Translated material
Not soared
Some scientists put the probe on a comet. Others constructed for paralyzed exoskeleton, controlled by the power of thought, in which he made the first hit on the ball at the opening of the World Cup in the Brazilian San Paulo. All this is an occasion to rejoice for researchers and humanity.
In the shadow of this list of victories remains different. One obstacle or failure is enough so that an excellent idea does not lead to any result. And from the understanding of what prevents first -grade ideas to come true, there is even more benefit than from joy for universally recognized successes. Therefore, we consider it necessary to analyze the four indicative failures that happened in science for a year.
Russia was left without the Nobel Prize in Physics due to dust
Two million 886 thousand people watched a video where a man with a bottle of champagne is knocking on the door to the professor of Stanford Andrei Linda. It was in March; The colleague came to tell that the mechanism of birth of the universe proposed by Linda was just confirmed in the experiment at the South Pole. The Antarctic telescope Bicep 2 studied relict radiation - roughly speaking, a flash from a large explosion. This light in a age of 13.8 billion years during the journey to us managed to become invisible to the eye. But the devices, as the team of experimenters reported, identified traces of ancient gravitational waves in it. The discovery of these waves in itself, regardless of the context, would be drawn to a separate Nobel Prize, because there are no experimenting for an experiment, and there are no results, except for one indirect certificate, still do not.
In May, in the experiment, Bicep2 found a flaw: its authors did not take into account the entire effect of dust scattered according to our own galaxy.
In 1979, it was exactly what Bicep 2 saw was predicted by Alexei Starobinsky from the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics. In the wake of his work, Andrei Linde (then - an employee of the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow) formulated his theory of cosmic inflation - instant inflating of the Universe, which divided it into the areas isolated from each other, so that no exchange of substance or even information between them is impossible. What happens to the neighbors, we will never know. In parallel, the theory of inflation was developed by the American physicist Alan Gut.
The Nobel Prize would have to be awarded to all three: Gutu, Linde and Starobinsky. In the early summer of 2014, scientists in this composition divided a million dollars from the Cavil Foundation - a prize in astrophysicist, established by the Norwegian philanthropist several years ago.
However, already in May in the Bicep 2 experiment they found a flaw: its authors did not take into account the entire effect of dust scattered according to our own galaxy. In September, this claim added the weight of the observation of the Planck space observatory: there was a critical dust, and due to its interference it was simply impossible to say whether there were gravitational waves or were not. This does not refute the theory of cosmic inflation, but does it insufficiently proven - at least for the Nobel Committee. The Physics Prize was eventually received by a team of engineers who developed blue LEDs.
Ebola medicine did not find
According to December 22, the hemorrhagic fever of Ebola killed 7518 people, and 19,340 cases of infection were registered in total. For the most part - in Africa; Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea were especially injured. Among the victims there are especially many doctors, nurses and volunteers who were in contact with patients. This means that first of all those who know how to deal with diseases die. And not only with Ebola.
RVSV-EBOV vaccine and GSK-Nih vaccine, as well as ZMAPP medicine, did not reach Africa.
Therefore, the indirect number of victims is larger: fewer doctors - more deaths from the most innocent causes, whether it be food poisoning or maternity leaves that would easily cope with Europe. In addition, the UN predicts hunger in Africa in the spring: half a million people will be left without food due to the fact that the fear of getting infected holds people from working in the field or from selling a crop in the market. Where is hunger - there are refugees, where refugees are - there are problems for the rest of the world, which the epidemic did not seem to touch. Moreover, among the refugees there will probably be carriers of the virus; Just take and brush it out.
Although the account of Ebola victims did not go to hundreds of thousands, but experimental (others are not) preparations developed in the West have a minimum of relations. RVSV vaccine - EBOV and GSK - NIH vaccine, as well as ZMAPP medicine, did not reach Africa. Partly because this is not the most comfortable place for controlled clinical trials. But also for the reason that they will not change the course of the epidemic.
What treatment do patients receive in Africa? Aspirin from the heat. Antibiotics from concomitant infections. Drugs that stop dehydration. These elementary means already greatly reduce mortality, and they are in short supply. Not enough beds. And there is not enough nurses, ready to bring the simplest medicines in time for a lying patient. Therefore, drugs based on monoclonal antibodies, which were delivered by the last flight from a European or American laboratory, are not the most reasonable intervention in such a situation. The position in the focus of the epidemic would have changed, perhaps, a tablet that raises bed patients from bed in place - but unfortunately, there are even plans for the pharmaceutical companies.
Spaceshiptwo crashed
Eight passengers sit in seats, fasten the belts - and land after two and a half hours, spending about three minutes in space. Each lays 250 thousand dollars for suborbital flights. By November 2014, about 800 people have already managed to buy a ticket from Virgin Galactic , which was going to make space tourism massive. Ten years ago, SpaceShipone , the predecessor of SpaceShiptwo , became the first private aircraft crossing the boundaries of the cosmos - and developers that everyone improved and improved the model, had every reason to believe in its success.
There was no reason to wait for SpaceShiptwo on October 31 will suddenly fall apart in the air during the fourth tests. One of the pilots managed to catapult, the second died.
© Paramount PicturesBlack holes almost canceled
In the film " Interstellar " Christopher Nolan, the most cashier of the year about space, all the most importantly occur at the horizon of events of a giant black hole. Probably, all modern science does not have a more successful metaphor for the border between Jew and Navi, the world of the living and the world of the dead - which Nolas uses one hundred percent. Through the horizon of events, there is no road back even for the rays of light - not counting, of course, the roundabout, through the fifth measurement and the back of the book shelves in the nursery.
The world premiere of the film took place on August 28. And eight months before, the Nature scientific journal printed in the news section an article under the heading: "Stephen Hawking: there is no black holes." Hawking is primarily a specialist in black holes (and only then a popularizer of science who knows everything in the world about the Universe), so if to listen to anyone, then to it. It was about his own text that it was worth refusing, at least, from the idea of the horizon of events.
Hawking made a compromise idea: instead of a horizon working in Styx mode, a temporary detention for particles.
Nobody has ever seen black holes. Astrophysics only know many objects that can be nothing other than a black hole, due to their different qualities. For example, this is a superheavy body around which our entire galaxy rotates. The properties of this black hole were determined along the trajectories of stars that cut circles around it. But all the picturesque effects, from the accretion to gravitational lenses that accompany the news about black holes, NASA artists have to draw, relying exclusively on their own imagination and on the comments of experts: there is no photo and can not be at least due to the fact that the closest potential black holes of thousands of light years.
They hope to see something else: the radiation of hoking, a trace of particles born from a vacuum at the very horizon of events and separated by a black hole. Hawking predicted this effect theoretically, and paradoxes have grown from its analysis, which prevent the equations of relativity and quantum mechanics from previous comfort. In 2013, a group of four theoretical physicists proposed a fundamentally different picture than in Interstellar: instead of the horizon of events-the “Wall of Fire”, a much more traumatic barrier for all divers in black holes. Leonard Sasskind, a long -standing opponent of Hawking, suggested that auxiliary “mole -holes” are required to be attached to each black hole - hyperspace tunnels through which the separated particles continue to communicate with each other. Hawking himself came up with a compromise idea: instead of a horizon working in Styx mode - a temporary detention point for particles, from where they spit back over time.
Whatever of these hypotheses is true, the previous images of black holes will have to be redrawn, and the “Interstellar” will remain a monument of the old theory.