE BEEN AROUND
FOR 400 MILLION YEARS

WHILE YOU’RE TANNING AT THE BEACH, GREAT WHITE
SHARKS ARE TANNING UNDERWATER. GREAT WHITES
ARE ONLY WHITE ON THEIR UNDERSIDES. THEIR GREY
TOPS DARKEN OVER TIME FROM EXPOSURE TO THE
SUN. AND YET THEY DON’T SUFFER FROM ANY TANRELATED SKIN DISEASES. SCIENTISTS HOPE FURTHER
STUDY MIGHT BE THE KEY TO PREVENTING SKIN
DISEASE IN HUMANS

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

SHARKS

YOUNG VICTIMS
Bodyboarding and sharks.
For some, it can be a lethal
combination. In many cases, it's
young men, often teenagers,
who are the victims of shark attacks.
For example, in November, 2013,
19-year-old Zac Young, died after being
attacked by a shark while bodyboarding
near Coffs Harbour on Australia's east
coast. Champion bodyboarder David
Lillienfeld was killed by a great white
shark in April 2012 near the coast
off Cape Town, just three months
after a British man lost parts
of both legs at nearby
Fish Hoek.

FIN THERAPY
IN 2009, AMATEUR DIVER CAROLINE SPENCE WROTE AN ARTICLE FOR THE
GUARDIAN TITLED "SHARKS SAVED MY LIFE". SHE RECALLS HOW, ON A SCUBADIVING TRIP TO EGYPT, SHE AND HER TEAM DIVED DEEPER THAN SHE EXPECTED
— 40 METRES INSTEAD OF 30. AT INCREASED DEPTH, OXYGEN CONSUMPTION
SWELLS. SPENCE, AN INEXPERIENCED DIVER, BEGAN TO PANIC, EATING UP
MORE OF HER TANK LEVELS. FILLED WITH TERROR, SHE CONTEMPLATED
SWIMMING TO THE SURFACE — A MOVE THAT WOULD HAVE KILLED HER FROM
THE BENDS. UNTIL A SCHOOL OF SHARKS FLOATED INTO VIEW:

“All thoughts of resurfacing were
banished. They were beautiful — exquisite
and huge. A whoop reverberated through
the water from our instructor, alerting us
to a three-metre copper shark. I forgot
about depth, strong currents and dying,
and watched this marvel of evolution slide
effortlessly through the water.”
Contd on pg74

73
NOVEMBER 2014

The phenomenon is known
as a trophic cascade and is
something that scientists have
only become aware of recently.
Until this study, it had been
difficult to demonstrate the
effects of removing sharks
from an ecosystem, because
when people fish for sharks,
they also take out other predatory reef fish like snapper,
Meekan explains.

PHOTOS GETTY IMAGES; CORBIS (BIGEYE THRESHER SHARK), JAVON TAEVIOUS (DWARF LANTERN SHARK)

THE MORE WE
CAN TEACH
PEOPLE,
THE MORE
THEY CAN
UNDERSTAND
AND RESPECT,
AND BE IN
AWE OF THESE
ANIMALS, SAYS
SHARK ATTACK
SURVIVOR PAUL
DE GELDER
“But several years ago
we were given a unique
insight into what happens
when you take sharks out
of the equation: Indonesian
fishermen came to the Scott
Reef in the Indian Ocean
and took only sharks. When
we compared the state of
this reef with one at Rowley
Shoals, a remote, pristine reef
ecosystem also in the Indian
Ocean, the difference
was pronounced.”

There was an increase
in mid-sized predatory fish
(known to ecologists as
mesopredators), and fewer
herbivores, like parrotfish.
Reefs depend on these
herbivores to eat algae to give
coral a place to grow and help
them recover from bleaching
events and attacks by crown of
thorns starfish.
“Because we only see the
marine environment for the
duration of a dive tank, it is
much harder to recognise that
the loss of a large predator has
any significant consequence,”
Meekan adds. “But if you went
to a game park in Africa and
shot all the lions, it wouldn’t
take long before there were
too many zebras and wildebeest eating the grassland,
which would then turn into
a dustbowl,” he says.
“On land the connection
is obvious: removing big
predators from ecosystems
causes an overabundance
of smaller predators, which
has disastrous consequences
for the animals lower on the
food chain,” says Meekan. “All
systems have evolved with
predators an intrinsic part of
the mix. We are now coming
to understand what happens
when you take the largest
predators out.”
There are economic
consequences as well. On
the east coast of the US,
indiscriminate hunting
of hammerhead sharks
has caused an explosion

10 REASONS TO LOVE SHARKS
UNDERWATER EYES

HOLD ME CLOSER, TINY SWIMMER

NOT ONLY IS THE BIGEYE THRESHER
SHARK RARELY CONSIDERED ANY SORT
OF DANGER TO HUMANS — AS EMBRYOS,
THEY ARE EVEN PRETTY DARN CUTE. TRUE
TO THEIR NAME, THEIR HUGE CARTOON
EYES, WHICH SEEM GRAFTED ONTO
THEIR SMALL BABY BODIES, MAKE FOR A
PLEASINGLY DISNEY-LIKE EFFECT

IF THERE’S ANYTHING CUTER THAN THE
BIGEYE THRESHER SHARK, IT MIGHT BE THIS
LITTLE GUY. THE DWARF LANTERNSHARK IS
CONSIDERED THE SMALLEST IN THE FAMILY.
REACHING A MAXIMUM RECORDED LENGTH
OF 21 CENTIMETRES, IT’S ALSO RARELY
SEEN, WHICH MAKES IT EASY TO IMAGINE
THAT IT’S AS SHY AS IT IS CUTE

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

SHARKS
A SHARK BENEATH
THE WAVES CIRCLES
A SURFER

SAVING THE BEASTS

“The more we can teach people, the more they
can understand and respect, and be in awe of
these animals; the more they’ll fall in love with
them, the more they’ll want to protect them,”
says shark attack survivor Paul de Gelder.
After literally staring death in the face he has
overcome his experience — and ironically, a
lifelong fear of sharks — to become a shark
conservationist and motivational speaker.
“The bottom line is that knowledge dispels
fear. There are so many unanswered questions
about a lot of sharks, but great whites are a
mystery still. It’s kind of like hunting Big Foot,
except you know Big Foot is there and now you
just want to learn about him," he says.
“It’s just an enchanting sort of exercise in a
world where we kind of know everything about
everything, or we think we do. There’s still these
unanswered questions about one of the oldest
species of animals on the planet.”

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

GENDER WARS

HOW CAN YOU FEAR ANIMALS WHEN THEY ARE
GIVEN NICKNAMES BY THE PEOPLE WHO STUDY
THEM? TIGER SHARKS HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO EAT
PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING, FROM LICENSE PLATES
TO TIRES. HENCE WHY SOME REFER TO THEM AS
"GARBAGE GUTS". BULL SHARKS, MEANWHILE,
TEND TO HIT THEIR PREY WITH THEIR BLUNT
SNOUTS, EARNING THEM "SHOVELNOSE"

LADIES, IF YOU’RE TIRED OF MEN BARGING
AT YOU IN BARS WITH THEIR TERRIBLE
FLIRTING TACTICS, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
MANY FEMALE SHARK SPECIES DEVELOP
TOUGH SKIN THAT IS THREE TIMES AS THICK
AS THE MALES. WHY? BECAUSE MALES WILL
LET THE GIRLS KNOW THEY ARE INTERESTED
IN MATING — BY BITING THEM
Contd on pg76

75
NOVEMBER 2014

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
If people are increasingly
sharing the water with sharks,
and killing hundreds or
thousands of sharks on the
off chance that it might save

one or two people a year in
that small area of coastline
is at best unpalatable, can an
increasingly sophisticated
understanding of shark
biology help different water
users live in harmony?
UWA’s Professor Collin is
a world leader in comparative
neurobiology and vision,
and is working on a number
of shark attack prevention
measures. “We’ve been
studying the sensory systems
of sharks for over 25 years
to get inside their minds.
We want to under-stand the
environmental cues they
use to find food, navigate
and orient themselves in the
water, as well as how they
socially communicate and
find mates in a vast, open
environment,” he says.
“Our lab investigates the
visual system of a diversity
of animals in different
light environments and we
discovered that although
sharks have a well developed
visual system, they are
colourblind — they simply
don’t have the ocular
machinery to process colour,
and are one of the few groups
of animals lacking this ability.”
Using this understanding of
how sharks see the world,
Collin and close collaborator
Professor Nathan Hart joined
forces with an entrepreneurial
private business now known
as SAMS (Shark Attack
Mitigation Systems) to
develop two unique wetsuit

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES

in stingray numbers,
decimating oyster stocks.
During a recent study in
Palau, an island country in
the western Pacific Ocean
where shark diving is an
popular activity, Meekan and
colleagues found that over
its lifetime, a shark is worth
US$1.9 million, with shark
diving generating US$18
million a year, equivalent to
eight percent of the nation's
GDP. They are similarly
valuable in South Africa,
where diving in cages with
great whites is popular, as is
diving with tiger sharks and
hammerheads in the Bahamas,
and snorkelling with whale
sharks in the Philippines and
Ningaloo, a 260 kilometre
fringing reef which lies off
Western Australia's midnorth coast.
He says he is relieved to see
that the attitudes of people
are changing from fear to
fascination: “We evolved to
fear things with big teeth.
But those who watched and
understood predators and
adapted their own behaviour
accordingly, survived. If we
are able to work with these
fascinating animals and
understand them better, then
we will all benefit.”

DON'T GO IN
THE WATER
"Duuun dun duuun dun dun dun
dun..." If only music would translate
better in print. But show anyone a
picture of a great white shark and it
won't be long until the Jaws theme tune
starts its familiar hum. The Carcharodon
carcharias has long been depicted in pop
culture as a "ferocious man eater" with
its serrated teeth hungry for a tasty bite.
However, celluloid depictions aside, humans
are not really its favourite food — this
species prefers a variety of other marine
animals, including fish and seabirds.
One thing is true: this is a big
beast, with the average male
measuring as much as
six metres.

10 REASONS TO LOVE SHARKS
GREY GUIDE

SHARKS > DOLPHINS?

A NATIVE OF THE TINY PACIFIC NATION OF KIRIBATI WAS ADRIFT
IN A WOODEN BOAT FOR 15 WEEKS, AND NEAR DEATH. TOAKAI
TEITOI’S BROTHER-IN-LAW, ALSO ON THE BOAT, HAD ALREADY
DIED OF DEHYDRATION. TEITOI AWOKE ONE MORNING TO A
SCRATCHING NOISE. IT WAS A SIX-FOOT SHARK, WHICH TEITOI
BELIEVES WAS TRYING TO GET HIS ATTENTION. “HE WAS GUIDING
ME TO A FISHING BOAT,” HE SAYS. “IF HE HADN’T NUDGED ME
AWAKE THE CREW MIGHT HAVE THOUGHT I WASN’T IN TROUBLE”

EVERYONE LOVES TO LOVE DOLPHINS AND
HATE SHARKS. IN HIS COLLECTION OF CHEEKY
THOUGHTS ON THE WORLD, ZOMBIES LOVE
PIZZA, HUMOURIST DAN FLORENCE HAS
THIS TO SAY: “DOLPHINS AND SHARKS ARE
NATURAL ENEMIES. DOLPHINS ARE LIKE,
“QUIT EATING US,” AND SHARKS ARE LIKE,
“STOP SMILING ALL THE TIME, YOU MORONS”

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

SHARKS

LOVE FROM
THE JAWS-MAN
PETER BENCHLEY PENNED
THE BOOK JAWS, LATER TO
BE MADE INTO A CERTAIN
BLOCKBUSTER BY STEPHEN
SPIELBERG. BENCHLEY'S
AFFINITY FOR SHARKS IS
CLEAR — AS HE WRITES HERE:

“Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of.
They're beautiful —God, how beautiful they are! They're
like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They're as
graceful as any bird. They're as mysterious as any animal
on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what
impulses — except for hunger — they respond to. There are
more than 250 species of shark, and every one is different
from every other one.”

77
NOVEMBER 2014

A SUBMERGED NET IS PLACED AROUND
THE BEACH TO PROTECT SWIMMERS
FROM SHARK ATTACKS. HOWEVER, NEW
TECHNOLOGIES ARE BEING DEVELOPED,
INCLUDING "BUBBLE CURTAINS" THAT
COULD ACT AS A NON-INVASIVE VISUAL
DETERRENT TO SHARKS

SHARKS ARE
COLOUR BLIND,
THOUGH THEY
HAVE A WELLDEVELOPED
VISUAL
SYSTEM. BUT
THEY CANNOT
PROCESS
COLOUR AT ALL
designs to replace the black
“seal costumes” commonly
worn by surfers and divers.
One camouflages the wearer,
78
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

while the other is based on a
conspicuous warning pattern.
“The warning suit, designed
for surfers, was created to be
conspicuous to a shark, with
its black and white stripes
making the wearer look like
an enormous, poisonous sea
snake,” Collin explains. “Once
we had established what a
shark could see by looking at
the spacing of its visual
receptors, we could work
out the spacing of the stripes
to optimise the chances of
the pattern being seen at a
distance and under certain
light conditions. It can be seen

but would not be recognised as
something edible.”
The other wetsuit, aimed
at divers, has a camouflage
pattern. “For sharks like
great whites, contrast and
the silhouette cast by a
potential prey item is of
prime importance when it
comes to finding food,” says
Collin. “If we can remove or
camouflage the dark contrast
edge by means of a wetsuit,
then the wearer will not be
seen as potential prey. Again,
we worked out what the shark
could see at the surface, in
mid water and at depth, and

devised a wetsuit that would
be less visible in different
regions of the water column.”
The suit appears to us as a
pattern of dark blue, light
blue and grey colours. But to
a shark, however, it appears
as shades of grey and doesn’t
stand out when suspended in
the water column.
When tested under
controlled conditions, Collin
says that sharks ignored the
camouflaged and striped
suits — while the black suit
was attacked. And while
the manufacturer posts a
disclaimer on its website

SHARKS

THE ART OF STAYING SAFE

PHOTOS GETTY IMAGES (MAIN); REUTERS (DANGER SIGN)

ASK ANY SURFER AND THEY WILL TELL YOU THAT
SOMETIMES THE WATER JUST FEELS ‘SHARKY’.
KNOWING WHEN IT IS NOT SAFE TO GO IN THE WATER
IS THE FIRST STEP TO ENSURING THAT NEITHER PEOPLE
NOR SHARKS SHOULD DIE NEEDLESSLY

saying that sharks are
dangerous and unpredictable,
and it is impossible to
guarantee that 100 percent
of sharks will be deterred
under all circumstances
using the wetsuits and other
products like surfboards, the
new wetsuits have proven so
popular that Collin says he
hasn’t even been able to get
one himself yet.

UNPREDICTABLE
While there is certainly a
great potential to come up
with an effective deterrent,
the holy grail of repellents

may take time. “Further
work is needed to determine
whether a deterrent is always
effective,” says Collins.
“Animals can become
habituated to a deterrent,
and whether a particular
deterrent affects all species
in the same way. What
may deter some species,
or individuals, may in fact
attract others.”
Sharks’ unpredictability
was borne out in some
research undertaken to
test commercially available
electronic deterrents. In 2012,
shark ecologist Dr Charlie

Swim at beaches patrolled
by lifesavers

might attract hungry fish
and sharks

Do not swim, dive or surf
where dangerous sharks are
known to congregate

If schooling fish congregate
in large numbers, you should
leave the water

Always swim, dive or surf
with other people

It is a myth that dolphins
in an area indicate the
absence of sharks.
Dolphins and sharks
sometimes feed together
and some larger sharks
feed on dolphins

Do not swim in dirty or
churned up water that could
conceal an approaching shark
Avoid swimming at dusk,
dawn or at night when some
species are actively hunting
Swim close to the shore, as
sharks are more likely to be
found in deeper water
Avoid entering the ocean
near a river mouth, especially
after rain as storms can wash
food items into the sea that

Look carefully before jumping
into the water from a boat or
wharf to reduce the risk of
jumping on top of sharks
Wearing shiny jewellery
can reflect light that
resembles the sheen of fish
scales and it might also
attract a hungry predator

79
NOVEMBER 2014

SHARKS

Huveneers from Flinders
University tested one of
the commercially available

FOR SHARKS
LIKE THE
GREAT WHITES,
CONTRAST
AND THE
SILHOUETTE
CAST BY A
POTENTIAL
PREY IS MOST
IMPORTANT
WHEN IT
COMES TO
FINDING FOOD
deterrents known as the Shark
Shield Freedom 7, a popular
shark deterrent device that
has been commercially
available for many years. It
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

is a submersible unit that is
strapped to the ankle of the
user, with a two metre-long
braided antenna that emits an
electronic pulse. It is believed
to work by overwhelming
the electroreceptors on
a shark's nose, making it
unpleasant for the shark to
remain in the area.
“Several functions of the
ampullary electrosense have
been proposed, including detection of prey, predators, and
mates, social communication,
and magnetoreception or geonavigation,” Huveneers says.
Any interference with the
electrosensors is likely, then,
to get the shark’s attention.
He tested the unit’s
effectiveness on great white
sharks in South Africa and
South Australia, and found
that results varied from shark
to shark, and even between the
two testing methods.

“Breaching is a natural
behaviour seen in great whites
in South Africa where they
prey on seals, and is regarded
as a behaviour associated with
hunting. We tested the unit’s
impact on this behaviour by
towing a seal decoy behind a
boat to elicit the behaviour.
When turned on, sharks were
observed aborting attack
charges while significantly
reducing the number of
surface breaches,” he adds.
However, an additional
experiment in South Australia
using static bait trials showed
that the sharks were not all
affected in the same way:
several sharks swam within
two metres of the device, while
others took the bait even when
the device was turned on.
“It was clear that it had
some effect, with sharks taking
longer to consume the bait
and overall staying further

from the Shark Shield when it
was turned on. But it did not
stop sharks from consuming
the bait. Our study shows that
the efficiency of the Shark
Shield is context-dependent,”
he says. With divers usually
wearing the devices strapped
around their ankles, this
research suggests that the
placement of the electrode
may have an impact on its
effectiveness.
Huveneers is quick to
add that the manufac`turer
is using the information
gathered in the study to finetune the device. To literally get
inside the heads of predatory
shark species, researchers
are using their increasingly
nuanced understanding of
shark biology. “By looking at
the brain we can gauge the
importance of certain senses,
because the brain of an animal
with a well-developed visual

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES

AVOID SWIMMIMG OR SURFING
IN SHARK-INFESTED WATERS.
PLUS, REMEMBER THERE'S
ALWAYS SAFETY IN NUMBERS!

SHARKS

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES

WHALE SHARK
FEEDING AT THE
SURFACE OFF ISLA
MUJERES, MEXICO

sense is different to that
of an animal that relies
primarily on its electrosensory
system to find prey,” Professor
Collin says.

A RECENT
STUDY IN
PALAU ISLAND
REVEALED
THAT OVER
ITS LIFETIME,
A SHARK IS
WORTH US$1.9
MILLION A YEAR
“Because we have investigated the visual system of a
number of sharks and examined
the responses of the eyes to
flashing lights and what range
of intensities they are sensitive
to, we are testing various visual
deterrents,” he says. Another

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

approach is presenting bubbles
as a potential method of
deterring sharks.
“The bubbles would
interfere with the sensitive
lateral line system, a series
of receptors distributed
over the head and body that
are stimulated by minute
movements of water.
Increasing the intensity of
bubbles may produce an
uncomfortable sensation,
while a curtain of bubbles may
also act as a visual deterrent
because it looks solid,” Collin
says, adding that bubble
curtains are non-invasive
barriers that could be used to
protect a beach.
“Other applications could
be personal — but we’re
talking about something more
intensive than the stream of
bubbles that escapes a diver’s
regulator.” While there are
acoustic deterrents available

internationally, Collin says that
creating something that uses
hearing is the toughest ask,
because little is known about
sharks’ auditory abilities.
“We are one of the few
labs in the world actively
working on hearing in sharks,
conducting tests on small
species in captivity,” he says.
“We need to establish their
hearing range, because there’s
no point presenting them with
a sound they cannot hear.”
His team wants to establish
whether different sounds
could be used as either a
deterrent or an attractant for
sharks. Some sounds could
even potentially be used to
lure the animals away from a
swimming area.
The research into finding
reliable, environmentally
friendly deterrents is
ongoing, but both Collin and
Meekan say that education

is key to staying safe in the
water. Meekan has logged
thousands of trouble-free
hours diving with sharks and
says there is no substitute for
common sense when diving
or swimming with sharks.
“When you put one foot in
the water, you take a step
down the food chain. You are
no longer the apex predator.
You need to be aware of
the situation, and when
spearfishing, or in the water
with an aggressive shark, you
need to take care.”
“We need to get the message
out that when sharks are active
and looking for food, such as at
dusk, it is not the best time to
be in the water,” agrees Collin.
“Swimming in groups and not
going out too far are sensible
policies.” Equally, listen to your
friends advice. “Sometimes it
is about protecting people
from themselves.”

TRIPLE-E
AND XXL
STEPPING ON-BOARD THE WORLD’S BIGGEST
SHIP IS A DIZZYING EXPERIENCE.
DANIEL SEIFERT MEETS MARY AND HER
CAPTAIN, WHO EXPLAINS WHAT IT’S LIKE TO
BE A BIG FISH IN THE WORLD OF SHIPPING

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PHOTO MAERSK

MONSTER SHIP

IF YOU WANT TO TAKE IN
THE ENTIRE PROFILE OF A
TRIPLE-E, YOU'LL HAVE TO
CRANE YOUR NECK

85
NOVEMBER 2014

BAD WEATHER, SAYS CAPTAIN DAVID
JOHNSTONE, IS SOUL-DESTROYING.
“BEFORE MAERSK I WORKED ON TINY
LITTLE SHIPS. THEY WERE ONLY ABOUT
79 METRES LONG.” THE ONE WE'RE ON
NOW, HE NOTES, IS 59 METRES WIDE.
AND MOTHER NATURE HASN’T RATTLED
HIS NEW SHIP YET. “WE LEFT EUROPE
RECENTLY, AND CAME ACROSS THE BAY
OF BISCAY, WHERE WE HIT SOME BAD
WEATHER. IF WE'D BEEN A LITTLE SHIP,
WE'D HAVE BEEN EVERYWHERE. THIS
THING HARDLY MOVED,” HE SMILES.

tanding on deck of Johnstone’s new
baby, currently looming over the docks
of Singapore, one can see why. You
can barely see the ground, masked as
it is by a maze of shipping containers.
Johnstone’s old ships carried about
600 of them. “There’s 600 containers
in front of my office alone, now!” But in
a sense, the whole ship is this Scottish
sailor’s new office. And what an office
she is. Her name is Mary, and she’s the
biggest ship in the world.

SKYSCRAPERS OF THE SEA
Annoyingly, there comes a time when
the only descriptor you can give for
something is “big”. It’s the point when
an object starts to literally boggle the
mind with its sense of scale, and trying
to picture it in your head is meaningless
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

— like comparing a baby’s handspan
to the planet Mercury. The Maersk
Triple-E class, the biggest ship in the
world, has firmly planted its colossal
bows in this unknowable territory.
You’re forced to come up with bizarre
ways to hammer its size home. When
we last wrote about this class of ship, we
said that if a Triple-E were stood on its
end, it would obscure your view from
the observation deck of the Empire
State building.
That’s just the ship, mind you, which
with nine tiers above deck and 10
below, is basically a 19-storey building
in its own right. Take off the 18,000
containers it can carry, and you would
fill Times Square in New York City,
and could stack up a few new miniskyscrapers while you were at it.
You get the picture. Big. Which
means that even filming the Maersk
comes with its own set of challenges.
How does one convince the eye to
believe the scale of this object? Peter
Oxley, executive producer of Discovery
Channel’s World’s Biggest Ship, answers
that question.
“Having people in shot as much as
possible was crucial,” he says to DCM.
“You will notice in the series that there
are lots of shots with yard workers
crossing frame on their bicycle.” This
was intentional, and the reasoning was
part scientific, part artistic, he explains.
“Not only did this help convey scale, but
it seemed fun to contrast the high-tech
nature of the build, with equipment as
low-tech as the humble bicycle.”

TOP KOREAN DOCKWORKERS CYCLE
AROUND THE SHIPYARD WHERE A
TRIPLE-E IS BEING CONSTRUCTED.
ONLY WHEN HUMANS INTERACT
WITH THE VESSEL (RIGHT) IS IT
POSSIBLE TO GET A TRUE SENSE OF
HER IMPRESSIVE SCALE. CAPTAIN
JOHNSTONE POSES WITH THE SHIP'S
COOK (ABOVE)

MONSTER SHIP

BIG IS BEAUTIFUL
And yet, just because Mary looks like a
behemoth, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t
pack a lot of grace, too. Like her sister
vessels, Johnstone’s Triple-E was built
smart, and designed to sail from Europe
to Asia with a minimum of fuss.
Her propellers are bigger than
traditional container vessels’, meaning
that less propulsive power is required
to move her forward. While she can
hammer along at 25 knots, slow and
steady is her sweet spot. By moving just
2.5 knots slower, she cuts her carbon
dioxide emissions by 20 percent. At 17.5
knots, she uses just half the fuel she
would at 25 knots.
The clever use of scaling doesn’t stop
there. Maersk believes that very soon,
it will reach an optimum average cost
per Triple-E vessel. Stop a second and
imagine what that might be. Four, five
hundred million, maybe?

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM MAIN DANIEL SEIFERT; MAERSK

WHISTLING ON DECK
IS STILL FROWNED
UPON, SAYS CAPTAIN
JOHNSTONE. “THAT
GOES BACK TO
PIRATE DAYS. IT WAS
BAD LUCK, BECAUSE
IT ‘WHISTLED UP’
THE WIND”
Try cutting that number in half.
Maersk is confident that in the near
future, Triple-Es will be rolling off the
line at an average cost of US$185 million
— staggeringly low, when you think
of the manpower, infrastructure and
engineering skill that goes into building
even one of these ocean icons.
Let’s not forget that fully loaded, a ship
like Mary can carry cargo worth billions.
It can load 2,500 more containers than
the second-largest Maersk ships, the E
class vessels — this despite only being
three metres longer and wider.
Add these capabilities together and you
grasp the reasoning behind the Triple-E’s
name: Economy of scale, energy-efficient,
and environmentally improved.

ICE CREAM, ANYONE?
Running this game-changer is a real
honour, says Johnstone, but the person
in the world who is most impressed with
87
NOVEMBER 2014

PHOTOS MAERSK

A MAERSK SHIP
SQUEEZES UNDER A
BRIDGE, HELPFULLY
SHOWING OFF HER
MASSIVE SCALE

him is his mother, who still phones
him before every voyage to ask, “How’s
that big ship of yours?” His grandson,
meanwhile, has other priorities.
Johnstone laughs, “He just wants the
Lego model of the Triple-E. He doesn’t
say, my grandpa is on the biggest ship on
the world. He just wants the biggest Lego
ship in the world!”

ACCORDING
TO CAPTAIN
JOHNSTONE,
TECHNOLOGY TWO
DECADES ON WILL
PROBABLY ENSURE
UNMANNED SHIPS,
QUITE LIKE THE
AUTOPILOT IN
AN AIRCRAFT
But a tour of the real thing is enough
to make anyone feel like a kid again. As
we come up in the elevator, a crewman
recommends we check out the pool
(firmly emblazoned with the words
“ABSOLUTELY NO DIVING”). Also
spotted on the tour are the gym, a
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

menu board that reads “Steak night is
December 13!”, a plush cinema, wireless
connectivity... and two very special treats
from Mary’s “godmother”, the wife of
Singapore’s Prime Minister. It’s hard
to tell which gift the crew members are
more excited about; a shiny Playstation
4, or an even shinier ice cream-maker.
All this new tech is very impressive.
But is there any sense, to a salty sea dog
such as Johnstone, with four decades
of sailing behind him, that too many
comforts take the romance and adventure
out of shipping? Surely a man who rides
a Harley Davidson in his spare time (and
boasts a tattoo to prove it), and whose
life's dream is to scale Everest, longs just a
little for the good old days when you were
incommunicado for weeks on end.
Not really. “One of the downsides of
going to sea was the massive divorce rate.
I’ve been there, I know what it’s like. If
anything the fact that you’ve got daily
contact now is good.”

WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK
That old stereotype that sailors are
fanatically superstitious still seems to
hold some water, though. Whistling on
deck is still frowned upon today, says the
Scot. “That goes back to pirate days. It

was bad luck, because it ‘whistled up’ the
wind. Only if the captain wanted wind was
he allowed to whistle.”
Speaking of weather, it seems mankind
might have been able to build ever-larger
vessels, but Mother Nature has responded
with increasingly unimaginable
superstorms. “The weather’s changing, for
sure,” notes Johnstone.
And it’s not just weather systems.
Sailing around the Falklands in the
early 1990s, his crew were amazed at the
unprecedented scale of the ice. “There
was one iceberg in particular, it was three
kilometres wide, and 100 metres high.”
Perusing the endless stream of
high-tech, cutting-edge equipment on
deck, DCM ponders one instrument,
the anemometer, which measures wind
direction and speed. Is that actually
a consideration, in this day and age?
Johnstone, who is busy telling a visitor
that if anyone were to play him in
a movie, it should be Bruce Willis
(“He’s nearly as handsome,” he grins),
confirms that it certainly is. Wind can
affect even non-sailing vessels, and
Mary is no exception. Her profile is
so large that it acts almost like a sail.
“The wind can catch you and whoosh,
it pushes you onto the jetty,” he says,

MONSTER SHIP

THE MAERSK
TRIPLE-E
COMPARED TO
OTHER GIANT
VESSELS

MAERSK TRIPLE-E (SERVICE 2013–)
CONTAINER SHIP

400M
KNOCK NEVIS (SERVICE 1989–2009)
OIL TANKER

458M
VALE BRASIL (SERVICE 2010–)
BULK CARRIER

362M
ALLURE OF THE SEAS (SERVICE 2008–)
PASSENGER SHIP

360M
USS ENTERPRISE (SERVICE 1962–2012)
AIRCRAFT CARRIER

341M
200M

100M

200M

300M

400M

500M

COST

DEADWEIGHT

CREW

CAPACITY AND
TOP SPEED

MAERSK Triple-E
US$185 million–US$190 million

MAERSK Triple-E
165,000 tonnes

MAERSK Triple-E
22

MAERSK Triple-E
18,000 six-metre containers

Knock Nevis
Unknown

Knock Nevis
564,763 tonnes

Knock Nevis
40

Knock Nevis
4.24 million barrels of oil, 30kph

Vale Brasil
Unknown

Vale Brasil
402,347 tonnes

Vale Brasil
33

Vale Brasil
67,993 tonnes, 28.5kph

Allure of the Seas
US$1.5 billion

Allure of the Seas
19,750 tonnes

Allure of the Seas
2,384

Allure of the Seas
6,296 passengers, 41.9kph

USS Enterprise
US$451.3 million

USS Enterprise
75,700 tonnes (displacement)

USS Enterprise
3,215

USS Enterprise
18,270 tonnes, 61kph

89
NOVEMBER 2014

SHIP-SHAPE SHOOTING
PETER OXLEY, PRODUCER OF THE DISCOVERY
CHANNEL SHOW WORLD'S BIGGEST SHIP,
TALKS ABOUT THE CHALLENGES OF FILMING
THE MAERSK TRIPLE-E IN A MULTI-EPISODE
EPIC, FROM CONCEPTION TO CONSTRUCTION,
AND FINALLY LAUNCH. HE RECOUNTS HIS
EXPERIENCE, FROM LOST-IN-TRANSLATION
MOMENTS TO FREEZING TEMPERATURES.

What were
the technical
challenges of
filming on and
around the
Triple-E — I
would imagine,
for example,
a wide-angled
lens is a must.
Were there any
other surprises
or difficulties?
Yes. We used a wide range of equipment,
to convey the scale of the whole operation.
One of our first tasks was installing two
fixed cameras to capture time-lapse
footage over four months. Installing these
cameras involved climbing 18-metre
lighting towers, and then hooking them up
to a portable battery, and a hard drive. All
in temperatures below freezing.
Once the filming was underway, we
soon found that filming in a shipyard is a
punishing environment for camera gear.
Clambering around a ship the size of the
Triple-E is extremely tiring, with many low
hatches, stairs and walkways to navigate.
Oftentimes, it is pitch black. So our camera
equipment got knocked about a bit.
Were there any moments during filming
that personally brought home the
immensity of the operation for you?
I think the launch was the moment that
everyone stood back, and went, "Wow, this
ship is enormous!" Until then, the Triple-E
had been in dry dock, and much of her hull
was obscured. But once launched, her full
size was plain to see.
How tricky is it to get the shots you want
in a working shipyard, where saws are
constantly whirring and multi-tonne
trucks zip cargo from here to there?
Did you anger any wrench-wielding
dockworkers with a schedule to keep?
It was an extremely taxing environment,
sometimes involving long, long days.
Trying to find out what was being built
and when was the first hurdle. Most of the
shipyard workers didn't speak English, and
our crews certainly didn't speak Korean.
But we had fantastic cooperation from the
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

MONSTER SHIP

SHIP-SHAPE SHOOTING

CAPTAIN JOHNSTONE
POSES PROUDLY
WITH MEMBERS OF
HIS CREW

yard, and from Maersk, who did their best
to ensure that we got the shots we needed.
And then of course, there was safety. Our
risk assessment ran to almost 10 pages.
There's a lot of CGI in this show. How
crucial was that technique from a
storytelling point of view? Would it have
been impossible to have done the show
without it?
I think it would have been much harder
to tell the story without the CGI. The first
thing we realised was that the audience
wasn't going to see the fully finished ship
until episode five, so the CGI enabled
us to showcase the complete ship from
episode one. This helps the audience to
visualise the scale of the project. And
then of course, the graphics helped us to
show parts of the ship, like the engine,
and propulsion system, that would
otherwise be hidden.
Having filmed the vessel for weeks,
how badly did you want to take that bad
boy for a spin by the end of filming? No
doubt you had learned a bit about her
controls by then.
We did experience the next best
thing — being on-board for almost the
entire maiden voyage — a four-week
cruise from China to Holland!
Was it tricky to get this cast of
shipbuilding experts to speak
about the technical processes in an
understandable way?
I think at first, it was a little tricky. It took
a while for our cast of experts to get used
to our presence, and our constant stream
of questions. But to be honest, the main
thing we were after from our contributors
was a sense of their character. World's
Biggest Ship is a character-driven
engineering series, first and foremost, and
we knew that we could always get across
the technical aspects of the build through
graphics and voice-over.

PHOTOS MAERSK

What was the most fun part of
the filming?
Spending time with the building teams
at the end of the day, and filming a side
of them we didn't normally get to see at
the yard.
Did the series make you appreciate the
way we construct our immense buildings
and vehicles, and transport the goods that
make up our lives?
It has certainly brought home the extent
to which we all depend on the shipping
container for our daily needs.
91
NOVEMBER 2014

MONSTER SHIP

demonstrating by smacking one
outstretched hand into the other.
Docking and manoeuvring is no easy
task when, as the captain explains, you
often have 600 metres of space to dock a
400-metre ship. Luckily, Mary is armed
with equipment and weather forecasting
services that can eyeball a potential storm
days in advance. In such cases, they often
zigzag around any problem storms they
might otherwise encounter. As Johnstone
points out, that’s just common sense.
“You don’t want to damage your
people. Or the ship. Or the cargo. If it
means slowing down, Maersk would
rather you turned up two days late with
everything on-board,” he notes. “What
they don’t want is us coming in having lost
200 containers, with a thousand damaged,
and the ship destroyed. Later they can
speed up to make up the schedule.”

CONTAINER SHIPS
LIKE MAERSK CAN
FERRY THOUSANDS
OF CARS LIKE THESE,
RECENTLY DELIVERED TO
SINGAPORE'S DOCKS

PHOTO DANIEL

THE AUTOMATIC AGE

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

What of the future of shipping, then?
Although this world-powering industry
shows no signs of stopping, it seems
the seas might become lonelier places
as progress marches on. “On this ship,
the minimum crew is 13 people,” says
Johnstone. "On my last ship, it was also 13
people — and it was only half the size.”
We ask the captain what he thinks the
technology will be like two decades from
now. “Unmanned ships, probably,” he
sighs. “They’ll likely be able to send them
across the ocean with nobody on it.”
Which brings to mind that old story
about how people viewed autopilots,
decades ago. In the future, they said, we
would only require a monkey and a man
to operate any vessel, no matter the size.
The monkey’s job was to look after the
autopilot. The man’s job was simply to
feed the monkey.
“I mean they can send drones up in
Afghanistan nowadays. If they can do
that, they can send a ship across the
ocean, easily,” says Johnstone. “Is that the
future? I don't know.” He looks off into the
horizon, silent for a minute.
Yet considering the skill levels that
it still takes to zip a floating skyscraper
halfway around the world, it’s highly likely
that men like him will continue to ferry
fresh sushi, sneakers, cars and the rest of
the world’s goods for decades to come.
Achievements like the Triple-E are
engineering feats to be proud of, but for
now, a ship very much needs her captain
and crew. If only to whistle up the wind.

PARANOIA
INC.

WAS THE FILM THE EXORCIST REALLY BASED
ON A TRUE STORY? AND WHAT’S WITH THE
ALIEN SKELETON UNEARTHED IN PERU?
YES, IT’S A RETURN TO THE UNEXPLAINED
FILES, WHERE, AS LUKE CLARK WRITES,
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE
INEXPLICABLE NEVER CEASE

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PHOTO DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

UNEXPLAINED

NOVEMBER 2014

95

With an
unforgiving ash
brown desert as
his backdrop,
Chuck Zukowski brings
his black utility truck
to a halt beside a lonely
road in middle America.
“I’m pretty excited
now,” the former deputy
sheriff tells the camera
next to him. “I can see
the guard shack from
here, I can see telephone
poles. There might even
be somebody walking
around out there,” notes
the Colorado native with
a sardonic laugh.

THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS
PAGE PRESTON CASTLE, A
DERELICT REFORM SCHOOL
IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, IS
SUPPOSEDLY HAUNTED BY THE
SUPERNATURAL
OPPOSITE DR HARRY KLOOR (AT
FAR RIGHT) WITH PARANORMAL
RESEARCHERS, MATT
GOLDMAN, JJ SICOTTE, MICHAEL
RUDIE AND BRANDON ALVIS,
INVESTIGATE THE HAPPENINGS
AT THE CASTLE

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

lad in a beige polo shirt,
Zukowski at first looks more like
your average soccer dad than a
paranormal investigator with 25
years of experience. And indeed,
he has reason for caution.
This isn’t the grassy knoll just
outside Yankee Stadium. In the
distance, framed by steel-grey
hills, we can see a remote border
post marking the entrance to
one of the most secret facilities
in the world.
He plans to hang back on
this roadside verge, rather than
driving right to the entrance
of Area 51. “I’m afraid if I get
any closer that they could
confiscate all my equipment
and my truck, and I’ll never see

it again,” he notes. “So I’m going
to hang back here just a little
bit, and grab some pictures,” he
notes, raising a telephoto lens
to his eyes.
We are on the open road,
investigating why a 4,823
kilometres latitudinal line
across the United States known
as the 37th parallel is the
sight of a raft of unexplained
phenomena, ranging from UFO
sightings to cattle mutilation.
But what connects the
events on this line? Amongst
Zukowski’s theories is one that
at first glance would seem far
fetched on any other show —
the existence of a network of
secret military underground
bases that house UFOs, all
connected by a series of tunnels
running along the 37th Parallel.
Standing on the state
line between New Mexico
and Colorado right on the
37th Parallel itself, is the
type of public figure who
doesn’t normally deal in rash
conspiracy theories. Former
Washington state senator, Dave
Schmidt, notes that he too
would like to know about

UNEXPLAINED

PRESTON
CASTLE
CALIFORNIA,
USA

PHOTOS DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRESTON SCHOOL
OF INDUSTRY

the tunnels. “I tried to get
information, and I could never
get it out of them,” he says.
According to Schmidt, his years
in office taught him that real
power in the US government
lies not with elected officials,
but with top-level civil servants,
all of whom refuse to go on the
record about the theory. But
does he agree with it?
“Oh absolutely, because
people have seen them. They
have seen the evidence too.
They don’t get to go inside, but
they have seen the evidence.”
As ever, the answers in this
show are not forthcoming
— but the questions sure
are intriguing. This is an
episode called Paranormal

Superhighway. And yes, you’re
right. You have officially
re-entered the world of The
Unexplained Files.

POP THE CORN
Whether we intend to seek
them or not, humans need
answers. We innately try to
rationalise the unknown, putting information in a file in our
brains. Yet there is another part
of us too. A shadow-dwelling
self, who remains stubbornly
drawn to the irrational. This
is the bug-eyed persona that
keeps you glued to your TV
set, dipping into your popcorn
with zombie-like regularity,
unconsciously searching for a
golden kernel of truth.

Just like the early ‘90s
bumper sticker once famously
warned: “Just because you’re
paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re
not after you.”
As with all great discoveries,
experience reminds us on a
constant basis that truth is
often far stranger than fiction.
And each time it does, we
simply chew harder on that
popcorn and stretch our eyes
that much wider, recalling
the ominous advice of The
Unexplained Files narrator:
“Rethink everything you think
you know.”
“There are global phenomena that science cannot explain.
True stories that defy rational
explanation.” So say the

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NOVEMBER 2014

opening lines of a show that
has already captivated scores of
viewers in the United States —
and that has one of its creators
as hooked as we are.

WITNESS TO POSSESSION
Executive producer Sarah
Davies is glued to her
breakaway show. “I have to
say, it’s probably my favourite
series I make,” she tells DCM
conspiratorially. “You just can’t
believe that all this weird stuff is
going on, and that it genuinely
isn’t explainable.”

“THE RUMOUR
WAS THAT
THE EXORCIST
WAS BASED
ON A TRUE
STORY, OF
A REAL
POSSESSION
OF A CHILD;
AND IT
TURNS OUT
THAT SEEMS
TO BE TRUE”
For Davies, there is something comforting about the
wide-eyed moments powering
the series. “It makes you see the
world a bit like a child again,
doesn’t it? You’re slightly in
wonder about it again.”
As befitting a second season
of a breakout show, the new
installation is even bigger and
more far-ranging, including a
terrifying chapter that Davies
says marked a particular coup
for the show — a first-hand
account of one of the world’s
most famous exorcisms, and
which may have inspired the
landmark 1973 movie.
“The rumour was that The
Exorcist was based on a true
story, of a real possession of
a child. And it turns out that
seems to be true,” she explains.
“It was based on the possession
of a young boy, who seems to
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

have been about 13 years old,
in Washington, just up the road
from where I live,” she says.
In the show, we meet
retired Alexian Brother, Greg
Holewinski, the last living
eyewitness to the now-famous
exorcism which reportedly took
place in Missouri, in 1949. “It
was very heavily documented
by the Catholic Church,
because the possession went on
for three months,” says Davies.
In the show, Brother Greg,
now aged 90, describes on
camera that he discovered the
incident, which at the time was
being kept secret: “I enquired
around and found out that
we had a young boy, who was
possessed, supposedly by the
devil.” The child was kept in
a locked room on the upper
floors of the hospital building.
“His eyes were closed tight.
He reacted differently when
the possession took place,” he
describes in the show.
“Nobody who’s ever taken
part in that exorcism has ever
really gone on the record to
talk about it,” says Davies. “He
was actually there on the day
that the exorcism worked,” she
notes. “He’s a very old man now,
he’s in his 90s, and he felt like
he wanted to go on record about
what happened. And to put the
record straight that actually, it’s
the truth.”
“It’s an amazing film. We
interview him, and we recreate
what he saw happening in
the room. And I think it’s
incredible — I mean, you just
don’t know what to make of it.
You know, something very, very
odd happened, and this child
manifested this possession in
lots of different ways.”
While what took place was
obviously some distance from
the events that take place in
the horror film, Holewinski
says he witnessed some
unusual incidents. “He did
levitate off the bed, according
to him and several other
witnesses — he went into the
roof,” says Davies.

UFO
ABDUCTION
TODMORDEN,
UNITED
KINGDOM

TODMORDEN

BRIDGE JUMPERS
Aside from numerous American
mysteries, this season once
again takes us on a global tour
of the world’s weirdest stories,
including clusters in both
Russia and Latin America. As
DCM documented recently, one
of the episodes, ‘Russian Yeti’,
sparked its own show.
Meantime, The Flannan
Lighthouse is an intriguing
disappearance story. “Three
lighthouse keepers disappeared
from a lighthouse in Scotland’s
Flannan Isle, and there’s loads
of speculation about what might
have happened to them. Their
bodies were never found,” she
says. “And it was like the Marie

Celeste when the lighthouse
was found. No signs of panic, or
anything like that.”
Among the series’ mini set
of “brilliantly weird” alien
stories is one called Alien
Skulls. Speaking over the phone,
Davies’ voice takes on a slightly
more fevered edge. “We DNA
test what, I’m telling you, looks
like an alien skull, It’s like a
skull that’s elongated,” she
describes. “We managed to get
access to it in Peru, and we had
it DNA tested. And the DNA
test came back that the mother
was human — and the father’s
species was unknown. I mean,
what the hell is that? We were
all shocked.”

UNEXPLAINED

SELECTED STORIES

CREEPS
FOR ALL
Executive producer Sarah
Davies says that in terms of both
intrigue and subject matter, the new
season has something for everyone.
“There’s a real range of monsters and
aliens. We’ve got a really creepy story
about something called 'Shadow People',
which are these new ghost phenomena that
seem to be popping up all over the world,”
she notes. “We’ve got lots of suitably
weird stuff, all beautifully shot and very
respectfully done. I really hope the
audience love it as much as we do,
because certainly it’s been a
massive hit in the US.”

A warning though. Real
pets die, namely in the episode
Bridge of Death. “We’ve even
got a bridge in Scotland that has
become synonymous with dogs
killing themselves — they seem
to go on the bridge and jump off
it. Which is bizarre,” she says.
“And while we were actually
filming the story, a dog, sure
enough, jumped off the bridge
again and died. It’s just a really
strange story.”
Sometimes it so happens
that two iconic key ingredients
for classic conspiracy stories
come together, something
which happened with the
episode that was titled, ‘UFO &
Nukes Conspiracy’.

PHOTOS DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (BROTHER GREG); CORBIS (UFO); MARC CALHOUN (LIGHTHOUSE)

THE REAL EXORCIST
For the first time, the last living eyewitness
to the exorcism of the real boy who inspired
the film The Exorcist speaks out about his
experiences in the Catholic hospital where the
horrifying events took place. As a young priest,
Brother Greg (pictured) was charged with
keeping the boy from levitating off the bed and
describes the ordeal as terrifying.

ALIEN SKELETON
A skull is unearthed in Pinipampa, Peru, with
a head as big as its body. Scientists have never
seen anything like it. Could the creature’s brain
have been as large as its skull? If so, what would
that mean about its intelligence level? The
results will be revealed with the skull’s first full
CT scan and medical examination.

THE FLANNAN ISLE LIGHTHOUSE
Historian and author Keith McCloskey is
investigating the mysterious disappearance of
three Scottish men who vanished over 100 years
ago. The men were stationed at the Flannan Isle
Lighthouse in Scotland. When the coast guard
came to relieve them after a three-week stay, all
three men had disappeared without a trace.

ALESHENKA

TOP IN THE EPISODE 'UFOS AND NUKES' THE
SHOW EXPLORES THE THEORY THAT THERE
IS MORE ALIEN ACTIVITY AROUND PLACES
WHERE THERE ARE NUCLEAR MISSILES. AND
IN SOME CASES WHERE UFOS HAVE BEEN
WITNESSED, NUCLEAR WARHEADS HAVE
BECOME INOPERABLE
ABOVE THREE MEN MYSTERIOUSLY
DISAPPEARED FROM THE REMOTE FLANNAN
ISLE LIGHTHOUSE IN SCOTLAND IN 1900

Russian Police Captain Vladimir Bendlin
is shocked to be handed what looks like a
mummified alien baby. The creature is 25 to 30
centimetres in length with humanoid features
but no sexual organs, no belly button, and
greyish in colour. He discovers the creature
is originally in the care of an old lady Tamara
Vasilievna Prosvirina. She has found it — alive—
in the forest near her home in central Russia.
She rears it as one of her children and calls it
Aleshenka. Determined to investigate, Bendlin
unravels the strangest case of his career as a
post-mortem examination and DNA tests raise
the possibility that this could be one of the most
credible alien encounters ever recorded.
99
NOVEMBER 2014

ELK
DEATHS
“Apparently, you get a lot
more alien activity around
places where there are nuclear
missiles,” she notes. “So much
so, that we have a former KGB
general on record saying that
they used to move the nuclear
weapons around Russia, just to
see whether alien activity would
happen where they moved them
too. And sure enough, it did.”
Describing the new
12-episode season as “a
real humdinger”, Davies
says that working on the
The Unexplained Files has
convinced her that perhaps
as a species, we may be being
arrogant to assume that
we already have our world
figured out. And maybe it's
natural, given our brief time
on the planet, that are so many
unexplained stories,” she says.

“One of the experts says
in the show, which I think is
brilliant, that given the Earth
has been here for thousands of
millions of years, who knows
what went on even just five
million years ago. We’re not
entirely sure,” she says.
“So of course there’s going
to be weird and wonderful stuff
that we’re discovering — and
perhaps we’ll never know a
fraction of it.” Rest assured
then that, bathed in the sweet
unknown, our bug-eyed
popcorn nights by the TV look
safe for now. The truth, as they
say, is still out there.
100
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

NEW
MEXICO

PHOTOS DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (MAIN AND DEAD ELK); LAWVAH (OVERTOUN BRIDGE); CORBIS (CROP CIRCLE)

THERE’S A
BRIDGE IN
SCOTLAND
THAT HAS
BECOME
SYNONYMOUS
WITH DOGS
KILLING
THEMSELVES.
THEY SEEM
TO GO AND
JUMP OFF IT!

NEW MEXICO,
USA

ABOVE UFO FIELD
INVESTIGATOR CHUCK
ZUKOWSKI TRAVELS
ALONG THE 37TH
PARALLEL LATITUDE
IN NEW MEXICO,
WHERE THERE HAVE
BEEN INNUMERABLE
ACCOUNTS WITH
EYEWITNESS
TESTIMONY OF
STRANGE OBJECTS
FLYING OVERHEAD,
MULTIPLE CATTLE
MUTILATIONS (RIGHT),
CROP CIRCLES (LEFT)
AND BRIGHT LIGHTS
IN THE SKY

UNEXPLAINED

SELECTED STORIES
UFO AND NUKES CONSPIRACY
Across the globe, military personnel witness
UFOs over nuclear installations. In some cases,
all nuclear warheads become inoperable. Are
UFOs targeting sensitive nuclear sites? Many
former officers believe the US government
knows more than it is telling the public.

BRIDGE OF DEATH
In the grounds of an imposing 19th century
Gothic castle in Scotland, the Overtoun Bridge is
at the centre of a troubling phenomenon. It has
been claimed that since the 1950s, more than
50 dogs have jumped to their deaths from the
bridge. Could they be committing suicide? And if
so, why?

ZOMBIES
In Haiti, they take their zombies seriously.
Jacqueline Jean’s family claim she died and was
buried in 2011. However, 14 months later, she
was found… alive. In 2009, Adeline Dassase was
found disoriented and wandering Haiti two years
after her death. She tells of a sorcerer using
zombie powder to bring her back from the grave
in order to enslave her. Is this definitive proof
that the myth of zombies is a frightening reality?

SHADOW PEOPLE
Preston Castle, a now derelict, neo-gothic
reform school in northern California, appears to
be haunted by spectral 3D humanoid silhouettes
as black as night, known as 'Shadow People'.
This intriguing phenomenon is reported across
the US. The American Paranormal Research
Association (APRA), founded to provide scientific
evidence of the existence of life after death,
is joined by confirmed sceptic and scientist
Dr Harry Kloor to investigate Preston Castle
and its strange inhabitants. They interview
witnesses, examine video evidence and uncover
the macabre murder of head housekeeper
Anna Corbin. Could her death be the key to
understanding the 'Shadow People', or will Dr.
Kloor provide a rational explanation for it?
101
NOVEMBER 2014

WHAT’S ON
THIS MONTH ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL

Skyscraper
Live With
Nik Wallenda
Last year in June, the high wire
artist, Nik Wallenda created a record
of being the first person to cross
the Grand Canyon on a wire. This
time, he is heading to the windy
city of Chicago to attempt his most
challenging tightrope walk yet. And
like the legendary Wallenda family
tradition, he will do it all without a
net or harness and BLINDFOLDED.
 
AIRS LIVE ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3 AT 5:30
AM AND SPECIAL TELECAST AT 9 PM

102
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

WHAT'S ON

Dual Survival
Experts agree there are some very basic and universal rules for surviving in
the wild. Find shelter, find water, find food, find help. Beyond that, there’s
not much they agree on. No one knows this better than Cody Lundin and
Joseph Teti, who take on some of the planet’s most unforgiving terrain
to demonstrate, in their own way, how the right skills and some creative
thinking can keep you alive.
AIRS EVERY DAY 9 PM STARTING NOVEMBER 10

103
NOVEMBER 2014

How Do They
Do It?
We rarely consider many of the objects
that make up the modern world elevators, carpets, helicopters, breast
implants, street lights, and more. Go
behind the scenes to discover how to
do the things and make the things that
form the modern world.
AIRS EVERY DAY 8 PM STARTING 3 NOVEMBER

104
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

WHAT'S ON

You Have Been
Warned
The series focuses on a particular science theme and
features the cleverest, funniest and most daring clips,
along with an explanation and breakdown from some
of the world’s best science experts. With the help of
amazing storytelling graphics, the expert panel will
explain the what, the how and the why of the science
that made these clips possible.
AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO FRIDAY 10 PM STARTING 10 NOVEMBER

105
NOVEMBER 2014