- Rarely have science and nature dominated daily life and
generated so much debate as in 2005. It was a year of clashes, between
nature and man, science and religion, and sometimes even between scientists.
Along the way, some important and amazing discoveries were made.
-
- Did one issue emerge as the top story? LiveScience invites
you to vote on the most significant development in science and nature this
year.
-
- The Hurricane Nightmare Comes True
-
- The busiest hurricane season on record brought the most
intense Atlantic storm ever recorded and ran several days beyond its official
Nov. 30 end, while scientists provided the first solid evidence that global
warming might be fueling more powerful storms. These were all big stories
in and of themselves, yet none will stick with us like the memory of Katrina,
the most destructive storm ever to strike the United States and a long-predicted
nightmare for resident of New Orleans. Nature's wrath forced scientists
and officials to assess preparedness for other dramatic natural threats
the country could face.
-
- Evolution on Trial
-
- Intelligent design, which posits that an intelligent
being and not Darwin's theory of natural selection is responsible for some
of the most incredible variations in species, exploded into public view.
The Kansas school board voted against science, as did Alabama's when it
voted to tell students that evolution is controversial. Eight families
in Pennsylvania sued over the whole thing. And voters in one district ousted
school board members for inserting religion into science classes. Meanwhile,
scientific leaders broke a longstanding silence to defend evolution and
discredit intelligent design as being unscientific, impossible to prove,
and nothing more than cloaked creationism. Even the Vatican weighed in.
The issue promises to permeate discussions of science and religion as long
as the two exist.
-
- The 10th Planet?
-
- You might think the discovery of an object larger than
Pluto orbiting the Sun would automatically be hailed as the long-sought
10th planet. Not so fast, many astronomers said. This new world is one
of perhaps thousands out there that await discovery. Will we call them
all planets? Should Pluto even be considered a planet? In a weird twist
to the debate, the discoverer of the controversial object suggests we all
ignore the scientific debate and let culture decide. One has to wonder
if that's the sort of ambiguity science ought to promote.
-
- The Apocalypse, or Just Mother Nature?
-
- It's not your imagination: Natural disasters are becoming
more common. But don't blame Mother Nature; we humans are moving in droves
to disaster-prone coastlines and living in substandard structures. The
magnitude 7.6-earthquake that struck Pakistan and killed upwards of 80,000
people was just another example of our inability to deal with events that
are statistically normal. Christian televangelist Pat Robertson didn't
let science cloud his vision, however, when he said the quake and a busy
hurricane season might be signs that the Biblical apocalypse is near.
-
- Signs of Life on Mars?
-
- This story extends back to last year and looks like the
sort of mystery that'll keep scientists scratching their heads for years
to come. The air of Mars seems to contain pockets of methane in doses that
should not exist. Perhaps it's the belchings of subsurface microbes, European
astronomers said early this year. They support that view with new evidence
for blocks of underground ice in the same region as the methane. The ice
could be supplying the precious liquid water needed to support the biology,
they figure. Other astronomers think the reasoning is very speculative,
however.
-
- Rebuilding Humans
-
- The "Six Million Dollar Man." would appreciate
the printable skin that's coming out of special inkjet printers now. The
fictional bionic man, Steve Austin, was way ahead of scientists on synthetic
body parts, but he'd be pleased to see the progress in 2005 on prosthetic
limbs that humans might one day control with their minds. Monkeys were
made to operate a robotic arm with just their thoughts via a computer attached
to their brains. Further study found they treat the device as if it were
a natural appendage. Meanwhile, the U.S. Military said further research
into these devices would become a priority. No "fixing humans"
story gained more attention this year than the first partial face transplant.
-
- (Way) Back to Nature
-
- In one of the year's more offbeat suggestions, scientists
proposed introducing elephants, lions and camels to create a U.S. Ecological
History Park that would return parts of the country to conditions similar
to the distant past while also preserving animals that are threatened in
Africa. In Siberia, a similar project is already underway. Scientists are
working to restore a large area of wetlands and forest to the dry landscape
that existed more than 10,000 years ago by re-introducing herbivores and
predators they think will alter the biology and ecology. One goal: learn
what caused the woolly mammoths to go extinct. Meanwhile, another group
announced plans to search for frozen woolly mammoth sperm DNA, which they
would inject into a female elephant; after several generations of offspring
by controlled procedures, they would create a beast that is 88 percent
mammoth. Amid all this, another team decoded part of the genome of an extinct
bear!
-
- Our Lowly Ancestors
-
- A fresh analysis of two previously found skulls determined
they're 200,000 old, making them the oldest known examples of our species.
Yet fossil records indicate musical instruments, drawings, needles and
other sophisticated tools didn't appear until about 50,000 years ago, suggesting
Homo sapiens had a pretty lowbrow culture for 150,000 years. Well, evolution
takes time. Another team found the fossilized remains of what they think
is humankind's first walking ancestor, from 4 million years ago. Other
research confirmed that the oldest human ancestor, from the time when we
split with the apes, lived around 6 million years ago. Oh, and you have
to respect our relatively recent ancestors (the lowbrow folks) who we now
know lived among 10-foot-tall gorillas that have since gone extinct. Maybe
they were so busy running they had no time to paint or create alphabets.
-
- Total Neanderthals
-
- Anthropologists scrounged around museum halls to put
together bones from various specimens to make the first Neanderthal skeleton.
And the result surprised them: "As we stood back, we noticed one interesting
thing was that these are kind of a short, squat people," said Gary
Sawyer of the American Natural History Museum in New York. "These
guys had no waist at all-they were compact, dwarfy-like beings." Meantime
another team announced plans to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome from
fossil fragments.
-
- Super-Earth Discovered
-
- Astronomers expect to eventually find many Earth-sized
planets around other stars. But technology can't spot such small objects
yet. Pushing the limits of existing methods, researchers detected a world
just 7.5 times the mass of Earth orbiting another star and said it must
be rocky. This year marked the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the
first extrasolar planet around a normal star, and astronomers have gathered
enough data on about 150 planets since then to say, in the words of Geoff
Marcy, "I imagine most stars have terrestrial planets. It seems hard
not to form them."
-
- The Reality of Myths
-
- Finally, visual proof of the longstanding myth. Japanese
scientists got the first images of a giant squid in its natural environment.
In California, meanwhile, hundreds of huge squid washed ashore. And another
new species of large squid was captured on video. Otherwise, it was a typical
year for creatures of myth (some of which, like the squid, turn out to
be real, by the way), with Bigfoot fans staging a conference and scientists
exploring claims of a giant lake monster in Canada. Seems even scientists
like a good tale; one team found an ancient sea creature that looks to
be part crocodile, part T. rex and dubbed it Godzilla.
-
- Decoding the Software of Life
-
- It was a big year for genome decoding. Scientists deciphered
the DNA of man's best friend, along with humankind's closest relative,
the chimp. Such findings are becoming so routine, however, that you might
not have even noticed that the genome of rice was revealed, too. The ongoing
investigation into our own DNA, meanwhile, revealed that identical twins
are not so identical. Other researchers reported that about 9 percent of
human genes are undergoing rapid evolution.
-
- Shrinking the Invisible
-
- In the world of nanotechnology, which is measured in
molecules, engineers crafted some nifty miniature machinery this year.
Different teams created the world's smallest car, motor, robot, refrigerator
and fountain pen. One hope is that these tiny machines, invisible to the
human eye, will one day be used to deliver drugs into cells, perhaps to
destroy cancer or cure other ills. Technology tasks are envisioned too.
In one nifty breakthrough, researchers merged microbe and machine for the
first time, creating gold-plated bacteria that sense humidity.
-
- Birth of a Black Hole
-
- An explosion 2.2 billion years ago, whose light just
arrived at Earth this year, was detected and then monitored by an unprecedented
array of telescopes on the ground and in space operated by astronomers
furiously exchanging emails. Within moments, the scientists suspected they
had seen the birth of a black hole as it happened (well, except for that
previously mentioned time delay). The event was triggered by the merger
of two neutron stars, the thinking goes.
-
- Advancing Humanoids
-
- A longstanding goal of robotics is to make them more
humanlike. Several small steps in that direction were achieved this year.
One team developed robots that walk like us. A NASA researcher announced
robotic skin that can feel things. Another bot looks so humanlike you might
want researchers to stop this trend. Then again, who could complain about
a robotic bartender that pours and listens.
-
- Copycat Cloning
-
- Making replicas of animals has become so routine since
Dolly the sheep in 1996 that the story about Snuppy, the first cloned dog,
didn't have the bite it might once have had. Meanwhile, Dolly's creator
this year got a license to clone humans. Apparently one day your double
can walk your dog's double. All the advances in mucking with the formulas
for life led to an interesting clinical trial in which parents will pick
the sex of their babies (other research shows most women would choose if
given the option, but overall there was no clear preference). The year
ended on a notable down note (dare we say duplicitous?) when a South Korean
cloning pioneer admitted the ethically questionable practice of using some
of his own employee's eggs and then admitted there were errors in his landmark
science paper about having cloned human stem cells.
-
- First Photo of an Extrasolar Planet?
-
- A series of announcements about the possible first picture
of a planet around another star ended up in a debate that has yet to be
resolved. The pictures are real, but astronomers can't agree on the masses
of the objects in the images or, for that matter, how to state the difference
between large planets and small stars. We'll have to wait for history to
tell us if this was a big story or not.
-
- Toward Immortality
-
- "I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could
oscillate between being biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely."
That's what eccentric researcher Aubrey de Gray, who thinks aging can be
cured, told LiveScience in an interview this year. De Grey also runs the
Methuselah Mouse prize for breakthroughs in extending the lives of mice,
which researchers hope will spill over into progress to slow human aging.
The purse of the M Prize, as it is called, grew beyond $1 million in 2005.
As for hard science, one study showed that the buildup of mutated DNA triggers
aging in mice. Another found stimulation of a certain gene in mice seems
to delay bone weakening, artery clogging and loss of muscle fitness. Modern
medicine is already allowing life expectancy to creep up, and it hit an
all-time high in America this year. Ray Kurzweil, a computer scientist
and writer, explained that his plan to live forever involves not tailgating,
but taking 250 supplements and drinking lots of alkaline water and green
tea.
-
- Protecting Ourselves
-
- Some day, scientists have been telling us for some years
now, we'll have to deal with an incoming asteroid or comet that would destroy
civilization at worst or wipe out a city at least. Big impacts have occurred
before, and there will be more. But we don't know enough about space rocks
and their composition to plan properly for deflecting or destroying such
a menace. Turnabout proved to be fair play when NASA's Deep Impact mission
slammed a probe into Comet Tempel 1 on the 4th of July. The upshot? This
comet was fluffy, unlike others that have been studied up close. Meanwhile,
a group of astronauts and scientists prodded NASA to visit asteroid Apophis,
which has a slight chance of hitting us a few decades hence. NASA's response:
A purely scientific mission might be considered, but we have plenty of
time to mount a diversion if further observations show this thing would
really hit.
-
- Global Warming Heats Up
-
- We can all stop arguing about whether the climate is
changing. Evidence is overwhelming, from shrinking glaciers to melting
polar ice caps and seas rising at twice the rate of the pre-industrial
era. Animals are changing migration and mating patterns; in the North,
125 lakes disappeared; river ice is melting sooner in spring. This year
is expected to be the hottest, stormiest and driest on record. The big
remaining question is how much of the trend is natural (scientists admitted
they know little about the Sun's role!) and how much is exacerbated by
greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, a host of studies made dire predictions
about the inevitability of rising temperatures and swamped coastlines over
the next century. Nasty side effects were predicted: more intense rainstorms;
worse droughts; stronger hurricanes; increased allergies; ice-free arctic
summers; and economic costs. A couple novel solutions were proposed: altering
airline flights and lofting a ring of miniature satellites to shade the
equator. Tempers rose in 2005, too, with the year closing on a low note
from the perspective of more than 150 nations who pledged to do something
about the problem, without the support of the United States or China.
-
- Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and
scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience
reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and stimulating
for people on the go. Check out our collection of Amazing Images, Image
Galleries, Interactive Features, Trivia and more. Get cool gadgets at the
new LiveScience Store, sign up for our free daily email newsletter and
check out our RSS feeds today!
-
- Copyright © 2005 SPACE.com.
|