I used to provide a daily list of links on this blog of science stories I found interesting. I gave that up and took down the link-posts to focus on my personal writing, but I still share links through social media. Here’s my favorite science stories of 2011.
Space
So Long Space Shuttle
Credit: Trey Ratcliff
NASA finalized the retirement of the Space Shuttle program with the announcement of their final resting places, with Washington DC, Los Angeles and Orlando getting real shuttles for their museums and New York getting the wooden training vessel (Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!). NASA also unveiled the Space Launch System (SLS) next generation of manned space explorations vehicles that will (hopefully) be taking us to Mars. Along the same goal, the Mars500 completed its 17 month simulated mission, complete with isolation and delayed communications as a partial proof of concept that humans can survive the trip to the red planet.
One of the great joys of being human is our incredible powers of pattern recognition. Our brain’s ability to manifest meaningful associations out of the complex morass of sensory stimuli perpetually assaulting us is a cognitive expertise into which computers are only just starting to venture successfully. It’s what allows us to recognize faces, raed wrdos wtih smrelcabd ltretes, identify with our fellow humans, and compartmentalize the sounds, tastes, and sights around us.
The number 11 has always been my favorite whole number. Ever since I was a kid, I appreciated the way the first nine multiples of 11 are numbers that mirror the tens and ones places (in a base-10 numbers system): {11, 22, 33, 44 … 77, 88, 99}.
Dr. Goodall opened the conversation with a small Dove Parade and her signature greeting in “chimpanzee.” She then explained how a “sense of urgency” keeps her going, motivated by the need to preserve our vanishing natural resources. The 77-year-old humanitarian, who founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 and was appointed by the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan as one of the institutions venerable Messengers of Peace, has spent a lifetime dedicated to conservation, not just to preserve wildlife, but also to improve the quality of life for human beings all across the globe.
“Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship I marveled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty — not destroy it!” ~ Yuri Gagarin
Happy Super-Duper-Mega-Maxi-Utra-Omni-Uber Awesome Powers of Ten Day!!!
10/10/10 is not only an entire power of ten more awesome than the other 99 years’ worth of 10/10 days in this century, 101010 is also the meaning of life in binary! Take a moment of silent reflection at 1010 AM, for yet even two more powers of awesomeness (within your timezone)!
The History of Exploring Powers of 10
Begin with the 1957 book Cosmic View, The Universe in 40 Jumps by Dutch educator Kees Boeke, which used illustrations and text to zoom out from a girl holding a cat, inexplicably sitting next to a blue whale. The linked website has all the illustrations and text for exploration.
Without a doubt, the most positive development in science for the year has been the election of President Barack Obama. After a stellar first week, it seems as though the American Government is treasuring science more than it has in years. With the Solar Decathlon on the Washington Mall, a Middle East Science Envoy, establishment of National Lab Day and Computer Science Week, and most recently the Educate to Innovate STEM initiative, there’s good news on the science front in politics every month. One of my favorites has been the appointment of America’s CIO Vivek Kundra, who is ushering in a new era of government transparency with data.gov and the Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research. The stimulus bill included a great deal of funding for scientific research and education which may be tracked at recovery.gov and the science-specific spending at Science Works for US, and although the money funding science won’t be spent quickly, it will have the effect of strengthening America’s position as an innovator years down the road.
On this day, 233 years ago, the philosopher David Hume, author of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which rejected intelligent design in nature, died in what was a milestone for atheism. The religious population watched Hume’s last days closely, incapable of believing that an individual could die rejecting the idea of god and fully expecting him to recant in his final days. Instead of recanting, David Hume played cards up until his last moment of life (Schmidt, 2006).
References:
Schmidt, James (2006). Making Man in Reason’s Image: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Humanity, Recorded Books, LLC.
Happy Ada Lovelace Day! In celebration of Ada Lovelace, only child to Lord Byron and author of the world’s first computer program in 1843 for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, bloggers everywhere are running posts about one of their favorite women in tech.
So this year I’d like to introduce everyone to Esther Dyson:
Dyson attended Harvard at the age of 16, was reporting for Forbes at 25, and was analyzing technology stocks for Wall Street by the age of 30. She co-established the publication Release 1.0, which continues today as Release 2.0 and sells for $130 a single issue. She has backed some of the best start-ups online, including Flickr, del.icio.us, and many others.
While TV talking heads ramble on their mostly-wrong predictions, Esther Dyson is a futurist who has put her money where her mouth is. Her article for WiredIntellectual Value, where she talks about companies needing to post content online for free and have to rely on other methods to make money off it, is so much common sense today, but she made the prediction in 1995. Esther Dyson may not be a name the average person will recognize, and that’s because instead of focusing on being famous like so many modern pundits, she has focused on being right.
Esther Dyson Patch Always Make New Mistakes
Credit: Gisela Giardino
This incredible propensity for Esther Dyson’s over-achievement appears to run in the family, as her father is physicist Freeman Dyson, mother is mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson, and brother is digital technology historian George Dyson.
The Science Fiction author, author of over 500 SF and general science books, Vice President of Mensa, and President of the American Humanist Society would be 88 today.
An interesting fact about Asimov and other great minds like Richard Feynman, was that they were supporters of reforming the spelling of English words. Asimov argued that the inconsistent and non-phonetic way we spell words in English contributes to illiteracy in American children.
Why don’t “comb,” “tomb,” and “bomb” rhyme/rime? Why do “they,” “say,” and “weigh” rhyme/rime? Our children don’t have difficulty learning to read and write because they are lacking in intelligence or proper study-habits, they have difficulty because they are learning a spelling system maintained by idiots.
The Spelling Society works to raise awareness of the problems caused by the irregularity of English spelling and improve literacy through spelling reform.
CNN making the boneheaded decision to dump its science unit, the Origin of Blue Eyes fitting another interesting piece of the human origins puzzle into place, and “Dwarf Planets” becoming “Plutoids” earn an honorable mention for science news in 2008, and the Large Hadron Collider will make next year’s top 10 list, when it starts working properly.
Here are my picks for the best science developments in 2008:
The Svalbard Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway went into deep freeze, preserving the world’s seed collections against any number of threats, from Global Warming to regional environmental damage. The vault is a monument to prescient thinking, an Ark for weathering our current environmental storms.
Svalbard Seed Vault
Once numbered at less than 100,000, a recent census found 125,000 western lowland gorillas found living in the Republic of Congo. Although still listed as “critically endangered,” the numbers show that conservation efforts do work, and that similar actions must be taken for other primates around the world.
The first Photo of an Exoplanet was confirmed from two photographs taken by the Hubble Space telescope in 2004 and 2006, a Jupiter-mass object that orbits the star Fomalhaut every 872 years.
Planet Orbiting the star Fomalhaut Every 872 Years
Closer to home an Electron was filmed for the first time, riding on a light wave after being pulled away from an atom.
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) was signed into law, which bars discriminating against people based on their genetic information concerning health insurance and employment.
The Phoenix Lander proved conclusively the existence of water on Mars, and kept us on the edge of our seats with its electrical problems and issues getting soil samples into its ovens for analysis.
Working models and computer simulations of the Antikythera device revealed the Greeks were using a very sophisticated astronomical calculator, which was also capable of predicting eclipses and the Olympic Games 2,100 years ago.
My personal favorite development for this year was Science Debate 2008, which successfully got the presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain to answer questions about science, and, even more amazingly, brought the scientific community together into its most effective lobby, which is like herding cats.
