Achievements of people in our time. A person's achievements form a good reputation
In order to successfully create new inventions, or at least keep track of them, you just need to know what our modernity stands on, that is, science, technology and infrastructure. These are the most important inventions and discoveries, the significance of which cannot be overestimated.
the fire
It is not known exactly when people began to use fire, when they learned how to store or extract it, but scientists suggest that all this happened from 600 to 200 thousand years ago.
Language
The first oral speech with semantic and phonetic structures appeared about ten thousand years ago.
Trade (barter)
The first case of barter exchange was tracked in the Papua New Guinea region about 19 thousand years ago. By the third millennium BC. e. trade routes appeared in Asia and the Middle East.
Agriculture and farming
About 17 thousand years ago, people first began to domesticate animals, and in the tenth millennium BC. e. began to grow plants, which led to the formation of permanent settlements and the end of the nomadic way of life.
Ship
Around the fourth millennium BC e. in ancient Egypt, wooden rafts and boats began to be used, and in the XII century BC. e. Phoenicians and Greeks began to build ships, which allowed not only to expand the world of that time, but also to develop trade, science, geography and cartography.
Wheel
The wheel has become one of the simplest and most important inventions in human history. They began to use it about five thousand years ago.
Money
A new step in the development of trade was the use of money. They were first used by the Sumerians in the third millennium BC. e.
Iron
Metallurgy began its development with the use of copper, silver and tin. They were followed by bronze. In the third millennium BC. e. people began to use stronger iron.
Written speech
Despite the fact that oral speech has existed for thousands of years, writing first appeared among the Sumerians only five thousand years ago.
Legislation
In the 18th century BC. e. Hammurabi - the sixth Babylonian king, wrote his famous code, or collection of laws by which one was supposed to live in society. Other examples of ancient legislative texts are the Book of the Dead, the Ten Commandments, and the Book of Leviticus.
Alphabet
The first alphabet containing both vowels and consonants appeared among the Phoenicians in 1050 BC. e.
Steel
Steel alloys are considered to be the strongest. Steel was first used in Asia about four thousand years ago. The Greeks began using these alloys in the 7th century BC. e., 250 years before China and Rome.
Hydropower
The energy of flowing or falling water began to be used in the Mesopotamia region in the 2nd century BC. e.
Paper
The Chinese first began to use paper around 105 AD. e., it was fabric. Paper made from wood only appeared in the 16th century.
Manual dialing with movable letters
Although the invention of the printing press belongs to Gutenberg (1436), the technology on which it is based comes from China. Movable type was invented by Bi Shen in 1040.
Microscope
In 1592, Dutch optical masters Zachariah and Hans saw for the first time that objects could be seen much closer through certain lenses. It was these special lenses that made it into the first microscope.
Electricity
In 1600 the Englishman William Gilbert first used the term "electricity". In 1752, Benjamin Franklin proved that lightning is electricity.
Telescope
In 1608, Hans Lippersheim created a collecting lens, which he inserted into a telescope. This became the prototype of the telescope, which Galileo improved after a year.
Engine
The invention of the steam engine by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 was the next giant step in technology. The internal combustion engine was invented by Etienne Lenoir in 1858.
Incandescent lamp
An incandescent lamp invented by Humphrey Davey in 1800 and later improved by Thomas Edison helped turn night into day.
Telegraph
The first simple telegraph was invented by the Bavarian Samuel Semmering in 1809. However, the author of the first commercially successful version of the telegraph is considered to be Samuel Morse - the creator of the Morse code.
Electromagnet
William Sturgeon invented the first electromagnet in 1825. His invention consisted of an ordinary iron horseshoe around which a copper wire was wrapped.
Oil and gas
This natural fuel was first discovered in 1859. The first gas well was discovered in Ohio and the first oil well was discovered in Pennsylvania.
Phone
The first device capable of transmitting discernible sounds was invented in 1860 by the German Philip Rise. 16 years later, Alexander Bell patented and demonstrated to the public an improved model.
Electric lamp
This vacuum electronic device is based on the fact that the flow of electricity does not need a wire and can pass both through air and through a vacuum. The first such device was created by Lee de Forest in 1893.
Semiconductors
The first semiconductors were discovered in 1896. Silicon is the main semiconductor today. It was first used for commercial purposes by Jagadish Chandra Bose.
Penicillin
Everyone has heard of the accidental discovery of the antibiotic penicillin in 1928. Long before Fleming, however, these properties were noticed by the French medical student Ernest Duchenne in 1896, but his research went unnoticed.
Radio
Among the inventors of the radio are such names as Heinrich Hertz (1888), Thomas Edison (1885) and even Nikola Tesla, who patented his invention in 1897.
Electron
This negatively charged elementary particle was discovered by Joseph Thomson in 1897. The electron is the main carrier of the electric charge.
The quantum physics
The year 1900 and Planck's hypothesis are considered to be the true beginning of quantum physics. On its basis, Einstein built his theory of particles of light, which were later dubbed photons.
Aircraft
The famous Wright brothers' invention dates back to 1903. The first successful manned flight took place on December 17.
A television
Television is based on a number of inventions and discoveries, but the first full-fledged television was created in 1926 by John Loughie Byrd.
Transistor
The switching and amplification of the electronic signal is carried out using a transistor - an invention that was created by Bill Shankley in 1947 and which allowed for the first time to think about the possibility of creating a global telecommunications network.
DNA
The main secret of life on earth was discovered by a team of scientists from Cambridge University in 1953. Watson and Crick received the Nobel Prize for this discovery.
Integrated circuit
In 1959, through the efforts of several developers, inventors and corporations, the first integrated circuit was created - an arbitrary set of electronic components combined into one crystal or on one circuit. It was this invention that allowed the creation of microchips and microprocessors.
the Internet
The progenitor of the Internet was ARPANET, or the DARPA project, developed in 1969. However, modern data transfer protocols and the Internet itself were created in 1991 by Briton Tim Berners-Lee.
Microprocessor
In 1971, a developer from Intel created an innovative integrated circuit, the size of which was ten times smaller. It was she who became the first microprocessor.
Mobile phone
In 1973, Motorola launched the first portable telephone weighing just over a kilogram. Its battery was charged for more than ten hours, and the talk time did not exceed 30 minutes.
Smartphone
In January 2007, Apple first released a multi-point touch phone on the market. The multitouch system paved the way for smartphones, tablets and hybrid computers.
Quantum computer
In 2011, D-wave introduced a radically new invention - a quantum computer - a computing machine based on the phenomena of superposition and entanglement, which makes it thousands of times faster than conventional mechanical computers.
This photo collection contains the most famous human achievements
Mariana Trench: Maximum Depth
The Bathyscaphe Trieste was designed by the Swiss scientist Auguste Picard, taking into account his previous development FNRS-2, the world's first bathyscaphe. Trieste is the name of the Italian city where the main work on its creation was carried out. From 1953 to 1957, several dives were made on it in the Mediterranean Sea, including a record depth at that time of 3,150 meters. In 1958, this unit was purchased by the US Navy. After the purchase, it was finalized - a stronger and more durable gondola was installed. Despite the purchase, Jacques Piccard, the son of the designer of the Auguste apparatus, remained the main pilot and technician of the apparatus in 1958-1960.
Jean Picard (center) and Lieutenant Don Walsh during their record dive. Mariana Trench, 23 January 1960:
The deepest trough known on Earth was named after the nearby Mariana Islands. Its depth was first measured in 1875 by the British ship Challenger, after which the deepest point of the trench was named. Jacques Picard and Don Walsh were the first to dive into the abyss on January 23, 1960. On the bathyscaphe "Trieste"they reached 10,911 m.
Only 52 years later, on March 26, 2012, their record was repeated by James Cameron, who single-handedly sank into the Challenger Abyss. A Canadian filmmaker dived in the Deepsea Challenger bathyscaphe, filming the 3D documentary for the National Geographic documentary.
Everest: the highest peak
The highest point of the Earth was subdued to man 7 years earlier than the lowest. 60 years ago, on May 29, 1953, for the first time in history, a human foot set foot on Mount Chomolungma with a height of 8,848 meters. New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were honored to become pioneers. They spent only 15 minutes on the "roof of the world", but these "15 minutes of glory" forever inscribed their names in history. Hillary and Norgay conquered the summit during the ninth British expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. By the way, Chomolungma also owes its more common name to the British, which the peak received in honor of the Welsh geographer and surveyor George Everest.
New Zealander Edmund Hillary (left) and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay are the first people on Earth to conquer Everest. Photo of 1953:
Nearly two meters tall, New Zealander Edmund Hillary photographed a small Sherpa on a snow dome with an ice ax raised, decorated with flags of the United Nations, Great Britain, Nepal and India. The climbers used oxygen devices, May 29, 1953.
Moon: the most remote place from the Earth, where there was a person
The crew of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, during the flight of which in July 1969, the earthlings landed on the moon for the first time. From left to right: Neil Armstrong (left), Buzz Aldrin (right) and Michael Collins. During the landing of Neil and Buzz on the surface of the satellite, Michael piloted a command module in orbit of the moon:
On July 21, 1969 at 02 hours 56 minutes 20 seconds GMT, Neil Armstrong made a small step that became a giant leap for all mankind, descending the stairs from the Apollo 11 lander to the lunar surface. The second guest of the Earth satellite was Edwin Aldrin, who joined the flight captain 15 minutes later.
In total, they plowed the lunar expanses for 2 hours 31 minutes and 40 seconds. During this time, astronauts planted the American flag and instruments necessary for scientific experiments, and also collected samples of lunar soil. After 21 hours and 36 minutes, spent on the lunar surface and inside the lunar module, the crew left the only astronomical object outside our planet, on which a man had set foot. In total, 12 astronauts have visited the surface of the Earth satellite as part of the Apollo mission to the moon.
Kola superdeep: the deepest well made by man
On May 24, 1970, drilling began on the deepest "hole" ever made by man. As part of the Soviet scientific program, a well was drilled in the Murmansk region (10 km from the city of Zapolyarny), which reached a record high of 12,262 meters in 1990.
Kola superdeep well. First stage drilling (depth 7,600 m), 1974:
The grandiose project lasted until 1992. Only the first 7 km of drilling took about 7 years. In 1983, the drill first entered the earth's rocks at a distance of 12 km. Later, due to accidents and technical difficulties, the work had to be suspended. Only in 1990 was the final world drilling record set. With the help of the Kola superdeep, scientists wanted to study the oldest rocks of our planet using the example of the granite Baltic shield.
The Kola Superdeep is sometimes called "a well to hell". There is a legend at a depth of about 12 thousand meters, the microphones of scientists recorded the screams and groans of people. This is, of course, a myth, although in the course of drilling, phenomena did occur that scientists could not find an explanation for.
Kola superdeep. Photo of 2007. At the moment, the facility is abandoned, the building is actually destroyed, and the well itself is welded:
Felix Baumgartner's flight: highest jump in history
On October 14, 2012 the Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner made the highest jump in history,jumping from a 39-kilometer height (39.45 thousand meters). The 43-year-old athlete climbed to this mark in 2 hours 16 minutes in a special capsule. During the fall, Felix exceeded the speed of sound, reaching a speed of 1,357.6 kilometers per hour.
He jumped in a spacesuit and for the first time without the help of flying equipment was in free fall for 4 minutes 19 seconds. This "sidereal" time could become fatal for Baumgartner in the event of a depressurization, but, fortunately, the experiment ended successfully. The extreme jump, which was broadcast live, was watched by about 8 million people.
Garrett McNamar: conquering the biggest wave
The largest wave, 10-storey high, was subdued by the Hawaiian surfer Garrett McNamar. He "saddled"30 meter water wall off the Portuguese coast near the small town of Nazara on January 29, 2013. Garrett McNamar Conquers The 100-Foot Storm:
A giant rampart has formed over an underwater canyon that is renowned for its reputation as the "generator" of the world's tallest waves. This is not the first world record set by a 45-year-old athlete. In 2013, Garrett conquered his own world record set in November 2011 on the same Portuguese coast. Then the Hawaiian daredevil conquered the wave 24 meters high.
Garrett McNamar Conquers The 100-Foot Storm:
Burj Khalifa: conquering the tallest skyscraper in the world
While all the main natural peaks have been conquered, the French climber Alain Robert took up the peaks created by man. And entered the Guinness Book of Records as the conqueror of skyscrapers. Spider-Man has more than 70 ascents to the tallest buildings in the world, including the Empire State Building (New York), the Eiffel Tower (Paris), Petronas Towers (Kuala Lumpur), Taipei 101 (Taipei) and the main building of Moscow State University (Moscow).
Alain Robert, nicknamed Spider-Man, conquers the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa (828 m):
The climber was the first to climb the tallest structure in the world, the 828-meter Burj Khalifa skyscraper.The ascent, which took place on March 28, 2011, took more than 6 hours... Alain Robert is famous for doing his tricks without equipment, but this time he fulfilled the organizers' requirement and took advantage of the insurance. Also read the article "Kingdom Tower - Living at an Altitude of 1 Km".
Reassessing values, or taking into account the achievements in your life
From time to time it is helpful to ask yourself the question: what have I achieved? The question is not idle, as it helps to comprehend what has already been done and what has yet to be done. If there are not as many achievements as we would like, this may serve as a reason to start changing something in life.
Important achievements in life can be divided into two conditional categories: public and personal.
Social achievements are what is valued in society, speaks of a person's success (a gold medal at school, a diploma from a prestigious university, a status position, material well-being).
Personal achievements are those actions for which we respect ourselves.
A very, very controversial question, which is more important - public recognition or personal satisfaction from your life. Both are important.
Achievements visible to everyone
Remember the Soviet comedy film, which has become a classic, and the phrase from this film, which went to the people: "an athlete, a Komsomol member and just a beauty"? There are achievements by which we are judged in society. These criteria for success include education, career, social status of a person. It so happened that we live in society and play by the rules that society dictates to us.
Education is an important achievement in life. But there is one "but": the education received can be considered an achievement, provided that the person studied independently (and did not buy sessions and exams) and as a result acquired a profession that will bring him income in the future. If a diploma is needed "just so that it was", then this is a dubious achievement.
Another important achievement in life is a person's professional success. If a person is engaged in what he loves, which brings him not only income, but also a feeling of satisfaction - this, of course, is a criterion of success.
Social status is a rather ephemeral concept and one can argue for a long time on the topic that in our society everyone is equal, but in real life everything is not so. If a person is respected in the professional community, has a good reputation in his social circle, this is also a certain achievement in life.
A dangerous, dead-end path is to consider your material well-being as your important achievement in life. There will always be someone who is richer than you, which means that your own material wealth will no longer please you so much. And at the same time, it is probably not quite the right step to ignore material success.
Personal achievement counter
With personal achievements, everything is easier and more difficult at the same time. Here everyone determines for himself what is important to him. This creates a personal scale of values, and what is important to you will not necessarily be a priority for others.
To create a harmonious family - someone quite rightly considers this to be an important achievement in life. And for someone an important achievement in life is to learn how to cook Spanish cuisine, visit Kilimanjaro, or lose 20 kilograms.
We are all different, and someone considers the purchase of an expensive car to be an important achievement, and someone - their spiritual self-development.
For a successful person, an obligatory personal achievement should be the desire to learn, to learn new things. And this is not only about professional activity, you can also learn "personal" things: learn to forgive and, as a result, become more generous, learn to restrain emotions - and due to this ability to get out of the most difficult life situations with honor.
Listing personal accomplishments (for example, having a photo album of photos of your triumphant moments in life) is a great exercise in confidence. And when there is a feeling of inspiration and self-confidence, it is much easier to reach new heights.
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Achievements are certainly useful - a victory over a fever, harmless - pentaquarks were found, amusing - psychology is still not quite a science, and such that make you think hard
Another year on our way to a frightening and alluring future is coming to an end. The main engine of this movement is science, but where exactly is it leading civilization? The answer becomes clearer if we sum up the results, highlight the most important scientific breakthroughs of the outgoing year, the prospects for their development and their authors - "progressors" in our terminology .
1. Defeated Ebola
Breakthrough: The Ebola vaccine has worked and the vaccination campaign has worked.
Progressors: Public Health Agency of Canada and Merck Pharmaceutical Company.
Details: Where did Ebola go? Russian (and possibly not only Russian) TV viewers began to ask this question around the middle of 2015, when the main "horror story" of the past few months stopped appearing in news reports. Some even spoke in the spirit of conspiracy theories: they say, they scared us with information about the epidemic in order to distract us from something more important and scary, and when they were distracted, they stopped scaring us. In fact, everything is simpler: it was by the middle of the summer that the outbreaks of the disease began to decline - a vaccine developed by Public Health Canada and improved by the pharmaceutical company Merck began to work.
The epidemic, which began in March 2014 in Guinea and became the largest since the discovery of the Ebola virus, spurred researchers and the work, which could otherwise take a decade, was done in 10 months. The vaccine has been created. In April 2015, doctors gave the first vaccinations to people. Within three months, 100 people infected with Ebola were selected for the experiment, and more than 2 thousand relatives and tribesmen of the infected were vaccinated. Later it turned out that out of the number of people who received the vaccine, only 16 people fell ill. Vaccinations began to be carried out on a systematic basis: as soon as a person who has caught Ebola is identified, all his closest associates are immediately sent for an injection.
Before the start of the vaccination campaign, doctors constantly recorded new cases of the disease. After the vaccine was introduced, the Ebola epidemic began to gradually subside.
Perspectives: The World Health Organization estimates that the new vaccine will be in the 75 to 100 percent range. If the drug had been developed at least a year and a half earlier, thousands of people would have been saved: the 2014–2015 epidemic killed 11,315 people, more than 28,000 were ill, but managed to survive. During the first two weeks of December 2015, Ebola did not show itself even once. It is impossible to count how many lives the vaccine will help to save in the future, but WHO representatives already say that for the first time in 40 years, the rules of the game are changing: now the advantage is on the side of the person, not the virus.
2. We flew to Pluto
Breakthrough: The New Horizons probe has reached Pluto and has collected a wealth of data about the dwarf planet and its moon Charon.
Progressors:NASA, though we owe no less to Percival Lowell, who predicted the existence of Pluto, and Cloud Tombaugh, who discovered it.
Details: The New Horizons mission started back in 2006, when Pluto was still considered a full-fledged planet, and no one had heard of facebook, for example. For nine long years, the spacecraft stubbornly approached Pluto, mostly staying in hibernation mode and only waking up from time to time to correct course and take pictures of space objects that turned up at hand. Objects, I must say, came across what you need: some clouds of Jupiter are worth something. And flying past Io, New Horizons took a series of images that revealed volcanic surges on its surface, which were then even glued into a full-fledged video (the first video of a volcano erupting outside the Earth!). But all this was just preparation for the tremendous success that awaited the probe in 2015. Color images of Pluto and its faithful companion Charon were obtained. Even people far from astronomy started talking about photographs with the "heart of Pluto" (the sea of \u200b\u200bnitrogen).
Perspectives: In general, the device carried out observations of Pluto for 9 days, during which it collected about 50 gigabits of information. Now he is slowly transmitting the collected data to Earth. According to NASA, the transmission will continue until the end of 2016, because its speed does not exceed 2000 bits per second. The information obtained will allow us to test some hypotheses, for example, about the presence of water under the ocean ice, or about the composition of the atmosphere of a dwarf planet. But the mission will not end there: on January 1, 2019, it is planned to fly past the asteroid 2014 MU69, a typical representative of the Kuiper belt. Perhaps it will be possible to find some more worthy targets to which the probe will head. But New Horizons has already achieved a lot. The last time humanity received images of an unknown planet in 1989 - then it was Neptune. And there are no more unexplored planets in the solar system.
3. Edited human genes
Breakthrough: The CRISPR / Cas9 genome editing method was tested on human genes and improved.
Progressors : Genetic engineers from China and the USA.
Details: In the past year, breakthrough experiments continued with the revolutionary in its simplicity method of editing CRISPR / Cas9 genes, which enables us to find the desired DNA section using special enzymes and change it by cutting out or adding lines of the genetic program code. The most scandalous was the experiment of Chinese bioengineers who tested the method on initially non-viable human embryos. The result disappointed even the scientists themselves: out of 86 embryos, only 28 of the replacement complex managed to bind to the desired DNA section. The experiment has received criticism, including from the journal Nature. In a critical article, scientists urged not to use the method in humans due to the large number of unwanted mutations and unpredictable consequences, and drew attention to the fact that experimental failures cast a shadow on successful attempts to treat individual organs with this system. However, very soon American scientists managed to increase the efficiency of the CRISPR / Cas9 method by an order of magnitude, reducing the number of errors to almost zero. We have come close to the technical possibility of editing the human genome.
Perspectives: At the summit dedicated to editing the human genome, scientists decided that it was not yet time to edit the genes that were inherited before the birth of a child. This temporary prohibition does not apply to treatments that are not inherited. They did not finally prohibit “fixing” the human genome, judging that there will always be those who will dare to violate the prohibition. Genetic engineering will need to perfect the techniques to obtain the key to editing inherited genes. At the first stage, this will make it possible to cure some diseases that are caused by changes in individual genes, and in the long term, it may lead to the emergence of different variants of “posthumans” experimenting with their genome.
4. Dug up the "transitional link"
Breakthrough: analyzed the remains of the most ancient people, called Homo naledi - judging by the anatomical structure, these are the earliest representatives of the human race, who lived 2-3 million years ago and claim to be a "transitional link" between australopithecine apes and humans.
Progressors: Lee Berger and the paleoanthropologists working with him.
Details: In 2013, two cavers discovered in a narrow tunnel in the Rising Star cave system a passage to a small chamber with sensational bones at the bottom. Paleontologist Lee Berger organized a large-scale expedition to the cave, which is now called Dinaledi. Only the most slender researchers had a chance to see a wealth unprecedented for a paleontologist: in the cave they found one almost whole skeleton, perfectly preserved hand and foot, and in general more than one and a half thousand skeletal fragments of 15 people of different sex and age. A touch of mystery added to the sensationalism of this find. Only one tunnel led into the cave, long and extremely narrow, and geologists argued that there was never another way. Scientists have not found any traces of human activity: the transfer of water, the manufacture of tools, fire, which could have allowed ancient people to navigate in the cave. But how and, most importantly, why did they sneak through the "skinner" into this cell? Did they grope in search of shelter or a place for a quiet death, or did their fellow tribesmen organize a kind of primitive cemetery in the cave, dragging bodies there? The dating of the fossils could help answer this question. For this, scientists had to investigate the sediment on the bones, the composition of flora and fauna, volcanic tuff or sand. But there was nothing of this in the closed cave, except for stone dust from the walls and ceiling, which covered the bones with a layer 15 centimeters thick. And the main news was that the researchers discovered not already known to science ancestors like Australopithecus, whose remains were often found in this area.
As a result of the research, a group of anthropologists described a new species of our ancestors - Homo naledi, or "star man" ("naledi" is translated as "star" from the South African language Sesotho). Two articles published so far describe in detail the features of the hands and feet of ancient people. The structure of the hand indicates that Homo naledi made tools, were skillful dart frogs and, for an as yet unknown reason, had very developed thumbs. The legs of the "star man" turned out to be long, and the feet did not differ much from modern ones, so he was adapted for long runs.
Perspectives: The exact place on the family tree for Homo naledi has not yet been found, nor has the age of the fossils been established. To do this, scientists will need radiocarbon dating of the bones and further study of the Rising Star cave system.
5. Caught a pentaquark
Breakthrough: In July, physicists announced the discovery of a new class of particles, the existence of which scientists predicted half a century ago, but could not prove in any way - pentaquarks.
Progressors: The article describing the discovery of pentaquark has about 700 authors, and in general the honor of the discoveries made at the Large Hadron Collider is shared by thousands of people who created it and are working there now.
Details: Quarks are fundamental particles from which two classes of compound particles are formed: baryons (these are protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus of an atom) and mesons. Baryons are made up of three quarks, and mesons are made up of two: a quark and an antiquark. Usually quarks do not form complex structures - if you put several quarks together, they do not merge, but immediately decay into mesons and baryons. To explain why this is happening, modern physics is not yet able to, since theoretically nothing prevents the unification of quarks in groups of 4 or 5 particles: tetra- or pentaquarks.
The possibility of such unions was substantiated in 1964, and since then physicists have conducted dozens of experiments trying to find particles consisting of two quarks and two antiquarks (tetraquarks) and four quarks and one antiquark (pentaquarks). By the end of the first decade of the 2000s, more than 10 teams of scientists from different countries announced positive results in the search for pentaquarks. But none of these results have been confirmed in larger experiments. The search for pentaquark began to be considered a thankless task and doomed to failure.
The discovery at the Large Hadron Collider was made almost by accident: physicists were studying the decay of a lambda baryon and suddenly saw a pentaquark. Considering the bad reputation of the pentaquark, physics approached the study of the discovered particle very seriously, for a long time measuring the mass, parameters and quantum numbers, and rechecking the results. In the end, data of very high statistical significance were obtained - the existence of a new class of particles was officially proven.
Perspectives: A pentaquark is not just a new particle, but a way of combining quarks into a multicomponent ordered structure, the properties of which we do not know much about. In the Large Hadron Collider, two pentaquarks, close in mass, were recorded at once, and now physicists will try to explain how this is possible. Various types of pentaquarks will probably be found.
6. Shown the unreliability of most psychological research
Breakthrough: It turned out that out of 100 psychological experiments, only 39 can be reproduced. The results obtained should lead to a change in the process of obtaining scientific knowledge.
Progressors: Open Science Collaboration, led by Brian Nosek.
Details: Reproducibility of results is one of the main properties of science. What is the point of saying that you managed to carry out a controlled thermonuclear reaction, in which the energy produced exceeded the expended one, if no one can then repeat your success? After all, this will actually mean that humanity has not received anything new, even if you are right. The results of psychological research often promise quite a lot and sound loud enough. Everyone wonders if, for example, the fear response is different in children and adults. However, it turned out that confirming the results of such experiments is not so easy. Psychologists from the Collaboration for Open Science have spent four years replicating experiments published in leading psychology journals, and the results of this study were disappointing. According to scientists, they were able to reproduce only 39 works out of 100, and this despite the fact that 97% of the original publications claimed the statistical significance of their result. Well ... It could be worse, right?
Perspectives: Of course, at first glance, this result does not at all look like a breakthrough in science. After all, it means that psychological experiments are often carried out incorrectly, or the reliability of their results is incorrectly estimated. But it's much better if the problem is recognized and corrected than when everyone diligently pretends that it does not exist. And here the research of the Collaboration for Open Science comes in handy. Scientists, realizing that the statistical significance of the results does not always allow judging the importance of a discovery, will try to make the research process more transparent and the results more reliable. Perhaps we will soon have a whole scientific revolution, which will fundamentally change the ways of obtaining knowledge in psychology. And at the same time, you see, and psychological experiments will be trusted more.
7. Allocated a new type of antibiotic
Breakthrough: In July, the journal Nature published an article about the discovery for the first time in 30 years of a new class of antibiotics - teixobactin.
Progressors: The antibiotic was "grown" by a team of biologists from the USA, Germany and Great Britain.
Details: Most antibiotics in use today were created in the 1960s, and since then many bacteria have developed resistance to them. Some causative agents of dangerous diseases, such as tuberculosis, were once suppressed by ordinary penicillin. But now tuberculosis and other half-forgotten infections may become mass murderers again.
The irony is that, in part, because of the rapidity with which any new antibiotics are losing their effectiveness, pharmaceutical companies have stopped investing in modifying existing drugs and finding new forms. They dropped their hands, one might say. The problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics is called one of the main threats to humanity in the near future.
Researchers at NovoBiotics Pharmaceuticals have used a completely new way of producing antibiotics. They did not turn to known strains that can be grown in the laboratory, but decided to look for a new antibiotic in the main source of bacteria - in the soil. Scientists have developed a device that can be lowered into the ground and allowed bacteria to grow in their natural environment. The substances that released these bacteria during their vital activity were then tested on mice infected with dangerous diseases. One of these substances had pronounced antibiotic properties and was very effective against most gram-positive bacteria that are resistant to all other antibiotics. This is a new type of antibiotic.
Usually antibiotics "spoil" the proteins of bacteria, and they in response adapt to its attacks, so changing the structure of the protein that it becomes insensitive to the antibiotic. But the found substance damages such important enzymes responsible for the construction of the bacterial cell wall that any change in them is fatal to the bacteria. Provided that the new antibiotic will be used with great care - only in cases where other drugs are powerless, bacteria will be able to develop resistance to it no earlier than in 30-40 years.
Perspectives: The company plans to bring the new drug to market within five years, and it will be a lifesaver for those who cannot be cured now. However, this is not the main achievement of scientists: the method of searching for new antibiotics, which they discovered, may open a new era in the creation of antibiotics, and we will have something to counter the threat of global epidemics caused by mutated bacteria.
8. We decided to cool the planet
Breakthrough: Strictly speaking, this is not a scientific achievement, but a diplomatic and social one, but on a scientific basis and very important. In December, the UN countries adopted a new climate agreement - the Paris. According to him, until the end of the century, the planet should not warm by more than two degrees Celsius. Countries are committed to doing everything possible to lower this threshold even to one and a half degrees.
Progressors: Representatives of all mankind - 195 countries of the world adopted the Paris Agreement.
Perspectives: Over the past 5000 years, the Earth has warmed up by only 4-5 ° C, but from 1980 to 2020, the temperature on the planet's surface increases by 0.25 ° C every decade. In the pessimistic scenario of the UN, in the 21st century, the planet will warm by 2.6-4.8 ° C, this warming will affect the lives of billions of people. The melting of glaciers, which will lead to rising sea levels and inundation of islands and continental coasts, droughts and global cataclysms, are only part of the predicted consequences.
The industry and energy of most countries in the world depend on the burning of fossil fuels. It is this process that is most responsible for the emissions of greenhouse gases, which, according to most scientists, provoke global warming. Ditching fossil fuels is now impossible, but as part of the agreement, UN countries have agreed to work on a gradual transition to a carbon-free economy. Energy will be spent more efficiently, countries will introduce new, environmentally friendly technologies, use renewable energy sources and diversify the economy in cases where it is too dependent on the production and consumption of hydrocarbon fuels. Each country independently determines how much it will be able to reduce the amount of emissions.
The participants of the conference in Paris were aware that such serious transformations could cause difficulties in the economies of many countries, both suppliers and active consumers of hydrocarbon fuels. The most vulnerable countries will receive annual financial support from other states, various international organizations and the commercial sector. The states will create an emissions market, introduce a new tax and stimulate investment in new energy and industry.
Perspectives:The Paris Agreement is legally binding, but it has not yet been signed. For it to enter into force, it must be ratified by at least 55 countries. This process will begin in April 2016 and will continue throughout the year. If the agreement is signed and the countries adhere to the commitments set out in it, humanity will have an increased chance to keep the planet as it has been for the past 5000 years.
9. We connected the brains of animals into a working network
Breakthrough: Neurophysiologists at Duke University connected the brains of several rats into a network and made the network solve problems.
Progressors: Miguel Nicolesis and his laboratory staff.
Details: Scientists have approached the problem of mutual understanding radically. Neurophysiologists from Duke University combined the brains of four adult rats, and the resulting "brainet" (brain network) solved quite vital tasks, such as image processing, storage and retrieval of information, and even predicting (anticipating) the weather. In a way, a kind of organic computer was obtained, the performance of which exceeded the performance of an individual brain. Unfortunately, what the test rats thought about this was not reported. But it would be interesting to know what it is like to have a common brain for four ...
Perspectives: Nicholasis' research contributes to the development of neurocomputer interfaces and methods of rehabilitation for people with impaired motor functions, but the main thing here is rather that a precedent has been created for the practical implementation of "brainet". Moreover, four unfortunate rats bound by electrodes are transferred from the category of science fiction to the category of promising technological projects "neuronet" - the future analogue of the Internet, in which the interaction of people, animals and machines is carried out using neurocommunications. It's hard to even imagine what kind of life this will bring to people. Perhaps a person connected with the world by a nervous network will not have a separate “I” at all, only “We” will remain, approximately as in the famous anti-utopia of Yevgeny Zamyatin.
10. Reverse the aging process
Breakthrough: A method has been developed that makes it possible to lengthen human telomeres by a whole thousand nucleotides - the terminal sections of chromosomes, the length of which largely determines the aging process of our body.
Progressors: A group of researchers from Stanford University led by Helen Blau.
Details: The reproduction of healthy cells in the body occurs through their division. During each division, the ends of the telomeres shrink. In young people, telomeres are equivalent to 8-10 thousand nucleotides in length. As they grow older and older, these "caps" shrink and at some point reach the point of "no return" - the cell stops dividing and finally dies. And the gradual death of cells, which carries with it the "littering" of the body, is, as many scientists believe, the main cause of aging.
The dependence of the aging process on the state of telomeres was known earlier, as well as the fact that a healthy lifestyle slows down their shortening, but the staff of Standford proposed a fundamentally different way: they proved that medical intervention from the outside can be used to directly increase the terminal regions of chromosomes.
Modified RNA carrying the telomerase reverse transcriptase gene has become the main tool of the new technology. After the introduction of such RNA, the cells begin to behave as young and are actively dividing. True, the elongated ends of the telomeres again begin to shorten with each new division.
Perspectives: People have always looked for an answer to the question "How to live happily ever after." And if happiness is not so simple, then thanks to the results of the completed research, we have a good chance to significantly extend our days. Continued research promises success in the creation of drugs, the regular intake of which will increase the active life of the cells that make up our body, which means that we will get several useful years to find the answer to the second part of the question - about happiness.
The fruits of progress
10 technologies that entered people's lives in 2015
1 a hoverboard instead of a hoverboard
For a generation, 2015 was, among other things, the year of Marty McFly's arrival "back to the future." Unlike the movie, in today's reality hoverboards (i.e. flying skateboards) are not yet foreseen. But gyro scooters are rapidly becoming fashionable. According to the developers, the device, consisting of a horizontal platform for legs and two wheels, controlled by two electric motors, works like a human vestibular apparatus: gyroscopic sensors signal the electric motors to rotate forward or backward when the center of gravity is shifted. forward) respectively. While hoverboards are used more and more by celebrities and lovers of advanced gadgets, it is possible that these devices will soon replace scooters and roller skates. The only thing left for gyroscooters is to become safer.
2 genetically modified animals
The outgoing year brought several important shifts in the distribution of laboratory-created animals. Genetically modified mosquitoes, developed by the British company Oxitec, were released in the Brazilian city of Piracicaba as a treatment for fever. An artificial mutation in the genes of male mosquitoes transfers a gene to females that kills their offspring before puberty. This measure should drastically reduce the population of mosquitoes that transmit fever.
Another big news was the permission to produce and eat the first GM animal in the United States. This is the AquAdvantage salmon with embedded DNA that affects the growth of fish. Salmon was considered equally safe for both human health and the environment.
3.Small, fast, cheap courier
This is not about gnomes, but about drones - small aircraft with remote control. The number of drones used commercially in 2015 grew like an avalanche. Already, they deliver goods to customers, monitor the traffic situation and are used for many other purposes, the spectrum of which will only expand: for example, drones will soon transmit an Internet signal in the most remote corners of the earth. The largest American online store Amazon promises in the near future with the help of a new service to deliver goods weighing up to 2.3 kg within half an hour and only $ 1. And in Japan, the police are launching drone-equipped networks into the sky: there are so many drones that there is a need to catch potentially dangerous ones.
4 personalized reality
In 2015, Facebook made it possible for a user to flag posts from people they wanted or didn't want to see in their news feed. Up to this point, the user's news feed was filled completely automatically: the computer analyzed the history of his likes, comments and views in order to identify preferences and fill the feed with information that might interest him. Now the machine also analyzes which publications you consciously prioritize or exclude from your feed, so that you have to do this as little as possible. However, the ability to independently participate in the formation of the news feed has completely changed the function of the social network. Now this is not just a site that you visit to find out what's new in the lives of your friends, and not even to find out the news. This is an information space where you will learn exactly and only what you want to know.
5.Internet for light bulbs
In the world of artificial lighting, as elsewhere in life, a digital revolution and universal "internetization" are unfolding - only lamps are connected to the network instead of people. Lighting technology merges with information technology thanks to LEDs (in English - LED) - a semiconductor device that emits light when a current is passed through it. LEDs are much more economical than other bulbs, but their most attractive feature is that they can be controlled. An exemplary example for the rapidly growing market for smart lamps is Philips' Hue, which is easy to control from a smartphone by changing color, color temperature and brightness, or setting various program modes - for example, in the early morning the program sets a cold light that stimulates people to work, and in the evening - warm, pleasant and soothing. And external sensors allow, for example, to automatically adjust the lighting level depending on the weather and time of day. Changes in lighting due to LEDs are important not only in everyday life - in the past year they began to be used in agriculture, which is becoming less and less "rural" - crops are grown in rooms with artificially controlled light, where for each species, say, lettuce , the optimal parameters of light radiation are selected.
6 building robots at home
Microcomputers and off-the-shelf kits for making your own electronic devices were booming in 2015. Gaining popularity and community of makers - so now they call "homemade" who love to make "smart" devices at home, for themselves. Anyone can now assemble their own robot based on a programmable mini-computer like Galileo or Edison, several sensors and connected to a global network - the range of constructors is expanding, the cost of components is decreasing, it is becoming easier to connect and combine them, and training materials are available on the Internet for free. In 2015, giants such as Intel, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon offered users a "cloud" infrastructure for managing homemade devices, storing and processing the data they create. By the way, the processing of data coming from such crafts all over the world can open a new era in the "digitization of the world" and the formation of various databases.
7 breaking down language barriers
The communication of people speaking different languages \u200b\u200bhas always been a huge challenge. It is difficult even to imagine a global world order and culture without language barriers, but it seems that the people of the planet will begin to understand each other without an interpreter very soon. In 2015, Skype launched a service for simultaneous translation of the speech of interlocutors who speak English, German and French (and the translation of SMS messages from 50 world languages). This is clearly only the beginning of a revolution in the world of automated simultaneous interpretation - it seems that the time has finally come to finish building the Tower of Babel.
8 the supercomputer as a doctor
IBM Corporation, which created the Watson supercomputer, launched the IBM Watson Health cloud platform in the spring. Simply put, Watson's artificial intelligence now lives in the cloud and is used to analyze medical data. In particular, it helps doctors to more accurately diagnose and select treatment. IBM has already entered into several agreements with major global brands in the healthcare industry. Watson has been trained to work with large amounts of medical data so that this artificial intelligence can leverage the expertise of researchers around the world. Watson is constantly improving with new data, helping to personalize recommendations for the patient, and fewer bipedal doctors make mistakes.
9 children from three parents
The UK government approved amendments to the law in February to allow mitochondrial donation, making the UK the first country in which children can have genes from not two, but three parents. Mitochondria are tiny "accumulators" of a living cell with their own genome. Approximately 6,500 babies a year worldwide are born with mitochondrial DNA breakdowns, fatal or leading to serious brain damage. Mitochondrial DNA in humans is transmitted only through the maternal line, and scientists have figured out how to get rid of the breakdowns by transplanting mitochondria from a healthy woman at the stage of "conception in a test tube". Before the vote in the House of Commons, there were more than two hours of debate, and the position of the supporters of the amendment, led by the Minister of Health, proved to be more convincing for the majority of parliamentarians than the position of the church and other opponents of the amendment.
10 computers gained sight
Capturing an image in a photograph or video is not the same as “seeing”, that is, “understanding” what exactly is depicted there. To teach machines to see means to teach them to name objects, to recognize people, to understand relationships, emotions, actions and intentions. In the past year, an important step was made in this direction - thanks to neural network methods of the so-called "deep learning", programs began to appear that can recognize objects, sometimes even better than people, and even describe in sentences what they see in a photograph. Of course, this is not yet a complete vision - for example, a computer cannot appreciate the beauty of a painting. But gradually machines gain sight. In the very near future, a mechanism will appear for searching information by keywords in countless photographs and videos on the Internet. Step by step, and we will not notice how we will perceive the world through not only our own, but also computer eyes.
The World Sand Sculpture Championship is taking place in Kolomenskoye. Works (there are 12 in total) are united by one theme "Great achievements of mankind".
There are many who want to visit the exhibition, so if there is an opportunity, it is better to go to it on a weekday.
Near each work there is a plaque explaining why the sculptor blinded exactly this, and nothing else. True, there is a feeling that the texts suffered somewhat during the translation ...
DENMARK. Peter Bush "Forgiveness":
Building the pyramids, inventing the Internet, building the Eiffel Tower, creating this took a lot of effort, solving many problems and overcoming obstacles. “The ability to forgive” requires even more efforts from a person to overcome himself.
BELGIUM. Angerrand David "The Great Achievements of Humanity":
Most of the great achievements of mankind can be divided into two categories: the first are associated with understanding and managing the world around them, the second are associated with finding and organizing their place in this world. And all the achievements from the second group are mainly due to our culture, which should be defined as a spectrum of customs and noticeable natural laws. In this sculpture, the fabric symbolizes modern human culture, which, being at its peak, completely hides the globe from us.
BULGARIA. Ruslan Korovkov "The Almighty is a sculptor":
The great achievement of mankind is the desire to become like our creator and create others like them. How the Creator created man in his own image and likeness. And maybe vice versa. And therefore, I believe that the great achievement of humanity is sculpture. From the days of Ancient Greece, when Pygmalion created his Galatea, to the days when people create robots and clones.
CZECH REPUBLIC. Radovan Zhivny "Archimedes":
Archimedes (287 BC - 212 BC) - the great ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, mechanic and engineer from Syracuse. He made many discoveries in geometry. He laid the foundations of mechanics, hydrostatics, the author of a number of practical important inventions. Already during the life of Archimedes, legends were created around his name. There is a story about how Archimedes was able to determine whether the crown of King Hieron was made of pure gold or whether the jeweler had mixed a significant amount of silver there. The specific gravity of gold was known, but the difficulty was to accurately determine the volume of the crown: it had an irregular shape! The Archidean pondered this problem all the time. Once he was taking a bath, and then he had a brilliant idea: by immersing a crown in water, you can determine its volume by measuring the volume of the displaced water. According to legend, Archimedes jumped out naked into the street shouting "Eureka!", That is, "Found!"
NETHERLANDS. Wilfred Steiger "Genius of the Times!"
Today humanity has big problems, such as: war, lack of water, pollution, death, etc. For many years people have been trying to solve all these problems. Today our main problem is that we live in a world of illusions because of our egocentrism. But if we realize the degree of our Ego, the illusions will disappear and we will be able to see me as it is. To achieve this, we need a genius person who is completely different from us.
AMERICA. Richard Varano. Archaicature:
(In English, this is a play on words: archaic means "old", architecture - "architecture")
The combination of classical architecture and fantasy symbolizes the work of the human imagination in erecting buildings that are durable on the one hand and creative in their design on the other.
ITALY. Leonardo Ugolini "The Tower of Babel"
Man is a cogwheel in the cycle of life. This means that the cogwheels of human understanding stopped working and the Tower of Babel collapsed under the weight of this event.
RUSSIA. Dmitry Klimenko. "The crown of creation - the Wandering biorobot":
Throughout the entire path of its existence, humanity thinks that it is constantly developing both spiritually and intellectually. Many of the best minds of mankind sacrificed their lives for the progress of civilization, although progress, I believe, is the replacement of one inconvenience for another. I have always been interested in the person himself, than the product of his life. What kind of personality one has to be to create something really great, be it the Parthenon or a spaceship, I really admire. With such a vastness of the topic, of course, it is impossible to cover everything, but I tried to display the most interesting, in my opinion, discoveries. The invention of the wheel, the table of chemical elements, Gagarin, Leonard's genius and man himself are the crown of creation.
INDIA. Sudarsan Patnaik. "Tad Mahal is a symbol of Shah Jahan's love for his wife, the fabulous beauty Mumtaz Mahal"
Taj Mahal is a mausoleum-mosque located in Agra, India, on the banks of the river. Yamuna. Built by order of the Great Moghlov Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth. It may not be the best or greatest monument of architecture built in the entire history of mankind dedicated to love, but it is undoubtedly one of the most breathtaking buildings in the world. Known for its architectural splendor and aesthetic beauty, the Taj \u003d Mahal is one of the 7 Wonders of the World.
SPAIN. Etoile Ovieda "Women's Liberation":
Most of the Landmarks are not easily recognized by our culture. This is probably because our culture classifies information together: art, science, religion, technology, sociology, when in fact we could only choose one word to define it all. It can be "consciousness", "knowledge" or "information". We are technocratic beings, constantly evolving. We are developing in such a way that we were able to pass through an important turning point in our culture. We have learned to control the birth rate and have given freedom to women.
IRELAND. Fergus Mulvaney "Rise and Discovery"
The human desire to find our place and establish ourselves in the universe is increasingly separating us from the earth. To achieve this, mankind develops and studies the latest ways of perceiving information, advanced technologies that can open before us a new understanding of the origin of man on Earth, our origins and a possible future in space. Oddly enough, the further we move away from the earth to the universe, the more we begin to understand how tiny our Earth and we are in relation to the universe.
UKRAINE. Irina Tavleskaya "Zen-soft"
Throughout the ages, people have tried to find the path to enlightenment through meditation and merging with nature. In our age of computer technology, a person seeks to come to enlightenment (satori) through programs and the Internet. Is it possible to comprehend the logic of thought through programs?
You can try to mold your own sculpture:
It costs 200 rubles to see the sculptures up close, for students, etc. - 100, disabled and veterans - free. But I really want to know what's behind the fence before you paid the money ...
The main achievement of humanity :)
