2023 Discoveries Now that the year is ended, I was wondering what were some of the greatest discoveries. I guess much of this depends in one’s interests. I am interested in many things so the things I pick may not be agreed upon by everyone. Some believe we have passed a milestone in artificial intelligence. When it was found AI could predict protein structures it was realized this could affect all life. Maybe even alien life if we make contact. We tend to think extraterrestrials would be ahead of us in everything, but if earth is an example, there are still some things the ancients could do which we can’t, and perhaps that would also be true for aliens. It is being said the art of diagnosis was greatly increased this year because of new AI algorithms along with new forms of mass spectrometry. AI is leaping ahead in almost every area it is used in. One of the greatest problems is how to grow more food without all that damaging fertilizer use. An advancement in fertilizer production was made in Japan when the scientists developed a noble-metal free nitride catalyst. It even works in moisture. It will reduce the carbon footprint of ammonia production. We are getting better at figuring out how brains work and a discovery was made this year which allowed scientists to map out the connections in an insect brain. The brain only had a little over 3,000 neurons but did have 548,000 synapses. Look for scientists to work their way up to figuring out bigger and more complex brain connections. A discovery was make which illustrates groups of animals are going extinct at a rate which is 35 times faster than in the past and it is thought we are the cause. Not only that, it is claimed this is accelerating and will become the sixth mass extinction event. There is a connect between us and every animal on earth, and we may find out some of these animals were needed for our continued existence. We found out something using rats which might have a big effect on humans. Scientists have found they could treat kidneys and store them cryogenically for up to 100 days and put them back in rats and they worked. This could be a great help to people awaiting kidneys and help cut down on all those waiting on lists who never make it. A brain decoder was invented which translates thoughts to speech. It may become possible for even those in comas, if they are trying to contact us, to be able to succeed. It certainly will be possible for those who are paralyzed. Can you imagine what a relief it would be for someone who could not move or talk to finally be able to converse? In time, we might find other uses for this device. Have you noticed all the radio and television ads for vaccines? I have, it seems to me there might be far more than necessary. There are now inverse vaccines which have been invented. These are useful for those with autoimmune diseases since they calm the response by them in certain situations. If this is not done, the autoimmune disease can turn against the body’s own cells in certain situations. The faster we are discovering new things, the faster the science increases. One object may open the field to more discoveries. We are watching more discoveries every year than in entire past centuries. We discovered that plants can make noise we can’t hear. When they get thirsty, they do this. The sound is ultrasonic and sounds like popping bubble wrap. It is believe this might be helpful to know for farming. Scientists claim to have discovered the octopus has dreams. They don’t know about what, but are sure it does. One of the discoveries of 2023 was the discovery of bowhead whales being cancer resistant. If scientists could discover why this might be able to solve the cancer problem in humans. They have a life span of over 200 years. The strange thing is it has many more cells than many other animals. It is bizarre, but a lot of larger animals are more cancer resistant than smaller ones. I don’t know when it actually started, but it has been brought to the forefront this year. I am talking about laser communications. NASA has decided to use it for space communication, but why? Before I get into that the first test took place this year from about 10 million miles. While radio and light waves both travel at the speed of light, a laser beam has a much wider bandwidth allowing for more data to be sent by the transmission. This will in effect allow for a shorter message since it will be wider. The future of communications rests in quantum science however which could be instantaneous. Over 5,000 new marine species have been found in the Clipperton Fracture Zone which is a deep sea mining hotspot in the Pacific Ocean. A new Chef robot was developed which can learn from cooking videos. It can watch a video and then repeat what was done to create the dish. It does make one wonder if someday chefs will become obsolete. There is a gene editing tool named CRISPR which is being used for just that. This year its use has been expanded and is being used for more common things in trials like high cholesterol. A new way to make it easier for anyone to create a computer chip has been developed called RISC-V. There are new companies looking into this. An announcement was made this year about a discovery in optics which could make the James Webb telescope obsolete. A process has been invented which will allow for the creation of very thin refractor lenses which will not only make reflector telescopes like Webb the last of the big mirror telescopes, but the refractors are said to be capable of being 100 times more powerful and a lot lighter. It is hard to imagine what a scope like that might see if aimed at what we think is the beginning of the universe.
|
