Especially this year it was like a fever dream: an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. A presidential debate that ends in a job. The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Abortion restrictions. Defense of the President. Alaska Airlines on the verge of fiasco. Diddy’s arrest. Raygun. Baldoni-Gate. Nurses!
I, myself, am tired.
That’s why, this year, I’m leaning on my nerdy habits and collecting interesting, fun, or inspiring news stories from the world of science—promising discoveries, exciting new facts, events of history and unsung heroes.
In hopes of providing some relief from the hell that has been 2024, here is a partial list of the year’s coolest science fiction stories, big and small:
Probably the first photo of a nyeswborn great white shark
Wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and University of California, Riverside, PhD student Phillip Sternes spotted what appears to be a baby great white shark off the coast of California last year. In January, the group published the photos in the newspaper Environmental Biology of Fishes.
“The breeding grounds of great white sharks is one of the holy grails of shark science. “No one has ever been able to pinpoint where it was born, nor has anyone seen a newborn shark alive,” Gauna said in a UC Riverside press release. “There have been dead white sharks found inside dead pregnant mothers. But nothing like that. ”
A A powerful microorganism called “Chonkus”
From the carbon-dioxide-rich waters near Vulcano, a volcanic island in northern Sicily, researchers isolated a new microorganism, the cyanobacterium UTEX 3222, named “Chonkus,” because of its ability to use carbon dioxide. Grist reports. When grown in a laboratory, it is very thick, as one scientist described it, like raw peanut butter.
“If scientists can figure out how to genetically engineer it,” Grist‘s Sachi Kitajima Mulkey writes, “these single-cell ecosystems could become a low-pollution waste management system” to combat climate change. (That may be easier said than done. Read more about Chonkus here.)
Water on asteroids
For the first time, scientists detected water on an asteroid: two asteroids, in fact, Space.com‘s Samantha Mathewson reports in February, named Iris (124 miles wide) and Massalia (84 miles). That’s important because scientists have a theory that Earth’s water—which you and I and everything else on this planet needs to survive—came from an asteroid. The findings support that theory.
And it could help generate new ideas about extraterrestrial life. “Understanding the distribution of water in the atmosphere will help researchers better assess where to look for other forms of life,” Mathewson writes, “both in our own planetary system and beyond.” ”
Carnivorous squirrels
Of course, the ground squirrels were always suspicious. (Are they really that different from rats?) But now, researchers have discovered new and unsettling information about their diet. In addition to eating nuts, seeds and acorns, a new study shows, California squirrels also hunt and eat voles, which are small rodents — a behavior the authors say was it has never been written before.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Sonja Wild, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, and an author of the study, said in a news release. Since then, we have seen that behavior almost every day. Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere.” Squirrel hunting trends have coincided with the state’s population growth, researchers said, but it’s unclear what caused the change.
Yes, there is a video.
The emergence of two prehistoric cicadas
This year, two groups of cicadas—the Great Southern Brood and the Northern Illinois Brood—emerged to breed after more than a decade of burrowing, the first such double event since 1803. New York Times it says, “The last time the 17-year cycle of the Northern Illinois Brood coincided with the 13-year cycle of the Great Southern Brood, Thomas Jefferson was president.
If you caught this year’s event, consider yourself lucky. It will be another 221 years until the next time the broods appear at the same time.
This photo of a Fish with a “loose” head with a blob
Just look at this thing.
Although technically a species “new to science,” as Mongabay Reports that this bristlemouth armored catfish was well known to the Wajun Indians of Peru worked with Conservation International scientists to identify the species in 2022.
In a report released this month, the non-profit organization officially declared the “amazing” fish and 26 other new species.
An injectable, long-acting HIV drug
An effective HIV vaccine has eluded scientists for decades. But now, a new drug can be a newspaper Science it calls it “the next best thing”: a vaccine that provides protection against infection for six months.
Here it is Sciencerecently named this drug the 2024 Breakthrough of the Year:
A major success trial in African adolescent girls and young women reported in June that the shots reduced HIV infection to zero—an astonishing 100% success rate. Any doubts about the findings disappeared 3 months later when the same experiment, carried out on four continents, reported a success rate of 99.9% in heterosexual people who have sex with men .
Many HIV/AIDS researchers now hope that this drug, lenacapavir, will lower the rate of infection worldwide when used as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Linda-Gail Bekker, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Cape Town, who led one of the two efficacy trials, says Linda-Gail Bekker. drug maker, Gilead Sciences.
Vulnerability of meteorologist John Morales
If there’s a good news story about climate change to come out this year, it’s that of John Morales. In October, a veteran Miami meteorologist had an emotional climate attack on Hurricane Milton, as the storm approached central Florida from the Gulf of Mexico.
As I reported at the time, Morales was initially reluctant to share the video of the conversation, during which she cried, to X. “I was just shy,” she told me. “I was like, how can I lose it like TV?”
But for me (and many others, obviously), Morales was the right ambassador for the moment. His summary has been shared thousands of times, and his interview with Ms. Jones was one of the most read environmental stories of the year.
He said that for decades, people knew him as a “just the news” guy. But the truth is that as extreme weather conditions put us in places we’ve never been before, it’s very difficult to stay cool, calm and comfortable.
I debated whether to share this. I apologized to the spirit. But I invite you to read my preview @BulletinAtomic how extreme weather 📈 is driven by global warming has changed. In fact, you too should be moved and searched #ClimateActionNow. https://t.co/09vxgabSmX https://t.co/GzQbDglsBG
– John Morales (@JohnMoralesTV) October 7, 2024
#Blobheaded #fish #carnivorous #squirrels #exciting #science #fiction #stories
