Science News Digest - 9th January 2012
In the science news this week, Stephen Hawking turns 70, how carbon emissions will put off the next ice age, why life could have started without DNA, and finally… a new species of hairy-chested crab is dubbed the Hoff crab.
Stephen Hawking turns 70
He is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable scientists the world has ever known, and this week, Professor Stephen Hawking turned 70. Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, has gone on to become one of the most prominent scientists in the field of black holes and the early Universe. His seventieth birthday, reported in The Guardian, has been celebrated with a week of symposiums and conferences at Cambridge University.
Sadly, ill health meant that Professor Hawking was unable to attend the closing day - his actual birthday. The speech he was going to give, titled ‘A Brief History of Mine’, was played without him. All his speeches are now pre-recorded, but as The Telegraph explains, Hawking would normally cue each sentence using his computer when giving his speeches in real-time. This time his assistant stepped in, and timed the speech with a slideshow of images from throughout the Professor’s life.
In the speech, Hawking dedicated his success to his father, saying that he was the one who picked him up following his diagnosis as a young man. Reported in The Independent, the scientist also described how one of the doctors he first saw when he realised something was wrong disappeared soon after he went into hospital without even telling Hawking what was wrong.
"My mother realised something was wrong and took me to the doctor," Hawking said. "I spent weeks in Bart's Hospital [in London] and had many tests. They never actually told me what was wrong, but I guessed enough to know it was pretty bad, so I didn't want to ask.
"In fact, the doctor who diagnosed me washed his hands of me, and I never saw him again. He felt that there was nothing that could be done. In effect, my father became my doctor and it was to him that I turned for advice."
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Ice age postponed by carbon emissions
The next ice age may be further away than we think, claim scientists from Cambridge University. Reported in the BBC, the study has predicted that the next ice age won’t take place until carbon levels drop significantly.
Scientists examined the orbit of the Earth in order to determine when the last ice age was and also predicted that the next one may be delayed because of the carbon emissions from human activity.
The study found that the last ice age was probably about 11,500 years ago, and that the next one should be in 1,500 years’ time.
However, the group, which also includes scientists from University College London, the University of Florida and Borgen University in Norway, expect that the high amount of carbon emissions in recent history could delay the onset of the ice age until carbon levels drop below 240 parts per million. Currently, the level is 390 parts per million.
"At current levels of CO2, even if emissions stopped now we'd probably have a long interglacial duration determined by whatever long-term processes could kick in and bring [atmospheric] CO2 down," said Luke Skinner from Cambridge University.
Previous research from other groups has shown that even if all carbon emissions were stopped instantly, the current levels would continue to warm the Earth for another 1,000 years.
The reason the Earth has had these phases of extreme cold in the past was due to the change in its orbit around the Sun. Known as Milankovitch cycles, the Earth moves further away from the Sun and tilts further away, which seems to cause an ice age, although the full mechanism is still not fully understood.
These variations take place over tens of thousands of years and occur in a cycle of around 100,000 years or so. However, this is the first time the effect of the extra carbon in the planet’s atmosphere has been taken into account.
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Did life start with TNA?
Until now, it was presumed that the earliest life used RNA as a way of encoding its genes, instead of DNA as is the case today. But now scientists have discovered that TNA, another nucleic acid, also has one of the important properties that makes RNA the ideal candidate for the genetic material for early life.
Most life as we know it today, except for some viruses, have DNA to store information and RNA to execute the instructions encoded in the DNA. However, RNA also has the ability to store information in a similar way to DNA, making it a possibility for how primitive life first stored genetic information.
However, as reported in New Scientist, it turns out that TNA, or threose nucleic acid, also has the ability to store information and work as an enzyme. It’s no longer found in nature but uses a smaller molecule as its sugar backbone – thresose, rather than ribose or deoxyribose as in RNA and DNA respectively. Because of its size, this may have made it easier to make and therefore a possible candidate for early life encoding.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that TNA was the original genetic material – it’s far more likely it was one of a number of methods used by early life, because the chemistry of the early Earth was so messy. John Chaput of Arizona State University believes that many different types of genetic material probably formed in a genetic hodge-podge.
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And finally…
Newly discovered crab species dubbed The Hoff Crab
Scientists have discovered a new species of crab in the Southern Ocean that they have nicknamed the “Hoff Crab” because of the creatures’ hairy chest. The crab is yet to be officially classified so scientists chose the humorous name to identify it.
The crab was one of a number of species found in the seas around Antarctica including a pale, unidentified octopus, barnacles and starfish, all living 2,500m below the surface.
Reported by the BBC, the study includes researchers from the British Antarctic Survey, University of Southampton and National Oceanography Centre.
Stephen Hawking turns 70
He is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable scientists the world has ever known, and this week, Professor Stephen Hawking turned 70. Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, has gone on to become one of the most prominent scientists in the field of black holes and the early Universe. His seventieth birthday, reported in The Guardian, has been celebrated with a week of symposiums and conferences at Cambridge University.
Sadly, ill health meant that Professor Hawking was unable to attend the closing day - his actual birthday. The speech he was going to give, titled ‘A Brief History of Mine’, was played without him. All his speeches are now pre-recorded, but as The Telegraph explains, Hawking would normally cue each sentence using his computer when giving his speeches in real-time. This time his assistant stepped in, and timed the speech with a slideshow of images from throughout the Professor’s life.
In the speech, Hawking dedicated his success to his father, saying that he was the one who picked him up following his diagnosis as a young man. Reported in The Independent, the scientist also described how one of the doctors he first saw when he realised something was wrong disappeared soon after he went into hospital without even telling Hawking what was wrong.
"My mother realised something was wrong and took me to the doctor," Hawking said. "I spent weeks in Bart's Hospital [in London] and had many tests. They never actually told me what was wrong, but I guessed enough to know it was pretty bad, so I didn't want to ask.
"In fact, the doctor who diagnosed me washed his hands of me, and I never saw him again. He felt that there was nothing that could be done. In effect, my father became my doctor and it was to him that I turned for advice."
-------------------------------
Ice age postponed by carbon emissions
The next ice age may be further away than we think, claim scientists from Cambridge University. Reported in the BBC, the study has predicted that the next ice age won’t take place until carbon levels drop significantly.
Scientists examined the orbit of the Earth in order to determine when the last ice age was and also predicted that the next one may be delayed because of the carbon emissions from human activity.
The study found that the last ice age was probably about 11,500 years ago, and that the next one should be in 1,500 years’ time.
However, the group, which also includes scientists from University College London, the University of Florida and Borgen University in Norway, expect that the high amount of carbon emissions in recent history could delay the onset of the ice age until carbon levels drop below 240 parts per million. Currently, the level is 390 parts per million.
"At current levels of CO2, even if emissions stopped now we'd probably have a long interglacial duration determined by whatever long-term processes could kick in and bring [atmospheric] CO2 down," said Luke Skinner from Cambridge University.
Previous research from other groups has shown that even if all carbon emissions were stopped instantly, the current levels would continue to warm the Earth for another 1,000 years.
The reason the Earth has had these phases of extreme cold in the past was due to the change in its orbit around the Sun. Known as Milankovitch cycles, the Earth moves further away from the Sun and tilts further away, which seems to cause an ice age, although the full mechanism is still not fully understood.
These variations take place over tens of thousands of years and occur in a cycle of around 100,000 years or so. However, this is the first time the effect of the extra carbon in the planet’s atmosphere has been taken into account.
-------------------------------
Did life start with TNA?
Until now, it was presumed that the earliest life used RNA as a way of encoding its genes, instead of DNA as is the case today. But now scientists have discovered that TNA, another nucleic acid, also has one of the important properties that makes RNA the ideal candidate for the genetic material for early life.
Most life as we know it today, except for some viruses, have DNA to store information and RNA to execute the instructions encoded in the DNA. However, RNA also has the ability to store information in a similar way to DNA, making it a possibility for how primitive life first stored genetic information.
However, as reported in New Scientist, it turns out that TNA, or threose nucleic acid, also has the ability to store information and work as an enzyme. It’s no longer found in nature but uses a smaller molecule as its sugar backbone – thresose, rather than ribose or deoxyribose as in RNA and DNA respectively. Because of its size, this may have made it easier to make and therefore a possible candidate for early life encoding.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that TNA was the original genetic material – it’s far more likely it was one of a number of methods used by early life, because the chemistry of the early Earth was so messy. John Chaput of Arizona State University believes that many different types of genetic material probably formed in a genetic hodge-podge.
-------------------------------
And finally…
Newly discovered crab species dubbed The Hoff Crab
Scientists have discovered a new species of crab in the Southern Ocean that they have nicknamed the “Hoff Crab” because of the creatures’ hairy chest. The crab is yet to be officially classified so scientists chose the humorous name to identify it.
The crab was one of a number of species found in the seas around Antarctica including a pale, unidentified octopus, barnacles and starfish, all living 2,500m below the surface.
Reported by the BBC, the study includes researchers from the British Antarctic Survey, University of Southampton and National Oceanography Centre.
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