Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking. The
Speaker 1: podcast said looks at the future and says she blinded
Speaker 1: me with science. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Focal, I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. I feel you've already done that one. It's okay,
Speaker 1: I'll do it again because you know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Science were and we're looking back on science. It is
Speaker 1: the end of two thousand thirteen. We wanted to look
Speaker 1: back at some of the big stories of two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen that kind of relate to stuff we've talked about
Speaker 1: all throughout the year on Forward Thinking. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: been an awesome year for for science and technological development.
Speaker 1: Amazing year. If you look at just a small list
Speaker 1: of the stuff that happened in two thousand thirteen, you'll
Speaker 1: realize that this podcast, if we were to try and
Speaker 1: cover all of them, would last approximately seventeen hours. So
Speaker 1: we have decided that we're going to just pick that
Speaker 1: leapt out at us. These are not necessarily the most
Speaker 1: important or most world changing stories. It's not a comprehensive
Speaker 1: list by any means, but this is the we We
Speaker 1: each took a section of the year and kind of
Speaker 1: looked at some of the big stories that happened during
Speaker 1: that part of the year and singled out some stuff
Speaker 1: that we really wanted to talk about and just kind
Speaker 1: of give an overview of some of the amazing things
Speaker 1: that have happened so far in two thousand thirteen. Also,
Speaker 1: I should say we are actually recording this on December seventeen,
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, so there's still some of two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen left to go. Yeah, if the Aliens land sometime
Speaker 1: between now and December or so when this show airs, yeah,
Speaker 1: it won't make the list. And also it's because the
Speaker 1: Aliens don't want us to talk about it. So uh,
Speaker 1: it turns out that I I drew the first part
Speaker 1: of the year, the first third of the year. So
Speaker 1: let's start off with January. And January started off like
Speaker 1: gang Busters and the astronomy world guys, I mean like
Speaker 1: crazy amounts of astronomy going on, Like people were just
Speaker 1: constantly looking up and wondering what was out there and
Speaker 1: finding new stuff. Well, you know, in December you get
Speaker 1: a solstice and and that's that's fun for people who
Speaker 1: are obsessed with the sky, and but by come January,
Speaker 1: you're you're recovering from that. Okay, what else is out there?
Speaker 1: What's going on? So lots of different reports that all
Speaker 1: kind of are related came out in January. For example,
Speaker 1: Caltech researchers reported that based upon the information that we
Speaker 1: have gleaned from the Milky Way, that uh, they figured
Speaker 1: that for every star that's in the Milky Way, there's
Speaker 1: probably at least one planet, not necessarily meaning that every
Speaker 1: star has a planet in orbit around it, but that
Speaker 1: that's the ratio that works out, which means that we
Speaker 1: probably have between a hundred and four hundred billion exo
Speaker 1: planets out there in the Milky Way and the Milky
Speaker 1: Way galaxy, just in our galaxy. Harvard Smithsonian Center for
Speaker 1: Astrophysics estimated that there are at least quote seventeen billion
Speaker 1: end quote Earth sized exo planets in the Milky Way. Now,
Speaker 1: that does not necessarily mean that these plants are in
Speaker 1: what we call the Goldilocks zone, though there was an
Speaker 1: interesting paper about that. Later this year, yep Uh and
Speaker 1: some Kepler astronomers discovered an earthlike exo planet called k
Speaker 1: O I one seven two point oh two, which could uh,
Speaker 1: it was similar to Earth. It was in that Goldilocks
Speaker 1: zone and they say, so far as of January of
Speaker 1: this year, it was the most likely candidate for a
Speaker 1: planet that could potentially support alien life. A lot of
Speaker 1: qualifiers there, because obviously right now we can't tell if
Speaker 1: in fact there is anything there. But it was one
Speaker 1: of those where they said, look, here's an example of
Speaker 1: a plant that could potentially be a planet supports life
Speaker 1: as we understand it here on Earth. Big exciting news
Speaker 1: and all of that, of course kind of related, which
Speaker 1: is why I grouped them together. Also in January, did
Speaker 1: you guys see the story about scientists figuring out how
Speaker 1: to cool down gas to quote below absolute zero end quote?
Speaker 1: I have not. I don't even understand. I don't think that. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: First of all, I sort of object to that particular
Speaker 1: type of reporting, saying below absolute zero. Absolute zero essentially
Speaker 1: means that you have a system where there is no
Speaker 1: energy there, you have no molecular movement. Yeah, it's essentially
Speaker 1: a universal constant, the way that the speed of light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the it's like the coldest something can get.
Speaker 1: If you think of cold as movement within a system.
Speaker 1: So this particular research study used lasers and some evaporative
Speaker 1: cooling on atoms to create negative temperature. And in this case,
Speaker 1: what they mean by negative temperature is if you think
Speaker 1: of a classic system, all right, most of the atoms
Speaker 1: in a classic stable system are low energy atoms. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you add energy to that system, some of those
Speaker 1: atoms jump up to a higher energy level and they
Speaker 1: get a little chaotic, get a little crazy, start moving
Speaker 1: all over the place. So in a negative temperature system,
Speaker 1: it's the opposite. In your average system, most of the
Speaker 1: atoms are high energ g. So the only atoms that
Speaker 1: are not really adhering to this are the few low
Speaker 1: energy atoms. So if you add energy into a negative
Speaker 1: temperature system, you then boost those few low energy atoms
Speaker 1: up into high energy and it becomes more stable. So
Speaker 1: it's the opposite of what we would think of with
Speaker 1: a classic system with positive temperature. And that's what they
Speaker 1: really mean by this negative temperature. It's that the physics
Speaker 1: themselves behave in a way opposite to what we would
Speaker 1: see in a classic system. So it's not that it's
Speaker 1: colder than absolute zero that somehow you have negative movement.
Speaker 1: It's that the actual laws of how the system behave
Speaker 1: is inverted from the way it would be in a
Speaker 1: classic system with a lot of low energy atoms. So
Speaker 1: I think in this case there was a lot of
Speaker 1: confusing reporting going on where uh, you know, some terms
Speaker 1: we're getting used in a very casual manner that ended
Speaker 1: up confusing things. But generally speaking, I mean it's an
Speaker 1: amazing news story. I just don't know the it was
Speaker 1: necessarily reported in the most understand as many deep science
Speaker 1: news stories happen to. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we can't
Speaker 1: all be forward thinking, right, I mean we can't. I
Speaker 1: just told us to a higher standard. I am joking people,
Speaker 1: so don't don't get mad at me. Another great story
Speaker 1: in January, so any C and Corning paired up to
Speaker 1: create a multi core fiber optic cable that was capable
Speaker 1: of transmitting one quadrillion bits of data also known as
Speaker 1: a pet a bit in one second. That's a huge
Speaker 1: amount of information. Yeah, one thousand terror bits of information
Speaker 1: in one second over a cable. They said that this
Speaker 1: has the potential of being able to maintain a speed
Speaker 1: like that over a cable that's as long as fifty kilometers.
Speaker 1: I believe We talked about this in our speed of
Speaker 1: Communication video, and it's pretty phenomenal stuff, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is where you're able It's it's you know,
Speaker 1: we all know that really this is going at the
Speaker 1: speed of light essentially more or less, but it's the
Speaker 1: amount of information that you're able to pass through. Is
Speaker 1: the throughput as opposed to the speed, Right, that's what
Speaker 1: That was the point we made in that episode. And
Speaker 1: in fact, a lot of the things I'm talking about
Speaker 1: kind of relate to episodes we've talked about in the past,
Speaker 1: which I just thought it was kind of cool to
Speaker 1: look back on this stuff. The way they did this
Speaker 1: was they created a triangular structure inside the fiber optics
Speaker 1: that would allow you to have multi phases of light
Speaker 1: passed through at the same time, so that the different
Speaker 1: light would not interfere with one another. So you could
Speaker 1: pass multiple pieces of information through the same core all
Speaker 1: the all the same time, and of course at at
Speaker 1: light speed. So it's pretty phenomenal stuff. Uh. January was
Speaker 1: also in deep space Industries announced that they had plans
Speaker 1: for asteroid mining. He had a big episode on asteroid mining. UH.
Speaker 1: They would launch the first spacecraft, the plan is to
Speaker 1: launch it in twift and that is not necessarily a
Speaker 1: mining spacecraft, but a survey spacecraft. UM. The School of
Speaker 1: Medicine at the University of St. Andrew's used the geometry
Speaker 1: of light to pull objects towards the source of light. Man,
Speaker 1: we should have done an episode about tractor beams, Yes,
Speaker 1: we did. Yeah, a lot of these were kind of
Speaker 1: the inspiration for those early forward thinking episodes, and so
Speaker 1: you should definitely go back and check those out, and
Speaker 1: we've done. We did a full podcast about this too.
Speaker 1: We talked about tractor beams, both the science fiction version
Speaker 1: and the science fact version, which is pretty cool. I
Speaker 1: believe that's the one where we consulted Wiki PA. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And I think, Lauren, I think you have something that
Speaker 1: you want to talk about in January two before I
Speaker 1: move on to February, Yeah, I wanted to mention that
Speaker 1: was the month that that Rice University researchers announced that
Speaker 1: they had created this or well, that they had used
Speaker 1: a wet spinning method of creating carrent carbon nanotube thread
Speaker 1: that UM that can be used to both suspend and
Speaker 1: power a lamp. And and I've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: I'm seriously infatuated with it. Um that the wet spinning
Speaker 1: method lets you dissolve clumps of carbon nanotubes and kind
Speaker 1: of squish them out into a thread, then wind it
Speaker 1: up and dry it out. And um, the resulting thread
Speaker 1: is macroscopic. It's like human hair sized. It can be
Speaker 1: hundreds of meters long. It has the connectivity of metal,
Speaker 1: the strength of carbon fiber. And yeah, you can you
Speaker 1: can watch a video of them both suspending and powering
Speaker 1: a lamp with it. And this is super cool because
Speaker 1: you know, before creating carbon nanotubes was one of those
Speaker 1: processes where we couldn't do a lot of it, and
Speaker 1: certainly not very long carbon nanotube chains of them would
Speaker 1: be would still be microscopic or even smaller than microscopic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this was an incredible development and has the potential
Speaker 1: to be truly transformative in future applications. In many applications.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we just did an episode about clothing, like, like,
Speaker 1: imagine entire pieces of cloth that are woven out of
Speaker 1: out of this kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine, to tell you the truth. It
Speaker 1: would be amazing to see and this could potentially be
Speaker 1: the groundwork for that. So moving on to a February,
Speaker 1: that's when the curiosity rover. You remember that little guy,
Speaker 1: he's adorable or it's adorable, shitt and anthropomorphize it. Uh,
Speaker 1: the wheeling around on Mars Chicken out for possible signs
Speaker 1: of Martian life, as well as just doing surveys geological surveys.
Speaker 1: Really it's a geologic coal device, but you know it's
Speaker 1: looking for other stuff too. Uh. It used a drill
Speaker 1: to get a deep rock sample. Is the first time
Speaker 1: we ever got a deep rock sample from a plant
Speaker 1: that was not Earth, So that's kind of cool. It
Speaker 1: bore a six point four centimeter hole into a target
Speaker 1: rock and scooped out dust for analysis and determined it well.
Speaker 1: It was able to determine the age of the rock, uh,
Speaker 1: within a within a narrow range. That narrow range being
Speaker 1: between three point eight six and four point five six
Speaker 1: billion years old. Sounds like it's about as old as
Speaker 1: the Earth. To give it take a billion years on
Speaker 1: that one. That's a pretty well anyway, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Also in February, the Large Hadron Collider shut down for maintenance,
Speaker 1: which was a planned shut down, although not just maintenance,
Speaker 1: but also to uh to address some problems that were
Speaker 1: kind of a faulty design issues so that they can
Speaker 1: fix that up. Once that all gets fixed up and
Speaker 1: it ends up coming back online, it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: two year hiatus, but once it comes back online, it
Speaker 1: will be operating at approximately twice as much power as before,
Speaker 1: so we'll be able to have much higher power collisions.
Speaker 1: And as you collide these particles at higher and higher
Speaker 1: energy levels, you get to see more stuff. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they already that this kind of dips into March,
Speaker 1: but they already had announced that they felt fairly certain
Speaker 1: that the mysterious particle they had detected with the Large
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider was in fact the Higgs boson, which is
Speaker 1: the particle that explains why matter has mass. So you know,
Speaker 1: you can only maybe we'll start to learn more about
Speaker 1: dark energy and dark matter once it comes back online
Speaker 1: in two years. UM. Now, as far as the scientists
Speaker 1: who work at CERN, don't worry about them. Their jobs
Speaker 1: are secure because they have terabytes and terabytes and terabytes
Speaker 1: of data to sift through while the LHC is offline,
Speaker 1: so they've got plenty of work. And the last story
Speaker 1: I have for February is that this is a this
Speaker 1: is my feel good feature because this is one of
Speaker 1: those things that I want is Victor Mattivets is a
Speaker 1: computer science grad student at the University of Illinois Chicago
Speaker 1: built a body suit that has haptic feedback system built
Speaker 1: into it and he calls it the spider Since Suit
Speaker 1: after our favorite friend Web Slinger. Yeah, spider Man. So
Speaker 1: so the Spidy Sinse suit has haptic feedback built into
Speaker 1: it and can detect when you come close to an
Speaker 1: obstacle or something is coming close to you. And the
Speaker 1: way he tested it was he took people who were
Speaker 1: wearing the suit, put blindfolds on them and had people
Speaker 1: rush up to them, and gave all the people with
Speaker 1: the body suit little cardboard ninja stars, and he said,
Speaker 1: of the time they were throwing the stars right at
Speaker 1: the people who are coming at them, because the feedback
Speaker 1: would be located in the same like giving you an
Speaker 1: idea of what direction the person or thing was coming from.
Speaker 1: And while this was kind of a funny way of
Speaker 1: showing off this technology, the plan is to use it
Speaker 1: for people who have visual impairment so that they can
Speaker 1: get around their environments better, and it actually uses ultra
Speaker 1: sound technology. It projects out ultrasound signals and has tiny
Speaker 1: little microphones embedded in the suit that pick up the
Speaker 1: reflection of the signals. So it's kind of like echolocation
Speaker 1: in a way. I was going to say, this sounds
Speaker 1: a lot more to me like Daredevil than Spider Man specifically.
Speaker 1: But well, the spiky sense of someone about the swing
Speaker 1: of a fist that your head, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: get it. I get it was the comics movies. But
Speaker 1: I was thinking you were going to say that the
Speaker 1: suit allows you to capture insects and liquefy them into
Speaker 1: precious fluids that you then derived nutrition from. No, not
Speaker 1: this one. I kind of want that suit. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: kind of relates back to our our discussion about bug burgers.
Speaker 1: But yeah, let's let's move on show we Okay. March
Speaker 1: um So March, you know I mentioned arid the Higgs boson.
Speaker 1: That's when certain announced that the particle they had discovered
Speaker 1: they were reasonably certain it was the Higgs boson. But
Speaker 1: March was also the month when there was a report
Speaker 1: about another research project from cal Tech, this time one
Speaker 1: involving self healing circuits. Now I once again I kind
Speaker 1: of object to the terminology here. Uh, it's super awesome
Speaker 1: work that was done. I don't necessarily think of it
Speaker 1: as self healing unless you think of the circuit as just,
Speaker 1: you know, it heals in that it's still capable of
Speaker 1: doing what it's supposed to do even after its suffered damage,
Speaker 1: because it's not that it repairs the damage. What happens
Speaker 1: instead is that they built circuits that if you were
Speaker 1: to damage the circuits and they used a laser to
Speaker 1: do it, it could reroute whatever was going on, so
Speaker 1: that the circuit could still fulfill its function even with
Speaker 1: that damage there. So it's not like it fixed the damage.
Speaker 1: It was just able to work despite the damage. I
Speaker 1: really just thought of it as resilient. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: have any specific bullet points on them. But later in
Speaker 1: the year, there was a lot of interesting polymer research
Speaker 1: into you know, non conducive materials, but materials that could,
Speaker 1: in fact, given given a certain amount of stress, that
Speaker 1: nickel alloy that would repair micro tears if you were to,
Speaker 1: uh to apply kinetic pressure to the alloy. That was
Speaker 1: really cool stuff too. But April that's when the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: General Hospital scientists grew rap kidneys in a lab. So
Speaker 1: what they what they did was they took some kidneys
Speaker 1: from deceased rats. They used detergent to strip away all
Speaker 1: the cells, the kidney cells, so what was left was
Speaker 1: the connective tissue like the blood vessel tissue and everything
Speaker 1: else that was left. But everything else was stripped away.
Speaker 1: They then used some a combination of human umbilical vein
Speaker 1: cells to line the blood cell connective tissue and kidney
Speaker 1: cells collected from newborn rats to try and rebuild kidneys.
Speaker 1: And then they implanted those new rebuilt kidneys into living
Speaker 1: rats and it worked. Now, this is actually worked. That's
Speaker 1: been done for a while. It's not like this was
Speaker 1: just done. Now. The work was published this year, but
Speaker 1: it dates. The project itself dates back to two thousand eight. Uh.
Speaker 1: Couple downsides. The rebuilt kidneys do not work as well
Speaker 1: as your normal kidneys would. In fact, for the rats,
Speaker 1: that works at about a third of the efficiency. But
Speaker 1: you know, for for dialysis, the percentage of efficiency is
Speaker 1: somewhere around fIF before you get put on dialysis, so
Speaker 1: it's actually above the dialysis threshold. So it already meets that. Now,
Speaker 1: granted this is for rats, it's not for humans, and
Speaker 1: the scientists were very quick to point out that elite
Speaker 1: from rat to human is incredibly complex and that that
Speaker 1: this approach would not be something that they could easily
Speaker 1: pour over to humans. It's more of a a you know,
Speaker 1: learning as we go. Uh. They said that in order
Speaker 1: for it to make a true working human kidney, they
Speaker 1: would need to learn more about steering stem cells so
Speaker 1: that they developed into very specific types of tissue so
Speaker 1: that way you have a good possible transplant oregan. So
Speaker 1: we're still years away. In fact, the scientist says that
Speaker 1: he thinks we're decades away from seeing this being used
Speaker 1: as a way for human transplant, you know, to actually
Speaker 1: grow replacement organs. However, he says, we're gonna learn so
Speaker 1: much along the way about how these organs repair themselves
Speaker 1: that that alone will be really useful. And um, that's
Speaker 1: all I have. I'm ready for someone to pick up
Speaker 1: in May. I mean, I could mention the fact that
Speaker 1: IBM made this cute stop motion animation by manipulating single
Speaker 1: atoms and taking pictures of the single atoms using an
Speaker 1: electron uh telling microscope. And it was a boy in
Speaker 1: his atom and it was adorable. But that's just my
Speaker 1: own favorite little story from me. It sounds like you
Speaker 1: did mention it. I guess I did. Ye. So in May,
Speaker 1: pretty big breakthrough human stem cells created by cloning, right,
Speaker 1: that's huge. Yeah. So it was a paper presented called
Speaker 1: human embryonic stem cells derived by somatic cell nuclear transfer
Speaker 1: and that was by schukrat me tell Ipo. I think
Speaker 1: I said that right, hopefully, But basically he was working
Speaker 1: at the Organ Health and Science University in Beaverton. Oregan
Speaker 1: and his team was able to create embryon extend stem
Speaker 1: cells specific to the patient through cloning. So big for
Speaker 1: therapeutic cloning in the future, big research promise there. In
Speaker 1: June they had the initiation of Google's Project Loon, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Google Loon was, uh it still is a project that
Speaker 1: Google is looking into to provide WiFi too hard to
Speaker 1: reach locations using these balloons that carry the transmitters essentially
Speaker 1: and they float in the stratosphere and you would use
Speaker 1: hundreds of these things to create WiFi networks into areas
Speaker 1: that otherwise would never get this this kind of service.
Speaker 1: Lauren and I talked about this on an episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff and we were absolutely I don't know if
Speaker 1: Charmed amused by the story of the the Alpha launch,
Speaker 1: where all right, we're basically Google men in black showed
Speaker 1: up at this nice sheep farmer's house in New Zealand
Speaker 1: and said, Uh, we want to install this thing. We
Speaker 1: can't tell you what it does. Yeah, we just want
Speaker 1: to put this thing on your roof, but we can't
Speaker 1: tell you what it's for, what it does. We can't
Speaker 1: tell you who you're with or who we're with. Do
Speaker 1: we less do it? And they said, right, and look
Speaker 1: into this light. Yeah. So then they installed it and
Speaker 1: then uh tested it out and everything was working, and
Speaker 1: then they told they came back and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you've got WiFi. Yeah, They're like wow, And so they
Speaker 1: hooked up their computers to the WiFi and it worked.
Speaker 1: So it's a a project that is still being uh
Speaker 1: kind of unfolded. It's really interesting stuff. Though. Also in June,
Speaker 1: didn't we have a really big Supreme Court ruling? Yes,
Speaker 1: we did place out on the science turf. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that that I know
Speaker 1: a lot of scientists and doctors were very eager to
Speaker 1: see happen because it settled a question about whether or
Speaker 1: not companies could patent human genes. I mean, genetic study
Speaker 1: is is hitting you know, a furious pace right in
Speaker 1: research facilities. There's a lot of potential to treat various
Speaker 1: diseases or to diagnose diseases, and there there's a lot
Speaker 1: of incentive for companies to develop ways of doing this
Speaker 1: because it's you know, it's a complicated UH area that
Speaker 1: very few companies can get a head start in. But
Speaker 1: of course if you have that ability to head start,
Speaker 1: then you want to protect that by patenting the heck
Speaker 1: of the stuff, including human genes. Well, there was a
Speaker 1: Supreme Court hearing where some scientists and doctors challenged patents
Speaker 1: held by a company called Myriad Genetics and specifically the
Speaker 1: genes that they were interested in correlated to risk of
Speaker 1: hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. And the sciences doctors were saying,
Speaker 1: we want to be able to develop our tests so
Speaker 1: that we can test women for this and and screen
Speaker 1: them for it effectively. But if you hold, if this
Speaker 1: company holds the patents on it, we can't do that
Speaker 1: without first going through this company. So it's restricting people,
Speaker 1: uh and their ability to get quality healthcare. And so
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court sided with the scientists and doctors. It
Speaker 1: was a unanimous decision. They said that you cannot patent
Speaker 1: something that is occurring naturally. You can't do that. So
Speaker 1: you can't discover something that no one was able. Even
Speaker 1: if you were able to isolate that gene, you can't
Speaker 1: patent the gene because it occurs naturally. What you can do,
Speaker 1: they said, was if you create something synthetically, like you
Speaker 1: create synthetic d n A, and you create genes this way,
Speaker 1: some sort of synthetic gene that you can patent, So
Speaker 1: you can patty your dinosaurs. But not if you're able
Speaker 1: to recreate dinosaurs synthetic means, which is what you would
Speaker 1: have to do, because there's no surviving genetic information that
Speaker 1: we could so that you know of well, you're not
Speaker 1: going to get it from a mosquito trapped namber, so
Speaker 1: that's already been disproven. Look, you don't don't don't tempt
Speaker 1: me to fly my car at you later today because
Speaker 1: I'll do it anyway. So, yes, that was a huge
Speaker 1: finding right there by the Supreme Court. So it's big
Speaker 1: news and great news for scientists and doctors. This wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily big news, but I thought this was quite amusing.
Speaker 1: So this is from a BBC report that was in July,
Speaker 1: and they reported on research that was presented at the
Speaker 1: uk A National Astronomy Meeting. Uh And I just thought
Speaker 1: this was cute. Basically, they predicted that the last Earthlings
Speaker 1: to survive on this planet will be microbes. Big surprise. Uh.
Speaker 1: They sort of laid out a model here. I thought
Speaker 1: this was interesting. And so they were researchers from the
Speaker 1: universities of St. Andrew's, Dundee and Edinburgh. Uh, and they
Speaker 1: looked at what's the future of the planet Earth gonna
Speaker 1: look like for life? They said, well, and about one
Speaker 1: billion years, things are going to get really nasty because
Speaker 1: of the increasing size, intense and luminosity of the Sun. Basically,
Speaker 1: the oceans are going to boil, filling the atmosphere with
Speaker 1: water vapor, which will trap more heat and cause a
Speaker 1: runaway greenhouse effect. And that's what people used to think
Speaker 1: happened to the planet Venus. I'm not sure if that's
Speaker 1: still the prevailing theory for why Venus has such a hot,
Speaker 1: dense atmosphere today. I know that theory has been challenged,
Speaker 1: but it might still be the main theory. I don't
Speaker 1: want either way. It would suck for say us, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not good for life things. Presumably in a
Speaker 1: billion years we have figured a few things out blow
Speaker 1: yourselves up, right, So in a billion years, basically that'll
Speaker 1: kill all macro organisms left on the planet. So plant
Speaker 1: and animal life bye bye. But extreme O file microbes
Speaker 1: might still be alive in subterranean water sources, and that's
Speaker 1: who they think will be the last ones hanging around.
Speaker 1: But they also said that all life on Earth will
Speaker 1: be cut put by two point eight billion years from now,
Speaker 1: So we've got that long to get off this planet
Speaker 1: and colonized greener pastures. All right, good, good to know
Speaker 1: our timeline. Yeah, okay, So also in July, I thought
Speaker 1: this was beautiful solar impulse complete the cross country flight.
Speaker 1: Now we've talked about that in our in our Flight
Speaker 1: podcast about the future of aircraft. Designed that the Solar
Speaker 1: Impact Impulse was an all solar aircraft, literally all solar.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, it took a while to
Speaker 1: get from California to JFK in New York. They left
Speaker 1: in May and they arrived in July, and of course
Speaker 1: they stopped. It wasn't continuously they had to watch bio
Speaker 1: Dome eight times in a row. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many times. I don't want to think about that. Um right,
Speaker 1: So they stopped a bunch of places along the way.
Speaker 1: But it is pretty amazing. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you'll realize how cool this is. This is a
Speaker 1: plane powered entirely by solar panels. Keeping that in mind,
Speaker 1: it had some pretty major drawbacks obviously. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it went slower than your average car speed, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure that carrying capacity was low. Right. That was
Speaker 1: also the pilot. You could have one person on board.
Speaker 1: In other words, Yeah, um, okay, so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Also in July, Boston Dynamics, that is the robotics company
Speaker 1: that created the Big Dog, that big, horrible scary thing
Speaker 1: that I think in the future will become a really
Speaker 1: cute thing. Yeah. It's a thing that can throw cinder blocks.
Speaker 1: Again exactly. Um so uh, they they for Darper created Atlas,
Speaker 1: the humanoid robot, which is a terminator. Um it's uh,
Speaker 1: it just is like would you call like the Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's six feet tall, it's bipedal, and it looks scary
Speaker 1: as hey. You can walk by petally it can go
Speaker 1: over a rough landscape, it can manipulate objects with its hands,
Speaker 1: it can scan the environment with sensors. So it's got
Speaker 1: like scary stereoscopic camera eyes, and it's got laser range finding,
Speaker 1: and it would be great in disaster scenario. So imagine,
Speaker 1: like a nuclear power plant melts down. You need somebody
Speaker 1: to go in there to a sort of human shaped
Speaker 1: and sized environment, uh and do some things. You might
Speaker 1: be hard to get vehicles in there or whatever, but
Speaker 1: this thing can go in there and do jobs that
Speaker 1: would probably kill people, and you know, track down human
Speaker 1: beings and carry them to safety instead of completely killing them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fingers crossed. Fingers crossed, assuming that the person would not
Speaker 1: be terrified to death of the lumbering monstrosity. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be the person that's the same
Speaker 1: size as the Atlas spot in the biker bar when
Speaker 1: it comes in looking for clothes, so that you're actually
Speaker 1: the camera eyes aren't that great. So what you do
Speaker 1: is you hunker down and it can't tell that you're
Speaker 1: not actually the same size as it. So it's like
Speaker 1: the the mythical eyes of the t rex and dress a. No,
Speaker 1: it might just think that you're like a fetal position
Speaker 1: sized human. That's fine. I often am that speculation on
Speaker 1: my part. Maybe the Atlas spot is smarter than we
Speaker 1: all suspect um, much better at stealing your clothes. Excellent, Okay.
Speaker 1: Also in July, Curiosity Rover has traveled one kilometer. It's
Speaker 1: a little rover that could the miss roll for the
Speaker 1: good but broken petty um. In August we got the
Speaker 1: unveiling of the in vitro meat hamburger served in London
Speaker 1: no jokes. Yeah, meat grown entirely in the lab, but
Speaker 1: cruelty free. That's pretty cool. And so in case you
Speaker 1: haven't listened to our podcast on this, we talked about
Speaker 1: it in the Future of Food episode. But um, the
Speaker 1: in vitro meat is real meat. It's not fake. This
Speaker 1: is one for real cow beef. But no cow had
Speaker 1: to die to make it. Um. Well, actually I think
Speaker 1: maybe this batch they did, but in theory like an
Speaker 1: original cow and has to die. To me, I don't
Speaker 1: think it was truly cruelty free because from what there
Speaker 1: was grown in veal stock and one of those scientists
Speaker 1: I here was really snooty, So there's a little cruelty
Speaker 1: in the lab. Regular basis. So it was really expensive.
Speaker 1: The the lab grown hamburger cost about three thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: a little bit of my price range most days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, maybe someday you'll win the lottery and
Speaker 1: and feed yourself on sweet, sweet lab grown flesh. Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to hit one more. Element one fifteen confirmed
Speaker 1: ununpenti um. That's way up there on the periodic table.
Speaker 1: It's one of those big atoms that you do not
Speaker 1: find in nature. You have to create in the lab
Speaker 1: synthesizing smashing atoms, because it basically dissolves into nothingness within Yeah.
Speaker 1: It has a half life of less than a second.
Speaker 1: It's my micro seconds. Uh. It flies apart immediately. And
Speaker 1: so this is cool because it had been previously claimed
Speaker 1: to have been discovered I think in two thousand three
Speaker 1: by scientists in Dubna, Russia, but researchers this year just
Speaker 1: created it again. So they pretty much confirmed it. Yep.
Speaker 1: And that means it's going to get an actual permanent name.
Speaker 1: Won't always be called unknown pentium. It'll be called something
Speaker 1: out for all the ages on obtaining them. Maybe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's a funny point because also this element one
Speaker 1: fifteen has showed up in science fiction and in conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory literature. There was a guy who claimed that he
Speaker 1: once worked at Area fifty one and he had worked
Speaker 1: on reverse engineering alien spacecraft. What he said as well,
Speaker 1: they create their anti gravity propulsion with the use of
Speaker 1: element one fifteen is a fuel, that's how they do it. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we already knew that he wasn't telling the truth, but
Speaker 1: this is pretty much proof that he's not, because the
Speaker 1: atoms are not stable enough um to be in any
Speaker 1: kind of technological sense, unless there's some really unexpected isotope
Speaker 1: of it that that we're not foreseeing right now. But
Speaker 1: I still don't believe him. Yeah. So one fifteen we're
Speaker 1: getting up there, and the cool thing is, as we
Speaker 1: keep climbing up the synthetic element ladder, there's also always
Speaker 1: the possibility that we're going to discover, as we've talked
Speaker 1: about before on here, sort of an island of stability,
Speaker 1: the super heavy elements that are much more stable than
Speaker 1: we expect, ones that don't almost immediately you know, end
Speaker 1: up deteriorating into something else. And if we do discover
Speaker 1: elements like that, they might have unknown technological applications that
Speaker 1: could be really useful to us. Okay, so that wraps
Speaker 1: up August, right, Oh, yeah, so that we're moving into September. Alright,
Speaker 1: September we had some awesome news and AIDS research. UM
Speaker 1: a vaccine that was developed at OHSU appears to have
Speaker 1: cleared s i V, which is the semi in version
Speaker 1: of HIV in monkeys entirely um and until now, infections
Speaker 1: have only been cleared in very select cases where people
Speaker 1: received anti viral treatment is as soon after contraction as possible,
Speaker 1: or um or during stem cell transplant. But so this,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is major um and And basically what
Speaker 1: they did is they modified a common virus called um
Speaker 1: pido megalovirus. Yes, that is an actual thing, Sido megalovirus UM.
Speaker 1: They modified it to express certain proteins from s i V,
Speaker 1: and that prompted the T cells and monkeys bodies T
Speaker 1: cells being you know, a common part of the immune system,
Speaker 1: to develop a really intense search and destroy mechanism for
Speaker 1: s i V. So, uh, you know, huge application not
Speaker 1: only in in AIDS, I mean, because HIV is a
Speaker 1: really virulent virus. UM It's it's very powerful stuff that's
Speaker 1: really hard for the body to clean out, but it
Speaker 1: could be a huge step in caring not only AIDS,
Speaker 1: but many other terrible diseases. So awesome. Um. Also in September,
Speaker 1: we got news that Voyager had officially left the Solar
Speaker 1: System a year previously, which time officially super officially this
Speaker 1: is important news about uh, you know, NASA said that
Speaker 1: Voyager had in fact been traveling through interstellar plasma for
Speaker 1: about a year. The tricky thing about all of this
Speaker 1: is that Voyager, you know, doesn't have an ionized gas
Speaker 1: sensor on it, so it needed another kind of indicator.
Speaker 1: And to what they wound up using was they tracked
Speaker 1: this burst of solar wind that had originated in March
Speaker 1: and uh it it vibrated the plasma around the craft
Speaker 1: in April, and scientists figured out from the pitch of
Speaker 1: the oscillations that the plasma was dense enough that this
Speaker 1: was in fact interstellar space. It's kind of funny because
Speaker 1: the announcement came this year, But then it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where like, so, guys, I guess where Voyager
Speaker 1: has been for like a year. But that's the only
Speaker 1: science works, right, because you know, you have to check
Speaker 1: and double check and triple check and all this and
Speaker 1: wait for data to come back to you from satellites.
Speaker 1: It's an interstellar space. So yeah, I was just thinking about, like,
Speaker 1: when we're naming all of these discoveries, it's funny that
Speaker 1: I think in a lot of these cases we're not
Speaker 1: actually saying when the discovery happened, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: when the information about it was published, which is an
Speaker 1: important step. So oh sure, sure, And and I do
Speaker 1: love that that sciences. I mean, just like with the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, where people for a long time, we're like,
Speaker 1: we think that this is totally a thing, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't for months, months, years until they said this is
Speaker 1: totally a thing. We still think, yeah, and exactly, we're
Speaker 1: really pretty sure. But hey, we are an interstellar species.
Speaker 1: Now we are something that we made. It has left
Speaker 1: our Solar system. That's beautiful and terrifying, not just my
Speaker 1: hopes and dreams. In better news, um September was also
Speaker 1: when the Mars rover found a whole lot of water
Speaker 1: in the soil and continuing along with with with Jonathan's
Speaker 1: news about it digging up some some good soil samples.
Speaker 1: About two percent of the surface of Mars soil is water,
Speaker 1: which is you know, potentially exciting for lots of future
Speaker 1: applications of us getting over there or even discovering what
Speaker 1: might have been there before. Yeah again, you know, the
Speaker 1: rovers a geological survey type device, but it's always possible
Speaker 1: that that we'll have one that is more speci tyfically
Speaker 1: suited to looking for signs of biological life sent later.
Speaker 1: And it's always possible that the Curiosity Rover could uncover
Speaker 1: some other example of that through its you know, operations
Speaker 1: as a geological survey machine, but that's not its main purpose, right.
Speaker 1: There was some exciting in vitro pluripotent stem cell research UM.
Speaker 1: Previous research had dictated that cells could really only be
Speaker 1: reverted into a pluripotent stem cell state UM, you know,
Speaker 1: from which most any kind of cell can develop in
Speaker 1: addition the lab, but researchers at the Spanish National Cancer
Speaker 1: Research Institute in Madrid found that it's actually more efficient
Speaker 1: to carry this out in a living animal, and they
Speaker 1: may have even taken the cells into a more primitive
Speaker 1: tote potent state, which means that other tissues like like
Speaker 1: placenta could be developed from it. You know, this is
Speaker 1: incredible stuff because you know, for the longest time, it
Speaker 1: looked like stem cells. Like the stem cells we were
Speaker 1: going to be able to use for the most part
Speaker 1: would be uh, would not be pluripotent stem cells even right,
Speaker 1: They'd be stem cells that could develop into maybe one
Speaker 1: or two different tissues, but not any tissue. Whereas this
Speaker 1: has the potential to be truly revolutionary if if we
Speaker 1: can you know, replicate it and also use it in
Speaker 1: organisms other than say mice, right exactly, And even that
Speaker 1: it would be more efficient to do that in a living,
Speaker 1: living being than in a in which then you have
Speaker 1: to get the stuff in the addition to a thing,
Speaker 1: and that's a whole other complicated process. So this is
Speaker 1: really exciting for you know, like regenerating tissue or limbs
Speaker 1: or stuff like that in the future potentially um quick note.
Speaker 1: In October, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to Francois
Speaker 1: Englert and Peter Higgs for the mechanism that led to
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson discovery. Oh, I had something in October.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk hall. Yeah, that is my favorite holiday,
Speaker 1: but also a logical discovery. There was a really cool
Speaker 1: paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Speaker 1: The paper was called Prevalence of Earth Sized Planets Orbiting
Speaker 1: sunlike STARRS, and this was an update of predictions about
Speaker 1: the number of earthlike planets habitable planets in the Milky
Speaker 1: Way galaxy. Basically, a Kepler survey of forty two thousand
Speaker 1: sun like stars uh found six three planets and about
Speaker 1: ten of them were Earth sized and inhabitable zone the
Speaker 1: goldilox zone. Yeah. So this is a quote from the
Speaker 1: and that that means habitable for life, of course, as
Speaker 1: opposed to for rocks, for rocks and dust. You know,
Speaker 1: I just don't have it. Of course they do. A
Speaker 1: quote from the abstract, this is direct. We find that
Speaker 1: twenty two of Sun like stars harbor Earth sized planets
Speaker 1: orbiting in their habitable zones. So that's more than one
Speaker 1: in five. Whoa, that's a lot. So if you've heard
Speaker 1: our podcast about the Drake equation, that's sort of like
Speaker 1: a ratio and number you get for predicting the probability
Speaker 1: that there's life technological life out there in our galaxy. See,
Speaker 1: that's one variable. We're starting to lock down the number
Speaker 1: of planets out there that could have life. That that
Speaker 1: number is fast closing on something tangible. Um. One more
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to announce space news. NASA's MAVEN mission
Speaker 1: launched UH, and that was the MAVEN stands for the
Speaker 1: Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission that launched in November.
Speaker 1: And basically it's going to explore the upper atmosphere of
Speaker 1: Mars UH and the ionosphere and its interactions with the
Speaker 1: Sun and solar wind according to NASA's mission project page.
Speaker 1: And basically what they're gonna do there is they're studying
Speaker 1: the Mars atmosphere and one of the things they want
Speaker 1: to learn is where it went. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a planet that lost its atmosphere over time. What happened
Speaker 1: to that atmosphere? And could the same thing happen to ours?
Speaker 1: I think it went on holiday alright to Venus? Would
Speaker 1: how does okay? Um? December, I've got another interesting mice study. Um.
Speaker 1: We we had some research that indicated that bacteria can
Speaker 1: help reverse autism like behavioral problems in mice. This was research,
Speaker 1: um okay. So so there's a whole body of research
Speaker 1: that's been done in both mice and humans that has
Speaker 1: indicated that that autism and gastro intestinal disorders are linked
Speaker 1: and um. But in this case, a team out of
Speaker 1: Caltech that it gave mice a gut microbe that decreased
Speaker 1: both bad gastro intestinal symptoms and also social anxiety kind
Speaker 1: of symptoms UM like obsessively repeating behaviors, are squeaking differently
Speaker 1: than other mice when they were greeting uh stuff. And
Speaker 1: so you know this is this is a really important
Speaker 1: uh kind of proof of concept of the connection between
Speaker 1: the human microbiome and brain function and it could lead
Speaker 1: to some really awesome treatments in psychotherapeutic fields, right yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course you know we always have to state
Speaker 1: the again, the jump from road into human is not
Speaker 1: not a simple one. It's not necess sarily something that's
Speaker 1: going to happen uh quickly, but it is promising, which
Speaker 1: is that's that's the key. Also, something that happened in December,
Speaker 1: So at the beginning of the month, China launched the
Speaker 1: chong A three spacecraft and it had a destination destination Moon. Great,
Speaker 1: they might be giants song and uh so the spacecraft
Speaker 1: went to the Moon and had the had a soft
Speaker 1: landing that means that it actually had a controlled descent
Speaker 1: and landed on the surface of the Moon, as opposed
Speaker 1: to hard landing, which is essentially crashing something into the surface,
Speaker 1: which lots of countries have tried to do. So this
Speaker 1: made actually more fun, but but a lot less. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot harder to do science. After the
Speaker 1: hard landing, China managed to be the third country to
Speaker 1: achieve this, behind Russia and the United States. And so uh,
Speaker 1: the chang A spacecraft ended up opening up and releasing
Speaker 1: the jade rabbit rover. So chung A is actually named
Speaker 1: after a Chinese moon goddess, and uh, the Chinese moon
Speaker 1: goddess has a companion named you two, which is a rabbit.
Speaker 1: So the rover is called a jade rabbit. So it's
Speaker 1: going after that that mythology. And um, so they've they're
Speaker 1: now doing science on the Moon. It's kind of become
Speaker 1: a lunar station of its own right to study the
Speaker 1: regular on the Moon as well as some other elements.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of interesting that we're we're still uh
Speaker 1: sending probes up there to get more information. I personally
Speaker 1: find that really inspiring. Uh. It keeps that in mind
Speaker 1: for scientists of the future. And I still think that
Speaker 1: the Moon is probably the I think men definitely way
Speaker 1: up there in the top ten. Uh other places. There's
Speaker 1: a bar down the street from where I live where
Speaker 1: I tell you you can't get rid of them. But
Speaker 1: the you know, the other thing about is that I
Speaker 1: think I think that a Moon base is as at
Speaker 1: least as likely, if not more likely, than a Martian
Speaker 1: base in the next few decades. Right, So, all right,
Speaker 1: I think that wraps up our our review of two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen. Like we said, it's not a comprehensive review.
Speaker 1: There is so much more that happened this past year.
Speaker 1: I could talk about things that people have done to
Speaker 1: mice all day. Yeah, there's there was a lot of
Speaker 1: things were done to mice in two thousand thirteen. You
Speaker 1: know what, I expect that we'll do some more things
Speaker 1: to mice in two thousand fourteen. But it's really been
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to to monitor the science news
Speaker 1: throughout the year and to talk more about some of
Speaker 1: the exciting potential outcomes of this science. Knowing that even
Speaker 1: with the potential outcomes we've talked about, that's just scratching
Speaker 1: the surface. Stuff comes up that you could have never anticipated.
Speaker 1: And that's what I truly find exciting about science. So
Speaker 1: we're really looking forward to two thousand fourteen, doing a
Speaker 1: lot more episodes next year, and we wish you guys
Speaker 1: a happy new year. Remember you can go to fw
Speaker 1: thinking dot com. That's where we have all the podcast,
Speaker 1: blog post, articles, and other information we need to go.
Speaker 1: Check that out, and you can always get in touch
Speaker 1: with us on the multiple social media platforms where we
Speaker 1: hang out all the time. That includes Twitter, Facebook, and
Speaker 1: Google Plus. Our handle is FW thinking and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com.
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