Disaster and unrest were the themes to 2011. Many of these disasters had something to do with climate change like the floods in Thailand, drought in Africa and hurricanes in America; the year was second warmest ever-recorded in the United Kingdom.
The International Panel of Climate Change, a UN body, declared in November that it was now clear from leading climate studies that the earth’s climate will surely be patterned by more frequent extreme weather, from desperate droughts to defacing floods.
Scientists continued to warn of doom in case of “business-as-usual”, foreseen by countless climate modelling reports, diplomats pondered in futile ways and the agitation within the masses appeared to take shape.
The recent Durban summit failed to coax a much-needed urgent international climate treaty, instead the governments made a last minute decision to work towards an agreement that will come into effect in 2020. The Kyoto Protocol, due to expire this year will be extended for 5 years; the USA still refuses to sign, Canada will withdraw and developing countries are exempt.
Concerned geologists met in May to discuss the formalisation of the term “Anthropocene” that signifies the epoch we live in, the one where humans inhabited and modified the earth drastically. It will replace the Holocene that started only 11,700 years ago and in hope that the term will bring into attention our damaging impact and encourage governments to handle phenomenon like global warming with seriousness.
Worrying social unrest was a regular event around the world in 2011. Internet and social media, propelled by the now omnipresent mobile phones and battery-operated handheld devices, spurred strikes and mass protests in New York, Delhi and Libya. Egypt’s revolution shone like a beacon. And here, scientists participated as a unit in hope to base their future society on rationality and reason this time.
Nuclear Energy
The ripples of the tsunami in Japan and the nuclear disaster it caused reached all parts of the world and many were hit hard. Under the fear that their dependency on nuclear energy might lead to a similar devastation, Germany and Italy joined Japan in initiating a phase out of nuclear reactors. Others like America, who realised the obsolete nature of the Fukushima reactors cautiously commissioned stress tests on their own reactors while some like China remained undeterred, convinced of true efficiency of clean nuclear energy. The world admirably looks at India’s plans for thorium reactors, which is cleaner, cheaper and more efficient than those fuelled with uranium; but within its borders where many read in street light, disagreements have raised hurdles for a possible energy self-reliance. Astronomy
Initiated a few years ago, citizen science is gaining popularity- where the public takes part in making sense of large unsorted scientific databases. In one such project a mysterious green cloud, 650 million light years away, was identified by a Dutch schoolteacher and named Hanny’s Voorwerp.
In January, the Hubble space telescope found that the glowing voorwerp (Dutch for object) was birthing stars, thanks to its interaction with an adjoining galaxy. Remote areas on earth and even the space around it, is littered with sophisticated telescopes playing the role of our eyes, peering into deep space.
In 2011, the speed at which exoplanets — planets outside our solar system, were being discovered, accelerated further. The Kepler space telescope along with other land-based ones has now revealed well over 700 exoplanets and thousands of contenders are being studied — some similar to our earth in different ways and some staying consistent with surprising. Planet hunters are spending more and more time in sprouting observatories and their search is always hungry for life-friendly planets.
Our desperate search for life outside our planet took us to the red planet yet again — Nasa successfully launched its biggest rover Curiosity in November; it is on its way now and scheduled to land on Mars’ gale crater this August.
Besides Mars, man-made machines reached the orbits of Mercury and asteroid Vesta, a probe called Juno lifted off to investigate Jupiter’s core and plans for solar observatories were finalised.
This success in space was overshadowed in a few incidents by failed missions, concern over rising space debris and recurrent funding issues. Americans proud of their ‘space-ferrying’ legacy were left emptied when the beloved space shuttle programme came to an end. The last of surviving space taxis Atlantis landed for the last time in July and no new plans have been made for a successor vehicle. Private companies are now competing to be the first ones to offer shuttle service to the international space station. Until then, the Russian Soyuz capsules will ferry astronauts and cargo to the orbiting laboratory.
Big breakthroughs
Particle Physics: The claim that neutrinos had been seen travelling faster than light sent shivers down the spines of physicists as it violates the special theory of relativity that Einstein put forth, which laid the foundation for much of modern science and technology. Confused scientists raised many doubts over the experiments design and the claim is to be verified by independent teams and experiments. As one theory appeared to be challenged another was reinforced when clues of the Higgs Boson surfaced at Cern. Physicists there announced repeatedly over the last year that the hiding place of the Higgs was being narrowed and the final verdict on the so-called “god-particle” is expected early this year. If found, the particle theorised to give mass to matter will help confirm the standard model of particle physics.
The Tevatron machine at Fermilab in America where many subatomic particles were observed shut down in September. Bosses at Cern, which is intrinsically a European organisation, said last year that the successor to the LHC machine will be an international one. This trend of international collaboration in big science and technology projects could be seen in all spheres of the research community and science diplomacy is thriving.
Health: The past year saw the success of clinical trials against a few vicious disease including malaria and HIV, and progress was made towards TB treatment. An international HIV trial was named the breakthrough of the year by Science magazine — taking anti-retroviral drugs before immune system began to weaken was found to be effective in preventing transmission to another individual. The Glaxo-PATH malaria vaccine trial in Africa was largely successful, although experts argued that it was ineffective in other forms of the disease.
A series of breakthroughs in early 2011 dampened high hopes around induced pluripotent stem cell technology — the ability to convert adult cells into stem cells that can be modified into any type. One research showed that the conversion was not effective — unwanted mutations could be introduced and another claimed that the cells could provoke an immune reaction.
Genome sequencing records is becoming important to health services of many nations where personalised health care is emerging. DNA barcoding has also emerged as a cheap useful technique to screen for various traits, even outside the health sector — in smuggling, pollution and conservation for example.
Chemistry: Ten years after their discovery, additions to the periodic table with atomic number 114 and 116 were given names Flerovium (Fl) in honour of the physicist Georgiy Flerov and Livermorium (Lv) after the laboratory where it was discovered. The names are yet to be formally accepted. Other heavy elements 113, 115, and 118 are still under review.