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Top 10 Scientific Advances of 2004
TarrVetus writes "Science Magazine's The Top Ten Science Breakthroughs of 2004 have been announced. The winner: The NASA Rovers and their evidence of water on Mars. The runner up was the Hobbit species found in Indonesia. Other breakthroughs include cloned human embryos and the first discovered pulsar pair."
Just as a generic curiosity. I wonder how many winners of the past eventually turned out to be false or incorreect? Cause the Hobbits are still debated (although it's not some big controversy). Just to put "breakthroughs" in perspective, because some breakthroughs just lead to empty mineshafts, not gold.
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
I submit the work of Dr. Valerie Hudson as an important breakthrough in 2004. She wrote a book called "Bare Branches" and explained how the sex ratio imbalance can have dire consequences for not only the affected nations (i.e. China )but also normal nations like the USA.
I love what Prof. Higgins said about the human cloning:
"The fact it can be done begins to move us away from some of the mysteries surrounding human beings; things like the existence of a soul, which frankly is pure imagination," he told the BBC News website.
Amen, brotha.
Hmm, don't know... reckon we can swamp this lot? It'd be challenging, I admit, but wouldn't it be tremendous to brag about to the grandchildren in years to come?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Most paleontologist believe this is a new species. The bones (they aren't even fossilised!) were found by an Australian/Indonesian team that was originaly lookng for evidence of the people who first colonized Australia. Apparently a bigshot Indonesian paleontologist got pissed of by being left out (some scientific bigshots expect to get their names papers without having to actually do any work), and then...
This is true. The existence of a purpose is irrelevant to the statement. Whether or not we have one, the goal of science is not discerning its existence or what it is.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
The key is in the details, and one of the first distinctions made in this discussion is a particular kind of stem cell research -- embryonic. I'm unaware of any party that is against stem cell research, but then I don't belong to a political party either. You caught that distinction better than most, and I thank you for it.
Even further lost in the other responses in this discussion is a recognition that the issue is not about research per-se but the acquisition of these cells to experiment on.
With the Medicare benefit program on its way in 2006, there is no reason why the GOP shouldn't be the leader in overall contributions by the pharmaceuticals. But your throwing the bath water in with the baby here. Better to look at California Prop 71 funding in particular.
No here's where you can really help me out...
Having made the distinction between stem cell research in general and embryonic stem cell research, where is this unique track? What makes embryonic stem cells more plausible than any other? From what I've read they have a tenancy to ball up in a cancerous mass before ever doing any good, something that adult stem cells don't seem to suffer from.
Another poster said that they have "saved" lives. I'll admit that anyone has been benefited would be news to me. Welcome news, but still news. In fact, not to openly display ignorance here but I know of no accepted medical procedure even based on stem cells, adult or embryonic.
Its hard to find very straight talk on this subject, but from where I stand much of the political tectonics right now are riding on a lot of bio-tech speculation. And the winner seems to be the most patentable, and not necessarily the best.
Some will always be above others. Destroy the equality today, and it will appear again tomorrow. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ok, so the rover found that there were some funny-looking spherules in a crater on Mars. Maybe those spherules could be created if there had been water a long time ago... So it might be possible that a long time ago there might have been some puddles of water on Mars... This means that it might be possible that there is liquid water around on other planets outside of earth... Water is considered an important ingredient of life, although there is no reason to know that you couldn't have life without water, and even if water is needed, you need many, many more things to be just so for life to form besides a bit of water... Is it just me, or isn't this pretty damn underwhelming compared to the progress we've had in other sciences in the last decade? (human genome, internet, stem cells, etc.)
Why do I always get the feeling that the scientists who get to decide that "major" advances such as Mars water have a personal interest in generating PR for their field?
I agree that research in space is pretty neat and all and is worth doing, but couldn't we all agree that the discoveries recently at NASA have been pretty disappointing, even if they are valuable for some esoteric research fields?
...and how come when the whole "life on Mars" thing happened a few years back, the NASA researchers were all parading in front of TV cameras when they found some interesting "formations" on a mars rock found in a meteor, but then when those formation were found to be somewhat suspect, they were all mum about it... so all that the public saw about doubts of their hyped findings was a small article in the back of Scientific American? Are the NASA researchers really doing good science here?
...just to be clear, I'll gladly admit my ignorance- I hope someone can give some clear answers to my questions and can tell me if there is really something exciting enough about these spherules in some Mars crater...
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Conrad Barski
Ah yes...because there's NO WAY that a group of people could be affected by the same growth-stunting mutagen and become the way they were. That is clearly impossible, and it is clearly another species.
You know, there are documented cases of humans (even groups of them - mutants who share the same parents or have the same disease) whose skeletal structure is as different from the norm as the norm is from all the other species in the Homo genus. Is it possible that we've got it wrong, and that we've only really found one species of man ever, or is there something besides skeletal remains on which to determine if there have been others in our genus?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Water does a few important things - it's liquid across a wide temperature range, and allows lots of reactions to take place in it - and one very rare one, it's denser when liquid than solid. We're not sure if that last is essential to life, but it might be, in which case there are no alternatives to water. And even if it isn't, there are still very few substances that would be liquid all year round on a planet, something that we're pretty sure life needs.
I am trolling
I submitted the the idea of the space scientists/adventurer to Time Magazine for its Man of the Year. This would note efforts of both the Rover/Cassini teams and Space Ship One. I cant think of a comparable political, international or cultural achievement. Perhaps they'll give to Karl Rove who managed to keep a shakey president in office when they announce it Sunday.
Can you name any other such set of pulsars that have been discovered by man? No? Then it seems to me they are one of a kind.
I'm an atheist but I've come to this place in an open-minded way. I've read quite a bit on philosophy of religion, theology, and arguments for God. I would love for someone to present me with a logically sound argument for the existence of an omnipotent creator. It'd be very comforting to know of such a being. But I can't just believe because it'd be nice to do so. I need a kernel of evidence from which to start and I've yet to find it. The search goes on, but for now I'm one of those atheists.
The Minehune are a little people who lived in Hawaii and were famous for building technical projects in a single night. Hmmm, not a long way across the Pacfic from Indonesia? We should do genetic studies of the bones and cross refernce to natives on Kauai, who haved claimed as recently as the 60's era census to be Minehune
a i/ fishpond.html
http://kalama.doe.hawaii.edu/~laakea/class/maik
http://www.spiritsouthseas.com/menehune.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menehune
Actually though, one major breakthrough in their design is the shuttlecock-style reentry, which I'm pretty sure has never been done before. I'm expecting that it will start showing up as a standard reentry method.
Sexuality is the charge of life. Not just in the sense of the Tao, the sense of a the universal forward direction, but also in terms of electricity, the attraction of polar sexual opposites to drive all higher forms of life. DO bacteria and viri have souls? All they do is asexually replicate. Does a dog have a soul or a giant squid?
All religions break down in the face of science except Taoism because all religions are based on human arrogance and ignorance. Taoism is based on quantum uncertainty and questioning. It is the journey that matters to the Taoist not some stupid beginning or end made up thousands of years ago to make someone feel better about themselves. Why concern your self with deluding yourself and others with imagined creation myths or bullshit social controls when you can simply find the best way through life.