2017: An Awesome Year in Science

Optimism to a physicist

Traditions
    In 45 BCE, Julius Caesar decided to make January the “first” month of the year.  The reason was that Janus, the god after whom the month is named, was the god of doorways and new starts, so it seemed an appropriate place to begin our cycle.  The Earth isn’t in a particularly special place, but we designate the December/January switchover as a festival to take stock of the past and consider the future. 
    2017 has of course been full of negative “political” news stories - just like every other year - but I’m happy to report that - just like every other year - Science provided a candle of optimism in the perpetual darkness of parochial human affairs!  The most important Science story was obviously that Lemmy, the late, great frontman of Motorhead had a dinosaur-alligator named in his honour called Lemmysuchus.  Some other things happened too.  Here’s my favourite picks of  awesome Science stories from the last 365 days.

                                                                                 January

Not Today Tsunami
Tsunamis occur when an earthquake at sea sends water outward in all directions, devastating coastal towns and cities.  Up until now, there has been no way to stop them but Usama Kadri, doctor of mathematics at Cardiff University, has hit on the solution.  By creating enormous sound-blasts underwater, the acoustic-shockwave can be pointed at the oncoming tsunami like a deflector shield.  When the kinetic energy of the water going toward land meets the kinetic energy of the soundwave moving away, the net energy of the water particles spreads out, raising the temperature and killing the tsunami.  Kadri’s idea is the first of its kind and has already been tested in small, artificial settings with great success.  All we need to do is scale it up and choose what sound to blast the tsunamis apart.

I have a few ideas...

                                                                                
                                                                                February
 
New Continent Discovered
It sounds made up but it’s completely true.  New Zealand, which everyone previously assumed to be an island on its own, appears to be the highest point of a unique continental plate, separate to all the countries around it.  This continent, named Zealandia on February 9th, lies 94% below the surface of the ocean but really is there, making its disocverer, Maria Seton, the first person to discover a continent in over three centuries. 

Mental Illness is Normal
A study conducted by J.D. Schaeffer in the newly continented New Zealand found that between the ages of 11 and 38 only 17% of people experience no mental health problems.  Everyone else experiences at least one bout of depression or anxiety and 41% experience it for more than a year.  It turns out that being mentally ill puts you in the majority.  Perhaps this might not seem like an uplifting news story, but I think it’s encouraging.  If you suffer from mental illness or know somebody who does, don’t feel ashamed or stigmatised.  We can now say categorically that it’s a standard part of being human.
 
Goldilocks and the seven planets
On February 21st, the Spitzer telescope at NASA discovered seven planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, all of them in the Circumstellar Habitable Zone aka the "Goldilocks zone”.  That’s the area around a star where the temperatures aren't too hot or too cold, making things just right for liquid water to flow and complex organic reactions to take place.  TRAPPIST-1 is about 378 trillion kilometers away sadly, but the evidence is undeniable.  Our solar system only has one planet in the CHZ for sure (Mars is up for debate), but apparently there are places in the Universe far more amenable to life.  If it was able to arise in this barren cosmic wasteland, chances are it could have done so elsewhere.

Fun fact: she's drinking little miss muffet's tears

                                                                                 
                                                                                 March

Life Started in Canada
The oldest fossils of living things have long been assumed to be the samples found in Pilbara Australia, dating to aboot 3.5 billion years old, but on March 1st Matthew Dodd published results that put new microfossils discovered in Quebec, Canada at 4.28 billion years.  That would be astonishing given that Earth is probably no more than 4.5 billion years old itself.  The results are disputed of course, but exciting...eh?


                                                                                   April
 
Saltwater Sieves
One of the most abundant resources we have on the planet is saltwater.  Unfortunately it’s unpalatable to humans making it approximately useless.  But on the 3rd of April, Rahul Nair discovered a solution (pun intended) to the problem.  Graphene, made from sheets of carbon atoms arranged like a chickenwire fence, has billions of tiny holes which water molecules fit through, but salt particles do not.  Graphene works like a sieve, purifying the water and leaving salt on the other side.  By using Nair’s method we could turn the oceans into fresh drinking-water for millions.
 
We Shall Not Be Moved
Perhaps the biggest story from April was a story about scientists themselves.  After Donlad Trump and many in his cabinet made comments denying climate change, asserting that vaccines caused autism or that the big bang was “a fairtyale”, the scientific community was worried that governments were no longer going to be making decisions based on Science (aka reality).  In response, an estimated 1.07 million people in over a hundred cities around the world took to the streets on the 22nd of April to march in protest of science-denialism.  The March for Science was the biggest pro-Science public demonstration in history.

Artificial Wombs
On the 25th, doctor Emily Partrdige and her team published a paper in which they reported keeping six prematurely born lambs alive inside artificial wombs.  The lambs were removed from their mothers via caesarean section and delivered at the equivalent of 23 weeks old.  Partridge and her team were able to keep the lambs alive until they were fully grown, after which they were birthed successfully.  If we can replicate this in humans it would mark the end for deaths of premature babies.
 
First Nano-Race
The world’s first nano-grand prix took place on the 28th.  Cars no more than a billionth of a meter across, invisible even to an optical microscope, were raced on a track for the first time, demonstrating the versatility and applicability of nanotechnology.  The Swiss team won with their mini-hovercraft “Nano-Dragster” although unfortunately the victory was undermined by the shape of the car itself...

This is Nano-Dragster...stop giggling

                                                                                    
                                                                                    May

Forget Shark-Nado, Meet Crystal-Nado
It sounds like a joke but it isn’t.  Kathleen Benson reported, on May 1st, that occasionally amid the Andes mountains of Chile, whirlwinds of air can pick up thousands of crystals and transport them across distances of over 5 km, before showering them in a sparkly display of magicness.  This isn’t a world-changing or far-reaching discovery, but it’s objectively awesome.
 
Transparent Frogs Exist
Juan Manuel Guayasamin and his team discovered a species of frog which is completely see-through; you can actually see their organs working from the outside, a bit like that scene in Hollow Man where we see Kevin Bacon's innards through the skin.  Only this time, no uncomfortable Kevin Bacon nudity!  They are called Hyalinobatrachium Yaku and are proof that sometimes nature does things for the hell of it.
 
Enceladus has food
In October 2015, Cassini (which collapsed into Saturn on September 15th of this year) flew through the hydrothermal plumes of the moon Enceladus.  As it shot through the jets, it collected a vast amount of data which was analysed over the next two years and on April 14th one of the most startling results was published: Enceladus' sub-surface ocean has a lot of molecular hydrogen - the most likely source being organic molecules.  Not only would these molecules serve as the building blocks for life, molecular hydrogen is often used as a food source for primitive microbes.  It used to be Mars which was considered our best bet for finding extra-terrestrial life, now it looks like Enceladus is going to take the top spot for astrobiological research.

But does Enceladus have naked me?

                                                                                  
                                                                                   June

Out of Eden
The earliest fossils of human-like creatures come from a site called Omo Kibish in Ethiopia and date to around 200,000 years old.  The assumption has always been that this is where humans first evolved.  The Shangri-La or Garden of Eden described in so many mythologies.  Turns out that’s not true.  On June 8th, Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin announced that a site in Morocco called Jebel Irhoud has human-like fossils dating back to around 350,000 years.  What's more, sites similar to Jebel Irhoud have been found all over Africa.  The assumption has always been that these sites were later ones, representing our spread from the cradle of life in Ethiopia.  But it looks like we had it backwards.  If the Jebel Irhoud site has been dated accurately that would mean the various human species were covering Africa simultaneously rather than originating in one single place.  This changes our understanding of not only human evolution, but how evolution itself works.

                                                                                   July

Here Comes the Sun
A novel but surprisngly simple idea to fight skin-cancer was published on 13th of July from Nisma Mujahid.  A sun-cream which boosts melanin production in human skin.  Melanin is the pigment which makes skin darker, meaning people with darker skin tend to be less at risk from skin cancer caused by UV rays.  While most sun-creams merely cover the skin of white people like me in dark brown ink, this one actually causes melanin to produce under the skin’s surface, providing secure coverage.  It’s been tested successfully on rats and isolated human skin to great effect.  All that remains is human trials. 
 
                                                                                  August
Collision Imminent
2016 saw the discovery of gravitational waves; ripples in spacetime caused by leviathan cosmic events.  The ones discovered by LIGO back then were generated by the merger of two black holes and this year we got a second big discovery; the collision of two neutron stars.  Essentially, atomic nuclei the size of Manhattan, neutron stars are the cores of dead suns spinning many thousands of times per second.  When neutron stars fall into each other’s gravitational attraction, the resulting collision is so powerful that it generates gravitational waves, along with heavy elements like gold that get scattered into the universe and wind up as globe-shaped prizes for people like Kevin Bacon.

Oh no, I've gotten the blog trapped in a Kevin Bacon loop!

                                                                             
                                                                               September

Gene Editing Achieved
On the 20th of September, research was published by Kathy Niakan and her team who managed to successfully edit a human embryo for the first time.  Using the revolutionary CRISPR technique, Niakan was able to alter an embryo to give it a greater chance of forming a blastocyst in the womb.  Baring in mind that roughly one in six women experience miscarriage at some point in their adult lives, the ability to edit human embryos would change the game completely.  It would also allow us to remove diseases and illnesses from unborn children, giving them a better chance of life.  People have speculated about the possibility of altering human genes for decades.  Now, we have taken our first step toward doing so.  Maybe one day everyone can be edited to look like Kevin Bacon.
 
                                                                               October
 
Part of our Universe has been found
It’s no secret that most of our Universe is missing.  Simply put, the Universe behaves in a way that suggests it should be heavier, but we’ve not been able to find where most of the missing mass is coming from.  There are three sub-categories.  The first is Dark Energy, the second is Dark Matter and the third is Missing Baryons.  And, on October 9th, the Baryon puzzle was solved.  Independently, two teams led by Hideki Tanamura and Anna de Graaf discovered threads of particles trillions of kilometers long, linking up every galaxy in the cosmos.  Although it looks like galaxies are lone specks of light floating amid darkness, it turns out they are linked by unimaginably long clouds like highways connecting towns, accounting for 50% of the normal matter that’s out there.  Dark matter and Dark energy are still mysteries, but that's one down two to go.  Next mystery: why is Kevin Bacon doing the EE commercials? 

It's Pronounced "Oh-Moo-er-Moo-er"
On 19th of October, the Hawaian astronomer Robert Weryk discovered a 230 x 35 meter cigar-shaped object floating through our solar system.  What was bizarre about Oumuamua (as it was later named) was that its trajectory could not be explained as having originated from either of the asteroid belts in our solar system, making it the very first interstellar object to approach our sun.  That we know of at least.  Sadly, it turned out not to be an alien probe, but most likely a hunk of rock from a system around the star Vega which got knocked into its current orbit approximately 600,000 years ago.  The same day Kevin Bacon was born.

That's enough from you Bacon!

Thanks Lemmy.
                                                                              
                                                                               November

Photons Behaving Badly
This one is seriously weird.  On November 9th a team led by Ado Jorio was able to observe a bizarre interaction between particles of light (photons).  By slamming a laser beam onto the surface of water, the team were able to emit pairs of photons which were able to “talk” to each other by sending temporary vibrations through the medium they were moving through.  Electrons are known to do this in superconducting materials but seeing photons do it is baffling.  Apparently, light particles can communicate information and energy with other light particles.  There’s not really a whole lot else can be said about this one because it's such a shock.  Watch this space.
 
Saving Lives
In 2015 a six-year-old boy was admitted to hospital with a very rare genetic condition called Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa.  The condition is lethal in children, causing the skin to fall off, leaving you without your primary defence system.  It’s genetic and there is no known cure.  Well…there wasn’t a known cure.  In what sounds like the plot of a movie, as the boy was down to 20% of his skin remaining, a group of scientists led by Michele DeLuca decided to try a never-attempted treatment in a last-ditch effort to save the boy.  By taking a small sample of his remaining skin and infecting it with a virus designed to correct the JEB genes with healthy ones, the team were able to create new healthy skin cells which they grew and grafted to the boy.  After eight months, the boy was finally given healthy skin and discharged from the hospital.  Technically this story happened in 2016 but DeLuca’s results were not published until November 8th and it’s too good not to mention.  The young boy in question has returned to school and DeLuca has genuinely found a cure for a formerly untreatable disease.  I would like to say “this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often” but actually…in Science…it genuinely does.

Welcome to Science

                                                                             
                                                                                December

Trump to the Moon
Say what you like about Donald Trump, he does seem to really like space.  Whatever his motivations, I happen to agree with his ideology.  Weird, right?  The space program is crucial to our species’ survival (that’s not hyperbole, it’s just true) so if he’s serious about investing in it I’m all in favour.  On the 11th of December, Trump announced that he wanted America to return to the moon with a mind for using it as a base to launch missions toward Mars and explore the rest of the solar system.  He hasn’t given any specific deadlines for NASA, nor has he announced any additional funding he will be supplying, but the sentiment is apparently there.  At this point, I’ll take anything I can get. 
 
Science provides hope even in hopeless places...

                                                                          Happy New Year :)

Image Credits

Optimism: HappyBrainScience
Lemmy: TheTelegraph
Goldilocks: Fluentin3months
Nano Dragster: Nano-carrace
Kevin Bacon: Bloodydisgusting
Kevin Bacon with Award: blogspot
Lemmy saves the day: staticspin
Miracle Cure: amazon
Trump: BusinessInsider