A whole new thing that could end the world

We’re all inured to sensationalist headlines about some disaster or another on the horizon. So I don’t blame anyone who was exhausted when they saw last month that dozens of scientists were warning in the journal Science that mirror bacteria could bring about a catastrophic ecosystem collapse and even mass extinction. 

After all, we already have looming threats like H5N1 to worry about, and more generally we live in an age that, as Adam Kirsch put it recently in The Atlantic, feels like “apocalypse...