As usual, my top science stories are kind of quirky. I have combined what are undoubtedly the biggest stories with a little Canadian content, something humourous and a nod to my own biases, which include human evolution and space travel. This week: Numbers 10 through 6.
10. Only in Canada
The research in my 10th top story wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it was very interesting and amusing. In July and August a robot made from a beer cooler bucket, pool noodles, wellington boots, rubber gloves, solar panels and a computer “brain” hitchhiked all the way from Halifax, NS, to Victoria, BC.
The official experiment according to researchers was to “explore topics in human-robot-interaction and to test technologies in artificial intelligence and speech recognition and processing.”
Frauke Zeller, assistant professor in the School of Professional Communication at Ryerson University suggested another way of looking at it.
“Usually, we are concerned with whether we can trust robots,” he said. “This project asks: can robots trust human beings?”
Apparently Hitchbot had a good experience with the humans it encountered. It made it to its destination in just 21 days, covered in graffiti, but otherwise no worse for wear.
9. Old cancer
There is a trend in the world of fad diets and anti-GMO thinking that illness, particularly cancer, is a modern phenomenon brought on by our post-industrial lifestyle.
A new discovery this year presented evidence to the contrary. Researchers, including a scientist from the University of Saskatchewan, found a 4,500 year old skeleton of a man who died from cancer.
It is the oldest case of cancer ever diagnosed and suggests that the disease has always been with us.
8. Next stop, Mars
While NASA has gotten out of the business of near space travel, farming out its earth-orbiting requirements to the private sector and having its astronauts hitch a ride with the Russians to the International Space Station, it has not abandoned deeper space ambitions.
On Friday, NASA successfully tested its new spacecraft. The Orion capsule shot up on a Delta IV Heavy rocket to 5,800 kilometres beyond Earth, orbited twice and splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean near the Baja California Coast. It is the furthest we have gone since the Apollo 17 moon mission, 15 times as far as the International Space Station’s orbit.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden dramatically hailed the mission as by as “Day 1 of the Mars era.”
Orion’s first planned manned mission will be to moon orbit in the 2020s where NASA hopes astronauts will rendezvous with a captured asteroid.
After that it is off to Mars in the 2030s.
7. Little green men?
I equivocated a bit at putting two Mars stories on the list, but ultimately, the latest data coming from the Mars rover Curisoity was too exciting to pass on. Just last week, scientists received the first confirmed discovery of organic molecules in the Martian soil.
It is a far cry from proving life exists, or previously existed, on the red planet, but it does suggest it is possible.
Furthermore, Curiosity sent home data that indicates sudden spikes in methane in the atmosphere that 10 times the normal level. NASA believes the spikes suggests some kind of process is occurring below the surface, but does not know if it is biological or non-biological.
6. New club member
As a species, we tend to be pretty arrogant about our abilities. For example, it was a long held belief that Homo sapiens is not only the only species currently capable of symbolic thinking, but the only species that has ever been capable of it.
That has been more or less debunked by scientists studying Neanderthals, dolphins and whales. There is also evidence some birds, particularly the Corvidae family, which includes crows and ravens, exhibit signs of symbolic thought.
In 2014, scientists have found something that may really turns the idea of the uniqueness of H. sapiens on its head. It is a 540,000 to 430,000 year-old shell from a Homo erectus site in Indonesia that has been engraved with geometric etchings.
The find pushes back the date of the oldest known engravings by at least 300,000 years and makes H. erectus the third member of the human family that probably had the ability of symbolic thought and therefore the capacity for language.
It is a very exciting discovery.
Next week: The Top 5.
