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huge advantage for astronomers in thestate particularly those at smaller insti-tutions, says Cassio Leandro Barbosa, anastronomer at the University of ParabaValley in So Paulo state.

Wendy Freedman, chair of the GMTboard and director of the Carnegie Obser- vatories, thinks that So Paulo and the GMT

are a good match. The decision to joinwill now come down to FAPESPs reviewof a November 2013workshop betweenBrazilian astronomersand the GMT leader-ship, along with anevaluation of benefits

for local industry, says Hernan Chaimov-ich, special aide to the scientific departmentat FAPESP. A decision is likely to be madeby April, he says.

According to Chaimovich, FAPESP isalso in discussions with the Brazilian Min-

istry of Science and Technology about afederal contribution to the GMT, whichwould grant telescope access to investiga-tors outside the state of So Paulo. If theministry does contribute, ESO advocatescould have cause for concern, because thatmight undercut interest in using the E-ELT,a major driver for Brazil to ratify its ESOmembership.

For ESO director-general Tim de Zeeuw,one proposal does not necessarily excludethe other. FAPESPs bid to join the GMTis independent of the ratification of Brazilto ESO and is very different, he says. Bothmegatelescopes are a decade or so awayfrom completion, but being part of the ESOgives Brazilian astronomers access to exist-ing observatories in Chile, such as the Ata-cama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Arrayand the Very Large Telescope, he adds.They are cutting-edge facilities availableto the Brazilian community here and now.

The ratification process formally beganin February last year, but has stalled in Con-gress. De Zeeuw expects Brazil to confirmthe agreement in the first half of 2014, butthose familiar with the Brazilian system areless willing to make firm predictions in anelection year. Beatriz Barbuy, head of theAstronomical Society of Brazils ESO com-mittee, is hopeful that the process will wrapup this year. We will see, she says. Thenext step is to find the budget.

Further delays could hurt both ESO andBrazil. Under present rules, major con-struction contracts for the E-ELT cannot beawarded until Brazils funds are secure. Thecountrys growing standing in internationalscience would also take a nose dive, saysBarbosa, just as it seeks to join other globalorganizations, such as CERN, Europesparticle-physics laboratory near Geneva,Switzerland. Our reputation would dropoff a cliff, he says.

Ourreputationwould dropoff a cliff.

B Y D AV I D E C A S T E LV E C C H I

Amanuscript that lay unnoticed byscientists for decades has revealedthat Albert Einstein once dabbledwith an alternative to what we now know asthe Big Bang, proposing instead that the Uni- verse expanded steadily and eternally. Therecently uncovered work, written in 1931, isreminiscent of a theory championed by Brit-ish astrophysicist Fred Hoyle nearly 20 yearslater. Einstein soon abandoned the idea, butthe manuscript reveals his continued hesitanceto accept that the Universe was created duringa single explosive event.

Evidence for the Big Bang first emerged inthe 1920s, when US astronomer Edwin Hubbleand others discovered that distant galaxies aremoving away and that space itself is expand-ing. This seemed to imply that, in the past, thecontents of the observable Universe had beena very dense and hot primordial broth.

But, from the late 1940s, Hoyle argued thatspace could be expanding eternally and keepinga roughly constant density. It could do this bycontinually adding new matter, with elemen-tary particles spontaneously popping up from

space, Hoyle said. Particles would then coalesceto form galaxies and stars, and these wouldappear at just the right rate to take up the extraroom created by the expansion of space. HoylesUniverse was always infinite, so its size did notchange as it expanded. It was in a steady state.

The newly uncovered document shows thatEinstein had described essentially the sameidea much earlier. For the density to remainconstant new particles of matter must be con-tinually formed, he writes. The manuscript isthought to have been produced during a tripto California in 1931 in part because it waswritten on American note paper.

It had been stored in plain sight at the AlbertEinstein Archives in Jerusalem and is freelyavailable to view on its website but had beenmistakenly classified as a first draft of anotherEinstein paper. Cormac ORaifeartaigh, a phys-icist at the Waterford Institute of Technologyin Ireland, says that he almost fell out of hischair when he realized what the manuscriptwas about. He and his collaborators have postedtheir findings, together with an English transla-tion of Einsteins original German manuscript,on the arXiv preprint server (C. ORaifeartaighet al . Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.0132;

COSMOLOGY

Einsteins lost theoryuncoveredPhysicist explored the idea of a steady-state Universe in 1931.

Albert Einstein at Mount Wilson Observatory in 1931, with Edwin Hubble (centre) and Walter Adams.

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2014) and have submitted their paper to theEuropean Physical Journal .

This finding confirms that Hoyle was nota crank, says study co-author Simon Mitton,a science historian at the University of Cam-bridge, UK, who wrote the 2005 biographyFred Hoyle: A Life in Science. The mere fact thatEinstein had toyed with a steady-state model

could have lent Hoyle more credibility as heengaged the physics community in a debateon the subject. If only Hoyle had known,he would certainly have used it to punch hisopponents, ORaifeartaigh says.

Although Hoyles model was eventuallyruled out by astronomical observations, it wasat least mathematically consistent, tweakingthe equations of Einsteins general theory of rel-ativity to provide a possible mechanism for thespontaneous generation of matter. Einsteinsunpublished manuscript suggests that, at first,he believed that such a mechanism could arise

from his original theory without modification.

But then he realized that he had made a mis-take in his calculations, ORaifeartaigh and histeam suggest. When he corrected it crossingout a number with a pen of a different colour he probably decided that the idea would notwork and set it aside.

The manuscript was probably a rough draftcommenced with excitement over a neat ideaand soon abandoned as the author realized hewas fooling himself , says cosmologist JamesPeebles of Princeton University in New Jersey.There seems to be no record of Einstein evermentioning these calculations again.

But the fact that Einstein experimented withthe steady-state concept demonstrates hiscontinued resistance to the idea of a Big Bang,which he at first found abominable, eventhough other theoreticians had shown it to bea natural consequence of his general theory ofrelativity. (Other leading researchers, such asthe eminent Cambridge astronomer Arthur

Eddington, were also suspicious of the Big Bangidea, because it suggested a mystical moment ofcreation.) When astronomers found evidencefor cosmic expansion, Einstein had to aban-don his bias towards a static Universe, and asteady-state Universe was the next best thing,ORaifeartaigh and his collaborators say.

Helge Kragh, a science historian at AarhusUniversity in Denmark, agrees. What themanuscript shows is that although by then heaccepted the expansion of space, [Einstein] wasunhappy with a Universe changing in time,he says.

Einsteins correction to his erroneous calculation.

B Y D A N I E L C R E S S E Y

R esearchers have called for a commonmethod of killing zebrafish used inlaboratories to be abandoned amid

growing evidence that it causes unnecessarysuffering.

The anaesthetic MS-222, which can be addedto tanks to cause overdose, seems to distressthe fish, two separate studies have shown. Thestudies authors propose that alternative anaes-thetics or methods should be used instead.

These two studies carried out indepen-dently use different methodologies to reachthe same conclusion: zebrafish detect and avoidMS-222 in the water, says Stewart Owen, asenior environmental scientist at AstraZenecasBrixham Environmental Laboratory in Brix-ham, UK, and a co-author of one of the studies.As this is a clear aversive response, as a humanechoice, one would no longer use this agent forroutine zebrafish anaesthesia.

The use of zebrafish (Danio rerio) in researchhas skyrocketed in recent years as scientistshave sought alternatives to more controversialanimal models, such as mammals. The fish arecheap and easy to keep, and although no firmdata on numbers have been collected, millionsare known to be housed in laboratories aroundthe world. Nearly all will eventually be killed.

MS-222 (ethyl 3-aminobenzoate methane-sulphate, also known as TMS) is one of theagents most frequently used to kill the creatures.

It is listed as an acceptable method of euthanasiaby many institutions, and also by societies suchas the American Veterinary Medical Associa-tion. But the study by Owen and his co-authors,published last year (G. D. Readman et al. PLoSONE 8, e73773; 2013), and the second study,published earlier this month by Daniel Weary

and his colleagues at the University of BritishColumbia in Vancouver, Canada (D. Wonget al. PLoS ONE 9, e88030; 2014), show thatzebrafish seem to find the chemical distressing.The research should fundamentally change thepractice, say the authors of both papers.

Owens study used video tracking to meas-ure whether zebrafish avoided anaestheticsflowing through one side of a tank by mov-ing to the other, untreated side. In the case ofMS-222, the team found that zebrafish spentsignificantly more time in the untreated sidethan on the side containing the anaesthetic.

Wearys team allowed zebrafish to first spendtime in either a light or a dark section of a tank,and then exposed them to MS-222 on their pre-ferred side, the light side. After exposure to theanaesthetic, all but one of 17 fish in the studyspent less time on the light side, and nine com-pletely avoided it. This indicates that the fishwould rather undergo discomfort in this case,darkness than be exposed to MS-222.

There must be something unpleasantabout MS-222 to produce such a strong signalin the experiment, says Weary, because fishdo not avoid many other harmful chemicalsto such an extent. The results are pretty clear,he adds. Were at a stage where it is a matter ofgetting policy-makers and researchers to thinkabout this and to rethink the procedures.

There is growing debate over the mosthumane methods of killing laboratory mam-mals, with rodent euthanasia coming

A N I M A L R E S E A R C H

Fish-kill method questionedCommon anaesthetic not the most humane option for zebrafish euthanasia, say studies.

A researcher checks zebrafish tanks in a cancer lab.

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