What science achieved in 2014

December 21, 2014 • 8:04 am

by Grania

Writers at io9 have collected some of the big breakthroughs in science this year.

Among their picks were Enceladus’ hidden ocean, the artificially expanded genetic alphabet, new burial mounds found at Stonehenge, a really big dinosaur named Dreadnoughtus Schrani,  womb transplants (oh, thank goodness!) and the supercluster Laniakea, although you should also read Ethan Siegel’s article about this story over at Starts With A Bang.

This is the one that made me snicker the most, if only because of the caption:

Harvard University's Self-Organizing Systems Research Group
http://io9.com/watch-the-largest-robotic-swarm-in-history-take-shape-1621759775

Very impressive and full of potential, these are tiny robots that self-assemble 2-D shapes in slow-moving swarms. Ed Yong wrote a great piece on how it works here.

Not a bad year for science. What science stories caught your eye this year?

79 thoughts on “What science achieved in 2014”

  2. King Richard III – from the search through the autopsy and ID

    Methane on Mars – I’m doubtful it’s an indicator of life, it’s just amazing to me there is a frigging robot on Mars, shooting lasers and drooling holes and smelling methane.

  3. My memories aren’t tagged with calendar dates, so it’s hard for me to know which was when.

    But there’s been a very recent paper that figured out that particle / wave duality is really just an equivalent form of the Uncertainty Principle. And earlier (though maybe not this year?) some researchers recreated basically all the spooky quantum phenomenon at a macro scale with oil droplets bouncing on water waves. And there’ve been rumors of the folks at CERN finding hints of something beyond the Standard Model, plus hints of cosmological observations of dark matter. Makes me think that we might be close to figuring out physics “for realz.”

    b&

    1. Well, someone can figure it out. My caveman brain will just have to take their word. Like Lawrence Krauss said, it’s counterintuitive and weird, deal with it.

      1. Oh, of course. What I mean is that there seem to be an awful lot of disparate pieces of the puzzle coming together right now, and that generally precedes a “phase change.” Or, I don’t think it’s all that much longer before there’s enough information to reconcile quantum and relativistic gravity for somebody who has all that information to go ahead and reconcile it, already.

        b&

        1. And when all the work is done and the phase is changed and the paradigm shifted, physicists will discover what the ancient mystics and their followers have known all along: fundamental reality is Consciousness.

          No, not really.

          But I do predict that, no matter how ludicrous or inappropriate that interpretation will be, the supernaturalists (New Age and same old Old Age) will attempt to spin it that way.

    2. Those stories are eye catching, indeed!

      But, I’m sorry to be such a downer, my problem with the first two is that they are designed to be so. There is a yearly industry of them, and it will remain so as long as basic quantum physics is as unconstrained as it is.

      Both are typical examples.

      The first story stems from those who want to reify “information”. They find a lot of formal correspondences between different quantum physics phenomena. But those correspondences don’t signify anything as long as “information” in quantum physics is a mere unitarity constraint. (Or in other words, quantum probabilities has to sum to 1.)

      E.g. uncertainty comes out of observation on the wavefunction, it is a Fourier decomposition property of finite wavepackets containing conjugate variables. “the uncertainty relation between position and momentum arises because the expressions of the wavefunction in the two corresponding orthonormal bases in Hilbert space are Fourier transforms of one another (i.e., position and momentum are conjugate variables).” [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle ]

      While quantum field theory show by way of relativity that the quantum field is the solution to the apparent “wave or particle” picture. “A QFT treats particles as excited states of an underlying physical field, so these are called field quanta. … Quantum field theory thus provides a unified framework for describing “field-like” objects (such as the electromagnetic field, whose excitations are photons) and “particle-like” objects (such as electrons, which are treated as excitations of an underlying electron field), so long as one can treat interactions as “perturbations” of free fields.” [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory ]

      The second story is a model of Bohm’s pilot wave theory for quantum mechanics. The problem isn’t to find such a classical model, the problem is that it breaks down in a relativistic context. That us why we have quantum field theory instead.

      And FWIW, 2-3 sigma effects aka “hints” come and go all the time in particle physics. Such “look elsewhere” effects of data fishing is why they use 5 sigma and not 3 sigma for declaring an observation that tests the standard particle or cosmological model.

      1. The second story is a model of Bohm’s pilot wave theory for quantum mechanics. The problem isn’t to find such a classical model, the problem is that it breaks down in a relativistic context.

        True…but, at the same time, we don’t have any way at all of reconciling gravity with both Quantum and Relativistic Mechanics. Until we’ve got that one solved, I don’t worry too much about anything else that works well at the one scale but not the other. I’d bet that the gravity solution will result in some sort of radical intuitive shift for basically everybody, and especially the lay audience…and all bets are off when it comes to that sort of thing.

        If nothing else, that oil drop video was a great way of visually demonstrating Bohm’s pilot wave theory. That it’s not likely to be the final answer is okay…it still makes it a lot easier to understand Bohm’s theory, which is a great thing for pedagogy if nothing else.

        b&

  4. Gravity waves! Then… maybe not. I thought the whole drama was a great example of how science works.

    The comet landing.

    Was it this year? If so, then the discovery of early human fossils in Dmanisi (Republic of Georgia) which suggests that Homo erectus, H. habilus, H. heidelbergensis might be all one variable species.

    1. That came out in October 2013 (DOI: 10.1126/science.1238484), reporting a fifth (and most complete) skull from the Dmanisi hominid.

  6. It has also been a good year for my field of study. The most awesome trend of the past year (although it already started taking off in 2013) are probably Deep Convolutional Neural Networks.

    They seem to have superpowers. Suddenly, many applications such as object detection, image classification, etc. which before worked ok now begin to work reliably.

    1. That’s worth looking up – thanks for sharing! (Always interested in learning about better classifiers.)

          2. Yes, but both were “merely” refining a long history of electric lamps. Though there’s certainly good reason to think that Edison refined Swan’s lamp as much as he refined any of the earlier ones….

            b&

  8. I came across 2 phenomenal articles just this last week that sent my head spinning:

    Synthetic molecules that mimic antibodies by attaching to pathogens and then pulling in a white blood cell: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141217113656.htm?utm_source=feedburner

    And remote controlled ferritin particles using radio waves and magnetic fields to activate and deactivate genes within a patients cells: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141215140801.htm?utm_source=feedburner

    1. *blink* Holy shit man. Thanks for sharing – both of those are incredible developments. The former blows my mind only the slightest bit more than the latter, but…

      1. Yes, yes! Big Hero is terrific for folks of all ages. Self-assembly robots make for an interesting plot set-up.

        And the animated short before the movie, despite starring a canine, is one of the best I’ve ever seen.

    3. Point taken in regards to the extent of the negative reaction, but the shirt guy was pretty obtuse about public relations.

      1. In fairness, he did later apologize for it. I don’t mean to imply that an apology always makes up for the wrong, but it should be considered, I think.

  11. The Rosetta and Philae story probably got my attention the most this year. I think little Philae is asleep – permanently – now but still an amazing project.

    1. I was hearing some weeks ago that it might revive a bit as the comet gets closer to the sun. Not sure if that is true.

      1. That’s the idea, indeed. Initially it would not survive close to the Sun because it would get too hot; now, being in the shade, they can’t yet charge the batteries, but might have a slightly longer lifetime because they won’t get as hot as quickly as they thought. They’ll still need to be able to charge the batteries through the solar array, though.

    2. This was certainly an amazing technological achievement. It’s maybe too early to pronounce on the scientific results of the mission.

  12. If you go to the link about the robots, the video shows their assembly patterns a bit more slowly. From that you can see how systematically the robots are recruited to assemble the pattern.
    They are not as ‘noisy’ from that view.
    Unlike people.

  13. Scientific American ran a story on the economics of solar electricity that was nuanced and informative. This topic isn’t quite as hysteria-generating as other sciency topics, but I have shared it with friends who are pro-solar without really understanding much about it. I was especially interested the tipping point when it could become uneconomic to maintain the traditional grid, which the solar structures still need as a back-up in most places. They end with the idea of a back-up based on natural gas. My own opinion is that solar with a back-up is great for rural and possibly suburban residences but not so much for big cities. Here’s the article, which is not behind a paywall:
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fight-over-rooftop-solar-forecasts-a-bright-future-for-cleaner-energy/

    1. I’m personally at the very heart of that story.

      I live in Arizona, and my roof is covered with solar panels. And my own utility, Salt River Project, is planning on tripling my monthly costs — from today’s $17 / month “connection fee” to at least $50 / month. Maybe even quadruple…it’s not clear if the $50 is instead of or in addition to the $17 / month.

      Before solar, $50 / month was about what I paid in the low-usage months. Today, I generate about half again as much electricity as I use. SRP credits my account once per year with the surplus…at the cheapest wholesale rate that exists. Still, it’s enough to pay for about six months of that connection fee.

      A few days ago, I hand-delivered a letter to the SRP CEO telling him that there’s no way I’m going to pay triple what I do today for electricity, so it’s up to him to keep me as a customer. Either they forget this tomfoolery or I buy a bunch of batteries and drop off the grid altogether. And I’d really rather stay on the grid, but it’s not a luxury that’s worth continuing to do business with a vendor who triples rates.

      SRP is a quasi-governmental agency, and the local corporation commission has no oversight role. We’ll see if SRP follows through on their threat…but there might not be much that will stop them at this point.

      b&

      1. I’m interested to hear how it works out. Here in Wisconsin the Republicans are implementing similar kill-solar changes making it less attractive for people to install solar. I may do it anyway. As I understand it, battery technology is lagging enough to make it hard for most folk to actually cut their ties to the grid.

        1. I’m still not sure how much it’s going to cost, myself.

          A common rough guesstimate is to budget as much for the battery system as for the PV array. A lot of money…it doesn’t come close to making financial sense with what I pay today, but, at what SRP is proposing to charge, I’d get a significantly better return on investment by going off the grid than by putting the money into T-bills.

          But I’m pretty sure I could do better, perhaps significantly better.

          One option might be to build my own nickel-iron batteries. Those things would outlive me. Buying them outright would cost a lot, but Edison invented them so the technology to manufacture isn’t out of the hobbyist range.

          Another option might be to get some discarded (etc.) electric vehicle (etc.) batteries — something not suitable for use in a moving vehicle, but still with plenty of charge to be worth putting at the back of a closet. If it’s cheap enough, even if it only lasts a few years…well, battery technology is evolving rapidly, and the el-cheapo rejects from a few years from now may well beat today’s state-of-the-art.

          Lots to investigate…but, at the least, the ballpark back-of-the-envelope figures make it a no-brainer with the proposed rate changes.

          b&

        2. Heh… I was reading Ben’s comment and thinking “huh, here in Wisconsin…” and then there was your comment. As a downtown Madison apartment renter, the going solar option doesn’t really exist for me, but Madison Gas and Electric (which has an effective monopoly regarding Madison electricity/natural gas) has recently been pushing for increased connection charges in exchange for lower per-kilowatt-hour charges, the long-term goal I recall being reported along the lines of upping the basic connection charge from something like $12 a month to $70 a month, while cutting the kilowatt-hour charge by huge amounts.

          Such a change does at least two things – 1) screw over people like Ben who are connected to the grid but do not rely on it for the majority of their power, therefore making it less economical to be energy-efficient, and 2) screw over lower-class people, who tend to have smaller domiciles and use less power per person but still need grid connection for the basics, as well as being less likely to have the spare money to invest in long-term payoffs like personal renewable energy generation. Now, they weren’t able to get exactly this through (though the state’s approved a baseline connection charge increase to about $20 for both electricity and gas, which is already about an 80% increase from prior), and they’ve backed up a bit in their stated ambitions, saying they’ll “hold meetings” about their plans – but I tend to feel that the message has already been sent: MGE doesn’t give a damn about protecting the environment or keeping energy affordable for all, it cares about making money (in fairness, though, that tends to be the point of a company’s existence in the first place).

          Yet on the flip side… I can understand the argument of the utilities regarding needing to up connection charges to the grid as people start to generate more of their own power, since grid maintenance costs still exist regardless of whether I’m drawing power from it constantly or only on the occasion that I need it. Without actual budgetary numbers to crunch (and the expertise required for the crunching) it’s tough for me to figure out whether MGE really is just trying to adapt to changing energy market realities and simply adjust their pricing scheme so that those creating their own power aren’t in some ways gaming the system (a crude analogy might be someone who only pays union dues in the short time periods in which they are attempting to get a union-negotiated raise) or if they’re just trying to use that as an excuse to pad their own pockets.

          The cynic in me tends to expect that while the utility’s arguments are valid to a degree, it is far from the degree that the utility shareholders/CEOs are presenting. I’ve no solid non-anecdotal evidence either way, but I strongly doubt MGE’s argument that too many of their customers are using alternative energy sources, unless it’s all on the outskirts – I work and live downtown Madison within two blocks of the capital, and almost nobody’s got solar panels around here, not businesses, not apartment buildings, not the masses of hippies even. Unless the non-isthmus parts of Madison are teeming with solar panels, I have to call BS on MGE.

          1. There’s been a fair bit of solar interest building in Milwaukee. The City has an office that coordinates solar group-purchase/install deals for interested property owners. They work with neighborhood organizations. We’re about to run the program in our neighborhood although now with the connection-charge changes it may not be as successful as it has been elsewhere in the city.

            And the Milwaukee Public Museum just completed a massive solar install on the south-facing side of their building.

          4. What the utilities are really afraid of — and rightly so — is a so-called “death spiral.”

            If you have the capital to make the initial investment, rooftop solar provides a better bang for your buck than anything on the stock market. (Profits are even better for utility-scale installations, incidentally.) Of course, it’s a non-trivial capital expense, so not many will make the investment…but it’s such a good return that there are companies (such as SolarCity) that’ll borrow the capital to buy the setup, install it, and lease it back to you in such a way that not only do they make an handsome profit but you save significantly on your electricity bill.

            (And, incidentally, if the utilities had even an hint of a clue, that’s the business they’d be getting in on, themselves, in a really big way.)

            But more distributed solar means fewer people buying fewer kilowatt-hours from the utilities, meaning their profit-per-kWh declines. And so their first instinct is to charge more per kWh so they can keep the same profit per kWh they’re used to. But the prices for solar are falling, rapidly…which means that solar becomes an even better deal with every utility rate increase. So the first instinct of the utilities has the effect of driving away even more customers, making them want to increase rates even more…thus the death spiral.

            The wild card right now is baseload power. Where do you get your power from when the Sun’s not shining? The average rate of production may well be greater than consumption…but extra power when you don’t need it doesn’t do you any good when you do need it.

            Solar customers typically are on a net metering plan. Generate 10 kWh during daylight hours, use 5 kWh during daylight hours and another 5 kWh overnight, and your net energy is zero and you’re not billed for any usage. That almost always carries over day-to-day, and typically month-to-month. In effect, you’re using the grid as if it were a battery.

            With solar at the percentages it’s at today, that works out fantastic for the utilities, since solar’s peak production is mostly aligned with peak consumption in the areas where it’s popular. When my rooftop is cranking out the amps in the middle of the afternoon in July, SRP can put off that much longer firing up a super-expensive diesel peaking generator. They wind up making a fantastic profit, since they’re effectively buying my power at wholesale nuclear rates, selling it to my neighbor at on-peak residential rates, and not buying it at ludicrous (10x retail or more) wholesale peaking rates. Then when I need extra overnight, they’re able to supply me with off-peak wholesale nuclear power, as cheap as it gets.

            Similar dynamics hold true until solar gets to be at least a quarter of the total generating capacity, at which point excess generation from solar can cause problems for the grid as it’s configured today. But solar only accounts for low-single-digit percentages, maybe not even that, of the generating capacity, so that’s a looooong ways away.

            At the $17 / month SRP charges me for a basic connection fee, it’d be silly to try to replace the grid with a battery system. It’d take forever to pay off, and my money would be much more profitable in the bank. But…at the $50 (or $67? not clear) they’re proposing…well, at that point, the batteries have a faster return on investment than T-bills, and so the entire dynamic that’s already in place with net generation suddenly comes into play with baseload supply as well. If it makes sense for you to go solar at today’s rates, it’ll also make sense for you to go off the grid at the proposed rates.

            In short, the utilities have it completely backwards. They should be keeping rates cheap for solar customers and be leading the charge in installing rooftop solar themselves. Because, even without rate increases, batteries are going to get cheaper rapidly, too, so it’s only a matter of time before it’s cheaper for everybody to ditch the grid.

            b&

          6. Damned little.

            http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/

            For example, to get the amount of energy stored in a single AA battery, we would have to lift 100 kg (220 lb) 10 m (33 ft) to match it. To match the energy contained in a gallon of gasoline, we would have to lift 13 tons of water (3500 gallons) one kilometer high (3,280 feet).

            Tom had a great bl*g going for a while, and he “did the math” on all sorts of possibilities like that. He sometimes let his pessimism get away from him…for example, he concluded that there’s not enough physical material to make enough storage to be able to stop mining energy, but completely overlooked both the obvious bit that more generating capacity means less need for storage, and that, with enough surplus capacity, you can be wasteful in your storage methods. For example, manufacture hydrocarbon fuels from atmospheric CO2 with surplus power in the summer, and then burn those same fuels in conventional power plants overnight during the winter.

            Cheers,

            b&

    1. This makes sense to me. Stone tool making goes back way further and it doesn’t surprise me that people sophisticated enough to make them (and no doubt lots of stuff that doesn’t preserve over time) would have been controlling fire “all along”.

  15. Here are my stories, in priority:

    #1: The BICEP2 observations.

    Even though Planck shows that some of the peak can be predicted by dust. Less likely all of it, according to work that tries to match the BICEP2 signature with Planck dust signatures, it looks different spatially. [That io9 gets it wrong is the reason why I don’t read popular science sites.]

    The work usher in a new era of gravitational wave astronomy, whether they will be seen or not. If we are lucky even the simplest inflationary process, analogous to the Higgs field, survives, with its exotic trans-Planckian physics.

    #2: The Planck observations.

    The new data release (two back-to-back conferences, perhaps web release on Monday) includes TE and EE polarizations, which absolutely _nails_ the Hot Big Bang era! Competing theories can be finetuned to predict those modes, but they have no inherent reason to do so.

    The remaining tension between Planck and most other observations disappear, and the so called anomalies are weakened further.

    Planck has also started to exclude dark matter possibilities from other physics. The Fermi and ISS observations of a positron excess are excluded as a dark matter signal, say.

    #3: The Rosetta observations.

    Any lander that makes 3 landings to get down is a must! The data analysis isn’t finished, but the AGU Fall Conference has ESA hinting that if the harpoons _had_ activated, they would have pushed the lander into space instead of anchoring it, the surface is that hard.

    They also mentions the exclusion of the Kuiper Belt Objects as main water source for Earth.

    #4: The Curiosity observations.

    The possible million of years old Gale crater lake (need confirmation) that would mean o northern ocean and/or countless other lakes, because of the humidity requirement.

    And the organics of today in the atmosphere, and billions of years ago in the Cumberland mudstone.

    #5: The elucidation of the thermodynamics of replication.

    I once had a hard time understanding that metabolism is non-equilibrium thermodynamics, since many chains are reversible. But that it is, and the ongoing development of NET for replicators based on irreversibility ties emergence of life by necessity to thermodynamics of metabolism.

    #6: The improvement of the ribosome phylogeny that clarifies lineages.

    I’ve mentioned this before.

    #7: The improvement of the mitochondrial phylogeny that clarifies the symbiosis.

    More sequencing and recognizing the state of a pre-mitochondrial ancestor places them within parasitic Rickettsiales as an originally ATP importing, low oxygen capable parasite that later was “tamed”. That origin is way simpler than earlier ones that had to posit some beneficial match in traits between the bacteria and its host. [ http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0110685 ]

    1. I forgot on the Curiosity modern organics:

      The data show dynamics (month long peaks) and I hear that they can exclude nearby impacts. That means Mars is biologically and/or geologically active!

      1. That means Mars is biologically and/or geologically active!

        For certain definitions of, “active,” of course…Antarctica is much more active on both fronts than anywhere on Mars.

        …but, yes, exciting nonetheless, especially if it’s biological activity. I mean, we can be damned confident that there’s life elsewhere in the Universe than just here on Earth…but it would be so loverly to find even some tiny microbes just in my own lifetime. The big question for Martian life, of course, will be whether or not it’s at all related to terrestrial life. If I had to bet, put me down for a suitable beverage on it being related…but that’s one bet I’d much rather lose!

        b&

  16. Jerry, when you come back add Grania to your small excellent retinue of contributors … my 2 cents

  17. I agree with walkingmap’s assessment above. Grania’s doing a great job. I think she’s the great scientific discovery (on Jerry’s part) of the year. (Well, I had to think of some way to link her to the topic of this post.)

  20. It takes a village to make a mistake like that gentleman made. I dunno, im willing to believe a person can become enlightened and recognize his lack of sensitivity (if not fashion taste). Since I’m not a mindreader I can’t judge; an apology is better than doubling down or being defensive.

  21. I think Prof. Ceiling Cat would appreciate a correction of the mistake made with the binomial nomenclature of the new dinosaur; Species is always lower case.

      1. …Or underlined. I should think it isn’t pedantic to correct a mistake regarding binomial nomenclature on a blo…er, website at least nominally devoted to evolutionary biology.

  22. Where’s the companion article, on what religion achieved in 2014?

    (Rolls on floor, laughs ass off, stops to catch his breath)

    Surely there must have been some building they flew a plane into, some chicken sandwich they either lauded or boycotted, or possibly some bit of presuppositionalist apologetics that they foisted off on the ignorati, somewhere? Right? Karen, Reza, are you there? Hello? Hello?

  23. Hmmm… `i’ve always had a passing interest in the theory of self-replicating machines (the early concepts were Von Neumman’s) and have tried to follow the literature to the best of my ability. I somehow can’t see how the example displayed here reflects anything but a mathematical curiosity, and is not really relevant to “proper’ self-assembly automata. For one thing it does nothing to model the assembly process from SIMPLER COMPONENTS. Also the ‘structures” built show no new emergent features. Nor do biological systems reflect such a degree of intercommunication.

    1. …. example: Conway’s “Game of Life”s fundamental cell entity produces more elaborate configurational shapes with totally new emergent properties, and do so by executing a far simpler algorithm and have not any necessity to “intercommunicate”

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