For the first time ever, a man-made object landed on a comet. The Rosetta spacecraft finally reached the 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, its destination, in August after travelling 6.4 billion km since it was launched ten years ago by the European Space Agency. Last month Rosetta deployed its probe, Philae.
Though the landing was soft, Philae came to rest on its side and a bit off the actual landing spot, in the shadow of a cliff and went to rest as its batteries could not be charged. But it did manage to send some data.
But nearly 80 per cent of science data will come from Rosetta that reached the comet in August and has been orbiting it since then. It is orbiting at an altitude of 10 km from the comet’s surface, and has already returned massive amounts of data. That according to Science is the reason why it was chosen as the top breakthrough of the year 2014.
Much more interesting data are expected in the coming months, especially in August 2015 when the comet is between the orbits of the Earth and Mars and closer to the Sun. The plunge towards the Sun has already begun and the subsurface ice deposits have already begun to sublimate. Peak activity is expected to come in August, though.
The sublimating ice is “powering jets of gas and dust.” By “watching the jets develop and change” scientists can not only know what happens to comets as they approach the Sun but also help us to know and understand how they were formed some 4.5 billion years ago.
The spectrometer on board the spacecraft has detected gases like methane, hydrogen and water. But the rare ones like formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide were also detected. Knowing the “primordial ingredients” is crucial as comets are believed to have seeded life on Earth.
The nine runners up, in no particular order, are:
A team of robots
Now an army of small robots that can cooperate to carry out very “rudimentary” tasks using new software has become a reality. While one study showed the possibility of thousand robots, which are about U.S. quarter coins size, marched together to form simple shapes like squares, letters and other formations, other studies too showed how a large group of robots can work together to achieve a desired end. Unlike what one might think, these robots are not expensive.
According to the journal Science, other robots that act collectively are the 10 quadcopters that kept one other informed of their locations through radio communication and thus adjusted their flight paths to avert any collision and fly in “formation, creating a rotating circle.”
Inspired by termites, another set of robots were programmed to built simple structures by taking into account two critical aspects — “by sensing progress and inferring” what the step that was required to build the structure.
Transition to birds
It is now common knowledge that birds evolved from dinosaurs. But the giant dinosaurs went through several stages before becoming the agile birds seen flying today. This year, evolutionary biologists finally figured out the “mode and tempo” of the grand evolutionary transition. Their work rests on a large body of work done in the past that meticulously logged in all the twists and turns.
Several groups put together earlier data collected on dinosaurs, early birds fossils as well as extant birds to find out precisely when features other than feathers evolved to enable the transition from dinosaurs to birds. “They discovered that the dinosaurs that ultimately gave rise to birds steadily got smaller and finer boned with time.”
“Once the body plan crystallized, new avian species arose rapidly.”
Turning the age clock back
Reversing the aging clock is no longer in the realms of science fiction. The answer lies in something found in the blood of the young mouse can reverse the aging hearts, brains and muscles of older mouse. One group found that a factor GDF11 in the blood, which was already shown to rejuvenate the heart, was also capable of strengthening the older mouse’s muscles and improving its endurance. It also even spurred neuron growth in the brain. Another group found that blood or even cell-free blood plasma from the young ones can “bolster an aging mouse’s spatial memory.
The research has already moved a step closer to improving human ailments like Alzheimer’s. A clinical trial involving 18 Alzheimer patients is already underway to study how the plasma donated by young adults can improve the disease.
Mimicking human brain
Computer engineers at IBM and other companies took a leaf out of human brain and designed “neuromorphic” chips that can process information in a manner similar to human brain. This means that unlike the way today’s computers carry out logically operations but struggle to “integrate vast amounts of data.”
But out brains don’t face that difficulty. We seamless integrate vast amount of data collected from diverse sources to build the final product. This becomes possible as individual neurons communicate with their neighbours to enable parallel data processing.
The IBM’s new chip — TrueNorth — mimics the brain but at very small scale with 5.4 billion transistors and 256 million “synapses”. The brian has 100 billion neuron cells and 100 trillion synapses.
Diabetes may become curable
Ever since the discovery of human embryonic stem cells, one of the main goals was to use them for treating diseases caused by dysfunctional or damaged cells. Diabetes is one of such diseases. Beta cells in pancreas produce insulin and the destruction of these cells causes Type I diabetes.
But efforts to turn embryonic stem cells into beta cells proved to be “frustratingly slow.”
Treating type I diabetes has come a step closer. Two studies show that enough beta cells can be produced in less than two months to replace beta cells seen in the body. But before being used, the causal factor for beta cells deaths has to be identified. Meanwhile, much can be learnt about beta cells by studying the lab grown ones with the naturally occurring ones.
Rivalling European cave drawings
Symbolic art drawn by humans about 40,000 years ago in caves on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia ends Europe’s “monopoly on early symboloic art.” Till date, the oldest symbolic art drawn by humans, an indicator of brain development, was seen only in Europe. “Hand stencils outlined in mouth-brown red paint, mixed with pictures of rare pig-deer in red and mulberry hues” seen in Indonesian caves was dated as only 10,000 years old. But new studies show that hand stencils are at least about 40,000 years old and the animal paintings at least 35,400 years old. If the dating is correct, it either means that humans in Indonesia were as capable of painting on cave walls and this development was independent of those living in Europe or humans possessed this ability even as they spread to other parts of the world from Africa.
Switching emotion memories
Now, switching emotion memories appears as easy as switching on/off a fan. Researchers were able to switch the emotion memories of mice from bad to good and vice versa. This goes a step further to work already done in zapping existing memories and “incept” false ones. But it is still unclear if the mice actually experienced a reversal of memories and also if they can be applied on humans. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Scientists have at least taken baby steps in tinkering with memory. If successful in humans, treating post-traumatic stress disorder may not be impossible.
Expanding the genetic alphabets
For the first time ever, scientists succeeded in adding two letters to E. coli’s genetic alphabets. In nature, four letters — G,C, A and T — are found. And base pairs are formed when G pairs with C and A pairs with T. The two added letters X and Y forms the third pair. Researchers have added such bases in test tubes but not in an organism. Though the added letter do not code for anything, in future it could be used to codes for certain proteins. That will open up a great window of opportunity for the development of new medicines.
New avatar of CubeSats
The boxes as small as 10 cm and costing just hundreds of thousands dollars as they are built using off-the-shelf technology are no longer used only as educational aids. They are becoming capable of doing real science. They have been equipped to take pictures, though of lower resolution, that can be used for a variety of purposes like monitoring deforestation, river changes. The year 2014 alone saw 75 such CubeSats being launched. They can hitch a ride on commercial rockets that are launched.
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