10 Biggest Science Stories

London's Guardian newspaper recently posted The Year's 10 Biggest Stories in science.  Of these stories, four touched upon astronomy, space travel, or the origins of our universe.  These stories were:

-- Flying faster than the speed of light just might be possible after all:  Discusses the CERN experiment that found neutrinos may have been traveling faster than light.

-- The best candidate for finding life on another world has been pinpointed by astronomers:  Notes how the Kepler telescope found Kepler 22-b, a planet 600 lights years away that is about 2.4 times the size of earth and sits within the "goldilocks zone."  With an average surface temperature of 22C (72 F), a solar orbit of 290 Earth days, and the possibility of water, the newly identified planet may be able to harbor life as we know it.

-- Mars continue to be a tricky place to reach:  The article notes that of the past 38 Mars missions, 19 have failed.  The Russian's most recent failure was not encouraging. 

-- We learned that the Higgs boson really does exist:  Scientists reported earlier in December that the Higgs boson, or the substance that gives all other particles their mass, may have been found. This offers some important insights into the origins of our universe.

Yes, it has been a pretty interesting year.  Now if we could only find a way to travel faster than light, we might have a chance to explore worlds such as Kepler 22-b.  Of course, we may need to do a better job getting to Mars before we worry about traveling elsewhere in the galaxy.

More on Musk (and Mars)

Yesterday Slate reported that Elon Musk is predicting that the first SpaceX mission to Mars could be as soon as 10 years from now.  Musk stated,  "Ultimately we don't really want 10,000 people on Mars...We want millions."  This is an impressive boast, and even more impressive if he has the resources to promise something that even the White House (and other countries) dare not utter. 

According to Musk at the National Press Club, “I would argue also on that scale should fit life becoming multiplanetary. And in fact I think, [after] consciousness, it’s the next step. You really kind of need consciousness to design vehicles that can transport life over hundreds of millions of miles of irradiated space to an environment that they did not evolve to exist in.”  Here is the part of the speech.

It is nice to have a few big thinkers in the room.  First we need to dream (and write it down), and then we need to act.  Someone contact NASA!

Startalk Radio - Fun Astronomy

I have been listening to Neil de Grasse Tyson on the StarTalk podcast and find that it is a fun mix of news, culture, science, and quite often topics on astronomy and astrophysics. Dr. Tyson, a well know astrophysicist, as well as the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, brings a lot of energy to the Discovery-funded program.  While I am not always a fan of the loud music starting the show and name-dropping that is bound to occur in each episode, I will give him credit for bringing audiences into a realm where they might otherwise be afraid to venture. 

Here are a few episodes from this year:

-- Oscar-winning actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg joins Neil to talk about her love of science, and how it eventually led to her role as Guinan on Star Trek, the Next Generation. 

-- Actor Alan Alda, comedian Eugene Mirman, and more great guests discuss the state of science literacy and take audience questions that explore just how weird and funny science can be.

-- Every now and then it's good to take a tour around your own backyard. Space scientists Steve Squyres and Heidi Hammel, comedian Chuck Nice, and Bill Nye the Science Guy join Neil in a look around our own corner of the cosmos.

Of course, Dr. Tyson is also the host of NOVA's scienceNOW, which has brought some interesting stories to the television.  He is a great popularized of science, which may rub some folks the wrong way (particularly his colleagues) yet offers a valuable service to a society where scientific opinion is often discounted for a variety of political reasons.  Whether he is showing up on Comedy Central's Daily Show or HBO's Real Time, he is pushing for more science funding as well as greater dreaming in our society.

As Carl Sagan played the serious scientist in his 1980s PBS series Cosmos, Dr. Tyson bring a comedic, frat boy style to his series to keep the topics light and interesting.  Of course, we also have the grandfatherly approach of Morgan Freeman on his Science Channel series Through the Wormhole to add to the balance.

It is odd that we have so many terrific science programs on television and populating the Internet, and yet Americans seem to be moving away from clear, scientific thinking on the issues facing us, be it the environment or the exploration of our universe.  How can we be starving in the midst of such plenty?