The Trouble With “The Big Bang”

Plus: targeting cancer’s Achilles heel; Behind the Scenes with Elizabeth Landau; and some of our most popular stories this week. [View in browser]( | [Become a member]( EDITORS’ CHOICE September 11, 2022   Did a friend forward this? [Subscribe here](. Dear Nautilus Reader, In a memorable line from Zack Snyder’s film 300, a Persian messenger threatens the Spartans with overwhelming force if they don’t submit to Xerxes’ rule. “Our arrows will blot out the sun,” he says. Stelios, played by Michael Fassbender, replies, “Then we will fight in the shade.” Today we learn that Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory cancer biologist David Tuveson is [taking that tactic to his lab.]( “Tuveson likens the approach to shooting arrows at the enemy and finally finding its most vulnerable spot,” science journalist Lina Zeldovich writes. The arrows, in this case, are chemo cocktails aimed at pancreatic tumor organoids taken from cancer patients and placed in a Petri dish. With this setup, “there’s no limit to the number of arrows scientists can shoot,” Zeldovich writes. It allows doctors to safely experiment with different treatments that they can then give to patients. “What we are doing is essentially looking for the cancer’s Achilles heel,” Tuveson said. He’s optimistic that the cancer [won’t be able to keep fighting in the shade.]( Plus, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains how a rash of recent articles, published in the wake of some images coming from the James Webb Space Telescope, [illustrates a longstanding confusion over what “The Big Bang” actually is.]( Then be sure to check out this week’s Behind the Scenes with [science writer Elizabeth Landau](, and some of the most popular Nautilus stories below—the big thinker; speaking ET’s language; your link to royalty; and more. [READ NAUTILUS](   [HEALTH]( [Targeting Cancer’s Achilles Heel]( Biden’s Cancer Moonshot aims to cut annual deaths in half. Scientists have the goal in their sights. BY LINA ZELDOVICH Matthew Weiss dreams of the day when his oncology practice will operate very differently. [Continue reading →]( Experience the endless possibilities and deep human connections that science offers [SUBSCRIBE TODAY](   [Gear Up for Success]( Challenge your child’s sense of adventure with [KiwiCo](. The mechanical engineering kits inspire kids to explore concepts they won’t soon forget. [Save up to 20%]( on robots, racers, and other awesome electronic projects. [Explore the Fun of Engineering](   Enjoying our newsletter? [Click here]( to keep hearing from us. Your clicks tell us you value receiving our newsletter. [Click this]( in the next 30 days to confirm you’re an active Nautilus reader, and we won’t unsubscribe you. Thanks! [CLICK TO STAY SUBSCRIBED](   [COMMUNICATION]( [The Trouble With “The Big Bang”]( A rash of recent articles illustrates a longstanding confusion over the famous term. BY SABINE HOSSENFELDER Did the Big Bang happen? [Continue reading →](   BEHIND THE SCENES [Elizabeth Landau Takes Us Behind “Are All Brains Good at Math?”]( If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that math actually is all around. And that’s how Elizabeth Landau sees it. “You can’t send a rocket out to space without math. You can't look at particles at the Large Hadron Collider without math,” she says. “Math is all around us, even in our daily lives, in splitting tips at a restaurant.” That’s what drew her to writing her recent story in Nautilus, “[Are All Brains Good at Math?](” “Why,” she wondered, “do people dread math so much?” Landau is a science writer, as well as a senior communications specialist at NASA. She’s always loved math, and doesn’t see it as a contradiction that, while taking multivariable calculus in college, she found that she “finally hit a wall.” She thought, “I don’t see the relevance of this anymore. I don’t think I’m going to use this anymore,” and she didn’t take any more math. But, [in our conversation](, she said she still uses it as an excuse to party. In her story, she notes that she’s well known for hosting Pi Day parties (on March 14). “I’ve been interested in the number pi since I was 13 years old,” she said. “I got this book called The Joy of Pi, and ever since, I was so interested in this number that is literally all around us, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, with its digits going on forever in this seemingly random fashion.” She usually has every guest make a pie, and sometimes they’ll have fun trying to recite the numbers. (At one point, she knew pi to 170 digits.) “I know this is very nerdy,” she said, “but it is very fun to have a pi off with another person who has also memorized a lot of pi.” We discussed, among other things, how our math teachers, if they show some anxiety around math, can sometimes pass that on to students. “There is something going on with the transmission of fear and anxiety about numbers,” she said. We also touched on whether math is, fundamentally, what’s most real. “I do feel like there’s some sense in which people who have these great ideas involving math, that they are tapping into these fundamental laws of the universe,” she said. “Now, that doesn’t mean that someday we’re not going to discover that some of those laws of physics are different. I think someday we will have a telescope powerful enough to maybe prove Einstein wrong in some ways. But there’s something fundamental to it. Not only do we as humans have a sense for number, but the ability to estimate could be shared even by animals. I think there’s something there, that we are tapping into some underlying fabric.” [Watch here.]( —Brian Gallagher, associate editor   [“We have to date zero evidence for the beginning of the universe, whether it was a Big Bang Event or something else.”]( [Sabine Hossenfelder disentangles three different ideas that people call “the big bang.”](   Popular This Week [MATH]( [Are All Brains Good at Math?]( BY ELIZABETH LANDAU Ken Ono gets excited when he talks about a particular formula for pi, the famous and enigmatic ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. [Continue reading →](   [MICROBIOLOGY]( [The Big Thinker]( BY PHILIP BALL “There is a black hole at the heart of biology,” Nick Lane writes at the start of his 2015 book The Vital Question. [Continue reading →](   [PHYSICS]( [We Might Already Speak the Same Language As ET]( BY CALEB SCHARF The Fermi paradox, the “where is everybody?” puzzle, is a persistent question in the search for life in the universe. [Continue reading →](   [GENETICS]( [You’re Descended from Royalty and So Is Everybody Else]( BY ADAM RUTHERFORD Charlemagne, Carolingian King of the Franks, Holy Roman Emperor, the great European conciliator; your ancestor. [Continue reading →](   More [H]()EALTH[stories from]()[Nautilus]() [You Eat a Credit Card’s Worth of Plastic Every Week]( What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health? BY KATHARINE GAMMON [Continue reading →]( [Why Making Our Brains Noisier Feels Good]( A counterintuitive approach to improving our mental health. BY THOMAS NAIL [Continue reading →]( [How the Coronavirus Stays One Step Ahead of Us]( As long as there are vulnerable populations, a virus will evolve. That’s nature. BY MEGAN SCUDELLARI [Continue reading →]( [A Cardiologist’s 9/11 Story]( From trauma to arrhythmia, and back again. BY SANDEEP JAUHAR [Continue reading →](   Today’s newsletter was written by Brian Gallagher   OCEAN [Experience the Ocean Like Never Before]( The [Nautilus Ocean]( newsletter provides narrative storytelling about the ocean you won't find elsewhere. The stories take you into the depths of the salty waters and shine a light on the ripples it causes in lives and cultures around the globe. [Join a community of 200k+ curious minds]( to science and its power to illuminate culture, humanity, and the universe. [Subscribe Now](   [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( Copyright © 2022 NautilusNext, All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from nautil.us. Our mailing address is: NautilusNext 360 W 36th Street, 7S, New York, NY 10018 To view in your browser, [click here]( . Don't want to hear from us anymore? Click here to [unsubscribe]( .