Important Science

Technology has seemed to gain speed this year. For the first time a paralyzed man was able to do something. He was hooked up to one of those new machines which change your thoughts into commands and words and that machine was connected to an IPhone. Next, he connected to a friend and held a chat with him just by thinking what he wanted to say and it came out on the screen. This is truly a miracle.

I think we have all heard the stories about the car that ran on water and the inventor was killed. Many do not believe this, but some do. A private company took an old Ford Falcon and modified it. They did something a little different. They had a water feed into the engine and a hydrogen feed. The water was used as a sort of timer for the engine explosions and they drove this car. It was said this was a huge breakthrough in using hydrogen powered cars. I didn’t see anything in the article which stated the hydrogen was coming from the water, which really would have been even more incredible.

A new scientific paper has come out about autism. Scientists believed it was only in a specific part of the brain. The new study contradicts this idea. It is being claimed autism changes many areas of the entire brain. This seems to mean it would make it much harder for a cure to ever be found, but I am not a doctor and this is only what I think. A new study came out which states 1 child in 100 around the world is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder known as ASD. Some are saying diagnoses are increasing merely because of sociological and political factors, others believe there could be something in the air or water which is affecting more children.

We keep getting a little closer to fusion power. The truth is if we conquer it, it could save the planet. It is non-polluting and extremely safe, because if the reaction is interfered with the process just shuts down. There is no radioactive waste. We have been trying to solve the problem of a sustained reaction and in all the years we have tried the best we ever did happened a few months ago in China. China has a project called the artificial sun. They managed to keep the reaction going for 17 minutes. This was far longer than ever before. We are definitely making progress but there are still a lot of problems to be solved. Update: The United States just produced a fusion reaction which produced more energy than it used for the first time.

Bones have been found in England which are said to be the oldest ever found there. Scientists are not quite sure if they are from early Neanderthals or Homo Heidelbergensis. The bones were dated as being about 480,000 years old.

Doctor Frankenstein would be proud, well on a much smaller level. One of the greatest accomplishments of this century so far is the creation of an artificial genome. They used it to give instructions to a bacterium which then reproduced as it would with a real genome. Is this the start of someday replacing human genomes which are damaged and cause birth defects? Could be, but there will be a lot more uses for this type of thing.

Pathfinder was the first rover to land on the Red Planet Mars. It landed there in 1997 and since then has sent back 17,000 photos. But photos were not its only job. It ran some tests. Scientists are no longer able to contact it.

When we go to the doctor with a suspicious lump, a biopsy is done. It has been estimated that only 1 in 15 to 30 biopsies is cancerous. Scientists are trying to remedy this situation and cut down on the need for all those biopsies. They want to develop another non-invasive method of checking that lump. Scientists recently have developed a device which uses a special light source. It is said to be what is used in the scanning machines at the airport. It is always great when some of the cutting and pain are taken out of diagnosis.

One of the greatest breakthrough so far in rocket science is the ability to print a rocket. This saves an incredible amount of time in the building process. It has also eliminated some of the assembly of many tiny or small parts in the rocket by being able to print them into the design. Using printers for this work will only get better and faster as newer ways are found in the printing process to speed things up even further.

We found out this year, 2022, we still have meteors and asteroids which are not discovered fast enough when they are heading toward earth. In March of this year the earth was hit with an asteroid. What made this asteroid different from many others is it was not discovered until 2 hours before impact. This is unacceptable on many fronts, but mainly because it shows there may be a time when we don’t get enough notice to deflect a dangerous asteroid. Would more dedicated telescopes help solve this problem or are there just some objects which come from hidden places near our planet?

We are learning that other races of man not only came before us, but that a few might have existed while we are here. We believe the Neanderthals were around with modern humans, but also Homo naledi may have overlapped their time with us on the planet. They are said to have existed from 335,000 years ago to 236,000 years ago, and as most of us have heard, the date for modern humans appearing keeps getting pushed back to earlier dates. It was thought the Neanderthals were wiped out by modern humans, but a new theory has emerged which states sex wiped them out. Scientists think having sex with modern humans produced a disease in the blood of their offspring. One thing which has been found is that every human has Neanderthal DNA in their bodies.