Here's a little something to expand the limits of your mind as a warmup. This sliver (1/20th) of the night sky contains over 48,000 dots and is 6 billion light-years wide, 4.5 billion light-years high, and 500 million light-years thick. It's also a shot of the past as it was about 6 billion years ago. It is the result of a collaboration between Daniel Eisenstein, a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III.
Each dot is a galaxy. Each galaxy contains billions of stars with diverse solar systems and was used to create a record-breaking 3D map of just 1.2 million galaxies.
Imagine. Quadruple star systems. Planets orbiting blackholes. Planets who can be only 12 miles across and made mostly of carbon, but 20 times more dense then Jupiter. Making the planet the densest of all diamonds. Even massive planets who orbit 3 stars at once. The possibilities are as vast as they are humbling.
Now that we've stretched a little, what's been going on in the world?
Scientists have had an enormous breakthrough in biology. They have found a gene that acts like a surgical knife on other genes. CRISPR has unlocked the ability to target and edit the genome of living cells. To it's advantage it is also the cheapest and is nearing human trials. Cancers, genetic defects and diseases could be a thing of the past. Science magazine gave it the "Breakthrough of the Year," over the Pluto flyby and even the discovery of a new human ancestor, Homo Naledi.
Scientists have had an enormous breakthrough in biology. They have found a gene that acts like a surgical knife on other genes. CRISPR has unlocked the ability to target and edit the genome of living cells. To it's advantage it is also the cheapest and is nearing human trials. Cancers, genetic defects and diseases could be a thing of the past. Science magazine gave it the "Breakthrough of the Year," over the Pluto flyby and even the discovery of a new human ancestor, Homo Naledi.
Science is moving in leaps and bounds. We could eliminate the shortage of organs and increase our lifespans by decades. We must be aware and mindful of the changes that could occur by quickly adopting the technologies of the future.
Would "designer babies" be a good thing? Could genetic mutations get out of hand? This method could be used to prevent mosquitoes from spreading malaria, but how would that effect the ecosystems containing them?
I believe our future is truly bright, and it will be bright for everyone, not just a few.
Would "designer babies" be a good thing? Could genetic mutations get out of hand? This method could be used to prevent mosquitoes from spreading malaria, but how would that effect the ecosystems containing them?
I believe our future is truly bright, and it will be bright for everyone, not just a few.
We have also discovered an extremely dim galaxy right on our front porch. One of the faintest galaxies ever spotted, Crater 2 is an ultra-dwarf galaxy. It has been given the nickname "the feeble giant," due to it being the 4th largest satellite of the Milky Way and still having such an extremely low surface brightness.
On the not-so-bright-side in science news, a bug in the software used to create the images of your brain during an fMRI scan, has put at risk the past 15 years worth of brain research, covering up to 40,000 research studies. A study published in the journal of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) found that the software used to generate the fMRI images from 499 healthy patients, up to 70% of the time, were lighting up areas of the brain that should not have been lit up in the images. This could be a huge setback in brain research.
On the not-so-bright-side in science news, a bug in the software used to create the images of your brain during an fMRI scan, has put at risk the past 15 years worth of brain research, covering up to 40,000 research studies. A study published in the journal of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) found that the software used to generate the fMRI images from 499 healthy patients, up to 70% of the time, were lighting up areas of the brain that should not have been lit up in the images. This could be a huge setback in brain research.
Google made a major breakthrough in quantum computing recently with the successful simulation of the energy surface of a hydrogen atom. The problem they overcame was one of "superposition," the natural quantum-state of an atom which puts it in all of its possible positions at one time. A traditional computer would have to run the simulation one quantum state at a time, linearly. But a quantum computer can look at every single state of the atom at one time.
As the technology improves the simulations could allow us to one day simulate the entire bodies chemistry,
allowing pharmaceuticals to be tested in virtual reality before being approved. Quantum computing technology is becoming more and more viable all the time.
As the technology improves the simulations could allow us to one day simulate the entire bodies chemistry,
allowing pharmaceuticals to be tested in virtual reality before being approved. Quantum computing technology is becoming more and more viable all the time.
Additional Reading:
- If you want to catch up on some other life changing tech coming our way within the next few years, like Nutrigenomics, Neuromorphic Engineering, or even Sythentic Biology? Five Emerging Technologies.
- "Neutrinos could be the reason why antimatter hasn't blown up the Universe."
- Jupiter's moon Ganymede found to have more water than the Pacific.