The surprising discovery of "square ice" which forms at room temperature was made by an international team of researchers last week.

The study was published in Nature by a team of scientists from UK and Germany led by Andre Geim of University of Manchester and G. Algara-Siller of University of Ulm. The accompanying review article was done by Alan Soper of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in UK.

"We didn't expect to find square ice ... We found there is something strange in terms of water going through [nanochannels]. It's going too fast. And you can't explain that by just imagining a very thin layer of liquid. Liquids do not behave in that way. The important thing to realize is that it is ice in the sense of a crystallized structure, it's not ice in the familiar sense in that it's something cold and from which you have to protect yourself," said Professor Irina Grigorieva, one of the researchers.

To study the molecular structure of water inside a transparent nanoscale capillary, the team used electron microscopy. This enabled them to view individual water molecules, especially because the nano-capillary was created from graphene which was one atom thick and would not impair the electron imaging. Graphene was also chosen because it has unusual properties like conducting electricity and extreme strength. It's a 2D form of carbon that once rolled up in cylinders will form a carbon nanotube, a material, which according to The Koyal Group Info Mag, is a subject of further study because of its unusual strength.

The scientists themselves were admittedly surprised at finding out that small square-shaped ice crystals formed at room temperature where the graphene capillaries are narrow (3 atomic layers of water at most). The water molecules formed into square lattices arranged in neat rows -- an arrangement that is uncharacteristic for the element that is known for forming consistent triangular structures inside regular ice. This discovery may just be the first example of water behavior in nanostructure.

<The Koyal Group Info Mag reports that scientists have been trying to understand for decades how water structure is affected when it is confined in narrow channels. It is only now that this becomes possible through computer simulations, but even with those, the results they get do not agree with each other.

The team is also trying to determine how common this square ice actually is by using computer simulations. And from what they've learned, if the water layer is thin enough, it could create a square ice regardless of the chemical properties of the nanopore's walls where it is confined. Since there is water practically everywhere -- in microscopic pores and monolayers on surfaces -- it is likely that square ice is actually very common in nature.

Aside from its more practical applications in water distillation, desalination and filtration, their finding also allows for a better understanding of how water behave at a molecular scale which is important in nanotechnology work.

Efforts to find Europe's lost comet lander, Philae, have come up blank.

The most recent imaging search by the overflying Rosetta "mothership" can find no trace of the probe.

Philae touched down on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 12 November, returning a swathe of data before going silent when its battery ran flat.

European Space Agency scientists say they are now waiting on Philae itself to reveal its position when it garners enough power to call home.

Researchers have a pretty good idea of where the robot should be, but pinpointing its exact location is tricky.

On touchdown, Philae bounced twice before coming to rest in a dark ditch.

This much is clear from the pictures it took of its surroundings. And this location, the mission team believes, is just off the top of the "head" of the duck-shaped comet.

The orbiting Rosetta satellite photographed this general location on 12, 13 and 14 December, with each image then scanned by eye for any bright pixels that might be Philae. But no positive detection has yet been made.

Rosetta has now moved further from 67P, raising its altitude from 20km to 30km, and there is no immediate plan to go back down (certainly, not to image Philae's likely location).

Even if they cannot locate it, scientists are confident the little probe will eventually make its whereabouts known.

As 67P moves closer to the Sun, lighting conditions for the robot should improve, allowing its solar cells to recharge the battery system.
The latest assessment suggests communications could be re-established in the May/June timeframe, with Philae distributing enough electricity to its instruments to resume operations around September.

This would be at perihelion - the time when the comet is closest to the Sun (185 million km away) and at its most active.

Scientists continue to pore over the data Philae managed to send back before going into hibernation.

Some of the results - together with ongoing Rosetta observations - were reported at the recent American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Highlights include a clearer idea of the nature of the comet's surface. Researchers say this appears to be covered in many places by a soft, dusty "soil" about 15-20cm in depth.

Underneath this is a very hard layer, which is thought to be mainly sintered ice.

The conference had the rare opportunity to see pictures from Rosetta's Osiris camera system.
These high-resolution images are not normally shown publicly because the camera team has been given an exclusive period to study the data and make discoveries.

Among them was a shot looking into a pit on the surface, revealing an array of rounded features that the Osiris team has nicknamed "dinosaur eggs".

These features have a preferred scale of about 2-3m and may be evidence of the original icy blocks that came together 4.5 billion years ago to build the comet.

The dino eggs have been seen at a number of locations, including in cliff walls.

Early interpretations of the general surface of the comet indicate that many structures are probably the result of collapse over internal voids.

Although a small body just 4km across, 67P's gravity is still strong enough to shape depressions and arrange fallen boulders.

A good example of this is in "Hapi" valley - the giant gorge that forms the "neck" of the comet.

It contains a string of large blocks at its base, which one Osiris team-member argued very likely fell from the nearby vertical cliff dubbed "Hathor".

All the surface features on 67P carry names that follow an ancient Egyptian theme.

Hapi was revered as a god of the Nile. Hathor was a deity associated with the sky.

A new research regarding healthy sleep might get you thinking twice about reading from your e-reader or tablets before dozing off at night.

According to a study from Brigham and Women's Hospital, people who read on a lit screen before sleeping tend to fall asleep later as opposed to those who read on a paperback.

The study which was printed in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the newest contribution to an increasing number of studies pointing to backlit devices, like our mobile phones and tablets, as culprits of sleep problems.

Anne-Marie Chang, a neuroscientist who headed the project said, "It seems that use of these devices in the evening before bedtime really has this negative impact on our sleep and on your circadian rhythms."

The study was conducted in a lab with 12 people who were monitored for 2 weeks. Every evening, they were asked to read for 4 hours -- the first 5 days from an iPad and the next 5 days from a paperback. Once the subjects went to bed every 10pm, they were closely monitored for physiological changes.

It turned out that when the subjects read on screens, their circadian rhythms were disrupted and melatonin production was suppressed, leading to less deep sleep and feeling of tiredness the next day.

Chang advised that the proper recommendation should be to set aside electronic devices a couple of hours before sleeping and read printed book instead. Ebook devices that do not have backlit screens will also be better. According to The Koyal Group Info Mag researchers, any device that gives off blue wavelength of light is problematic as a person will tend to hold it closer to the eyes.

Professor Charles Czeisler, one of the lead researcher said, "The light emitted by most e-readers is shining directly into the eyes of the reader, whereas from a printed book or the original Kindle, the reader is only exposed to reflected light from the pages of the book. Sleep deficiency has been shown to increase the risk of cardio diseases, metabolic diseases and cancer. Thus, the melatonin suppression that we saw in this study among participants when they were reading from the light-emitting e-reader concerns us."

Meanwhile, other scientists are cautioning the public in drawing conclusions from the said study. This is because critical changes were observed in a controlled environment like a laboratory compared to the real-life setting.

Their experiment conducted in a lab does not effectively mimic the setup in real life where people are naturally exposed to sunlight. For instance, the low light in the lab might have affected them in a way that it made them sensitive to light from screens. As The Koyal Group Info Mag said, a person exposed in mere room light the whole day could be more sensitive to the light from an ebook reader than a person who had been exposed to sunlight outside the whole day.

However, they all agree that the blue light wavelength emitted by devices like laptops, tablets and mobile phones has negative effects and should be avoided at least before bedtime.

In a related research conducted by Mariana Figueiro of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2012, they found that subjects who use an e-reader device like a tablet before going to sleep at night had lower melatonin levels after using it for 2 hours. But they clarified that the lit screen is only one of the contributing factor.

DNA-programmed blotting
paper could soon be giving doctors a simple disease test that will reveal
an infection in 30 minutes for just a few pence.

Researchers have proved the technique works by developing a prototype
Ebola test in just 12 hours, and using just $20 of materials.

The smart diagnostics use a soup of
biological ingredients including the genetic material RNA.

The researchers say this can be freeze-dried and preserved
on ordinary paper.

Team leader Jim Collins, who has joint appointments at
Boston and Harvard Universities, says the biological powder can be reactivated
by simply adding water, like living powdered soup.

"We were surprised at how well these materials worked
after being freeze dried," he told the BBC.

"Once they're rehydrated, these biological circuits
function in these small paper disks as if they were inside a living cell."

Genetic hacking

Jim Collins is a leading pioneer in the field of synthetic
biology, whose 2000 paper showing genetic circuits could be created in the same
way as electronic circuits can be programmed, helped launch the discipline.

Since then, synthetic biology has become a powerful tool in
fundamental biology, with researchers hacking the genetic programmes of
microbes to study their life processes, or give them the power to compute using
logic like a digital processor.

Collins' group has previously reprogrammed bacteria to
become cellular spies, recording events as they pass through an animal's bowels.

But the discipline has required specialist skills, so that
few laboratories can take advantage of the techniques. The researchers' avowed
intention in the new work, described in the journal Cell, is to make synthetic
biology widely available.

They've definitely succeeded, says Professor Lingchong You,
an expert in cellular reprogramming at Duke University.

"This paper-based approach is incredibly attractive. It
feels like you could use it in your garage! It'll give scientists a
synthetic-biology playground for a very low cost."

'Biochemical soup'

The materials in the powdered biochemical soup include
simple enzymes that bacteria need, molecules to power the chemical reactions,
amino acids which are the bricks of cell biology, and importantly ribosomes,
giant molecular machines that read genetic material and use it to assemble the
bricks into functioning proteins.

In liquid form, these cell extracts are routinely used in
biology labs. Linchong You gives credit to Collins for having the imagination
to freeze dry them with synthetic genes.

"With hindsight, it's obvious it should work. But most
of us don't think in this direction - there was a real leap of faith. But the
fact you can leave these freeze-dried systems for a year, and they'll still
work - that's quite remarkable."

Alongside the paper-based biochemistry, Jim Collins' team -
in collaboration with Peng Yin, also at Harvard University's Wyss Institute -
has also introduced a new way of programming RNA, the molecular cousin of DNA
which ribosome machines read. Their method makes the gene-circuits far more
flexible than previous approaches.

The new type of RNA can be programmed to react and respond
to any particular biochemical input, and then switch on the rest of the genetic
machinery.

"This gives us a programmable sensor that can be
readily and rapidly designed," Collins explains.

The Ebola test they experimented with is a proof of
principle showing how flexible the programming step is.

"In a period of just 12 hours, two of my team managed
to develop 24 sensors that would detect different regions of the Ebola genome,
and discriminate between the Sudan and the Zaire strains."

In contrast, conventional antibody tests take months and
cost thousands of pounds to devise, the researchers argue.

Quick response

The genetic test kit gives a simple colour output, turning
the paper from yellow to purple, with the change visible within half an hour.
By changing the input trigger, variants of the test could be used to reveal antibiotic
resistance genes in bacterial infections or biomarkers of other disease
conditions.

Their Ebola test is not suitable for use in the epidemic
areas at the moment, Collins emphasises, but it would be simple to devise one
that is.

The arrays of programmed paper dots would be easy to mass
produce. Lingchong You envisions an "entire fabrication process carried
out by computer-aided circuit design, robotics-mediated assembly of circuits,
and printing onto paper."

And price is not the only consideration. Collins points out
the freeze-dried circuits are stable at room temperature. In large parts of the
world where electricity is unreliable, or there are no refrigerators, this
would be a particular advantage.

"We are very excited about this," he added.
"In terms of significance, I rank this alongside all the other
breakthroughs I've been involved in."

Research into one of the biggest recent stem-cell "breakthroughs" has been withdrawn because of "critical errors".

Scientists in Japan had claimed stem cells could be made cheaply, quickly and ethically just by dipping blood cells into acid.

They have now written a retraction that apologises for "multiple errors" in their report.

Nature, the journal that published the findings, is reviewing how it checks scientific papers.

Stem cells can become any other type of tissue and are already being investigated to heal the damage caused by a heart attack and to restore sight to the blind.

Researchers around the world described the acid-bath stem-cell finds as a "game changer," "remarkable" and "a major scientific discovery".

Falling apart

However, errors were rapidly discovered, parts were lifted from early work and presented as though it was new research, and leading scientists have been unable to produce stem cells using acid in their own laboratories.

An investigation by the Riken research institute in Japan found that scientist Dr Haruko Obokata had fabricated her work in an intentionally misleading fashion.

The retraction states: "These multiple errors impair the credibility of the study as a whole and we are unable to say without doubt whether the stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluri­potency stem cells phenomenon is real.

"Ongoing studies are investigating this phenomenon afresh, but given the extensive nature of the errors currently found we consider it appropriate to retract both papers."

The affair brings back memories of the false claims by world-renowned cloning scientists Hwang Woo-suk.

He claimed he had produced embryonic stem cells from cloned human embryos, but those findings were later found to be "intentionally fabricated".

'Highlighted flaws'

A Nature editorial stated that the public's trust in science was at stake in the latest controversy.

It added: "Although editors and referees could not have detected the fatal faults in this work, the episode has further highlighted flaws in Nature's procedures and in the procedures of institutions that publish with us."

However, it did say a review was under way to increase checking on images used in papers.

The acid-bath stem cells research has not been completely discredited and research is continuing to see if stem cells can be produced using the method.

Chris Mason, a professor of regenerative medicine at University College London, originally said the results were "a very exciting, but surprise, finding" and added: "It looks a bit too good to be true."

After the retraction, he told the BBC: "I'm surprised that Nature took so long when there was so much material showing problems with the papers. I don't understand that."

However, he said the system of peer review, in which fellow scientists critique papers before they are published, would struggle to pick up the problems in this research.

He said: "If you're a reviewer you can only review the material you're given. You have to take it on trust. You're not a detective looking for fraud.

'Good day for science'

"If you have to act as a super-sleuth, that's impossible for anyone to ever do."

He praised the way social media had uncovered and shared the errors, which could have otherwise taken years to unpick.

"I would argue this is not an embarrassing day for science, I think it's a good day for science and it shows we work well to weed out inferior publications."

Dr Dusko Ilic, a senior lecturer in stem-cell science at King's College London, said: "It is easy to be judgmental, and pointing fingers after all is over.

"Gaining knowledge is difficult. It requires both time and persistence, I hoped that Haruko Obokata would prove at the end all those naysayers wrong.

"Unfortunately, she did not. The technology, indeed, sounded too good to be true, though I still find fascinating how a 30-year-old scientist could pass scrutiny of her co-workers and multiple reviewers in Nature with a complete fabrication."

The UK Medical Research Council's Prof Robin Lovell-Badge added: "The stem cell community has been expecting these retractions to come for a while.

"This story illustrates how the stem cell field can rapidly detect bad science and reject it.

"It also illustrates both the problems and benefits of hype, this was potentially important research because of the novelty of the claims in an important field, but it was hyped far beyond reality, by some of the authors and by their perhaps willing victims, the media."

 

What is the goal for the Asteroid Redirect Mission?

Through the Asteroid Redirect Mission, NASA will identify, capture and redirect an asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, which astronauts will explore in the 2020s, returning with samples. The mission is an important early step as we learn to be more independent of Earth for humans to explore Mars. It will be an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities, while helping us learn to protect our home planet. The overall objectives of the Asteroid Redirect Mission are:

* Conduct a human exploration mission to an asteroid in the mid-2020s, providing systems and operational experience required for human exploration of Mars.
* Demonstrate an advanced solar electric propulsion system, enabling future deep-space human and robotic exploration with applicability to the nation's public and private sector space needs.
* Enhance detection, tracking and characterization of Near Earth Asteroids, enabling an overall strategy to defend our home planet.
* Demonstrate basic planetary defense techniques that will inform impact threat mitigation strategies to defend our home planet.
* Pursue a target of opportunity that benefits scientific and partnership interests, expanding our knowledge of small celestial bodies and enabling the mining of asteroid resources for commercial and exploration needs.

The same way we need values to measure everything from temperature to time, astronomers have now developed a new stellar scale as a "ruler" to help them classify and compare data on star discoveries.

Previously, as with the longitude problem 300 years earlier for fixing locations on earth, there was no unified system of reference for calibrating the heavens.

The astronomers selected 34 initial 'benchmark' stars to represent the different kinds of stellar populations in our galaxy, such as hot stars, cold stars, red giants and dwarfs, as well as stars that cover the different chemical patterns - or "metallicity" in their spectrum, as this is the "cosmic clock" which allows astronomers to read a star's age.

This detailed range of information on the 34 stars form the first value set for measuring the millions of stars that the Gaia satellite, an unmanned space observatory of the European Space Agency, aims to catalogue.

Many of the benchmark stars can be seen with the human eye, and have been studied for most of human history - dating to the very first astronomical records from ancient Babylon.

"We took stars which had been measured a lot so the parameters are very well-known, but needed to be brought to the same scale for the new benchmark - essentially, using the stars we know most about to help measure the stars we know nothing about," said Paula Jofre from Institute of Astronomy at Britain's University of Cambridge.

"This is the first attempt to cover a wide range of stellar classifications, and do everything from the beginning - methodically and homogenously," Jofre added.

NASA's Curiosity rover has now been exploring the Red Planet for a full Martian year.

Curiosity wraps up its 687th day on Mars today (June 24), NASA officials said, meaning the 1-ton robot has completed one lap around the sun on the Red Planet. (While Earth orbits the sun once every 365 days, Mars is farther away and thus takes considerably longer to do so.)

Curiosity touched down on the night of Aug. 5, 2012, kicking off a mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. The six-wheeled rover quickly delivered, finding that an area near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.

The $2.5-billion mission, known officially as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), has made other important discoveries during its time on the Martian surface, too. For example, Curiosity's measurements of radiation levels - made during its eight-month cruise through space and while on the planet's surface - suggest that the risk of radiation exposure is not a "showstopper" for manned Mars missions. The rover's data should should help researchers design the shielding astronauts will require on such missions, NASA officials said.

Curiosity has also scanned Mars' air for methane, a gas that here on Earth is predominantly produced by living organisms. The rover's instruments have found no traces of the gas, in contrast to some previous observations made by Red Planet orbiters.

Curiosity left Yellowknife Bay last July and is now on the way to the base of Mount Sharp, which rises more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) into the sky from the center of Mars' Gale Crater. The huge mountain has long been Curiosity's ultimate science destination; mission scientists want the rover to climb up Mount Sharp's foothills, reading a history of the planet's changing environmental conditions along the way.

Unexpected damage to Curiosity's metal wheels has slowed progress toward Mount Sharp a bit, forcing the mission team to rethink and revise its driving plans. The rover has made it about halfway to the mountain's base, with about 2.4 miles (3.9 km) left to cover, NASA officials said.

"Over the next few months, the science team is really excited to get to Mount Sharp, where we think the layered rocks there have captured the major climate changes in Mars' history," Curiosity deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada said in a new NASA video marking the rover's first Martian year. "We can't wait to get there and figure it all out, but it's going to take a lot of driving."

South African scientists contributed significantly towards the knowledge base that helped an international experiment make a breakthrough in proving a particle discovered in July 2012 is a type of Higgs boson, a finding that could be the most substantial physics discovery of our time.

The Higgs particle is the missing piece of the Standard Model of Physics, a set of rules that outline the fundamental building blocks of the universe, such as protons, electrons and atoms. Finding it starts a new era for science, because scientists will be able to probe previously uninvestigated parts of the universe.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) yesterday said the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had found new results on an important property of the Higgs particle. The discovery of the elusive particle was announced almost two years ago.

Home-grown contribution

Bruce Mellado, an associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Physics, says the finding is "certainly an important milestone in determining that what we discovered is a Higgs boson". He notes the ATLAS experiment, in which SA is involved, has reported a similar result.

Locally, about 70 South Africans are involved in the global project and, while the team is small in comparison to those from other countries, there are substantial benefits coming out of its involvement. Four universities are participating in the programme: Wits, University of Cape Town, the University of Johannesburg, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

As a result, says Mellado, SA has contributed "significantly" towards the knowledge base that paved the way for yesterday's announcement. The Higgs boson gives matter mass and holds the physical fabric of the universe together.

Missing piece

The particle is named after Peter Higgs, who, in the 1960s, was one of six authors who theorised about the existence of the particle. It is commonly called the "God Particle", after the title of Nobel physicist Leon Lederman's "The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?" (1993), according to Wikipedia.

Yesterday's announcement, hailed as a major breakthrough, is the result of work done at the LHC, the £2.6 billion "Big Bang" particle accelerator at the centre of the hunt for the Higgs boson.

The LHC has been dubbed the world's largest experiment and is housed at CERN.

The LHC is the largest scientific instrument ever built. It lies in an underground tunnel with a circumference of 27km that straddles the French-Swiss border, near Geneva, and has been heralded as the most important new physics discovery machine of all time.

"With our ongoing analyses, we are really starting to understand the mechanism in depth," says CMS spokesperson Tiziano Camporesi. "So far, it is behaving exactly as predicted by theory."

The LHC was offline for maintenance and upgrading during the last 18 months, and preparations are now under way for it to restart early in 2015 for its second three-year run. The experiment will run until 2030 and will be upgraded to 10 times its initial design specification, with the ability to collect 100 times more data.

"Much work has been carried out on the LHC over the last 18 months or so, and it's effectively a new machine, poised to set us on the path to new discoveries," says CERN DG Rolf Heuer.

Teleskopet stor nok til at stedet tegn af fremmede liv på andre planeter

Ingeniører er ved at sprænge væk i toppen af en chilensk bjerg til at oprette et websted for den europæiske meget Large Telescope. Det vil gøre det muligt for os, for første gang, at direkte observere planeter uden for solsystemet.

Cerro Armazones er en smuldrende kuppel af rock, som dominerer de udtørrede toppene af bjergkæden chilenske kyst nord for Santiago. Et par gamle beton platforme og nogle rustne rør, dele af fjeldets gammel vejrstation, er de eneste råd at mennesker nogensinde har taget en interesse i dette forbyder, tørt sted. Selv udsigt ser fremmede, med omkringliggende boulder-strøet ørkenen forsynet med en bemærkelsesværdig lighed med landskabet af Mars.

Dramatiske ændring nærmer sig Cerro Armazones, dog - for i et par uger, bjerget 10.000 m vil have sin top slået. "Vi vil at sprænge det med dynamit og derefter bortføre murbrokker," siger ingeniør Gerd Hudepohl. "Vi vil tage omkring 80 m væk fra toppen af bjerget til at oprette et plateau - og når vi har gjort det, vi vil bygge verdens største teleskop der."

Givet det bjerg remote, ugæstfri beliggenhed, det lyder måske en usandsynlig påstand - bortset fra det faktum, at Hudepohl har gjort slags før. Han er en af det europæiske sydlige observatorium mest erfarne ingeniører og var involveret i halshugning af et andet nærliggende bjerg, Cerro Paranal, hvor hans hold derefter rejst en af planetens mest avancerede observatorier.

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Den komplekse Paranal har været i drift i mere end et årti og omfatter fire gigantiske instrumenter med otte meter hele spejle - kendt som den meget store teleskoper eller VLTs - samt kontrol værelser og en labyrint af underjordiske tunneler, der forbinder sine instrumenter. Mere end 100 astronomer, ingeniører og støtte medarbejdere arbejde og leve der. Et par dusin meter under teleskoper, de har en sports-kompleks med en squashbane, en indendørs fodboldbane og en luksuriøs 110-værelse ejendom, har en central swimmingpool og en restaurant der serverer måltider og drikkevarer døgnet rundt. Bygget med udsigt over en af verdens tørreste ørkener, er stedet en fantastisk oase. ( Se nyheder på Dicoveries )

European Southern Observatory, som Storbritannien er en nøglen medlemsstat ønsker nu Hudepohl og hans team til at gentage dette bemærkelsesværdige trick og tage toppen af Cerro Armazones, som ligger 20km væk. Selv denne gang vil de opføre et instrument så stort, det vil dværg alle teleskoper på Paranal sat sammen, og eventuelle andre teleskop på planeten. Når afsluttet, den europæiske meget Large Telescope (E-ELT) og sin 39-meter spejl vil tillade astronomer at kigge længere ind i rummet og se nærmere tilbage på historien om universet end nogen anden Astronomisk enhed i eksistens. Dets konstruktion vil skubbe teleskop-gør til sin grænse, men. Dens primære spejl vil være lavet af næsten 800 segmenter - hver 1,4 meter i diameter - men kun et par centimeter tyk, som skal bringes i overensstemmelse med mikroskopiske præcision.

Det er en bemærkelsesværdig sammenstilling: midt i fuldkommen ødelæggelse, forskere har bygget gigant maskiner manipuleret til at operere med glat perfektion og nu planlægger at top denne præstation ved at bygge en endnu mere omfattende enhed. Spørgsmålet er: med hvilket formål? Hvorfor gå til en remote ørkenen i det nordlige Chile og hugge ned toppe til at gøre boliger for nogle af planetens mest komplekse videnskabelige hardware?

Svaret er ligetil, siger Cambridge University astronomen Professor Gerry Gilmore. Det handler om vand. "Stemningen her er så tør som du kan få og der er af afgørende betydning. Vandmolekyler skjule visningen fra teleskoper på jorden. Det er ligesom forsøger at peer gennem tåge - for tåge er hovedsagelig en suspension af vandmolekyler i luften, efter at alle, og de dunkle din vision. For et teleskop baseret på havets overflade, der er en stor ulempe.

"Men hvis du bygger dit teleskop, hvor atmosfæren over du er helt tørt, du får den bedste mulige udsigt over stjernerne - og der er ingen steder på jorden, som har luft tørrere end dette sted. For god foranstaltning, de højtliggende vinden blæser i en glat, laminar måde over Paranal - som plader af glas - så billeder af stjerner er fortsat bemærkelsesværdigt stabil så godt."

Udsigten over himlen her er tæt på perfekt, med andre ord - som en aftentur rundt udsigtsplatform på Paranal viser tydeligt. Under mit besøg hang Mælkevejen over observatoriet som en enkelt hvid ark. Jeg kunne se de fire vigtigste stjerner af Southern Cross; Alpha Centauri, hvis usete følgesvend Proxima Centauri er den nærmeste stjerne til vores solsystem; de to Magellanske skyer, satellit-galakser af vores egen Milky Way; og Coalsack, en interstellare støv Sky, der udgør en slående silhuet mod den stjerneklare Mælkevejen. Er ingen synlige i nordlige himmel og vises ingen med sådanne brilliance andre steder på planeten.

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Jord-størrelse planet discovery: 5 ting at vide

NASA'S Kepler rumteleskopet opdaget en anden jord-størrelse planet, der er i den "beboelige zone," en planet afstand fra sin stjerne hvor forholdene er ideel til flydende vand.

Denne planet--kaldet Kepler-186f--er tættest på jorden i størrelse af alle de tidligere opdagelser af planeter i dette Guldlok zone, sagde Elisa Quintana af NASAs Ames Research Center og SETI Institute, ledende forfatter af undersøgelsen rapporteret i tidsskriftet Science.

Opdagelsen af Kepler-186f er "et stort skridt hen imod at finde denne hellige gral planet", der både tæt i størrelse til jorden og kredser omkring en stjerne svarer til jordens sol, Quintana sagde. I stedet for at kalde det en jordens tvilling, finder NASA Kepler-186f en jorden fætter.

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Her er fem ting at vide:

1. planeten er 1,1 gange på størrelse med jorden. Seneste opdagelser har været 1,4 gange størrelsen af jorden eller større, Quintana sagde.

2. Kepler-186f har en kortere orbital mønster: 130 dage at kredsen sin stjerne, versus 365 dage til jorden.

3. stjernen Kepler-186f kredsløb er "mindre, køler, lysdæmper" end Jordens sol, sagde J.D. Harrington, NASA talsmand.

4. den masse og sammensætning af Kepler-186f er ukendt. Men baseret på planeter af samme størrelse, er det sandsynligt, planeten er sammensat af en rocky materiale, Quintana sagde.

5. planeten er 500 lysår fra jorden.

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Deler deres arbejde er at hjælpe de rivaliserende pharma giganter oprette nye lægemidler

Mene Pangalos er manden til opgave med intet mindre end fyres op opdagelse motor af Storbritanniens næststørste narkotika maker efter sin katastrofale falder ud over "patent klippen".

Han tiltrådte AstraZeneca som leder af innovative lægemidler i 2010, da selskabet afstivet for patenter at udløbe på en perlerække af sine bedst sælgende lægemidler.

Halvfemserne havde været produktiv for Astra, men rørledningen var tørret. Holdenes forskning stadig churning ud masser af "kandidat" medicin, men de fleste af dem var ikke når testet i virkelige patienter.

Virksomheden stadig betaler prisen for at tage sine øjne ud bolden i den tidlige del af årtiet. Salget faldt kraftigt i 2012 og forventes at holde faldende i en årrække.

"Drug kandidater er en nem ting at levere," siger Pangalos, nu Astra's executive vice formand for innovative lægemidler og tidlige udvikling.

"Hvis du havde målt AstraZeneca som en kandidat [narkotika] maskine, vi var en af de bedste selskaber i verden. [Men] Når du målt os for succesfulde lanceringer, vi var en af de mindst produktive."

Problemet var enkel. Astras forskere var at blive belønnet for at levere så mange potentielle lægemidler som muligt, uanset deres langsigtede potentiale.

"Forskning var forkert, fordi du var at fokusere på diskenheden ikke kvalitet," siger han.

"Gør forskere ikke bare aflevere en kandidat, men er nødt til at tænke på hvordan du får det i sene udvikling - pludselig deres verden fik vendt op og ned, fordi nu de ikke var at få belønnet bare for en kandidat.

"Det drev en meget anderledes adfærd med hensyn til hvordan du synes om [et lægemiddel] fra forskning i udvikling," siger han.

Pangalos, en neurolog af baggrund, er i en nøddeskal "sandheden-søger". Ophøjede det kan lyde, men det er også indlysende, forbløffende.

Hans mantra er, at den mere Astra forskere forstår de sygdomme, de forsøger at behandle, og "target" årsag pathway, jo bedre de bliver at udvikle den rette medicin.

Det er nu muligt for forskere at lokalisere som en del af DNA er blevet "brudt" i visse sygdomme og så finde ud af hvilken slags molekyle kan gribe ind for at forebygge eller mindske følgerne.

De starter med en såkaldt "target"-det være sig en kemisk reaktion, der sker i en syge celle eller en del af DNA- og designe et stof omkring det.

"Du vil blive overrasket over hvor mange gange molekyler er gået ind i mennesket, mislykkedes og derefter nogen spørger det meget enkle spørgsmål, 'gjorde du engagere mål?' og folk slags skuldertræk deres skuldre," siger han.

Han indrømmer AstraZeneca var sent til spillet, men skiftet er begyndt at betale.

Rørledningen er fylde igen, takket være en blanding af erhvervelser og nye lægemidler fra virksomhedens egne forskere, og Astras administrerende direktør, Pascal Soriot, påstod tidligere på året, at salg vil begynde at stige igen i 2017 som nye produkter ramte markedet.

Pangaloss arbejde var godt på vej af den tid, Soriot tog roret i slutningen af 2012, men det har taget scenen under den nye chef. Inden måneder efter sin ankomst udpeget Soriot Pangalos til hans inderkreds som en del af en større management omlægning.

Fortsæt læsning her

Rising Japanese scientist faked heralded stem cell research, lab says

In her short scientific career, the trajectory of Haruko Obokata was meteoric. Before the 30-year-old was 20, she was accepted into the science department at Tokyo's Waseda University where the admittance board placed great importance on a candidate's aspirations.

Then she studied at Harvard University in what was supposed to be a half-year program, but advisers were so impressed with her research, they asked her stay longer.

It was there that she would come up with an idea that would come to define her - in ways good and bad. The research was called STAP - "stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency" - which unveiled a new way to grow tissue. "I think about my research all day long, including when I am taking a bath and when I am on a date with my boyfriend," Obokata told the Asahi Shimbun.

Last January, just three years after Obokata earned her PhD, she published what appeared to be her groundbreaking research in the scientific journal Nature

It purported to establish a new way to grow tissue and treat complicated illnesses like diabetes and Parkinson's disease with an uncomplicated lab procedure.

Many called it the third most significant breakthrough in stem cell research.

"There were many days when I wanted to give up on my research and cried all night long," she said at news conference. "But I encouraged myself to hold on just for one more day."

The headlines were thunderous. "Stem cell 'major discovery' claimed," BBC bellowed. "STAP cell pioneer nearly gave up on her research," reported the Asahi Shimbun. "Scientist triumphed over setbacks," crooned the Japan News.

On Tuesday morning, Obokata's research institute, Riken, which is almost entirely funded by the government, announced that the 30-year-old had purposely fabricated the data to produce the findings.

Institute director Ryoji Noyori said he'll "rigorously punish relevant people after procedures in a disciplinary committee," according to AFP.

The investigation's head said the paper "amounts to phony research or fabrication." He added: "The manipulation was used to improve the appearance of the results."

Obokata, for her part, denied the month-long investigation's allegations. "I will file a complaint against Riken as it's absolutely impossible for me to accept this," AFP reports her saying in a statement.

Whispers began soon after the paper hit print. No one was able to successfully reproduce the experiment.

According to Riken's preliminary report, the institute received its first hint that not everything was as it seemed with Obokata's research on February 13, and eventually conceded there were "serious errors."

Riken said it launched its probe of the research that day "given the seriousness of the issue."

In early March one of the paper's co-authors, Teruhiko Wakayama, jumped ship, calling for a retraction of the findings. "It's unlikely that it was a careless mistake," he wrote the Wall Street Journal in an email.

"There is no more credibility when there are such crucial mistakes," he added.

At issue, investigators say, are images of DNA fragments submitted into Obokata's work. They say they weren't the result of "errors," as previously theorised. The images were either doctored or entirely fabricated.

Way too often, media coverage on science and technology tends to concentrate on topics of current fashion or what some people call as "high-fi" themes - be it the God particle, stem cell biology, or yet another nanomaterial. Articles that appear in "high impact" journals are covered more often while discoveries and analysis of everyday problems and suggestions to handle them, usually published in more modest journals are given the go-by. Two such reports concerned with pressing problems of everyday importance to India appear in the latest issue of Current Science (Volume 106, 10 February 2014, pages 343-345), which need to be highlighted. One of them has to do with the overload of phosphorus in the soils of Kerala and how it affects the health of the land and the waters of the region and what may be done about it. And the other is a report about the discovery of a few bacteria in the coast of Gujarat which can degrade plastic materials such as polythene. And it is a pity that main line media, right here in India, have not found them worthy of coverage and publicity.

The first is a short report (just about 1200 words and two figures) by scientists from the Indian Institute of Spices Research in Calicut, concerning the massive accumulation of phosphorus in the soils of Kerala. The Kerala State Planning Board has taken up the massive (and rather "boring") task of analyzing the status of acidity in the agricultural field in all the Panchayats of the state. As many as 1,56,801 samples across the state were analysed (a huge exercise in itself) and of these about 91 per cent of the fields were found to be moderate to strongly acidic (pH between 6.5 and 4.5). This is bad because plants grow best by absorbing nutrients from soil whose pH is between 6.5 and 7.5. This is the ideal pH range for plant root growth; when the pH reduces below 6.5, the phosphorus (P) in the soil gets "fixed" by the metals present in the soil (such as aluminum and iron) and no longer available in the soluble form for absorption by the plant roots. And P is vital since it is used not only to make the DNA and RNA of the plant cells but also as the energy currency in the biochemical processes that all living beings use for metabolism (just as we use the rupee in our daily live transactions).

How did this high level of P come about? Through the overuse of fertilizers and manure by the farmers. As the Calicut scientists report, soil in Kerala is already inherently acidic and the overuse of fertilizers and manure only adds to the problem. Not only does much of the P in the soil gets fixed and becomes unavailable for plant growth but even some of the soluble phosphorus is lost through the run-off water from these sites and affects the quality of water in the nearby lakes and water bodies.

The Kerala State Planning Board's report is thus an important and admirable exercise that calls for action. The Calicut scientists make some relevant suggestions towards this, e. g., skip the applications of high P fertilizers, test the soil periodically and reduce (or avoid) manure that contains high amounts of P. We must express our appreciation to Drs K. M. Nair, P, Rajasekharan, G. Rajasree, P. Suresh Kumar and M. C.Narayanan Kutty of the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research), the Kerala State Planning Board, and Drs R. Dinesh, V. Srinivasan, S. Hamza and M. Anandaraj, at the Indian Institute of Spices Research at Calicut for this important and relevant research and analysis. The second report in page 345 of the same issue of Current Science, by the budding science writer Ipsita Herlekar, highlights the discovery by scientists at the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Bhavnagar, Gujarat. These scientists analysed as many as 60 types of bacteria in the Arabian Sea along the coast of Gujarat and found three species from there, namely, K. Palustris M16, B. Pumilus M27, and B. Subtilis H1584, are able to "eat" polyethylene - the synthetic plastic used in everyday life as bags and films to cover materials, and that the B. Subtilis H158 strain was the best among the three. This calls for further work which might help us find an eco-friendly way to manage this totally out of hand (and totally man-made) menace of plastic waste and pollution.

Let us applaud Drs K. Harshvardhan and B.Jha, the CSMCRI scientists for this discovery and hope they will take this further into the level of practical application, Ipsita for elegantly highlighting this CSMCRI work, and the journal Current Science for publishing these reports which are of "high impact" at the practical and actionable level. Bread and butter science is just important as "blue sky" science.

The above article is a repost from TheHindu

A new type of giant virus called "Pithovirus" has been discovered in the frozen ground of extreme north-eastern Siberia by researchers from the Information Génomique et Structurale laboratory (CNRS/AMU), in association with teams from the Biologie à Grande Echelle laboratory (CEA/INSERM/Université Joseph Fourier), Génoscope (CEA/CNRS) and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Buried underground, this giant virus, which is harmless to humans and animals, has survived being frozen for more than 30,000 years. Although its size and amphora shape are reminiscent of Pandoravirus, analysis of its genome and replication mechanism proves that Pithovirus is very different. This work brings to three the number of distinct families of giant viruses.

In the families Megaviridae (represented in particular by Mimivirus, discovered in 2003) and Pandoraviridae, researchers thought they had classified the diversity of giant viruses (the only viruses visible under optical microscopy, since their diameter exceeds 0.5 microns). These viruses, which infect amoebae such as Acanthamoeba, contain a very large number of genes compared to common viruses (like influenza or AIDS, which only contain about ten genes). Their genome is about the same size or even larger than that of many bacteria.

By studying a sample from the frozen ground of extreme north-eastern Siberia, in the Chukotka autonomous region, researchers were surprised to discover a new giant virus more than 30,000 years old (contemporaneous with the extinction of Neanderthal man), which they have named Pithovirus sibericum. Because of its amphora shape, similar to Pandoravirus, the scientists initially thought that this was a new member -- albeit certainly ancient -- of this family. Yet genome analysis on Pithovirus showed that this is not the case: there is no genetic relationship between Pithovirus and Pandoravirus. Though it is large for a virus, the Pithovirus genome contains much fewer genes (about 500) than the Pandoravirus genome (up to 2,500). Researchers also analyzed the protein composition (proteome) of the Pithovirus particle (1..5 microns long and 0.5 microns wide) and found that out of the hundreds of proteins that make it up, only one or two are common to the Pandoravirus particle.

Another primordial difference between the two viruses is how they replicate inside amoeba cells. While Pandoravirus requires the participation of many functions in the amoeba cell nucleus to replicate, the Pithovirus multiplication process mostly occurs in the cytoplasm (outside the nucleus) of the infected cell, in a similar fashion to the behavior of large DNA viruses, such as those of the Megaviridae family. Paradoxically, in spite of having a smaller genome than Pandoravirus, Pithovirus seems to be less reliant on the amoeba's cellular machinery to propagate. The degree of autonomy from the host cell of giant viruses does not therefore appear to correlate with the size of their genome -- itself not related to the size of the particle that transports them.

In-depth analysis of Pithovirus showed that it has almost nothing in common with the giant viruses that have previously been characterized. This makes it the first member of a new virus family, bringing to three the number of distinct families of giant viruses known to date. This discovery, coming soon after that of Pandoravirus, suggests that amphora-shaped viruses are perhaps as diverse as icosahedral viruses, which are among the most widespread today. This shows how incomplete our understanding of microscopic biodiversity is when it comes to exploring new environments.

Finally, this study demonstrates that viruses can survive in permafrost (the permanently frozen layer of soil found in the Arctic regions) almost over geological time periods, i.e. for more than 30,000 years (corresponding to the Late Pleistocene). These findings have important implications in terms of public health risks related to the exploitation of mining and energy resources in circumpolar regions, which may arise as a result of global warming. The re-emergence of viruses considered to be eradicated, such as smallpox, whose replication process is similar to Pithovirus, is no longer the domain of science fiction. The probability of this type of scenario needs to be estimated realistically. With the support of the France-Génomique infrastructure, set up as part of the national Investments for the Future program, the "Information Génomique et Structurale" laboratory is already working on the issue via a metagenomic study of the permafrost.

While there is a collective fear for microorganisms for causing human diseases in particular, many of them are actually beneficiel in the field of food, vehicle and antibiotic production. Koyal Info Mag prides itself in its wide coverage of scientific news, discoveries and resources that caters to researchers, scientists, students, scholars, healthcare practitioners and various institutions.

The above article is a repost from ScienceDaily/a>

The Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - Dozens of University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) scientists and student researchers will present new research findings at the 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting at the Hawai‘i Convention Center on February 24-28.  This 17th biennial meeting will be the largest international assembly of oceanographers and other aquatic science researchers and policy makers, with attendance expected to exceed 4,000.

 

For a full list of sessions and presentations, visit: http://www.sgmeet.com/osm2014/.&nbsp; Conference registration is complimentary for members of the news media.

 

 

A selection of School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) highlights includes the following:

 

 

Science Research Sessions and Presentations:

Celebrating 25 years of sustained marine observations, scientists working at the open ocean field site Station ALOHA will share biological, chemical and physical oceanography discoveries deriving from Hawai‘i’s own unique ocean science field programs.  Station ALOHA was established by the Hawaiʻi Ocean Time-series (HOT) program in 1988, and has been visited on a monthly basis since that time.  The emerging data comprise one of the only existing records of decadal-scale ecosystem change in the North Pacific Ocean. "Time series research is more important than ever before; understanding planetary change requires high quality observations and measurements,” said Matthew Church, UHM Oceanography Professor and HOT Program Principle Investigator.  “Humans are influencing the oceans in many ways, and measurements made at Station ALOHA are helping us understand and document how ocean ecosystems are responding to these changes."  This session includes more than 25 presentations drawing from observations from present day back to 1988, including long-term changes and trends observed in ocean biology, chemistry, and physics.  Among the notable topics highlighted in this session include documenting ocean acidification, studies on time-varying changes in biodiversity, and the influence of local and regional climate on ocean ecosystem behavior around Hawai‘i.

 

Chip Fletcher, UHM Geology Professor and his team will describe their effort to monitor and evaluate beach erosion rates at the Royal Hawaiian Beach in Waikīkī. One year after a major sand replenishment program, the beach width appears to vary by location and by season, resulting in net erosion in eastern and western portions of beach.

 

In the “Story of Marine Debris from the 2011 Tsunami in Japan,” UHM International Pacific Research Center scientists Jan Hafner and Nikolai Maximenko will present the latest synthesis of modeling and observations over the 3 years tracking the debris. This synthesis has resulted in understanding the pathways of the drift from the debris. The improved ocean drift model can help locate marine debris, marine animals, and people lost at sea.

 

Other research presentations will focus on ocean acidification, sea-level rise and inundation, and climate change including extreme sea level variability due to El Nino events, among many other topics.

 

 

Education and Engagement:

UH Mānoa’s Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute are hosting a Youth Science Symposium on Tuesday, February 25, from 4-6 p.m. Nearly 20 middle and high school youth scientists will present posters of their research.

 

SOEST will share several programs aimed at recruiting Native Hawaiian students into ocean and earth science.  Funded by C-MORE and NSF, the Ocean TECH program engages middle school, high school and community college students in the ocean and earth sciences through technology, career pathways and interaction with career professionals.  Funded by the UHM Sea Grant College Program and offered in partnership with Kapiʻolani and Leeward Community Colleges, the SOEST Maile Mentoring Bridge supports Native Hawaiian students throughout their undergraduate years through mentoring relationships that offer encouragement and the sharing of academic and non-academic knowledge.

 

“Marine Microbiological Mysteries” is a new UHM Outreach College program designed for grades 9-12 to help foster interest in pursuing STEM careers. The hands-on learning opportunity at the Waikīkī Aquarium places microbiology in a real-world context.  This presentation is part of an OSM session titled "Sea-ing connections: Ocean science as a catalyst to inspire the next wave of young (preK-16) scientists and keep students engaged within and outside the classroom."

 

 

The Koyal Group Info Mag articles - A zircon crystal embedded in sandstone found on a sheep ranch in Australia is the oldest piece of the Earth’s crust to be discovered, shedding new light on our planet’s formation.

 

The zircon, described in the journal Nature Geoscience, is about 4.4 billion years old and much smaller than a single grain of rice. But the tiny crystal carries an outsize significance: It is evidence that by that point in its history, Earth had gone from a superheated ball of molten rock to a congealed surface eventually capable of supporting life.

“One of the main goals of the space program is to understand if there’s life elsewhere in the universe,” said John Valley, a University of Wisconsin professor who led the study, collaborating with scientists in Australia, Canada and Puerto Rico.

By studying how the conditions of life came together on our planet, scientists believe we will learn what to look for on other planets.

But the earliest rocks and first evidences of life have been subject to dispute over the years. Some scientists, for example, maintain that the earliest evidence of life is about 3.8 billion years old and found in Isua, Greenland. Skeptics, however, note that no fossils were found in the Greenland rock. They point instead to 3.5 billion-year-old evidence of life found in rocks in Pilbara, Australia.

 

That’s no small difference — 300 million years.

The age of the zircon described by the Valley team, however, does not appear to be in dispute. The Valley team used a new technique called atom-probe tomography, which allowed them to confirm the accuracy of the crystal’s age. The new instrument, made in Wisconsin, is so sensitive that researchers were able to identify the atomic number and mass of each atom in the sample.

“I think they have shown unequivocally, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this grain is that old,” said Samuel Bowring, an expert in the early history of the Earth and a geology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bowring was not involved in the new study.

 

“It’s only one grain, mind you,” he added, “but it’s very significant.”

 

Jim Mattinson, a professor emeritus in the department of earth science at University of California, Santa Barbara, said zircons have been found previously that were about the same age as the one in the current paper, but the earlier discoveries were met with skepticism.

 

“This paper drives a nail into that coffin (of doubt),” Mattinson said. “We’re really getting back as far as we can go in the Earth’s geologic records.”

Zircon crystals are composed mainly of the elements zirconium, silicon and oxygen. Small amounts of uranium also appear in zircon.

The uranium decays at a set rate, forming lead. Because of these characteristics, scientists can use the lead and any remaining uranium in a zircon crystal to calculate the age.

Zircon is found embedded in younger rock. Valley found the zircon used for the current study in sandstone collected in the arid Jack Hills of western Australia, a region known to contain some of the oldest pieces of the planet’s crust.

 

“The oldest rock in Australia was collected not far from where we were working,” Valley said.

 

Dating of the zircon helps clarify an early chapter in the Earth’s history. Scientists have theorized that one of the crucial early events occurred when an asteroid roughly the size of Mars struck a glancing blow to the Earth, vaporizing the mantle and crust. Dust from the collision merged to form the moon.

The enormous energy from the collision transformed the surfaces of the Earth and moon into oceans of molten rock. Both subsequently cooled. Zircon was one of the minerals formed when the planet cooled.

Although minerals also were formed as far back in history, what makes zircon so valuable to geologists is its ability to endure. Zircon is a very hard mineral with stable chemistry able to survive extreme temperatures.

 

 

“We like to say that zircons are forever,” Valley said. “They really persist in the rock record.”

Physicist (and Star Trek expert) Lawrence Krauss talks about the unpredictability of the future.

 

The Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - Lawrence Krauss is a busy man. A theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, Krauss has studied the universe, served on the science policy committee for Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, and crossed paths with intellectuals like Stephen Hawking and Christopher Hitchens. He has authored several books, including The Physics of Star Trek. In February 2014, Krauss took part in an American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium titled Where's My Flying Car? Science, Science Fiction, and a Changing Vision of the Future.

 

 

So, where is my flying car?

Your flying car is still in the dreams of people 50 years ago. You can feel bad that we don't have flying cars, that we're not living in hotels in space, but the real world intervenes. Certain [technological innovations] are just a lot harder, a lot more expensive.

 

At the same time, there's a flipside: The real things that have happened are much more interesting. The Internet is a clear example of how our lives have changed in ways we couldn't have imagined: a distributed information source, which is invisible to everyone, where you can access anything, and it's distributed throughout the whole world. Basically, communication is instantaneous.

 

When it comes to the things that people really want in science fiction—like space travel—the simplest things end up causing them not to happen. Humans are 100-pound bags of water, built to live on Earth.

We hoped for flying cars and got the Internet instead. What's to blame for the difference between our hopes and the reality we end up with instead?

 

I would say [innovations] almost never come from predictable places. If innovations were predictable, they wouldn't be discoveries. When people extrapolate into the future, they extrapolate [from] the known present. If I knew what the next big thing was, I'd be doing it now.

 

What have we done to the world? Climate change. Overpopulation. Global inequity. Perhaps a virus we set loose from the animal world by displacing so many exotic species, which could wipe us all out. These all either seem to be here already or looming in our near future.

 

The virus thing: I wouldn't stay up overnight on it. We're pretty robust; we've survived for four and a half million years.

 

 

So what does the future hold?

 

It looks like we're destroying the world as we know it. We certainly are entering Earth 2.0. But where that will go is not clear.

 

 

Are you hopeful for the future?

 

It depends on the day. I'm not very hopeful that humanity can act en masse to address what are now truly global problems that require a new way of thinking. As Einstein said when nuclear weapons were created: "Everything's changed save the way we think."

 

I think we need to change the way we think to address these global problems. Will it happen? Maybe kicking and screaming. My friend, the writer Cormac McCarthy, told me once: "I'm a pessimist, but that's no reason to be gloomy." In a sense, that's my attitude.

 

 

Five hundred years from now, will we be living on Mars?

 

Maybe. If we do space travel, it will tend to be one-way trips. Throughout human history, people have done these ridiculously difficult one-way voyages for one reason: because where they lived was so awful they were willing to get on a little wooden vessel that might sink and go across an ocean to some unknown place that they would probably never return from because it was so crummy where they were.

 

 

Maybe we'll do that for ourselves. We'll make the world so miserable that living in some harsh environment on Mars might seem attractive.

Physicist (and Star Trek expert) Lawrence Krauss talks about the unpredictability of the future.

The Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - Lawrence Krauss is a busy man. A theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, Krauss has studied the universe, served on the science policy committee for Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, and crossed paths with intellectuals like Stephen Hawking and Christopher Hitchens. He has authored several books, including The Physics of Star Trek. In February 2014, Krauss took part in an American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium titled Where's My Flying Car? Science, Science Fiction, and a Changing Vision of the Future.

 

So, where is my flying car?

Your flying car is still in the dreams of people 50 years ago. You can feel bad that we don't have flying cars, that we're not living in hotels in space, but the real world intervenes. Certain [technological innovations] are just a lot harder, a lot more expensive.

At the same time, there's a flipside: The real things that have happened are much more interesting. The Internet is a clear example of how our lives have changed in ways we couldn't have imagined: a distributed information source, which is invisible to everyone, where you can access anything, and it's distributed throughout the whole world. Basically, communication is instantaneous.

When it comes to the things that people really want in science fiction—like space travel—the simplest things end up causing them not to happen. Humans are 100-pound bags of water, built to live on Earth.

We hoped for flying cars and got the Internet instead. What's to blame for the difference between our hopes and the reality we end up with instead?

I would say [innovations] almost never come from predictable places. If innovations were predictable, they wouldn't be discoveries. When people extrapolate into the future, they extrapolate [from] the known present. If I knew what the next big thing was, I'd be doing it now.

What have we done to the world? Climate change. Overpopulation. Global inequity. Perhaps a virus we set loose from the animal world by displacing so many exotic species, which could wipe us all out. These all either seem to be here already or looming in our near future.

The virus thing: I wouldn't stay up overnight on it. We're pretty robust; we've survived for four and a half million years.

 

So what does the future hold?

It looks like we're destroying the world as we know it. We certainly are entering Earth 2.0. But where that will go is not clear.

 

Are you hopeful for the future?

It depends on the day. I'm not very hopeful that humanity can act en masse to address what are now truly global problems that require a new way of thinking. As Einstein said when nuclear weapons were created: "Everything's changed save the way we think."

I think we need to change the way we think to address these global problems. Will it happen? Maybe kicking and screaming. My friend, the writer Cormac McCarthy, told me once: "I'm a pessimist, but that's no reason to be gloomy." In a sense, that's my attitude.

 

Five hundred years from now, will we be living on Mars?

Maybe. If we do space travel, it will tend to be one-way trips. Throughout human history, people have done these ridiculously difficult one-way voyages for one reason: because where they lived was so awful they were willing to get on a little wooden vessel that might sink and go across an ocean to some unknown place that they would probably never return from because it was so crummy where they were.

 

Maybe we'll do that for ourselves. We'll make the world so miserable that living in some harsh environment on Mars might seem attractive.