Scientific Adventures: 2015's science news in review

With 2016 now upon us, let us look back at five of the largest scientific events last year.

NASA makes it to Pluto

When NASA launched the New Horizons probe in 2006, they had to wait quite a while for it to reach its destination, Pluto. This past January, the space probe began its approach in what would be a seven-month lead up to New Horizons eventual flyby of the icy dwarf planet.

On July 14, NASA received confirmation of the probe flying a mere 12,500 kilometres above the planet, making it the first human object to reach and study Pluto and its largest moon Charon.

New Horizons then continued it’s cosmic flight farther into the Kuiper Belt, a region of rock and primordial elements, to study an object farther away called 2014 MU69, and is expected to reach it’s target by late 2018 to early 2019.

The probe will continue to send data from its Pluto flyby until the end of 2016, when the entire data packet will have completely downloaded back to NASA servers. Data that has already been sent includes pictures of a “heart” shape on the pink-hued surface, in addition to beautifully detailed images of Pluto’s mountain ranges and polar caps.

Canadian wins Nobel Prize for going underground to view the sun

After working for the last two decades two kilometres underground in a reconverted Sudbury mine, Canadian scientist Arthur B. McDonald, along with his Japanese counterpart Takaaki Kajita, were presented with the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics in December after determining new information about neutrinos. Neutrinos are tiny subatomic particles that have no charge and are found in three states: tau, muon and electron.

The duo made the discovery when looking at neutrinos both leaving the sun and in Earth’s atmosphere, the particles were changing from one state to another. To do this though, they also had to have a mass, something the standard model of physics had previously believed not possible.

This mass, although extremely small, allowed neutrinos to behave in the ways observed in different environments by McDonald and Kajita, who through data saw the tiny particles performing the changes.

Both scientists said during interviews at the award ceremony in Stockholm that research will now focus on determining the actual value of that mass, and if there are other types of neutrinos to be found.

New ancestors found means a new timeline for evolution

Back in March, two separate papers were published declaring the Homo genus to be almost three million years old, pushing back previous estimates by over 400,000 years.

Species in the Homo genus include modern humans, Neanderthals, a completely new species named H. naledi only announced in September, as well as about a dozen other species from across Africa and Eurasia.

The archaeological find that changed our evolutionary calendar was LD 350-1, a jawbone fragment found back in 2013 dating over 2.8 million years, becoming the oldest fossil specimen relating to the homo genus.

Scientists found this date by using the known age of the soil layer where it was found as well as computer simulations. This further refined their estimate and pushed back our own ancestors timeline into that of Australopithecus, some of the first upright walking hominids ever found in the fossil record.

Remember that other new species mentioned as well? The H. naledi specimens were found in the South African Rising Star cave system back in 2013 as well, and have now led researchers to speculate the placement of bodies showed early hominids first signs of burial practices, displaying intelligence, emotion and possibly an emerging society.

Vegans will rejoice when they eventually see “bacon” Dulse on shelves

University of Oregon scientists performing large-scale underwater agriculture off the coast of California for the last 20 years declared the ability to grow a bacon flavoured version of seaweed back in July.

In addition to the beautiful idea of the greatest food on earth also now being one of the fastest growing, the team behind this creation have said it holds about twice the nutritional value as a similar serving size of kale.

While originally growing the seaweed, called Dulse, for another experiment as fast growing food stock for abalone, the team stumbled upon the algae’s unique salty taste, finding it resembled bacon when fried, and high nutrient value for humans as well the molluscs it was originally intended for.

While Scandinavian countries have eaten Dulse for centuries, it’s now commercialized, ending up in premium health food stores. Students working with the team of researchers hope to change that by implementing a business strategy to make the underwater crop a lowcost food source globally.

Currently, their specific strain can double in size in about 10 days, and is the only one known to have that delicious bacon taste.

DNA/RNA building blocks easily created in outer space conditions

Scientists in Taiwan and from NASA’s Ames Research Facility both had papers accepted in early 2015 researching the ability to create precursors to life, using lab conditions to simulate a comet hurtling through space.

By placing tiny layers of water and pyrimidine, a carbon-nitrogen cyclic molecule, into specialized vacuum chambers that could be cooled to space-like temperatures, they simulated some of the most basic conditions for molecules already found on the surface of comets, primordial balls of icy rock left behind from the formation of solar systems.

The pyrimidine/water samples were then subjected to different wavelengths of UV light, a wellknown form of radiation throughout the universe.

After being left between an hour to almost a day and a half, instrumental analysis of the samples showed evidence of Thymine, Cytosine, Uracil and a host of other cyclic organic molecules not present in the initial conditions.

Cytosine and Thymine are found as one half the genetic materials in DNA, while Cytosine and Uracil make up one half of RNA, the genetic backbones of all life as we currently know.

These studies may be the most compelling evidence yet of Panspermia, the theory suggesting life, or its precursors were brought to the surface of planets including Earth, on comets and meteorites. This rich organic material began seeding pools of raw chemicals, giving rise to the primitive cellular soup that eventually became all life on Earth.

Evidence has already shown that meteorites interior temperatures can remain relatively unchanged during entry into the atmosphere, and with the ability to show that pieces of DNA and RNA can be made in space, we may have found where life truly originated.