2018 in science: from gene-edited babies to cube shaped poo (+ predictions for 2019)

Have you sobered up yet? How about now? And now? Since I don't have any more time to wait for you to open both of your eyes, I will just go on ahead. Your one eye sober and one eye drunk and closed will just have to do. December is behind us and that means that we have once again made a full circle around the Sun and oh boy what a fun ride that was. For every second of those 365 days, we were moving around 30 kilometers. Yup, 30 kilometers per second, that was and will still be our speed of circling that bright shiny star that makes everything on this gorgeous planet possible. What happened during all of those 31557600 seconds? A lot of interesting things...

There was a lot that happened in many fields, from astronomy to psychology and according to many scientific platforms, there was a difference between what was considered most valuable and that which has been read the most. It is nice to know what people are interested in. Poo, they are interested in poo but I can not blame them when it comes shaped like cubes. It was a busy year in science and I will try to cover some groundbreaking discoveries, those that still wait some more confirmation and share with you some predictions for the 2019 and what might be waiting for us. Are you ready to take a look in the past and see what amazing things have happened? Let's go!

Many scientific platforms out there list the human-driven climate change as the story of the year. Yeah... I do not want to be the one who always goes against the current but that "fight" between are humans responsible for what is happening with the Earth or not is redundant in my humble opinion, let us first convince people that there is, in fact, something going on. Denying that there is a climate change is bordering with psychosis but hey, some people believe that Earth is donut-shaped so why am I surprised that there are also those who think that nothing is going on with the climate. Sea level is rising and the temperature rise is affecting species being lost due to destroyed habitats not to mention how there are extreme heat waves all over the world. Since I do plan to write a separate post about science confirming that humans did impact things (take that you orange psycho), I will end this rampage-like digression and get back to what I wanted to list as my favorites from 2018. For now, I leave you with an amazing article for all you who are impatient to learn more:

You know how in numerous movies aliens came from Mars? Who knew that Hollywood was playing it so close to the truth. All you have to do is consider how aliens can be any life form and not only humanoids and not let your imagination run as wild as you want. There is a strong indication of how there is a possibility of life but nothing has been proven yet. That being said, weeeee, LIFE ON MARS!!!!

Researchers found a wide lake of standing liquid near the Red Planet’s south pole. It is buried beneath 1.5 kilometers of ice and the largest volume of liquid water ever claimed to exist on Mars. Now, the discovery is a bit controversial since the temperature under that ice should be around –68° C and I am not sure how water can remain liquid and there is the thing where the second Mars orbiter did not detect it like the first one did. Roberto Orosei of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Bologna, Italy has an explanation for both "problems". He claims that Mars’ south polar ice cap has a texture like Styrofoam which can insulate the lake and confuse the second orbiter leaving it with no results. Long-wavelength radar technology made this finding possible and if ice really is porous on Mars then there is a strong possibility that there will be more of these lakes discovered and life could be down there, in that hidden water.

Neutrinos are subatomic particles produced by the decay of radioactive elements that do not have an electric charge. They are produced in high-energy collisions, traveling at the speed of light, and unaffected by magnetic fields which makes them ideal for conveying astronomical information from the edge of the universe because they are affected only by the weakest of nature's forces and unabsorbed while they travel great distances. Most of them were created around 15 billion years ago but they are still being born in the explosions of supernovas, nuclear power stations, particle accelerators, and various atmospheric phenomena.

Many people have been hoping for this kind of discovery for decades. Brilliant cosmic beacon called a blazar about 4 billion light-years away. Blazars are active places at the centers of galaxies that send jets of high-energy matter and light toward Earth. The IceCube observatory spotted the high-energy neutrino and both the Earth-orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov, or MAGIC, telescopes in the Canary Islands reported that the blazar was violently flaring up in gamma rays at the same time the neutrino was detected. Why is this one of my favorite science things from last year? Because unraveling the secrets of the cosmos will follow it. Neutrinos can be used to learn more about the objects that created them. Some are even speculating about a new field of astronomy that combines information from neutrinos and light.

This was my favorite thing from last year, the work of Chinese scientist Jiankui He, a man whose name will be remembered and written in history books, a genius if you ask me. Sure, there are those who object his work and are highly concerned about the ethical issues but I am not one of them. I see gene manipulation in our future as one of the best ways to improve our health from an early age. What ethics are we even talking about here? If there is a way to eliminate viruses and diseases (especially autoimmune ones), I am all up for it. Science is here to help, why would we continue living with diseases if we can eliminate them? Your argument about playing God is not valid if you ever took a pill against pain or visited any doctor what so ever.

First of all, this man did absolutely nothing wrong and did not force parents to participate, on the contrary. Seven couples were recruited from an HIV patient group to take part in the project. The gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 was used to disable the CCR5 gene in the fertilized eggs that produced the twin babies. CCR5 encodes a protein that allows the HIV virus to enter cells and if disabled might help children to avoid HIV infection. China’s Ministry of Science and Technology suspended his work and put him under investigation for violating their laws. Sure, his work could have been better and is far from over but common people, until you make this possible and normal, more will be done in secrecy and why? Because we are still concerned about false ethics? Yes, I said FALSE. Welcome to the future. Medicine and health are more important than your religious views.

Yes, not only has a male birth control pill been created, it has been tested too and passed the test with flying colors. Since men did not have side effects from the prototype contraceptive (like women usually do) and their testosterone and other reproductive hormones got safely reduced to levels that halt sperm development, I get how this is an interesting thing to read about. According to sciencenews.org, it was the number 1 news read about in 2018. You can read the research about it here:

Look at that cute creature, it turns out that his poo is not only cute too but cube-shaped. This is the only animal that poops little cubes. Their elastic intestine shapes the poo in little cubes that can even be rolled like playing dice. In other news, if you are not getting enough sleep, you might be at higher risk of Alzheimer's disease. There’s not enough evidence yet to know the exact degree to which sleep might make a difference in the disease, and study results are not consistent but the theory how sleep deprivation can lead to Alzheimer’s disease got some extra attention since disrupted sleep might encourage Alzheimer’s by allowing buildup of amyloid-beta which is thought to lead to the death of neurons.

2019 will most definitely be the year of astronomy. The Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory may detect black holes and their merges, China will probably land the return mission on the Moon, and the Parker Solar Probe will fly close enough to the sun to show us never before seen details of it. Gene-editing technology and the climate change will remain popular topics but there will also be some promising work on superconductivity. To me, the most interesting thing is, of course, the human brain, behavioral sciences, and human evolution.

Our brains are what makes us human and there are extraordinary beyond words. One of the frequently asked questions is where does our consciousness come from. The answer may be the claustrum. It is a paper-thin sheet that covers the insular cortex which is involved in emotional processing. This part of the brain is the most mysterious one and I have great hope that neurobiology will unravel at least some of its secrets. Speaking of neurobiology, 2019 may be the "marriage year" where neurobiology and psychology will work even closer together and more frequently. There is much that we can discover if those two fields continue their lovely relationship. We may even learn what makes us who we are and how can we impact it to become better at everything. By learning about ourselves we are enabling progress in any science field because everything starts with the brain. By being better at using it, we are becoming better in everything.