And also: crossing the 400 parts per million mark of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, ancient water on Mars, and Voyager 1 exited the solar system; Planets in the habitable zone, and the first predator discovered in the 21st century
This year was a year full of news in many and diverse scientific fields. Among the thousand articles published this year on the Ydan website, we have selected what may be the most important news with long-term consequences.
The meteor that horrified Russia
Sometimes it takes timing for a scientific topic to hit the headlines. At the beginning of the year, the scientists did a build-up for the upcoming passage of an asteroid known as 2012 DA14, which is about 70 meters in diameter near the Earth. It is a relatively large asteroid that approached us less than the distance at which the communication satellites are located, but nature had a different story to tell us that day, a fragment of another asteroid, albeit smaller, He chose that very day to crash on Earth with a loud noise and a shockwave that caused thousands of windows to explode and the injury of over 1,500 people in the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia. This meteor is probably the most documented celestial event because it was also photographed from cell phone cameras, but mainly from front cameras of vehicles, the installation of which is required by the requirement of the insurance companies in Russia.
A larger fragment of it was later found in a frozen lake. This is the largest impact on Earth since the meteor explosion in the air over Tungaska in Siberia in 1908.
Following this crash, interest in near-Earth objects and their risk increased, something that may help in preparing operations to study these objects, and perhaps even in repelling those of them that could endanger the planet.
The skull in Georgia
Not far from there, in Demanisi, Georgia, it was discovered by an international group of researchers, including Prof. Yoel Reck from Tel Aviv University The most perfect skull of one of the first individuals in the Homo lineage, This is the fifth specimen of an ancient hominid, a bipedal primate mammal that walked upright at this site. The researchers estimate that this is an individual of the species Homo erectus, the like of which was found in Africa and Asia, and they also changed the definition of several species from the same period - Homo regaster, Homo rhodolphensis and Homo habilis as different individuals of a single species - Homo erectus - the upright man.
This is a significant change compared to the current classification of man. The opponents, on the other hand, think that even if the skull is important, they do not agree with its membership in the Homo erectus species.
XNUMXD printed gun
The organization known as Defense Distributed - defense for all - managed to create diagrams of a gun that can be created with a home 10D printer and one of its people also demonstrated it. Later, Channel XNUMX investigators also demonstrated that the gun can be inserted through the Knesset's security systems and even came close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The person who specialized in the issue is Dr.Roey Tsezana, until recently a researcher in the technological and social forecasting unit at Tel Aviv University. In his book "The Guide to the Future" he writes that as soon as every person can print such a gun for himself, at the cost of purchasing a XNUMXD printer and another hundred shekels for the material, the police forces will be forced to prepare again for the threats before them. For organized crime families, a XNUMXD printer costs pennies. And if they can equip all their soldiers with weapons that are not detected by a metal detector, what's good." However, since law enforcement is aware of the problem, they will find a solution to it.
For an article on the subject on the "Other Science" website
Human cloning
For the first time human cloning - for the purposes of healing a child with a genetic disease. Researchers from the Oregon Medical and Scientific University took skin cells from an eight-year-old boy who suffers from a rare genetic disease and inserted their kernels into a donor's egg cell instead of the egg nucleus, thereby cloning an embryo for the first time in history, from which they took lines of stem cells containing the sick child's DNA, so that now it can be They will be used in various experiments, in the way of finding a cure or good treatments for the disease, the identity of which has not been disclosed.
A landmark in global warming
In May of this year, For the first time in history, scientists measured a concentration of 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere At a measuring station of the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) in Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Before the industrial revolution, this greenhouse gas concentration was 280 parts per million. Such levels have not been in the atmosphere in the last 3 million years.
You don't have to be a scientist to feel the results of warming - changes in the amount of rain, huge storms (Katrina in 2005, Super typhoon Haiyan which hit the Philippines in November 2013), deserts, blizzards created due to the weakening of the Gulf Stream as a result of filling the ocean with fresh water and more.
The public refuses to believe the warnings and now the reason has also been revealed, The British Guardian reports that conservative parties, mainly in the US, invest a billion dollars a year to spread the denial of global warming and lobby to prevent any activity on the part of the government and international bodies. Several years ago we already reported on news spread by the Greenpeace organization according to which two brothers who own refineries in Texas (the Koch brothers) took over the Republican Party and financed only the campaigns of candidates who deny global warming, which turned it into an anti-scientific party. They also tried to take over the liberal newspaper Los Angeles Times this year, among other things, to tilt its scientific line in the field of the environment.
This year also saw the release of the IPCC's fifth report - The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and it was made clear that the probability that man is causing the observed warming in recent times has risen to 95%.
Mars on the crosshairs
About a year ago, the robotic all-terrain vehicle Curiosity landed on Mars. Life is not even designed to be found but he has certainly managed to decipher rock compositions that bring closer proof that it could at least have supported life in the past. Among other things, this is mortar found in the 'Yellow Knife Bay' area, and other soil containing more than 2% water, and we also learned about the composition of the Martian atmosphere, which is 1% thicker than ours.
and meanwhile, A private company called Mars 1 announced its intention to send four lucky astronauts to Mars in 2025 to inaugurate the human colony there. There is still no technology that will allow them to be returned, and those who leave will have to stay there. Over 200 thousand people registered for the competition. And in the meantime, another group, Inspiration Mars Foundation wants to send a couple on a flight that will attack Mars and return to Earth, I wonder if a husband and wife will be able to be together in a closed facility for over 500 days?
Voyager 1 has left the solar system
a little further, Voyager 1 officially passed the edge of the solar system this year. Of course, there is no boundary line, so the scientists had to figure out for themselves whether the spacecraft entered the unmapped area. Voyager 1, which was launched together with its twin sister Voyager 2 in 1977, made history when it was the first man-made object to leave the heliosphere, the magnetic boundary that separates the Sun, the planets and the solar wind from the rest of the galaxy, only in retrospect was an article published in the journal Science according to which the event took place on August 25, 2012.
The Planck Space Telescope photographed the infant universe in greater detail than ever before And it turned out that the universe is 100 million years older than previously thought.
Planets in the life zone
The Kepler space telescope is responsible this year for the discovery of hundreds of planets outside the solar system, Three of them are relatively small and are in the life zone of their Sun, and therefore can theoretically be a home for life. Regardless of Kepler, scientists have discovered other planets with the potential for life around the Glace system 667. Kepler showed that most of the stars in our immediate environment have planets, but he himself suffered from problems that caused his shutdown, so far 135 planets that he discovered since his launch in 2009 have been confirmed, and there are more Over 2,000 candidates to follow.
Animals
In June, the discovery of the oldest primate skeleton - Archicebus Achilles - was announced A 7 cm long creature that lived 55 million years ago.
In Colombia, scientists have discovered a creature that looks like a cross between a bear and a cat known as Aligito - This is the first carnivorous mammal identified in the Americas in 35 years.
The most viewed articles on the science website in 2013
- Raymond Lowe - the man who turned design into a science
- 161st birthday of Julius Richard Petri - Petri plate key
- 130 years since the birth of Franz Kafka - about cockroaches and humans, following the story "The Incarnation"
- The Roswell incident - the mystery and the solution
- Today is the first day of winter - the shortest day of the year
- Rosalind Franklin - the scientist whose fame was stolen from her
- In Siberia, the body of a woolly mammoth was found with blood flowing from it
- Will the asteroid that will pass by the Earth today (Friday) in the evening experience seismic activity?
- Polio - the twenty things every parent must know
- "Galileo was wrong: the sun revolves around the earth"
