The year 2022 witnessed a devastating ongoing war, the unprecedented climatic disasters and the return of forgotten diseases but the year also saw awe-inspiring scientific breakthroughs and heart-warming successes. Here are the year’s significant scientific achievements.
Space Exploration
The year started on a positive note with the arrival of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on its destination 1.5 million kilometres from the earth on January 24. The telescope was launched on December 25, 2021 and during its 29 day; 1.5 million kilometres long journey into space, its giant sunshield unfurled and golden mirror blossomed. Engineers ticked off a total of 344 crucial steps any one of which could have doomed the mission had they gone wrong. It spent next five months in mirror alignment and cooling down its equipment to -233C°. Finally on July 11, 2022, months of eager anticipation paid off when first colour imageof cosmos captured by James Webb Space Telescope wasunveiled by US President Joe Biden. The image reveals thousands of galaxies some seen as they were 13 billion years ago. It is the deepest and the sharpest image of the distant universe so far.
Meanwhile in the month of May, the first ever image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy was revealed by astronomers. The image reveals a glowing, donut shaped ring at the heart of our galaxy.The black hole is named Sagittarius A* and is about 27000 light years away from the earth. The image was captured by the Event Horizon TelescopeCollaboration.Another major breakthrough was achieved on September 24, when NASA smashed a 160 metre wide asteroid Dimorphos orbiting a slightly larger asteroid (Didymos) with a fridgesize Double AsteroidRedirection Test (DART) satellite, altered its orbit and demonstrated a strategy for thwarting real threats, should future Earth-bound asteroids be detected. Apart from asteroid activity, our moon has been in the news. Fifty years after astronauts last left the moon, Humanity is about to make a giant leap again. Apollo 17 (December 1972) still marks the last time anyone directly witnessed Earth’s blue globe rising above the grey lunar horizon. Now fifty years latter, Artemis, a joint NASA-ESA programme started its operation to return people to the moon. The first phase of the mission, the Orion capsule, was launched on November 16, and successfully returned to Earth on December 11. The second mission will fly with astronauts on board and the third mission will land people on the moon – including the first woman and the first person of colour.
Health
On January 7, 2022, in a first of its kind surgery, a genetically modified pig heart was successfully transplanted into a 57-year old man with terminal heart disease. The surgery was considered an early success as it overcame the obstacle of organ rejection and the patient survived for 61 days with a strong functioning heart. In another medical first, scientists at Yale University restored the function of various pig organs including the brain, heart, liver and kidneys a full hour after the animal had died. The scientists developed a perfusion system known as OrganEx. The system pumped a mixture of blood and nutrient-rich fluid through each animal’s circulatory system. After six hours of circulation, heart cells began beating, liver cells absorbed glucose from blood and DNA repair resumed but the animals didn’t regain consciousness. The technology holds the potential to keep more human organs alive longer for transplants.
Ancient DNA
2022 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Swedish scientist Svante Paabo. The Swedish scientist reconstructed the ancient DNA extracted from the bones of extinct hominins, Neanderthals and Denisovans and revealed that early humans interbred with these now extinct species. Moreover, in May 2022 scientists announced the discovery of a likely Denisovanmolar (tooth) from a cave in Laos.
Research into ancient DNA has accelerated in recent years.Until recently, the oldest DNA discovered was one million years old but this year scientists wound back the clock further than they once thought possible, extracting tiny DNA snippets at least 2 million years old from frozen soil in an artic desert, the northern Greenland. The DNA suggest that the region was once home to mastodons and reindeer that roamed a forested ecosystem unlike any now found on Earth.
Limitless Energy
On December 5, scientists at theUS National Ignition facilityhave for the first time achieved the phenomenon known as fusion ignition–creating a nuclear reaction that generates more energy than it consumes. Theresearch aims to harness the nuclear fusion–the phenomenon that powers the Sun–to provide a source of near-limitless clean energy on earth. Despite this latest success, a long path remains to achieving that goal.
(Author Teaches Physics at HSS Hawal Pulwama and can be reached at: [email protected])
