Slashdot Mirror
Top 25 Science Stories of 2002
1.Nc3 writes "Scientific American has released a list of their top 25 featured science stories of 2002. From Cryptography to Entomology to Astronomy, a lot of neat stuff happened this year."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Article Link Here
It says that Yet pound for pound, the sturdiest spider silks are stronger than steel and stretchier than nylon.
I heard that while back the Army made a vest out of Spider Silk rather than Kevlar and it was able to stop even small rifle bullets O_o.
This could be very revolutionary. I wonder how it compares to silk?
I noticed that they got two separate returns on their investigations. It got me to thinking....
Maybe someone in the early 1900s got hold of some parchment from the 1400s and inked the map using ink from the 1900s. It would explain the two contradictory reports and would, as the article states - be one heck of a forgery.
Makes me wonder if they could lift fingerprints off of the map and try matching them to those of known forgers. Probably wouldn't make a lot of difference since fingerprinting wasn't always done in forgery cases until after the great depression (when forgery really took off as a method to make money) but you never know. They might actually get the original artist's fingerprints. Which would be neat if nothing else.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
And scientists and medical researchers are already researching AIDS. The AIDS problem in Africa is not scientific, it's cultural and political.
19.) Meet the Oldest Member of the Human Family - This is depressing ... this helps to further prove that you and I are nothing more than a chimp!
And? We are animals. Nothing more. We are not special. Deal with it. Yes, we are the top of the food chain for now and we are the most competent tool users and the most comunicative species ever to walk the earth, but we are still animals. You and I are special to our friends, family and loved ones. Is that not enough?
18.) Attacking Anthrax - Yea! Eat that bin Laden!! That idea won't work on the U.S.!
Bin Laden didn't have anything to do with the anthrax attacks. That was the work of home grown American nutjobs.
17.) Crafty Crow Rivals Primates in Toolmaking - Proves you can teach an old bird new tricks ... nothing neat hear ... move on
There is something "neat" here. Corvids (crows, ravens, magpies) are the smartest birds on the planet. The fact that they may be smarter (in some areas) that chimpanzees could radically change how we view animal intellegence.
14.) Element 118 Dropped from Periodic Table - I needed some of this stuff next week ... again, nice to see how "real" some of these so called findings are, but even better to see that someone was honest enough to retract their false findings! Way to embarass the community!!
No. Being honest is not an embarrassment. The embarrassment would come from the scientists refusing to retract their work. I respect and trust a scientist who has the integrety to admit a mistake.
11.) Light's Information-Carrying Capacity Doubles - So now more senceless data from Microshaft can travel at "the speed of light" ... great!
Please. Grow up. This kind of crap is cool if you are 14-years old.
4.) Physicists Create a New State of Matter - Sorry, call me short sighted, but I just don't see how this is useful
Many new discoveries are not useful at first. It was hundreds of years after Leonardo first thought up the helicopter before anyone could build one that actually worked. It took a better understanding of aerodynamics, better building materials and a lightweight, yet powerful engine in order to do it. Each piece of the puzzle found by someone else. Many inventions are made not by inventing the thing out of whole cloth, but by piecing together the discoveries of others into something new. Usually something never invisioned by those who discovered the pieces. That is the beauty of Abstract Knowledge: you never know what the pieces you've found will eventually make.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
There is something "neat" here. Corvids (crows, ravens, magpies) are the smartest birds on the planet. The fact that they may be smarter (in some areas) that chimpanzees could radically change how we view animal intellegence.
Lots of birds can use tools. However I recall that it is now wildly believed that the kia bird of New Zealand is by far the world's smartest bird. They not only have great independent intelligence but have some amazing learned group behaviours. Unlike most birds that can use tools for a single purpose, kia birds can use tools "stacked" together.
--- I do not moderate.
I don't know about that. Peer reviewers, presented with convincingly manufactured data, failed to catch a careful, deliberate forgery prepared by a fellow expert in the field. Short of actually repeating all the work, sometimes it can be very difficult to review the veracity of a manuscript. Peer reviewers are looking for well-designed experiments and interesting, useful results. They check for errors of methodology or theory--most probably don't look for deliberate fraud unless they catch an obvious flaw.
The scientific method as a whole seems to still work--once the work was published, it was tested, challenged, and eventually withdrawn. Schon is utterly disgraced in the scientific community, and any future claims will be met with careful scrutiny.
Just like any other field, there are bad apples. In science, I suspect that fraudulent work is less likely to be presented and more likely to be caught simply because other people will test it.
~Idarubicin