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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."
Largest man-created crater on the surface of Mars? That's got to count for something!
I consider that a pretty awesome feat as i assume many others do
If I remember correctly, the finding of the new Hobbit species was discredited as a "dwarf" mutant of a long-discovered human ancestor. Was this discrediting discredited itself?
Love, Stu
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.
Your ignorance is interesting.
It's not illegal. You just won't get federal funding.
Prohibition on Federal Funding for Cloning of Human Beings
In case your interested.
For discovering that all previous science and history is false and the world is in fact a giant ant farm created 6000 years ago by a cloud dwelling egomaniac
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
If you have a scientific breakthrough, please wait till the next year to announce it, otherwise you won't make it the top 10 list.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
that happened in 2003...
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.
We have the first actual picture of a planet orbiting another star... not inferential data, not radio info, but optical (not sure about wavelength, but that's irrelevant).
And it's not even on the list? The still questionable "discovery" of a wet Martian past makes the top of the list, but a deffinitive leap of scientific discovery (ie a fuzzy and blurred but very real picture of an extrasolar planet) doesn't even receive mention on the list (even if the article was kind enough to mention it)?
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
BBC have more bandwidth than God. Slashdot is more likely to get BBCed than BBC is to get slashdotted. =)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
David: Look, whether or not Anton is a midget, or a dwarf-
Man: No, he's a midget.
David: What's the difference?
Man: Well, a dwarf is someone who has disproportionately short arms and legs.
David: Oh, I know the ones. (He does a dwarf impression)
Man: Yeah, it's caused by a hormone deficiency.
David: Yeah. Bloody hormones.
Man: A midget is still a dwarf, but their arms and legs are in proportion.
David: Sure. (Gareth suddenly appears out of no-where)
Gareth: So, what's an elf?
David: Do you want to answer that?
Man: An elf is a supernatural being. Sometimes they're invisible, like fairies.
David: They don't actually exist, do they? In real life?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I don't happen to believe in the soul as it appears in most religions, but I fail to see how a successful cloning experiment completely disproves the idea that helps countless millions cope with their lives. Statements like these hurt the image of the scientific community in the eyes of the public, i.e. the people the science is supposedly trying to improve the lives of.
If he had really disproven the soul or God (which is impossible to to the vague nature of their descriptions) then he should by all means spread this proof, but since he hasn't, then he should just STFU.
He is making scientific conclusions based on his faith that the soul is not real. That's just stupid.
_____
Thank you.
I've always wondered why the excitement over embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells seem to be safer, and umbilical chords and liposuction seem to be a plenty good source for these little wonders.
Well had I hung my hat on the theory that it justified abortion (and that may have much to do with it) until I learned about cloning embryos (listed above as one of the top 10 scientific advancements). And cloning embryos is a patentable process.
So here in California we have the distinct honor of going in debt to fund yet another health-care industry attempt to corner an emerging market with patents?
If it were only not true...
Some will always be above others. Destroy the equality today, and it will appear again tomorrow. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the United Nations a measure was considered to address human cloning. That measure was not taken up and has been postponed until next year. The following countries wanted to take up the issue and are assumed to be against human cloning: Against: Albania, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chile, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (the Federated States of), Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Spain, Suriname, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, United States of America, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela and Zambia.
As a biologist, I have to say that I'm incredibly disappointed by the inclusion of "junk" DNA in the list. I don't know what specific research results they're referring to when they say there's a breakthrough there, but the entire concept of "junk" DNA is absurd. I've never met a single molecular biologist who believed that non-coding regions were unimportant, and in fact it's been known for at least forty years that non-coding regions are important in regulation of gene expression. Maybe what bothers me most is the term "junk" DNA, which I've never actually heard another scientist use. It's a fictitious concept perpetuated by science writers so that they can feign surprise every time someone can attribute a function to a non-coding piece of DNA (and claim that the scientific community was surprised as well).
All that aside, I'm sure there are big breakthroughs in our understanding of the role of non-coding regions, and it probably deserves to be mentioned. However, one important point to make is that in spite of all this, there ARE parts of the genome that are unquestionably useless evolutionary vestiges. This is not necessarily mysterious, but it is interesting (for example, providing what is in my mind the most convincing evidence of evolution).
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.
But Professor Higgins also sees philosophical implications in the work... Science is about trying to understand where we come from, what our purpose is.
;)
Religion is about trying to understand what our purpose is. Anyone claiming science is for said purpose has merely made a religion for themselves out of science. Science is the accumulation of information using the scientific method. Repeat after me, science is in no way meant to be a search for our purpose as humans. Class dismissed.
Only if half the internet failed. BBC has more bandwidth than slashdot could possibly get at.
If a first you don't succeed, your a programmer...
What about the Dudes who figured out how to filter cheap Vodka to make it semi drinkable?
That's gotta count for something!
See previous "Hacking Vodka" article here on
The second sentence doesn't imply the first. It's as if you said: "There is no music. There are only density waves in the air."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
So could the BBC create a webserver that the BBC couldn't crash?
... seems to blow all that other crap away, even if the news was released in december. evidence of water once being on mars is big... but hardly surprising enough to rank at #1.
This page has some of the first pictures of clouds and frost on Mars, likely composed of water ice. It's really quite amazing.
However, as our scientific understanding of a phenomenon grows, it naturally replaces the earlier, superstitious myths that sought to explain it. This is not to say that those myths are completely without value. They may indeed "help countless millions cope with their lives", but that does not give them scientific merit, nor elevate them above the status of "imagination".
If you look at the details of the discovery - the Hobbits lived with real life dragons, hunted minature oliphants and lived in the misty moutains, (plus the locals reputed name for the hobbits is a gaelic word that means trickery) it quickly becomes apparent that the whole thing is a hoax created to make Nature look stupid. Unfortunately, the editors at Nature weren't up on their Tolkien.
Sounds like the start of a new philosophical question!
If a tree falls in the forest while nobody's around, does it make a sound?
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
What's God's bandwidth?
What wouldn't Jesus do?!
Right up there with the comment about souls, is this doozie:
Jenet and Scott Ransom of McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, have developed a theoretical model to explain the behavior of this one-of-a-kind set of pulsars.
"One of a kind"? Just because we haven't seen any others, means there are no others?
For shame. Feynman would totally kick these people's asses.
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...
---
Conrad Barski
>>I fail to see how a successful cloning experiment completely disproves the idea (of the soul).
The reason that successful cloning sheds light on the idea of the soul is that the soul is supposedly the thing that makes us specially human - it (the soul) derives from the concept of the animus, or "spark of life". The church teaches that a soul can only be created by god, not humans. So, the successful cloning of a human, resulting in a living, thinking person, created by people by human ingenuity instead of the usual way - fscking - means that either people don't need a soul to live and think (which completely undermines the basis for positing a soul in the first place), or the lab techs whipped up a soul in the closet and didn't put it in the report (in which case a soul has been created by other than god, which opens up a whole other can of worms for the church to explain away... eg, whence consciousness, and whence animus)
>>If he had really disproven the soul or God (which is impossible to to the vague nature of their descriptions) then he should by all means spread this proof, but since he hasn't, then he should just STFU.
Ahem. He didn't mention god. And as far as it being impossible to disprove such things, it is equally impossible to PROVE them. =) Also, the reason for that is not that they are "vaguely defined", but instead, exactly because of their descriptions. When you posit something which has infinite capabilities and unknowable motives, anything can be explained as caprice.
The soul is a cultural construct. It has weight as long as people believe in it. When people stop believing, it's over.
As far as STFU goes, he has as much right to speak his mind as anyone else. Including you. Hey, here's an idea, how about YOU STFU? No? Then let him speak.
>>He is making scientific conclusions based on his faith that the soul is not real.
I'm working hard to restrain myself from flaming you. Read it again without your blinders, grandma. He didn't say "I have concluded on the basis of my observations that the soul is not real". What he said was "the existence of a soul[...] frankly is pure imagination". He gave his frank opinion. There is a difference. If you don't know what science is then (redacted) yourself.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
he was no doubt confused by the lack of apostrophe's
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
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.
I nominate:
"The one week in 2004 that passed without Micro$oft having to issue a security update".
Sorry, wrong department. You want 'Myths and Fantasies'. Down the hall and to the left.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
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.
Your comment "open your mind" means you wish for a reprieve from logical thought to the exclusion of illusory constructs made before even electricity was known formally? Your point is reminiscent of the very force holding back social progress in the US. There is a level at which it is permitted for a rational person to say: "That is irrational, inapplicable, and overtly detrimental so I should do all that I can to reduce its influence and power" (where it is an institution, nation, or other power). The elimination of regressive or detrimental ideology is integral to the advancement of the human species, after all the civilised world no longer drills holes into the skulls of epileptics to let out the "evil spirits," why should the modern world tolerate any remnants of regressive ideology?
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
- Medicines for the World's Poor. "Public-private partnerships" emerged as a force in 2004, according to Science magazine, affecting the way medicines are developed and delivered to emerging nations.
Sounds like applied science to me.Personally though if I were Science I wouldn't give SpaceShipOne a prize this year, since getting someone into space isn't technically by itself a new development in even applied science. I'd give it to them in a year or two-- once they manage to successfully begin operating their spaceliner business, since that IS going to be a dramatic change in how science is applied...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You can take a look to Science's cover to check it out.
Your head a splode