Περισκόπιο επιστήμης

Η επιστήμη μάς χαρίζει όλο και πιο νέα πεδία γνώσης, θέτει νέες προβληματισμούς, νέα ερωτήματα. Η επιστήμη δημιουργεί νέες κοσμοθεωρίες, εισάγει στον άνθρωπο σε πρωτόγνωρα μονοπάτια, οδηγεί την κοινωνία σε καινούργια φάση της ιστορίας. Κανείς μας δεν μπορεί να ερμηνεύει την πραγματικότητα χωρίς να παρακολουθεί τις επιστημονικές εξελίξεις. Αλλά η διαρκής ενασχόληση με την επιστημονική γνώση δεν είναι μόνο αδήριτη ανάγκη, είναι ομορφιά ζωής…

Επιμέλεια: Νίκου Τσούλια

Οι πρωτιές της επιστήμης το 2011

Eννέα ανακαλύψεις και επιτυχίες που ξεχώρισαν στο επιστημονικό πάνθεον της χρονιάς που μας αποχαιρετά

ΕΥΗ ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑΔΟΥ ΤΑ ΝΕΑ 27.12.11

Η ανακάλυψη ότι τα αντιρετροϊικά φάρμακα εμποδίζουν τη μετάδοση του ιού του AIDS είναι η σημαντικότερη επιστημονική είδηση της χρονιάς, σύμφωνα με την επιτροπή των ειδικών της επιθεώρησης «Science».

Ανάμεσα στις υπόλοιπες επιστημονικές πρωτιές του 2011 είναι η πρόοδος στις έρευνες για το εμβόλιο κατά της ελονοσίας, η επιτυχία της ιαπωνικής διαστημικής αποστολής «Χαγιαμπούσα» που έφερε πίσω στη Γη σκόνη από την επιφάνεια ενός αστεροειδούς, η ανακάλυψη ότι στο DNA του σύγχρονου ανθρώπου υπάρχουν μεταλλάξεις προϊστορικών προγόνων μας, η χαρτογράφηση της δομής της φωτοσυνθετικής πρωτεΐνης που χρησιμοποιούν τα φυτά για να διαχωρίσουν το νερό σε άτομα υδρογόνου και οξυγόνου, καθώς και η γνώση ότι ο κάθε άνθρωπος έχει ένα κυρίαρχο βακτήριο στο πεπτικό σύστημα.

Τέλος, ξεχωριστή θέση στο επιστημονικό πάνθεον της χρονιάς έχει η ανακάλυψη μακρινών πλανητικών συστημάτων με πρωτόγνωρα χαρακτηριστικά.

Τα αντιρετροϊικά φάρμακα

Η κλινική δοκιμή που κατέδειξε τις ικανότητες των αντιρετροϊικών φαρμάκων έγινε σε εννέα χώρες, από τη Βραζιλία έως την Ταϊλάνδη. Συμμετείχαν 1.800 ετεροφυλόφιλα ζευγάρια.

Ανάμεσά τους, πολλά ζευγάρια με έναν φορέα του HIV, του ιού που προκαλεί ΑΙDS. Οι φορείς του ιού πήραν αντιρετροϊικά φάρμακα για να δουν αν αυτά εμποδίζουν τη μετάδοσή του στους συντρόφους τους, κάτι που οι ειδικοί πίστευαν ότι ισχύει, αλλά δεν το είχαν αποδείξει στην πράξη.

Η δοκιμή ήταν προγραμματισμένη να διαρκέσει έως το 2015, όμως τα αποτελέσματα ήταν τόσο άμεσα και ξεκάθαρα, που οι επιστήμονες δεν δίστασαν να τη σταματήσουν πρόωρα και να δώσουν τα φάρμακα σε όλους τους συμμετέχοντες. Η ομάδα που έπαιρνε τα φάρμακα παρουσίασε επίσης 41% λιγότερα προβλήματα υγείας που σχετίζονται με τον ιό HIV.

Οπως διαπίστωσαν οι επιστήμονες, η λήψη των φαρμάκων στο αρχικό στάδιο της μόλυνσης με τον ιό HIV, δηλαδή πριν μειωθούν τα επίπεδα των λευκών αιμοσφαιρίων, οδηγεί στη δραματική μείωση, κατά 96%, της πιθανότητας να μολυνθεί και ο σύντροφος του φορέα.

Η επιστροφη του «Χαγιαμπούσα»

Επειτα από πολλές αποτυχημένες προσπάθειες, το ιαπωνικό διαστημόπλοιο «Χαγιαμπούσα» επέστρεψε στη Γη μεταφέροντας σκόνη από την επιφάνεια ενός μεγάλου αστεροειδούς, το πρώτο διαστημικό δείγμα που έρχεται στον πλανήτη μας τα τελευταία 35 χρόνια.

Φως στην προέλευση του ανθρώπου

Ερευνες στον γενετικό κώδικα προϊστορικών και σύγχρονων ανθρώπων δείχνουν ότι πολλοί άνθρωποι φέρουν ακόμα σήμερα μεταλλάξεις στο DNA τους, που κληρονόμησαν από τους προγόνους μας πριν από χιλιάδες χρόνια, όπως ένα μυστήριο είδος από την Ασία και άλλα από την Αφρική, που δεν έχουν ταυτοποιηθεί ακόμα.

Αιχμαλωτίζοντας το ηλιακό φως

Ερευνητές στην Ιαπωνία κατάφεραν για πρώτη φορά να χαρτογραφήσουν τη δομή της φωτοσυνθετικής πρωτεΐνης που χρησιμοποιούν τα φυτά για να διαχωρίσουν το νερό σε άτομα υδρογόνου και οξυγόνου. Η ανακάλυψη έχει τις προϋποθέσεις να οδηγήσει στη δημιουργία μιας νέας πηγής καθαρής ενέργειας.

Βακτήρια στο έντερο

Πεντακόσια με 1.000 είδη βακτηρίων ζουν στο ανθρώπινο έντερο. Ερευνες κατέδειξαν όμως ότι ο κάθε άνθρωπος έχει ένα βακτήριο κυρίαρχο στο πεπτικό του σύστημα, κάτι που βοήθησε τους ειδικούς να κατανοήσουν τη σχέση τροφών και μικροβίων στις ασθένειες και τη διατροφική μας κατάσταση.

Εξωγήινα ηλιακά συστήματα

Χάρη στα πανίσχυρα τηλεσκόπια, οι αστρονόμοι ανακάλυψαν πολλά μακρινά πλανητικά συστήματα, με χαρακτηριστικά πολύ διαφορετικά από το ηλιακό μας σύστημα. Σε ένα από αυτά, οι πλανήτες ακολουθούν τροχιές τις οποίες δεν μπορούν να εξηγήσουν τα σημερινά μοντέλα. Επίσης, δέκα πλανήτες που φαίνονται να κινούνται ελεύθερα στο Σύμπαν.

Το ελιξίριο της νεότητας

Η απομάκρυνση «γηρασμένων» κυττάρων, που έχουν σταματήσει να διαιρούνται, από ποντίκια μπορεί να σταματήσει συμπτώματα που σχετίζονται με τη γήρανση, όπως είναι η αδυναμία στους μυς και ο καταρράκτης. Τα ποντίκια αυτά δεν έζησαν περισσότερο από άλλα, όμως είχαν καλύτερη ποιότητα ζωής.

Ελπίδες για εμβόλιο κατά της ελονοσίας

Ως «εξαιρετικά ενθαρρυντικά» κρίνονται τα πρώτα αποτελέσματα δοκιμών για εμβόλιο κατά της ελονοσίας σε 15.000 παιδιά στην Αφρική.

Αρχαίο διαστημικό αέριο

Αστρονόμοι στη Χαβάη εντόπισαν στο μακρινό Διάστημα δύο νέφη υδρογόνου που φαίνεται να έχουν μείνει ανέπαφα από το Μπιγκ Μπανγκ, την έκρηξη που δημιούργησε το Σύμπαν πριν από δύο δισεκατομμύρια χρόνια.

Ο Αριστοτέλης για την τεχνολογία

Θ. Π. ΤΑΣΙΟΣ, ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ 24.12.11

Επειδή µέσα στο νέο Οραµα για µια αδανειακή Ανάπτυξη, η Τεχνολογία θα παίζει ρόλον κεντρικό, σκέφθηκα µήπως µπορούµε να ενισχύσοµε την τεχνικοφιλία των Νέων-µας, θυµίζοντας άλλη µιά φορά το πάθος των Αρχαίων Ελλήνων υπέρ της Τεχνολογίας. Λοιπόν, παρά την (αναχρονιστικώς) υποτιµητική χροιά της ρετσινιάς «ιδεαλιστής», ο Πλάτων φαίνεται να είναι φίλος προς την Τεχνολογία. Ενδεικτικώς θα αναφερθώ σε τρία µόνον περιστατικά: Πρώτον, όταν θαυµάζει τους Τεχνίτες στον Γοργία (503 Ε, 504 Α), «τους οικοδόµους, τους ναυπηγούς, τους άλλους πάντας δηµιουργούς, ως εις τάξιν, τινα έκαστος έκαστον τίθησιν ό άν τιθή, έως άν το άπαν συστήσηται τεταγµένον τε και κεκοσµηµένον πράγµα». ∆εύτερον, είναι χαρακτηριστικό το οτι δέν θαυµάζει τον Θαλήν ως Μαθηµατικόν, αλλα ως Μηχανικόν µεγάλων τεχνικών έργων: «Εργα σοφού ανδρός πολλαί επίνοιαι και ευµήχανοι εις τέχνας ώσπερ αύ Θάλεω του Μιλησίου» (Πολιτεία, 600 α).

Και τρίτον, η επιµέλεια και η πληρότητα µε τις οποίες προβάλλει στον «Πρωταγόρα»-του την πεφωτισµένη εκδοχή του µύθου του Προµηθέως, συνιστούν άλλην µιά θετική ένδειξη της σηµασίας την οποία έδινε ο Πλάτων στην Τεχνολογία.
Αν λοιπόν αυτά ισχύουν για τον Πλάτωνα, ευλόγως αναµένεται οτι ο ρεαλιστικότερος και εµπειρικότερος µαθητής-του θα βλέπει µε καθαρό µάτι την Τεχνολογία – χωρίς λ.χ. τις ιδιότυπες επιφυλάξεις του Ξενοφώντος για τους Τεχνίτες («Οικονοµικός», VI, 5). Πράγµατι, στην αριστοτελική Σχολή, άλλες ήσαν οι περι Τεχνολογίας κρατούσες αντιλήψεις, κι άλλο το συστηµατικό ενδιαφέρον για τις εφαρµοσµένες Επιστήµες. Απ’ αυτήν λοιπόν την άποψη, ο Αριστοτέλης είναι «πιό σύγχρονος» για τις σηµερινές-µας αντιλήψεις. Με µία διαφορά: Οτι εµείς δέν είµαστε επαρκώς αριστοτελικοί, κατα το γεγονός οτι µάλλον δέν δείχνοµε το ίδιο ενδιαφέρον για ολόκληρο το φάσµα του επιστητού, για την πραγµάτωση ενος όλο και διαφεύγοντος Ανθρωπισµού.

Ο φιλάνθρωπος πραγµατισµός του Αριστοτέλους φαίνεται ήδη απ’ την πρώτη φράση του βιβλίου «Τα Μηχανικά»: «Θαυµάζεται όσα γίνεται δια τέχνην προς το συµφέρον τοις ανθρώποις» (847 α). Συµφέρον, διοτι αναγνωρίζεται οτι η Φύσις µπορεί να είναι αντιθετική προς τον Ανθρωπο. ∆ι’ ό και «τέχνης γάρ κρατούµεν, ών φύσει νικώµεθα!» (ένθ.αν.§21). (Εδώ επιχαίρω για την καραµπινάτη ανατροπή ενος σύγχρονου ακραίου συνθήµατος «η Φύση είναι ιερή» – συνθήµατος που αθελήτως αποενοχοποιεί τον καταστροφέα του Περιβάλλοντος, αφού του αµφισβητεί την ικανότητά-του και υποχρέωση ως µοναδικού όντος που παράγει Αξίες.) Αλλ’ ο Αριστοτέλης δέν αρκείται στο θαυµάζειν τ’ αποτελέσµατα της Τεχνολογίας: Ενδιαφέρεται και για την ιχνηλάτηση του τεχνολογικού ενεργήµατος. Και του αναγνωρίζει το στοιχείον της δηµιουργικότητας µπροστά στα δυσεπίλυτα προβλήµατα που πρέπει να λύσει: «Οταν ούν δέη τι παρα φύσιν πράξαι, δια το χαλεπόν α π ο ρ ί α ν παρέχει και δείται τέχνης – διό και καλούµεν της τέχνης το προς τας τοιαύτας απορίας βοηθούν “µηχανήν”» (ένθ.αν. §16-19). Εδώ, η ετυµολογία αποκαλύπτει θεµελιώδη συµβάµατα: «Μηχανή» ή (µάλλον, επι το δωρικότερον) «µαχανά» είναι το πέραν της Φύσεως ενισχυτικόν των ανθρωπίνων δυνατοτήτων. Απ’ το «δύναµαι» (το ιαπετικό mâgh, το γοτθικό mag ή το σλαβικό mog), θα πηγάσει το «µέσον», ο «τρόπος», το «επινόηµα» το µήχαρ (µήχος) κάποτε σήµαινε και το φάρµακο. Αν λοιπόν επιτρέπεται εδώ µια υπόθεση εργασίας, µπροστά στο αδιέξοδο της α-πορίας, ο άνθρωπος µηχανεύεται µια λύση (µια µηχανή), επιστρατεύοντας τη φαντασία του. Αλλα και στηριζόµενος στην Επιστήµη, λέει ο Αριστοτέλης: «Εστι δε ταύτα [τα της τέχνης προβλήµατα] κοινά τών τε µαθηµατικών και των φυσικών» (847 a, 24-26).

Εδώ, µάλιστα, συναντά τον ∆άσκαλό-του που διαβεβαίωνε οτι: «οίαν πασών Τεχνών άν τις Αριθµητικήν χωρίζει και Μετρητικήν και Στατικήν, φαύλον το καταλειπόµενον εκάστης άν γίγνοιτο» (Φίληβος, 55 Ε). Η σταυρογονιµοποίηση Επιστήµης και Τεχνολογίας, άλλωστε, είχε αρχίσει απ’ τον 6ο π.Χ. αιώνα µε τη γεωµετρικοποίηση των µεγάλων υδραυλικών έργων (Θαλής, Ευπαλίνος), για να φθάσει στον 5ο αιώνα να διευκολύνεται η κατασκευή µουσικών οργάνων χάρις στη µαθηµατικοποίηση της Μουσικής (Αρχύτας) ή, τέλος, να έρθει το µέγα αντίδωρον της Τεχνολογίας προς την Επιστήµη: µε τον Μηχανισµό των Αντικυθήρων (τον πρώτο αναλογικό Υπολογιστή) κατα τον 2ο π.Χ. αιώνα.

Η κορύφωση όµως της θέσεως του Αριστοτέλους εν σχέσει µε την Τεχνολογία εκφράζεται νοµίζω µε τη βασική πολιτική σκέψη που διατύπωσε στα Πολιτικά (1253 b, 34): «Ει γάρ ηδύνατο έκαστον των οργάνων (κελευσθέν ή προαισθανόµενον) αποτελείν το αυτού έργον, ουδέν αν έδει ούτε τοις αρχιτέκτοσιν υπηρετών, ούτε τοις δεσπόταις δούλων»! ∆ηλονότι η απελευθέρωση του τλήµονος γένους των βροτών απ’ τον µόχθο, τον πόνο και την εκµετάλλευση θα επιτευχθεί µέσω της προχωρηµένης Τεχνολογίας των αυτοµάτων και των ροµπότ. Αυτήν την ευγενή Ουτοπίαν άλλωστε θα υιοθετήσει (δυό χιλιάδες χρόνια µετά τον Αριστοτέλη) και ο Campanella στην «Città del Sole» – όπως την υιοθέτησαν έκτοτε και ποικίλες κοινωνιστικές θεωρίες και καθεστώτα. Τα οποία όµως υπονοµεύθηκαν ενπολλοίς καί επειδή δέν µπόρεσαν να ακολουθήσουν ολόκληρη τη συνταγή του πλατωνικού Πρωταγόρα: Οπου αναγνωρίζονται µέν το κίνητρον της Ανάγκης (§321 c) και η εκ θεότητος δωρεά της «εντέχνου σοφίας, σύν πυρί» (321 d), καθώς και η λόγω Τεχνολογίας επακολουθήσασα «ευπορία του βίου» (322 a) – υπογραµµίζεται όµως και το γεγονός οτι τότε οι άνθρωποι «ηδίκουν αλλήλους και διεφθείροντο» (322 b)!
Οπότε παρεµβαίνει ξανά η θεότητα, προσφέροντας το (ως απεδείχθη απαραίτητον)
συµπλήρωµα της αρχικής δωρεάς – χαρίζοντας στους ανθρώπους «Αιδώ τε και ∆ίκην , επι πάντας» (322 c).

Το µόνο κακό είναι που ετούτο το τελευταίο δώρηµα δέν είναι απευθείας αναλώσιµο, αλλα προϋποθέτει επίµονη µυητικήν αυτενέργεια – ιδίως στην περίπτωση λαών λεβέντικων και αξιοζήλευτων…
Υστερόγραφο: Πάντως, για να ενισχύσοµε συστηµατικότερα την Τεχνικοφιλία των Νέων-µας (κόντρα στον υφέρποντα λογιοτατισµό και τον εφιππεύοντα οικονοµισµό), µήπως θα έπρεπε να διδάσκοµε στην Ιστορία των σχολείων-µας κι ενα κεφαλαιάκι για την ένδοξη ιστορία της αρχαίας ελληνικής Τεχνολογίας; Καιρός είναι.

Ο κ. Θεοδόσης Π. Τάσιος είναι ομότιμος καθηγητής του Εθνικού Μετσοβίου Πολυτεχνείου.

2011 review: The year in life science

26 December 2011 by Michael Marshall, New Scientist

In 2011 New Scientist saw genetic engineering on fast forward, foxes zeroing in on their prey using Earth’s magnetic field, and a game of primordial Pac-Man.

We also discovered that the key to humanity may be in our missing DNA, lab yeast can make the evolutionary leap to multicellularity, and one vertebrate can eat with its mouth shut.

Meanwhile, our understanding of human evolution took a sharp left turn. In the wake of the 2010 discovery that humans and Neanderthals interbred, it emerged that our ancestors interbred with several other hominin species – and that the interbreeding may have helped us go global.

Here are our 10 favourite stories from 2011, from the earliest life on Earth to Egyptian archaeology and the latest developments in synthetic biology.

Life began with a planetary mega-organism
The last universal common ancestor may have filled the planet’s oceans before giving birth to the ancestors of all living things on Earth today

Oldest reliable fossils show early life was a beach
The oldest compelling fossil evidence for cellular life has been discovered on a 3.43-billion-year-old beach in western Australia

Brainy molluscs evolved nervous systems four times
Slimy and often sluggish they may be, but some molluscs deserve credit for their brains – which, it now appears, they managed to evolve independently, four times

Skeleton of ancient human relative may yield skin
Two fossils of the extinct hominin Australopithecus sediba could rewrite the history of human evolution. They are in astonishingly good condition, and even their skin may have been preserved

Our ancestors speak out after 3 million years
You may think humanity’s first words are lost in the noise of ancient history, but an unlikely experiment using plastic tubes and puffs of air is helping to recreate the first sounds uttered by our distant ancestors

The vast Asian realm of the lost humans
The Denisovans, mysterious cousins of the Neanderthals, occupied a vast realm stretching from the chill expanse of Siberia to the steamy tropical forests of Indonesia – suggesting the third human of the Pleistocene displayed a level of adaptability previously thought unique to modern humans

First images from Great Pyramid’s chamber of secrets
They might be ancient graffiti tags left by a worker or symbols of religious significance. A robot has sent back the first images of markings on the wall of a tiny chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt, that have not been seen for 4500 years

Eating your greens alters your genes
The Brussels sprout is no mere side dish. A landmark study suggests that this dinky member of the cabbage family – along with rice, broccoli and possibly all the plants you eat – changes the behaviour of your genes in ways that are new to science

Chicken revisits its dinosaur past
Evolution has been rewound to create a "snouted" chicken. That means we might also be able to fast-forward it to create the animals of the future

E. coli‘s genetic code has been hacked
The genetic code common to all life is not set in stone – we can change it at its most fundamental level for our own purposes. Genetic engineers have invented a new way to quickly, precisely and thoroughly rewrite the genome of living bacteria

Mechanical Memory

The Maillardet automaton’s motions are controlled by dozens of slowly rotating brass disks. These disks contain all the data necessary for its lifelike movement and drawings — in effect, they serve as a mechanical form of read-only memory. Related Article »

Photos by Frank O’Connell (motor); Darryl Moran/Franklin Institute (automaton); Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times, 26.12.11

Source: The Franklin Institute

Royal Institution Christmas lectures will unwrap the human brain

In this year’s Christmas lectures on BBC Four, Professor Bruce Hood aims to reveal the brain in all its mystery and complexity

Alok Jha, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 December 2011

Prof Bruce Hood wants people to come away from his Christmas lectures with a greater appreciation of their white and grey matter. Photograph: Paul Wilkinson/BBC

Human beings are the most intelligent species on the planet because our brains have evolved to cope with complex social situations, according to this year’s Royal Institution Christmas lecturer, Professor Bruce Hood. This important function takes decades to develop properly, however, and explains why we humans spend a much larger proportion of our lifespan as children than any other animal.

In three one-hour lectures – entitled Meet Your Brain – Hood will examine how the brain is constructed and creates the world we perceive around us. He also hopes to inspire a new generation of neuroscientists from among his audience of schoolchildren by showing that scientists are only beginning to understand the workings of the brain.

"I’m going to leave open a lot of questions and, hopefully, they’ll see that this has got many years of work in future," says Hood, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol.

Whether or not they (or the millions watching at home) end up studying the brain, Hood hopes that people come away from the lectures with a deeper appreciation of the white and grey matter. "We take it for granted – the things we do every day. We don’t understand how complicated they really are. I want people to come away with a sense of wonder about how a thing like the brain has such flexibility and such powerful processing capability to create this experience we have."

The Royal Institution’s Christmas lectures were initiated by Michael Faraday in 1825 as an attempt to bring science to young people. They have run every year since (except during the second world war) and lecturers have included David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins and Dame Nancy Rothwell.

From a set that resembles a 1950s horror movie, Hood plans to take viewers on a trip through the capabilities of our most important organ. "The brain is seven times heavier than you would imagine for an animal our size. It’s full of billions upon billions of brain cells," he says. "It’s not the number of cells that’s really fascinating, it’s the connection between the cells because that’s the secret of the processing power of the brain. It’s connections that encode information."

Babies are born with almost their full complement of brain cells, so it’s the increase in the number of connections between the cells that explains the change in the size and weight of the brain as it matures. All of this helps to create a representation of the external world.

"You’re encoding experiences and storing that," says Hood. "When the brain brings these back to think about them, it’s almost recreating the original experience. It’s not a photograph captured in time, these things are constantly dynamic and changing."

Hood will also discuss a uniquely human capability that our brains have evolved: the ability to be social. "Childhood used to be thought of as a time of immaturity," he says. "But we now realise that this is the period where we’re becoming social. The species which have the longest periods of childhood tend to be the ones which are more flexible or intelligent."

Not only do human children learn from others, they learn to become like others. "We spend up to 15-20 years in childhood and that’s a large proportion of human lifespan and that can only be because it serves a really important process, which I think is learning from others and learning to communicate and share information," says Hood. "We don’t simply read behaviours, we put ourselves in other humans’ shoes, we take their perspectives, we can empathise, we can see their points of view. This is a whole area called ‘theory of mind’. Without that you cannot anticipate what other people are thinking and doing."

The human desire to socialise, to see people around us, can also trick us. "Seeing faces [in inanimate objects] is a very common thing because faces are the most important social stimuli to humans. We have areas of our brain dedicated to processing faces," says Hood. "The problem is that we’re trip-wired to seeing anything that could be face-like. This has often explained why people have seen faces in clouds or trees. Often, religious deities are the things that people spot."

Hood’s own research involves examining the human ability to form connections with objects by inferring some internal property that gives them a specific character. "Children at 3-4 years of age will know that cats are different from dogs but they can do that over and beyond the outward appearance. They start to think there must be something inside a cat that makes them different to a dog – a catty essence," he says. "They’re starting to infer a deeper property to the living world."

In recent experiments, Hood has found that people wanted to wash their hands after touching or wearing a cardigan that they have been told once belonged to a murderer; but they wanted to hold a pen that had been told had belonged to Albert Einstein. "I think this is the basis of why we go to museums and collections: we want to see the original objects," says Hood. "As soon as we discover it’s not the original, our regard for it disappears."

• The Royal Institution Christmas lectures will air on BBC Four at 8pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Science review of 2011: the year’s 10 biggest stories

Neutrino particles appeared to prove Einstein wrong by travelling faster than light, while the discovery of an Earth-like planet raised hopes of finding life on another world

Robin McKie, guardian.co.uk, Saturday 17 December 2011

An artist’s impression of Curiosity, Nasa’s Mars-bound science lab, as it analyses Martian rock. Photograph: Reuters

Graphene is going to be the ‘it’ material of the 21st century

Or at least that is what George Osborne hopes. After two Manchester University scientists, Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, won the 2010 Nobel prize for physics for their graphene research, the chancellor announced in the autumn that Britain would be investing £50m in setting up a national research programme into the substance. Graphene – a sheet of carbon atoms one atom thick – could be used to make everything from touchscreens to plastics cheaper and more efficient, say scientists, though such developments may take decades to achieve. Certainly much has been made of its potential. According to research carried out by James Hone of Columbia University, graphene is the strongest material ever measured, some 200 times stronger than structural steel. "It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of cling film," he told the BBC. However, it is the versatility of graphene – a possible source for composite materials, electronic components and other goods – that causes the excitement. As Geim says: "It is not even one material. It is a huge range of materials." Hence the billions that IBM, Samsung and Nokia are putting into graphene research, a commitment that puts Osborne’s £50m investment into perspective.

Flying faster than the speed of light just might be possible after all

Despite Einstein assuring us a century ago that no moving object could surpass the velocity of light, scientists this year appear to have found an anomaly to the rule. In September, physicists at Cern in Geneva fired a beam of neutrinos – tiny entities that barely weigh anything, and which hardly ever interact with anything – to colleagues at the Gran Sasso laboratory 454 miles away in Italy. To their considerable surprise, the scientists found the neutrinos arrived so quickly, they must have been travelling faster than light, albeit only slightly – about 60 billionths of a second quicker. Most experts thought that the experiment would be proved flawed when it was repeated. However, a second firing of a beam of neutrinos produced a similar result. This leaves Professor Jim Al-Khalili, of Surrey University, facing the prospect of an uncomfortable new year. The physicist has pledged to "eat his shorts" live on TV if it is proved that neutrinos can travel faster than light.

Modern humans have been hanging around Europe for thousands of years longer than we had thought

Bones and teeth found in England and Italy have pushed back the dates for the arrival of modern humans in Europe by 5,000 years or so, researchers revealed. Two baby teeth, found in the Grotta del Cavallo, Apulia, and a jawbone fragment, from Kents Cavern, Devon, were dated as being 45,000 and 41,000 years old respectively, according to articles published in Nature. Previously it was thought that Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, just when the Neanderthals – who had ruled the continent for several hundred thousand years – began to die out. If humans were responsible for replacing Neanderthals, they must have worked very fast, palaeontologists argued. However, these new dates increase the overlap of modern humans and Neanderthals, according to Dr Tom Higham, from Oxford University, who led the study at Kents Cavern. "We estimate that probably 3,000-5,000 years of time is the amount of the overlap," he told the BBC. Thus humanity had a comfortable period of several millennia to wipe out the Neanderthals, it now transpires.

The female brain lights up in a very special way after an orgasm

Last month, scientists revealed that they had used scanning images to create the world’s first movie of the female brain as it approached, experienced and recovered from an orgasm. The animation showed the steady build-up of activity as disparate bunches of neurones flickered into life and then came together in a crescendo of activity before gently settling back down again as a test subject brought herself to orgasm. According to Professor Barry Komisaruk, a psychologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, whose team carried out the research, the findings should lead to treatments that could help both men and women who cannot reach sexual climax. Kayt Sukel, whose orgasm was recorded by the Rutgers team, told the Guardian that she managed to stimulate herself despite having to lie still inside the dark, cramped confines of a MRI scanner. "If you move too much during an MRI scan you can compromise the data," she said. "It wasn’t easy to work up to an orgasm but I found it wasn’t quite as difficult as I had imagined." The earth moved, but not very much, in other words.

The best candidate for finding life on another world has been pinpointed by astronomers

Observations by the US space telescope Kepler pinpointed a planet orbiting another sun that is the closest thing to another Earth that has been detected to date. Kepler 22-b is about 2.4 times the size of Earth and lies in the so-called "Goldilocks zone" around its home star. In other words conditions there are not too hot and not too cold. Indeed, scientists estimate that the planet’s surface temperature is a relatively balmy 22C while a year there that lasts 290 Earth days. Astronomers also speculate that Kepler 22-b possesses water. "This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at Nasa headquarters in Washington. However, prospects for visiting the planet are remote. Kepler 22-b is 600 light years from Earth. Even having a radio conversation with any inhabitants that it might possess will be frustrating. At that distance, a radio message asking inhabitants how they are doing would not receive a reply for another 1,200 years.

You can win the Nobel prize even though you are dead

One of the strictest rules established by the committee that implemented Alfred Nobel’s bequest for the science prizes was the edict that only the living receive an honour. "Work by a person since deceased shall not be considered," it states. But on 3 October, the Nobel committee announced that Ralph Steinman had won the prize for medicine, unaware that the Canadian immunologist had died of cancer the previous Friday. After a quick look at the rulebook, an emergency meeting of the Nobel assembly decided the decision should stand as it "was made in good faith, based on the assumption that the Nobel laureate was alive". In fact, the edict about awards for the deceased was not made until 1974. Before that date, a person could be awarded a prize posthumously if they had already been nominated before February of the same year – as was the case for Dag Hammarskjöld, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1961. Steinman shared his prize with American Bruce Beutler and French biologist Jules Hoffmann. All were honoured for research on the immune system. Prior to his death, Steinman had been treating himself with a therapy based on his own research but died after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

Stem cells may not be the great white hope for medicine in the 21st century after all

The dream that paralysed people could walk again after injections of stem cells suffered a major blow, following the decision by the US biotech giant Geron to abandon the first human trial of its kind. Geron said difficult economic conditions, which make it hard to raise money, had forced it to quit its stem cell work. The decision was a blow to those who thought stem cell therapy for humans would soon become commonplace. Four patients had been injected with Geron’s stem cell therapy, the goal being simply to establish whether the treatment was safe. There were no ill effects, but Geron acknowledged that the patients had not seen any improvement, even though lab tests had given paralysed rats the power to move their hind legs. Researchers who are testing stem cells for other conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, are still hopeful of ultimate success.

Mars continues to be a tricky place to reach

Despite half a century of sending probes to the red planet, space engineers still have a shaky record of success. Of the 38 Mars missions, 19 have suffered some kind of major flaw, a failure rate of 50%. The latest victim of the Great Galactic Ghoul – as boffins call the curse of Mars probes – was the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission, which was supposed to fly on a 10-month mission to Mars after its launch last month. Instead it found itself stuck in orbit only a few hundred miles above Earth. Despite all attempts to coax the errant satellite to reboot its computers and to relaunch itself towards Mars, its radio emitted only a few, unhelpful beeps before conking out. This leaves planetary scientists pinning their hopes on Curiosity, the giant mobile science laboratory built by the US, which was also launched last month. Set to arrive at Mars in August, six-wheeled Curiosity will be lowered from a rocket-powered "sky crane" on to the planet’s surface and will then trundle over it for several years, drilling samples from rocks which it will analyse for signs that the planet once supported life. US space controllers say the craft is currently on a perfect course to Mars. So far, so good.

Archaeopteryx may not have been the world’s first bird

This biological bombshell for the science of bird evolution is the handiwork of Xing Xu at Linyi University in China, whose colleagues studied a new Archaeopteryx-like fossil – called Xiaotingia zhengi – and found the creature belonged not in the lineage of birds, but to a group of dinosaurs called deinonychosaurs. More strikingly, Archaeopteryx appeared in the same group, after their analysis, according to a study published in Nature. Deinonychosaurs, such as the velociraptor, walked on two legs, ate meat and had vicious retractable claws. The finding is tentative, but builds on doubts that have emerged over the special status of Archaeopteryx following the discovery of other bird-like dinosaurs over the past decade or so. Archaeopteryx was discovered in 1861, two years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. The spectacular fossils of an animal with the feathered wings of a bird, but the teeth and tail of a dinosaur, caused an immediate sensation in Victorian England, where society was wrestling with the consequences of evolution through natural selection. The creature became renowned as the most primitive bird on the planet – until now. Certainly, doubts about its status are rising, though many scientists remain cautious. As Paul Barrett, a dinosaur researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, says: "Maybe Archaeopteryx wasn’t on the direct ancestral line to birds, but was part of an early experimentation in how to build a bird."

And finally, we learned that the Higgs boson really does exist

Well it probably does. Or put it this way, it might just possibly be real. On the other hand, it is also possible that it might not exist. After spending a decade and around £6bn building the Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss-France border in order to smash particles together at colossal speeds and so recreate conditions of the early universe, scientists reported this month that the prime goal of these efforts – the pinpointing of the Higgs boson, the entity which gives all other particles their mass – may have been realised. Two experiments on the collider both noted evidence of a particle at a mass of around 125GeV being created from their collisions. This could be the Higgs boson, they declared. On the other hand it might not be, they added. "There is definitely a hint of something around 125GeV but it’s not a discovery yet. We need more data! I’m keeping my champagne on ice," said Jeff Forshaw, a physicist at Manchester University. In other words, the collision data might just be a statistical anomaly that could disappear once more results come in. So all we have to do is wait for another 12 months and then we should know – one way or the other. Something to put in next year’s science review, if nothing else.