STELLAR NEW STARTS OPEN NEW WORLDS
The New Year is already stoked and filled with promise as scientists around the world leverage the discoveries and developments that made last year (2018) a stellar year, from out-of this-world feats and probes engineered and executed by both NASA and SpaceX, to biomedicine breakthroughs, to ghosts of distant galaxies detected by DESY sensors right here on earth, to name a few.
Despite the challenges faced by the scientific community, including pushbacks by climate deniers, budget cuts, intellectual property thefts, ethical breaches, and failed experiments, there has been so much progress made and so much to build upon. Recent successes and more favorable political shifts give up increasing hope.
There is so much fascinating science to look forward to in 2019. Check out some notable highlights below.
Despite the trials of Icarus, we keep wanting to get close enough to the sun to touch it, which is quite a feat given that it’s 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, for the first time, the recently launched Parker Solar Probe can get close without burning up because it flies by so very fast. It is the fastest human-made object, capable of flying past the sun at speeds up to 213,200 miles an hour. It is also cable of gathering tons of data that was never accessible before.
It took decades of planning, 6 months of traveling through spaces, but the NASA InSight lander finally landed safely on Mars just two months ago. It’s the start of a whole new era of exploration.
NASA's InSight lander will spend two years studying the deep interior of Mars. Get ready for a whole new set of discoveries, answers, and lots more questions, as this brilliant robot probes and expands our view and understanding of this beautiful red planet.
Vitrakvi (larotrectinib), is a new drug that targets cancer based in DNA vs tumor location. The FDA just approved the drug, developed by Loxo Oncology, which has worked to target lung, colon, breast, and thyroid cancers in clinical trials.
"This new site-agnostic oncology therapy isn't specific to a cancer arising in a particular body organ, such as breast or colon cancer," FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a release. "Its approval reflects advances in the use of biomarkers to guide drug development and the more targeted delivery of medicine."
Studies showed that 81% of patients who tried the drug saw their tumors shrink, while 17% of patients had their tumors disappear entirely.
For the first time, scientists have been able to trace the origins of a ghostly subatomic particle that traveled 3.7 billion light-years to Earth. The tiny particle is called a neutrino. DESY sensors installed and monitored by the the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole detected it.
The particle originated in a galaxy with a supermassive, rapidly spinning black hole at its center, known as a blazar.
"The era of multimessenger astrophysics is here," NSF Director France Cordova said in a statement. "Each messenger — from electromagnetic radiation, gravitational waves and now neutrinos — gives us a more complete understanding of the universe and important new insights into the most powerful objects and events in the sky."
There’s a new kind of beauty to for us to look for in the night sky, thanks to the discovery of a new kind of aurora. It’s purple! And it can be seen much further south than the Northern Lights.
This purple-hued aurora was first reported by citizen scientists in Canada in 2015. Over the past 3 years, the worked with researchers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, to learn more about it origins. They learned that this particular aurora travels on different magnetic field lines than the others, so it can be seen closer to the equator.
Researchers named this type of aurora STEVE, for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, and recently published their findings in the journal Science Advances.
Earlier this year, SpaceX launched the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy, a towering, 27-engine rocket, designed to carry astronauts, payloads, and potentially tourists into deep space.
The first payload was SpaceX and Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk's red Tesla Roadster, “driven” by a dummy driver, dubbed Starman. Two months ago, they zipped past Mars, at speeds as high as 7 miles per second, and they are still going, traveling in an elliptical orbit around the sun.
Musk says the spacecraft could continue orbiting for “millions or billions of years,” as David Bowie’s “Starman” plays on infinite loops to keep the dummy Starman amused.
Now that a record number (10) of scientists represent the US in Congress, we have reason to hope that more discoveries will be coming our way, that the most important scientific issues of our time will be addressed, such as climate change.
Read more about New Starts all this week on BeautifulNow, including Beautiful New Escapes for a New Year, The Well: A New Beautiful Wellness Club, Begin Something Beautiful Now, and 10 Songs about Beauty in Starts. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
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