Some have dubbed it the "doomsday vault"; others, taking a more positive tone, call it a repository of biodiversity. However you look at it, the Global Seed Vault is a fortress. Buried under almost 500 feet of Arctic permafrost, secured against bomb blasts, earthquakes, and potential thieves, this massive seed bank, which will ultimately include samples of a large portion of the world's plant varieties, is our high-tech hope for preserving the genetic diversity that underlies the world's food supply. But despite its scope, the seed vault isn't enough.

Why a seed bank in the first place? Because industrial farming approaches have made what was once a plethora of diverse crops into something more like a set of monocultures, carefully bred to meet our standards for long distance travel, high yields, and resistance to bug and weed killers. Many scientists fear that climate change will threaten these crops, which provide us with a huge proportion of our food.

To keep growing enough food, we'll have to breed new plant varieties that fare better in higher temperatures, or in depleted soil, or under whatever challenging conditions a particular crop faces. For that, plant breeders will need to tap the genetic diversity that exists among the many varieties of any given plant. A gene that makes one kind of rice grow well in sandy soil, for example, can be transferred to another kind of rice. This is why preserving each and every variety of plant food is essential to securing our food supply.

But a seed bank, vital as it is, falls short. Why? Because how and what we eat is as much about who we are as it is about the seeds we put in the ground. We're missing something if we believe we're saving ourselves simply by saving seeds.

Don't get me wrong: Genetic diversity in edible plants is the toolbox nature gives us to feed ourselves with, and preserving it by saving seeds is central to our ability to grow and develop new crops. But, as Michael Pollan articulates in his latest book In Defense of Food, the way we eat is attached to our cultures, beliefs, languages, and rituals. We learn about growing and eating food from people who came before us, and that knowledge is as important as the food itself.

The (necessary) sterility of a seed bank doesn't capture the messy, many-threaded ways in which food and agriculture are incorporated into a society. A seed bank doesn't preserve the knowledge of how to grow its precious population, or how farming crops cooperatively might produce different results than farming them individually, or even how to make the plants into edible dishes.

If we want to ensure our food supply, we need to do more than freeze seeds. We need to also take careful notes about culture.

I began thinking about this several years ago, when I had the privilege of visiting a seed bank operated by a group called Native Seeds/SEARCHin Tucson, Arizona, when I was working on a piece about seed saving for our Science of Gardening Web site. Native Seeds/SEARCH Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) was founded in 1983, when Native Americans in the region wanted to grow traditional crops and couldn't locate seeds. Since then, the organization has grown to include 4500 farmers and thousands of seed varieties developed by Native Americans in the Southwest.

NS/S doesn't just save seeds: they save the knowledge that goes with them. NS/S farmers continually plant and grow handfuls of the seed bank's reserve, refreshing the seed stock and passing along knowledge of how to best grow a particular plant. NS/S employees also collect stories from and share knowledge with Native people in the region.

Now, I'm no farmer, but it seems to me that safeguarding both the "agri-" and "-culture" of plant varieties will help us get the most out of the seeds we've saved. Otherwise, we end up seeing the security of our food as little more than a sterile set of seeds stored in a deep freeze, ready to be accessed for answers when our old farming technologies get us in trouble. But feeding ourselves is hardly a sterile affair: we grow, prepare, and consume food in a complex context of environment and humanity. I, for one, think our tendency to dismiss that larger picture is what's gotten us into this biodiversity problem in the first place.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

Hawkins isn't your ordinary astronomer. She began her career in an ordinary way: Ph. D. in Astronomy from UCLA, using mathematical models and computer simulations to give meaning to her observations. Along the way, she began to learn about how ancient people studied the sky. She's worked with us on our Ancient Observatories website, and hosted an equinox webcast from the top of the Mayan pyramid in the ancient astronomical site of Chichen Itza. And she's devoted a considerable amount of time and energy to understanding and appreciating how the knowledge of ancient people complements what modern scientists study today.

Most scientists today don't learn much about ancient knowledge. Observations such as measurements of the sun's movement across glyph-crusted temples don't usually meet the rigorous criteria of the scientific process: observe, create hypothesis, test, reproduce results.

In some instances, ancient people followed similar practices that were very similar to those used by modern scientists, observing things systematically and trying to devise explanations that will result in correct predictions. And sometimes the knowledge they gathered was, in fact, so "scientific" that modern researchers use it in their work today.

Take, for example, the knowledge of the Aymara Indians in Peru. The well-being of these adept weather-watchers was dependent on knowing how to time the planting of their vital potato crop with the arrival of the season's first rains sometime between October and December. They did this by making observations like meteorologists might today. They watched the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters constellation rise each night, and noted how fuzzy or clear it looked in the sky. Fuzziness caused by cirrus clouds high in the sky, meant rains were a ways off, and potato planting should be postponed. A clearly visible set of Sisters meant rains would come soon.

In 2002, Ben Orlove an environmental scientist at UC Davis, published a paper about the accuracy of the Aymara's observations of the Pleiades. It turned out that these ancient observations could be used by modern scientists to discern El Nino patterns in the past. Fascinating, since these measurements were taken long before there was a formal science of meteorology. Ancient knowledge becomes data points in modern research.

Hawkins cited another example: Ruth Ludwin, a seismologist at the University of Washington, has used generations-old folk tales of the Coast Salish Indians to help inform her computer modeling of earthquakes. The tales recount a serpent that knew where and when an earthquake would strike. By adapting location information from the stories into her computer models, Ludwin has found several small faults in the Seattle area that may have been active hundreds of years ago when the stories were created and may still pose a risk to local communities.

"It's interesting that what we call evidence can come in many forms," Hawkins says. "It might be part of a song, or a glyph writing or an artistic piece or a story."

And sometimes the records we keep and the stories we tell have more meaning than we can imagine when we create them.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

Companies like GenoCAD allow users to piece together
their own designer DNA.

“Synthetic biology” seems like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it? I mean, if it’s biological, it’s natural, right? And if it’s natural, then it’s not synthetic.

Sure. Except that modern science has sorta blurred all those nice convenient boundaries.

Nothing has demonstrated this more clearly than Craig Venter’s latest feat of building out an entire bacterial genome from scratch. It’s the second episode of a three-part plan, devised by the venerable entrepreneur who brought the world its first look at the human genome, to create an organism with a manmade DNA sequence. First, he took a genome from one bacterium, stuck it into an empty cell, and then got it going. Now he’s pieced together a copy of the DNA of Mycoplasma genitalium, the second-smallest known bacterial genome. The last in this troika of tricks will be to combine these two steps, inserting the manufactured genome into a cell and starting it up.

Some scientists believe that success in this endeavor will soon lead to the creation of organisms with new, artificial genomes. Couple that idea with the announcement that researchers at Scripps have devised two new molecules that can function as DNA bases and the question of what’s alive, even what counts as biology, gets a little fuzzy.

I first heard about synthetic biology several years ago, at a lecture for science writers. The speaker had culled together sections of DNA that he hoped would produce a medically useful enzyme, inserted the sequences into a bacterial genome, then let the bug do its work copying the gene and producing the chemical, which the speaker could then harvest.

This seemed to me to be a fundamentally different way of thinking about biology. Here was a scientist who wasn’t asking: “How does this work?” or “Isn’t the living world amazing?” He was asking: “How can I employ this system to manufacture a specific product for my benefit?” He was harnessing the ingenious mechanisms of biology as tools. Being able to put together sequences of DNA seemed akin to the invention of movable type, a letter here, a letter there, till you spell the words (or in this case, genes) you want.

At some level, I was offended by this, though I’m still not exactly sure why. It seemed like a disrespectful exploitation of life. Who are we to manipulate the code defining living things and make them do our bidding? And how far will we go with this? Will the precious genomes of my plants, or my pets, or even me for Godsakes be manipulated one day, ordered to pump out some substance that a distant researcher has deemed desirable?

On the other hand, I was fascinated. The potential this technique held for research was enough to send a geek’s mind reeling. What amazing ingenuity. What creative thinking. How wholly human, actually, to devise a new purpose for knowledge we’d gained. This engineering feat struck me as demonstrating a deep appreciation—almost a reverence for—the power within the systems that the living world has evolved.

So there I was, conflicted.

Since then, this process of connecting DNA bits together has become more commonplace. So common, in fact, that a variety of companies, like Gene Design and GenoCad invite you design a gene online and have it sent to you (Go ahead, try it. It’s easy to make up valid sequences.). This is, in fact, what Venter did: ordered sequences of DNA and pieced them together, discovering that he could make an exact copy of the genome he desired.

Synthetic biology’s proponents promise microbes that can clean up pollution, produce drugs, signal changes in the environment, help with medical diagnoses, and a slew of other useful tasks. Its detractors fear the creation of new biological weapons, and new organisms that aren’t well understood but which may be able to reproduce and evolve.

Since this sort of talk makes a sci-fi world of ready-made critters seem like it’s just around the corner, it’s easy to forget how much work remains before our best (or worst) dreams come true. Just because we can string functional bits of DNA together, even whole (though relatively small) genomes, doesn’t mean that we actually know much about how they work. Venter, after all, didn’t invent a new genome, he just put an already-known one together. The goal, of course, is to be able to someday make new genes that do specific things. But for the moment, synthetic biologists hope to use the technologies they’re developing to learn much more about how genes work in the first place.

What does wait for us around the corner is a set of questions similar to those that accompany all new and emerging technologies. How do we create policy to protect ourselves from the risk but not quash research? Who decides what research directions and questions are most important to pursue? How do we create profit incentives for technology that benefits the common good?

And will I ever resolve my mixed feelings about this new science? Is it better off that I don’t?

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

latitude: 39.1067, longitude: -77.1623

See if you can tell from the 2 images below:*

A real, spontaneous smile incorporates tiny muscles around the eye that are nearly impossible to contract at will. You can see this for yourself in an exhibit called "Polite Smile, Delight Smile" part of the Exploratorium's new Mind exhibition.

This corners-of-the-eyes giveaway, as well as many other subtle, yet revealing, facial gestures, was discovered by Paul Ekman, now a professor emeritus of psychology from the University of California, San Francisco. Ekman's been studying the universality of facial expressions and the secrets our faces reveal for over four decades. The notion that certain expressions of emotion are programmed into us wasn't so well received when he proposed it in the 1960s. At that time, social scientists believed facial expressions were cultural. Then, in 1967, Ekman embarked on an expedition to Papua New Guinea, where he asked people belonging to an indigenous tribe that had virtually no contact with the developed world to imitate the expressions they would have in certain situations, such as meeting an old friend or discovering a decaying animal. Ekman found that the ways these people's faces expressed sadness, fear, surprise, anger, and disgust involved the same eye and mouth muscle movements that people from Western cultures displayed. The collection of photos he took there will be on display at the Exploratorium from January 22 –April 27, 2008.

Today, Ekman is lauded by psychologists. He's considered the leading expert on detecting deceit, and his ideas are used to train CIA, Homeland Security, and other law enforcement officers to detect when they are being lied to by someone they're questioning and to spot unusual behavior. He devised a tool known as the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which catalogues the musculature behind thousands of facial expressions. Some of the most subtle of these Ekman calls "microexpressions," fleeting muscle movements that reveal emotions the subject is trying to suppress. With the knowledge that these revealing expressions are universal, FACS allows a trained person to "read" someone's emotions by observing their facial muscles.

When Ekman's book Emotions Revealed came out in 2003, I thought it would be great to master the subject matter. Who wouldn't benefit from learning to understand the fleeting messages people send oh-so-subtly? But the more I thought about it, the more uneasy I began to feel. Something didn't sit right with me about the practice of decoding people without their knowledge. Then again, isn't that what any of us do when we "sense" that someone was nervous or untruthful or secretly overjoyed? It's not like our microexpressions are hidden. We express them in plain sight. They may be the source of an intuitive person's "sixth sense." But to formally study these expressions with the intent of detecting emotions that the subjects themselves are unaware of–is that a violation of privacy? Ekman would say no. He insists that he can't read minds, only emotions, and that leaves out most of the personal details. Still, there's something unsettling about the idea that feelings I've long considered private are written all over my face.

* BTW, the real smile is image 1. Did you guess correctly? Leave a comment to tell us how you knew.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

latitude: 37.8041, longitude: -122.448

Let me explain. On New Year's Eve I brought my phone with me to San Francisco's Ocean Beach, where I traditionally go, rain or shine, to watch the year's last sunset. I was by myself, but I wasn't alone.

Oh no. I took snapshots of shimmering colors on the waves and sent them to faraway, landlocked friends who miss the sea. Another friend called to say she was also watching the sunset from her rooftop. Text messages flowed in.

I was connected.

Well, duh," you could say.

And this "duh" is exactly what seemed kind of profound: we take communication for granted. Of course we can talk to each other and share things with each other. And of course we create new devices to make talking and sharing easier. Of course.

But why do we do this, seemingly to no end? And why is it that communication is such a vital and defining aspect of our experience as humans? Why, really, do I love my cell phone so much?

I think it's genetic.

It's probably not news to most of you that we humans appear to be wired to talk to each other. We've got that FOXP2 gene that keeps making the news, contributing to our linguistic capacity. In fact, many researchers believe that language was central to our success as a species and allowed a small group of humans to expand across the globe about 50,000 years ago.

Our genetic design for interaction seems to go beyond talking amongst ourselves. A University of Michigan study slated to be published next month found that social interaction has a positive affect on memory and on cognitive functioning. The people who had the most conversations with others seemed to be the sharpest, and this was particularly true among young people. This may mean that more socially-oriented humans had a bit of an advantage over those who tended to keep more to themselves.

We may be such social animals that we're even hard-wired to simply need company. After all, isolation is one of the most universal methods of punishment. Another set of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that mice isolated from their comrades have lower levels of hormones that control anxiety, depression, and aggression. They believe that these responses are similar in humans. In other words, it's possible that our brains keep us happier and functioning better when they're interacting with other brains.

It makes sense that our predecessors who figured out how to play well with others and share their thoughts were the ones who got the best shot at passing on their genes. And it's no wonder our species devotes such enormous reserves to inventions that make communication easier. The most basic systems of rock painting and alphabets have allowed groups to share stories or warn others of impending trouble. And creations that help disseminate these symbols–papyrus, the printing press, even the simple pen and paper–have had a major impact on how we exist with one another, as individuals and as societies.

These days, many of our communication technologies have gone beyond "watch for hungry bear" or "here's my idea" into doing a kind of doubly-human duty. We not only use technology to convey thoughts, but also to extend our opportunities to create bonds with other people and to form social groups. Thus the popularity of the likes of Facebook, personals ads, and Flickr. In fact, if you leave a comment about this little ditty I've written, you've hopped on this double-duty train by becoming a part of Quest's blogging community.

And so now, as my thumbs feverishly tap out text messages, I see my cell phone as more than a gadget. It's the latest cousin of cave drawings and hieroglyphics. What it says about my own evolution I'm not quite certain. But no doubt my wireless admiration results from something buried in my chromosomes.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

latitude: 37.7595, longitude: -122.51

If you're reading this science blog, you probably know the right answer. And that would make you a little more informed than the average American, according to a recent National Science Foundation report.

Getting kids grounded in science at a young age can go a long way to fostering understanding of science as an adult. But according to research led by the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, we Californians aren't exactly paving the way to a future rich with science literacy. Not to quote too many reports here, but the folks at LHS found that 80 percent of elementary school teachers in California spend little or no time on science at all.

At the same time, an Education Department survey of parents found that the vast majority of them consider science education important. Yet the No Child Left Behind Act has focused study in elementary grades on reading and math, at the expense of science. Complicating matters is the fact that many elementary school teachers say they feel unprepared to teach science, and there’s little opportunity for them to up their skills.

For someone like me who works for a science museum, this state of affairs isn't exactly news. But I began to reflect on it in a different way after discussing the LHS report with a group of colleagues from other science education organizations at a recent QUEST partner meeting.

If kids aren’t getting science in their classrooms, this means a huge percentage of them must learn about the natural world in other ways. Many kids get very little exposure, either in school or out, to hands-on learning or experiences in nature.

The vast majority of the science they’re familiar with they've picked up from TV. There’s a legion of youngsters who’ve seen enough shows to become experts on Brazilian rainforests and exotic savannah animals, but they know little of the California poppies and red-tailed hawks that populate nearby parks. And while CSI seems to have made many people more familiar with DNA, it doesn’t always present science in the most accurate light.

I began to see the role of science museums, educational outreach departments, and other like-minded organizations in a new way: We’re filling a gap left behind by pressures for testing and shortages of resources in public schools.

Why does it matter if kids know about science anyway? Our livelihoods depend on it. Growing fields like biotechnology and green building, which will provide today’s students with lucrative jobs in the future, require solid scientific understanding. The commercial sector has already begun to see this: The pharmaceutical company Merck, for example, founded the Merck Institute for Science Education in 1993. While I'm sure some Merck employees are thinking about the future of young people, the institute is no doubt ultimately concerned with the future of Merck, which depends on the "intellectual capital" emerging from our school systems. Even former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has noted that science education is vital to our economy.

And on a more poetic, perhaps less pragmatic note, understanding and appreciating the nature we see around us is just a pleasant, life-affirming way to engage with the world.

So if you're a parent, take an afternoon to bring your kid to a nearby zoo or museum or park. Your small effort may help bridge a big gap in your child's education.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

latitude: 37.8037, longitude: -122.449

Oil booms at Crissy Field. Credit: fredsharples

It seems that the fate of birds in these situations provokes an especially emotional response in most people. Maybe it’s their visibility, maybe it’s the metaphor of losing flight, but there’s something about an oil-covered bird that makes plain the most tragic consequences of human interactions with nature.

Standing at the beach (which I visit frequently because it’s across from my office) made me realize how much there is to understand about the Bay’s inner workings. Knowing that there was much less oil on Crissy Field than at Rodeo Beach made me consider how the Bay’s currents flow than I had before. The booms floating in the water prompted questions about whether marine microorganisms are filtered out along with the oil, what role such critters play, and how they’re faring in an oily environment. Watching ducks splash about in the marsh, I wondered about the less-visible fates of the plants and fish below the surface. No doubt the oil spill's effects are beyond birds and oily blobs on the beach, hidden to those of us unfamiliar with the Bay’s ecosystems and mechanics.

While Craig and I meandered the dunes with Park Service staff days before, we learned that Crissy Field is an ever-changing environment, always in flux, sometimes through forces of nature and sometime at the hands of humans. Remembering this was heartening. Crissy Field has gone from natural shoreline to air strip and back to shoreline again, and has recovered from past oil spills much larger than this one. Nature (with a little help from concerned citizens) has amazing repair mechanisms, and has allowed Crissy Field to survive many assaults during its history. Despite its current scars, it will survive this as well.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

latitude: 37.8058, longitude: -122.4530

Dave Barker of the Exploratorium
gets some batting tips

The idea behind "corking" a bat is that the bat will be lighter and the batter will be able to swing it faster, hopefully imparting more power to the ball. If you watch QUEST's TV feature on the physics of baseball, you'll see my Exploratorium colleague David Barker learning from the CalBears batting coach that getting the bat going fast is a key to whacking the ball as far as possible. In fact, today's players use bats that are lighter and shorter than the ones swung decades ago, for just this reason.

Unfortunately for Sammy Sosa (and others before him who pulled the same stunt), corking the bat to make it lighter is a flawed approach. A wooden bat is a close-to-perfect swatting tool: it's solid enough to resist absorbing much impact from the ball, but not so hard that it overly deforms the ball when hitting it. A bat with cork in the middle will be squishier, and won't hit the ball as hard. Imagine the difference you'd expect if the bat were made of pillows. That's a little extreme, but you get the idea. According to a recent Mythbusters show, corked bats don't improve the power of a hit.

See for yourself what a difference swing speed can make. Check out our online "Scientific Slugger." You can choose different swing speeds and pitches, and see which combinations go farthest (if hit perfectly).

Did Sammy know he was swinging a corked bat the day he was caught, or was it truly an accident? We'll probably never know. But what's clearer is that, in terms of a baseball career, it probably wasn’t worth the risk.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

Image from Wikipedia, originally from socialfiction.org

For 30 years, Brandeis University professor Irene Pepperberg worked with Alex, and wrote many papers describing what she saw as an ability to learn and use language and numbers. Alex had a vocabulary of over 100 English words, could count to six, and could pick out objects based on their colors, shapes and the material there were made of. Alex and Dr. Pepperberg weren't without their skeptics. Some scientists insist that what seemed like communicative ability was simply Alex picking up on and responding to cues or gestures that his researchers were unaware they were making.

The jury's still out on parrot intelligence, but there’s no question that Alex and Dr. Pepperberg have made many people wonder whether animals have more going on upstairs than we recognize.

It's known that birds give different calls for different purposes. Does that mean birds have intent? Are they aware of their desires?

Iggy the cockatiel– thinking?I confess, I've got a bias of my own in this regard. I have a pet cockatiel who, I'm certain, is much smarter than I give him credit for. Of course I like to think that my adorable Iggy the Cockatiel learns things and has a distinct personality, even though some scientists would disagree. For example, Iggy decidedly prefers my roommate to me. Whenever she and I are both home and he's out of his cage, he'll make his way to whatever room she's in, sometimes clear across our sizable apartment, in an effort to be with her. I never saw him do this regularly for anyone else, and he seldom makes the return journey to hang out with me (I try not to take it too personally). He plainly seems to desire my roomie's shoulder and have an intention to hang out with her.

But really, do I want to believe in Iggy’s person-like intentions because it’s a human tendency to anthropomorphize everything? Or do I think what I think because my own awareness allows me to recognize that same trait in other beings?

Dr. Pepperberg isn't the first or only researcher to study animal intelligence. Scientists have been watching chimps, dogs, even octopi in the search for smarts beyond humanity. From what I can tell, there doesn't seem to be much agreement about the meaning of what they've found. Why not? I'm inclined to say that what a person thinks we learn from Alex and his animal comrades says more about how that person views our relationship to animals than it does about whether a parrot can really count.

My little member of the parrot family heartily agrees–I think.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

Then, at 4 pm on September 3, as Aeneas watched, two visitors were invited to whack at the sphere. It collapsed in seconds like a pile of toothpicks.

Exhilarating. Who doesn't love to behold order collapsing into chaos?

YouTube video of sphere destruction

I watched our You Tube video of the event three times. Four times. Five times. And as I watched, it dawned on me that Aeneas' sculpture–and its destruction–is actually a great metaphor for science.Our understanding of the world and nature is, on one level, a carefully constructed sculpture of observations, experiments, and calculations that build on each other. Their collective result takes shape as knowledge.But knowledge is an evolving entity. New discoveries or experiments often force old–sometimes dearly held–ideas to give way, making space for new insights about the natural world. No matter how beautiful a theory or idea is, if we learn something new that negates it, we must be ready to let the old idea go. Our ability to remain unattached to ideas in the search for truth is what creates space for growth in our knowledge of the natural world.Though many people think of "art" and "science" as opposite ends of a spectrum, there's a surprising number of parallels between them. For example, it's no coincidence that, before constructing his sphere, Aeneas built two sculptures in our exhibition space, only to kick them both down. As the artistic process demands, he reworked and refined his approach, taking the building blocks (both literal and figurative) and the lessons learned from his first attempts, and stepping back enough to let go of certain aspects of his earlier approach.

To me, this looks a lot like the process of science: a search for the "right" understanding, tests and trials, a necessary willingness to readjust or rethink an idea, even if it's elegant, when new information shows that it's flawed. In comparison to the efforts of one artist testing and refine his ideas, though, science relies on the efforts of a whole intellectual community testing and refining each other's ideas. Science is rooted in the notion that knowledge shifts and changes, and that our understanding of the world tomorrow will–and in fact, has to–look a little bit different than our understanding of it today.

In this light, thinking about temporariness is an important practice in science. Ryan Jenkins, one of the Exploratorium's Explainers, recalled how reluctant he'd felt to take apart a pegboard he'd thoughtfully constructed. "I can only imagine what it would be like to destroy something that you spent so much time, planning, and precise placing of wooden boards," he wrote. "Although the spectacle of the crash might be pretty damn satisfying."

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.