Sunday, December 29, 2013 5:42:18 PM
This Year's Biggest Discoveries in Science
From the edge of the solar wind to ancient human DNA, science made big strides in 2013.
Kepler-62f is an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star about 1,200 light-years from Earth (artist's rendering).
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF NASA/AMES/JPL-CALTECH
Dan Vergano National Geographic Published December 20, 2013
Science mattered more than ever in 2013. Climate science questions raged after Super Typhoon Haiyan .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131108-supertyphoon-haiyan-yolanda-atmosphere-climate-change/ .. pummeled the Philippines. And scientific expertise figured in disarmament debates in Syria .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130912-syria-chemical-weapons-remediation-assad/ .. and in Iran's proposed halt to its nuclear activities .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/02/120206-iran-strait-of-hormuz-oil-supply/ .
[ Typhoon Haiyan Photos: Before and after
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94366364
Eyewitness footage of Typhoon Haiyan washing house away
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94150127
Assad regime vows no surrender of power
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94582670 ]
Meanwhile, on the pure research front, investigators made plenty of intriguing discoveries in 2013. With plenty to choose from, and argue over, here's a top five list of some favorites from the year:
1. Space gets more crowded. "Buy land, they're not making it anymore," Mark Twain famously advised investors. Twain never heard of exoplanets, of course. Caltech researchers suggested this year that at least 100 billion such worlds .. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler20130103.html#.UrIUHmRDtWZ .. orbit stars in our Milky Way galaxy. That's a lot of new real estate. (See "Smallest Exoplanets Found—Each Tinier Than Earth .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120111-smallest-exoplanets-kepler-space-science/ .")
[ Astronomers Image Lowest-mass Exoplanet Around a Sun-like Star
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90744482 ]
Of course, not all of them are places you would want to live. A November analysis from NASA's Keck Observatory team suggested that one in five stars may have Earth-size planets .. http://www.keckobservatory.org/recent/entry/one_in_five_stars_has_earth_sized_planet_in_habitable_zone .. orbiting in their "habitable zones"—zones that could be friendly to surface oceans. A more recent climate analysis of habitable zones said that number may be too high .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131211-fewer-habitable-planets-hot-climate-greenhouse-science/ , but that is still plenty of planets.
2. Human embryonic stem cells cloned.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF OHSU PHOTOS
A scientist removes the nucleus from a human egg using a pipette. This is the first step to making personalized embryonic stem cells.
After more than a decade of false starts, Oregon Health and Science University researchers announced they had cloned human embryos and collected stem cells .. http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/16/top-10-headlines-today-stem-cells-cloned-oldest-water-found/ .. from them. They also grew the cells into specialized skin and heart cells, a first step toward using them in transplant medicine.
The key to the team's success turned out to be the addition of caffeine to the cloning process. Now researchers will seek to discover whether these cells or similar "induced" stem cells, made without embryos, will have the most medical use .. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/05/15/human-stem-cell-cloned-mitalipov/2156325/ .
[ Team of scientists create cloned glow-in-the-dark rabbits
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91028046 ]
3. Voyager reaches edge of the solar wind.
Illustration courtesy Caltech/NASA
An illustration of the Voyager spacecraft.
One of the year's biggest announcements came from news that actually happened in 2012. The aftershocks of a pair of solar storms in September confirmed that NASA's venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft had actually entered interstellar space. (See "Voyager 1 Leaves Solar System, NASA Confirms .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130911-voyager-interstellar-solar-system-nasa-science-space/ .")
"It is an incredible event, to send the first human object into interstellar space," study lead author Donald Gurnett, of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, told National Geographic.
NASA had long been hoping to announce that the far-flung spacecraft, launched in 1977, had passed the edges of the solar wind. Voyager 1's twin, Voyager 2, is also expected to soon reach interstellar space.
[ Voyager 1 Has Left the Solar System
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91969539
in reply to that .. Voyager Captures Sounds of Interstellar Space
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92023460 ]
4. Mars lake looks hospitable to ancient life.
Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS
NASA's Curiosity rover landed in the Martian crater known as Gale Crater,
which is approximately the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.
NASA's Curiosity rover continued to make historic tracks in 2013, finding that a vanished lake on the red planet could have supported life there more than three billion years ago .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131209-mars-rover-curiosity-life-on-mars-space/ .
The discovery is seen as vindication of NASA's efforts to look for past habitable conditions on Mars. The $2.5 billion rover next heads for Mount Sharp, in the center of Gale Crater, its original destination after landing. (See also: "Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?")
[ New Mars theory casts doubt on planet's habitability
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=79469273
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=87186926 ]
How The Human Face Might Look In 100,000 Years .. one bit ..
In 100,000 years: The human face is proportioned to the 'golden ratio,' though it features unnervingly large eyes. There is green “eye shine” from the tapetum lucidum, and a more pronounced superciliary arch. A sideways blink of the reintroduced plica semilunaris seen in the light gray areas of the eyes, while miniature bone-conduction devices implanted above the ear work with the communications lenses on the eyes. Image credit: Nickolay Lamm
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/06/07/how-the-human-face-might-look-in-100000-years/
hmm, looks the end to calling a loved one 'bright eyes' is nigh .. sod forbid, everyone
would have them .. maybe, 'dull eyes' by then might evolve to a complimentary meaning ]
5. Lord of the Rings looking more like a documentary.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM
This skull's features resemble those of both earlier and later humans.
The human family tree suddenly sprouted some funky-looking shoots after a year of ancient DNA and fossil discoveries.
At the Dmanisi site in the Republic of Georgia, for example, researchers reported that what seemed like a lot of different-looking early human species likely were just one, Homo erectus. They based the claim on the discovery of a 1.8-million-year-old skull blessed with a mixture of more ancient and more recent characteristics. (See "Beautiful Skull Spurs Debate on Human History .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131017-skull-human-origins-dmanisi-georgia-erectus/ .")
On the genetic front, what looked like a Neanderthal bone in a Spanish cave turned out to actually possess the genes—the oldest DNA yet sequenced .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131204-human-fossil-dna-spain-denisovan-cave/ — of a different vanished early human species, the Denisovans.
Meanwhile, Siberia's Denisova cave, where Denisovan fossils were first discovered in 2008, yielded a toe bone that belonged to a Neanderthal woman .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131204-human-fossil-dna-spain-denisovan-cave/ .. from perhaps 140,000 years ago. (See "Ancient Incest Uncovered in Neanderthal Genome .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131218-neanderthal-genome-incest-archaic-ancestor-science/ .")
This finding suggests that archaic humans mated with Homo erectus .. http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-erectus , as well as with some early modern humans in prehistory. A lot of modern people have a little archaic human in their genes, it turns out.
[ inbreeding apparently wasn't very taboo for neanderthals...
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95141274 ]
Follow Dan Vergano on Twitter .. https://twitter.com/dvergano .
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131220-year-in-review-2013-science-discoveries-fossils-space-history/
====
First 'Alien Earth' May Be Found by 2014
SPACE.com Staff | April 03, 2012 12:37pm ET
This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.
Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
The first true "alien Earth" will likely be discovered in the next two years, a NASA scientist says.
Astronomers have found more than 750 alien planets to date, and NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has flagged 2,300 additional "candidates" awaiting confirmation by follow-up studies. This haul has not yet included an Earth-like exoplanet .. http://www.space.com/13991-alien-planet-discoveries-kepler-earth-twin.html — one that's the size of our planet and orbits at the right distance from its star to support liquid water and, possibly, life as we know it.
But that could change soon, according to Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a researcher at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. who specializes in exoplanet biology.
"I believe Kepler will find a 'Goldilocks planet' within the next two years," Domagal-Goldman said in a statement. "We'll be able to point at a specific star in the night sky and say 'There it is — a planet that could support life!'" [ Video: How to Find Earth's Alien Twin .. http://www.space.com/15105-find-earth-planets-mission-plans-video.html ]
Continued: http://www.space.com/15141-alien-earth-planet-2014.html
From the edge of the solar wind to ancient human DNA, science made big strides in 2013.
Kepler-62f is an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star about 1,200 light-years from Earth (artist's rendering).
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF NASA/AMES/JPL-CALTECH
Dan Vergano National Geographic Published December 20, 2013
Science mattered more than ever in 2013. Climate science questions raged after Super Typhoon Haiyan .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131108-supertyphoon-haiyan-yolanda-atmosphere-climate-change/ .. pummeled the Philippines. And scientific expertise figured in disarmament debates in Syria .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130912-syria-chemical-weapons-remediation-assad/ .. and in Iran's proposed halt to its nuclear activities .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/02/120206-iran-strait-of-hormuz-oil-supply/ .
[ Typhoon Haiyan Photos: Before and after
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94366364
Eyewitness footage of Typhoon Haiyan washing house away
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94150127
Assad regime vows no surrender of power
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94582670 ]
Meanwhile, on the pure research front, investigators made plenty of intriguing discoveries in 2013. With plenty to choose from, and argue over, here's a top five list of some favorites from the year:
1. Space gets more crowded. "Buy land, they're not making it anymore," Mark Twain famously advised investors. Twain never heard of exoplanets, of course. Caltech researchers suggested this year that at least 100 billion such worlds .. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler20130103.html#.UrIUHmRDtWZ .. orbit stars in our Milky Way galaxy. That's a lot of new real estate. (See "Smallest Exoplanets Found—Each Tinier Than Earth .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120111-smallest-exoplanets-kepler-space-science/ .")
[ Astronomers Image Lowest-mass Exoplanet Around a Sun-like Star
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90744482 ]
Of course, not all of them are places you would want to live. A November analysis from NASA's Keck Observatory team suggested that one in five stars may have Earth-size planets .. http://www.keckobservatory.org/recent/entry/one_in_five_stars_has_earth_sized_planet_in_habitable_zone .. orbiting in their "habitable zones"—zones that could be friendly to surface oceans. A more recent climate analysis of habitable zones said that number may be too high .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131211-fewer-habitable-planets-hot-climate-greenhouse-science/ , but that is still plenty of planets.
2. Human embryonic stem cells cloned.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF OHSU PHOTOS
A scientist removes the nucleus from a human egg using a pipette. This is the first step to making personalized embryonic stem cells.
After more than a decade of false starts, Oregon Health and Science University researchers announced they had cloned human embryos and collected stem cells .. http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/16/top-10-headlines-today-stem-cells-cloned-oldest-water-found/ .. from them. They also grew the cells into specialized skin and heart cells, a first step toward using them in transplant medicine.
The key to the team's success turned out to be the addition of caffeine to the cloning process. Now researchers will seek to discover whether these cells or similar "induced" stem cells, made without embryos, will have the most medical use .. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/05/15/human-stem-cell-cloned-mitalipov/2156325/ .
[ Team of scientists create cloned glow-in-the-dark rabbits
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91028046 ]
3. Voyager reaches edge of the solar wind.
Illustration courtesy Caltech/NASA
An illustration of the Voyager spacecraft.
One of the year's biggest announcements came from news that actually happened in 2012. The aftershocks of a pair of solar storms in September confirmed that NASA's venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft had actually entered interstellar space. (See "Voyager 1 Leaves Solar System, NASA Confirms .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130911-voyager-interstellar-solar-system-nasa-science-space/ .")
"It is an incredible event, to send the first human object into interstellar space," study lead author Donald Gurnett, of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, told National Geographic.
NASA had long been hoping to announce that the far-flung spacecraft, launched in 1977, had passed the edges of the solar wind. Voyager 1's twin, Voyager 2, is also expected to soon reach interstellar space.
[ Voyager 1 Has Left the Solar System
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91969539
in reply to that .. Voyager Captures Sounds of Interstellar Space
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92023460 ]
4. Mars lake looks hospitable to ancient life.
Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS
NASA's Curiosity rover landed in the Martian crater known as Gale Crater,
which is approximately the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.
NASA's Curiosity rover continued to make historic tracks in 2013, finding that a vanished lake on the red planet could have supported life there more than three billion years ago .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131209-mars-rover-curiosity-life-on-mars-space/ .
The discovery is seen as vindication of NASA's efforts to look for past habitable conditions on Mars. The $2.5 billion rover next heads for Mount Sharp, in the center of Gale Crater, its original destination after landing. (See also: "Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?")
[ New Mars theory casts doubt on planet's habitability
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=79469273
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=87186926 ]
How The Human Face Might Look In 100,000 Years .. one bit ..
In 100,000 years: The human face is proportioned to the 'golden ratio,' though it features unnervingly large eyes. There is green “eye shine” from the tapetum lucidum, and a more pronounced superciliary arch. A sideways blink of the reintroduced plica semilunaris seen in the light gray areas of the eyes, while miniature bone-conduction devices implanted above the ear work with the communications lenses on the eyes. Image credit: Nickolay Lamm
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/06/07/how-the-human-face-might-look-in-100000-years/
hmm, looks the end to calling a loved one 'bright eyes' is nigh .. sod forbid, everyone
would have them .. maybe, 'dull eyes' by then might evolve to a complimentary meaning ]
5. Lord of the Rings looking more like a documentary.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM
This skull's features resemble those of both earlier and later humans.
The human family tree suddenly sprouted some funky-looking shoots after a year of ancient DNA and fossil discoveries.
At the Dmanisi site in the Republic of Georgia, for example, researchers reported that what seemed like a lot of different-looking early human species likely were just one, Homo erectus. They based the claim on the discovery of a 1.8-million-year-old skull blessed with a mixture of more ancient and more recent characteristics. (See "Beautiful Skull Spurs Debate on Human History .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131017-skull-human-origins-dmanisi-georgia-erectus/ .")
On the genetic front, what looked like a Neanderthal bone in a Spanish cave turned out to actually possess the genes—the oldest DNA yet sequenced .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131204-human-fossil-dna-spain-denisovan-cave/ — of a different vanished early human species, the Denisovans.
Meanwhile, Siberia's Denisova cave, where Denisovan fossils were first discovered in 2008, yielded a toe bone that belonged to a Neanderthal woman .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131204-human-fossil-dna-spain-denisovan-cave/ .. from perhaps 140,000 years ago. (See "Ancient Incest Uncovered in Neanderthal Genome .. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131218-neanderthal-genome-incest-archaic-ancestor-science/ .")
This finding suggests that archaic humans mated with Homo erectus .. http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-erectus , as well as with some early modern humans in prehistory. A lot of modern people have a little archaic human in their genes, it turns out.
[ inbreeding apparently wasn't very taboo for neanderthals...
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95141274 ]
Follow Dan Vergano on Twitter .. https://twitter.com/dvergano .
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131220-year-in-review-2013-science-discoveries-fossils-space-history/
====
First 'Alien Earth' May Be Found by 2014
SPACE.com Staff | April 03, 2012 12:37pm ET
This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.
Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
The first true "alien Earth" will likely be discovered in the next two years, a NASA scientist says.
Astronomers have found more than 750 alien planets to date, and NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has flagged 2,300 additional "candidates" awaiting confirmation by follow-up studies. This haul has not yet included an Earth-like exoplanet .. http://www.space.com/13991-alien-planet-discoveries-kepler-earth-twin.html — one that's the size of our planet and orbits at the right distance from its star to support liquid water and, possibly, life as we know it.
But that could change soon, according to Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a researcher at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. who specializes in exoplanet biology.
"I believe Kepler will find a 'Goldilocks planet' within the next two years," Domagal-Goldman said in a statement. "We'll be able to point at a specific star in the night sky and say 'There it is — a planet that could support life!'" [ Video: How to Find Earth's Alien Twin .. http://www.space.com/15105-find-earth-planets-mission-plans-video.html ]
Continued: http://www.space.com/15141-alien-earth-planet-2014.html
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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