2012: A Science Odyssey

At the same time Star Wars hit the silver screen, NASA launched two Voyager spacecraft on a grand tour of the solar system, providing humanity with its first fleeting glimpse of the gas giants up close. Voyager represents the most audacious expedition in the history of exploration, pushing the then known-technology to its very limits.

Over the next decade, the two Voyager spacecraft flew by Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus and Pluto. In 2012, some thirty five years after it left Earth, Voyager I finally reached the heliosheath, the boundary where particles streaming out from the sun are pushed back by interstellar space. If we equated interstellar space to the sea, then Voyager just crossed the river mouth, crossing the bar as it were into open ocean.

When you consider that for the past 35 years Voyager has been moving at 38,500 mph (over 60,000 kph or more than 16 kilometers a second) you get a sense of just how vast our solar system is, and we orbit just one star among an estimated two hundred billion in the Milky Way galaxy.

14. Curiosity lands on Mars

Early this year, NASA described the landing of Curiosity as seven minutes of terror, and they weren’t kidding. If Voyager is the most audacious exploration ever undertaken, Curiosity is the most audacious and complex planetary landing ever attempted. Make no mistake about it, hurtling almost four tons of scientific equipment at Mars is like hitting a golfball from Perth to Sydney and hitting a specific, predefined window on the Opera House.

Slowing that golfball from over 13,000 mph (20,000 kph) to a walking pace in just seven minutes is extraordinary. It’s akin to ensuring that golfball lands gently on the window ledge rather than the breaking glass.

13. Artificial leaf generates hydrogen

Problems like climate change aren’t going to be solved by conventional means. Using relatively inexpensive materials, Nocera has developed the world’s first practical artificial leaf. It’s early days, but drop his “leaf” in a jar of water, leave it in the sunlight, and you’ll gather hydrogen and oxygen as byproducts.

12. Flexible, inexpensive solar-panels challenge fossil fuels

Using an ion-cannon to produce cheap solar-panels definitely sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but that’s exactly what a US start-up has done. With wafers as thin as 3mm, there’s an astounding array of possibilities for innovation with these new solar panels. There’s also the chance for solar power to make significant in-roads as an alternative to fossil fuels.

11. Ultra-flexible “willow” glass allows for curved electronics

US manufacturing company Corning, who developed the super-tough, lightweight Gorilla Glass found in smartphones, have developed Willow Glass, a flexible glass 0.05mm in thickness that, along with advances in batteries and the use of graphene in electronics, could trigger yet another transformation in computing. Several years ago, Sony showcased a purely theoretical concept called the wearable personal computer. Imagine your smartphone as a bracelet and you’ll get what they were proposing.

10. Planet with four suns

As fascinating as this discovery is, you’re probably wondering why it’s rated as high as it is, and it’s not because of the discovery itself, as remarkable as that is, it is how this astonishing planet was discovered that’s really important. This surprising discovery was made by some average Joes participating in citizen science. Citizen science is an emerging field, allowing everyday people to contribute to genuine scientific research efforts.

Getting back to our planet orbiting four suns, this remarkable planet is about the size of Neptune and has a stable orbit around a binary star system (two stars that closely orbit each other), only these stars in turn orbit another binary star system. Why this planet has not been torn apart, sucked into one of the stars or spun off into space is something scientists are now examining.

9. DARPA “terminator” traverses obstacle course with ease

Arnold said he’d be back, and he wasn’t kidding. Thanks to US military research, Skynet is alive and well and getting ready to come to a battlefield near you. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has developed a robot that can negotiate obstacles such as a low wall and holes in the ground, using autonomous navigation. Teaching robots to independently navigate a battlefield brings up visions of Terminator-style robots replacing front-line troops. In practice, any such innovation is at least a decade away, but it’s coming.

8. 3-D printer builds a two-story house in a single run

OK, so the house looks like something from the fictional planet Tatooine, with load-bearing arcs and curves, but it takes a quarter of the time needed to build an equivalent-sized home. And being made from sand and a chemical binder it has the durability of cement. Give it a polish and this printed house comes up looking like marble. It’s cheaper and quicker to build than a conventional home.

7. Human robotics/bionics

There have been several wonderful advancements in bionics, the use of technology to overcome physical disabilities. In England, two men have been fitted with light-sensitive microchips that replicate the neural signals for sight, giving them the ability to distinguish black from white as well as to make out the shape of various objects.

Doctors are hopeful their minds can be trained to detect more and more detail over time with their new sight. With twenty thousand people in the UK affected by blinding effects of retinitis pigmentosa, this is a significant medical advance.

In another Six Million Dollar Man bionic development, a quadriplegic woman, Jan Scheuermann, has learned to control a robotic arm and hand with her thoughts.

6. Self-driving cars are made legal in Nevada, Florida, and California

Take a good look at your kids. Depending on their age, they may never learn to drive. Earlier this year, Google began testing driverless cars and three US states have passed laws to let these cars roam free on their roads. With over 300,000 hours of autonomous driving under their belt, there’s been no accidents, at least, no robotic accidents. Ironically, the only time these driverless cars have been involved in an accident has been when humans have been at the wheel.

5. Genetically-modified silk is stronger than steel

The phrase “genetically-modified” often evokes visions of a mutant monster and the prospect of food supplies being irrevocably damaged or destroyed. The truth, however, is rather different. Humans have been genetically modifying plants and animals for tens of thousands of years using artificial selection. Simply by breeding desirable traits we’ve developed dairy cows that radically overproduce upwards of 10,000 kg of milk per year, we’ve taken wolves and created Chihuahua and Great Danes, we’ve taken wild horses and bred them to be faster and lighter, to the point where their bones become so brittle they break easily under stress. None of these animals are in a natural state, they’ve all been modified by humans. And don’t get me started on chickens.

There is a need to regulate genetically-modified plants and animals, but GM is not Pandora’s box, no more so than artificial selection ever was. When used in a scientifically robust and ethical manner, GM has tremendous potential to improve the quality of our lives.

4. Stem cells could extend life

Mice normally live to about two years of age. Scientists at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, studied mice with a genetic defect that caused them to ageing rapidly and die after 21 days. Using muscle stem cells from young, healthy mice, they were able to extend the life of these defective mice for over 70 days.
At first, researchers thought there was a mistake. Perhaps the samples had been mixed up, but carefully controlled analysis showed they really had extended the lives of these genetically defective mice by a factor of three. If the same results were replicated with humans an eighty year old could reach two hundred years of age.

Stem cell therapy is still in its infancy, and this research was only conducted on muscle stem cells. There’s a long way to go before this could become a medical treatment, but the possibility of using proteins to tease the body’s own stem cells into regenerative behaviour is no longer science fiction.

3. Chimera monkeys created from multiple embryos

Like something from a Frankenstein movie, scientists have combined cells from six distinctly different different embryos into three baby monkeys, such a hybrid creature is known as a chimera. According to researchers, “The cells never fuse, but they stay together and work together to form tissues and organs… Assumptions about the way human embryos develop have always been based on the (chimera) mouse, but that’s a dangerous assumption (because humans are so different).”

Animals formed as chimeras are used to better understand the role of genes in embryonic development, but previously this study had been limited to mice. Having primate models will increase the possibility of applying any learning about their genetic development to humans.

2. DNA was photographed for the first time

In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick first identified DNA as a complex, helical molecule, recognizing its role in carrying the genetic blueprint for life. Although x-ray diffraction revealed the now familiar double-helix shape, it would be almost sixty years before a single strand of DNA could be photographed.

There’s still more work to be done, but this level of visibility into the working of DNA has significant implications for areas like cancer research, disease prevention, treating genetic defects, etc.

1. The Higgs-Boson particle was discovered

The Standard Model of particle physics is an oddity. It’s not widely loved, but since its inception in the 1960s the Standard Model has been highly successful at combining and explaining the fundamental forces of nature. With the exception of gravity, the Standard Model has provided a robust explanation of the quantum world upon which the universe is founded.

All other particles described by the Standard Model have been seen in experiments, but the Higgs boson, first predicted in the 1960s, had never been seen until 2012. In the jigsaw puzzle that is particle physics, the Higgs field provides all other particles with their mass, so finding the Higgs and confirming its role in particle physics is an outstanding achievement.

Although this discovery may seem somewhat esoteric, this new knowledge will have an impact on our world. A hundred years ago, cars looked like jalopies, biplanes struggled to get into the air, the average life expectancy for a man was around 47 and the leading cause of death was tuberculous. A hundred years ago, we thought there was just one galaxy, ours, now we know there are hundreds of billions of stars in hundreds of billions of galaxies spread throughout the universe. A hundred years ago, the prospect of standing on the Moon or flying by Jupiter and Saturn would have seemed fanciful, like wishing on fairies, but advances in scientific knowledge have made all this possible and have radically changed our world. Imagine where humanity will be a hundred years from now.

Let’s see what 2013 has in store for us…

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