Line | When asteroids collide, some collisions cause |
an asteroid to spin faster; others slow it down. If | |
asteroids are all monoliths—single rocks—undergoing | |
random collisions, a graph of their rotation rates | |
(5) | should show a bell-shaped distribution with statistical |
“tails” of very fast and very slow rotators. If asteroids | |
are rubble piles, however, the tail representing the | |
very fast rotators would be missing, because any | |
loose aggregate spinning faster than once every few | |
(10) | hours (depending on the asteroid’s bulk density) |
would fly apart. Researchers have discovered that | |
all but five observed asteroids obey a strict limit on | |
rate of rotation. The exceptions are all smaller than | |
200 meters in diameter, with an abrupt cutoff for | |
(15) | asteroids larger than that. |
The evident conclusion—that asteroids larger than | |
200 meters across are multicomponent structures or | |
rubble piles—agrees with recent computer modeling | |
of collisions, which also finds a transition at that | |
(20) | diameter. A collision can blast a large asteroid to bits, |
but after the collision those bits will usually move | |
slower than their mutual escape velocity. Over several | |
hours, gravity will reassemble all but the fastest | |
pieces into a rubble pile. Because collisions among | |
(25) | asteroids are relatively frequent, most large bodies |
have already suffered this fate. Conversely, most | |
small asteroids should be monolithic, because impact | |
fragments easily escape their feeble gravity. |
The type of behavior exhibited when an animal recognizes itself in a mirror comes within the domain of “theory of mind,” thus is best studied as part of the field of animal cognition.
Line | Anthropologists once thought that the ancestors |
of modern humans began to walk upright because | |
it freed their hands to use stone tools, which they | |
had begun to make as the species evolved a brain of | |
(5) | increased size and mental capacity. But discoveries |
of the three-million-year-old fossilized remains of | |
our hominid ancestor Australopithecus have yielded | |
substantial anatomical evidence that upright walking | |
appeared prior to the dramatic enlargement of the | |
(10) | brain and the development of stone tools. |
Walking on two legs in an upright posture (bipedal | |
locomotion) is a less efficient proposition than walking | |
on all fours (quadrupedal locomotion) because several | |
muscle groups that the quadruped uses for propulsion | |
(15) | must instead be adapted to provide the biped with |
stability and control. The shape and configuration | |
of various bones must likewise be modified to allow | |
the muscles to perform these functions in upright | |
walking. Reconstruction of the pelvis (hipbones) and | |
(20) | femur (thighbone) of “Lucy,” a three-million-year-old |
skeleton that is the most complete fossilized skeleton | |
from the Australopithecine era, has shown that they | |
are much more like the corresponding bones of the | |
modern human than like those of the most closely | |
(25) | related living primate, the quadrupedal chimpanzee. |
Lucy’s wide, shallow pelvis is actually better suited to | |
bipedal walking than is the rounder, bowl-like pelvis of | |
the modern human, which evolved to form the larger | |
birth canal needed to accommodate the head of a | |
(30) | large-brained human infant. By contrast, the head of |
Lucy’s baby could have been no larger than that of a | |
baby chimpanzee. | |
If the small-brained australopithecines were not | |
toolmakers, what evolutionary advantage did they | |
(35) | gain by walking upright? One theory is that bipedality |
evolved in conjunction with the nuclear family: | |
monogamous parents cooperating to care for their | |
offspring. Walking upright permitted the father to | |
use his hands to gather food and carry it to his mate | |
(40) | from a distance, allowing the mother to devote more |
time and energy to nurturing and protecting their | |
children. According to this view, the transition to | |
bipedal walking may have occurred as long as ten | |
million years ago, at the time of the earliest hominids, | |
(45) | making it a crucial initiating event in human evolution. |
Scientist: In an experiment, dogs had access to a handle they could pull to release food into a nearby enclosure that contained a familiar dog and nothing else, contained an unfamiliar dog and nothing else, or was empty. The dogs typically released more food to the familiar dog than to the unfamiliar dog. This suggests that dogs are more motivated to help other dogs they know than to help unfamiliar dogs.
The scientist's argument would be most strengthened if it were true that, in the experiment, the dogs with access to the handle tended to release more food when