Blog

Science : back on key finding 2016 by Hôtel★★★ Restaurant gourmand Coco Lodge Majunga.

2016 was no exception to the rule : It was rich in scientific discoveries. New worlds, health, Biology, and even a revolution in physics…

■ The great mystery of mathematics …

Omnipresent in science and technology, is mathematics an invention or a discovery, a science specific to humanity or the very language of the universe ? A dizzying and original investigation at the heart of a fascinating debate that has lasted since Antiquity.

■ A habitable planet not far from us ?

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our Sun. A 4,2 light years away from us, It turns out that a planet orbits around, and that it is in the habitable zone of the star. Proxima b as it is called, is rocky and could have liquid water on its surface. That said, nothing proves today that this is actually the case, even if the news announced in August is promising. Proxima b, however, will remain inaccessible to humans for a long time : with our current means of propulsion, it would take several tens of thousands of years to get there. For now, we will have to be content with telescopes to find out more..

■ Life on Earth is older than we thought

The news came from Greenland : 3,7 billions of years, this is the supposed age of life on Earth. An older estimate of 200 millions of years compared to what was previously thought. These are stromatolites, rock formations certainly created by microbial life which made it possible to reassess the age of life on Earth. The indices are however held and require confirmation. The mystery of the mechanism of the appearance of life remains in any case as complete as ever., especially if she actually turns out to be older than expected. There are a 3,7 billions of years, the Earth “only” had 800 million years. At the sum of our current knowledge, it seems little for the living to appear.

■ Towards a real Jurassic Park ?

Remains of dinosaurs fossilized in amber and discovered by man... No, this is not the synopsis of a new episode of Jurassic Park, but indeed what happened in the north-east of Burma. In June, the newspaper Nature Communication published this ad : feathers of a baby winged dinosaur were found perfectly preserved, despite 99 millions of years spent locked in amber.

Rebelote at the end of the year, and this is another first : this time it is a piece of fossilized dinosaur brain which is uncovered. Date of 130 million years, it would have belonged to an iguanodon, a vegetarian animal long 8 meters and weighing more than 4 tons. But Steven Spielberg can still go get dressed : clone dinosaurs, it's still science fiction.

■ The game of Go is no longer the preserve of humans

Lee Sedol had to make short work of his opponent. Last March, the world champion of Go game faced Alphago, artificial intelligence, before the eyes of the whole world. Few had bet on a victory for the machine as the game of Go appeared “human”. Las, it was the software developed by Google that won 4 sleeves 1, thus vividly illustrating the progress made in the development of artificial intelligence. Phenomenal progress in just a few years, which makes some people say, like the famous physicist Stephen Hawking, that « artificial intelligence will either be the best, evening the worst thing ever happened to humanity ».

■ From the hottest year to the next

2014 broke all heat records on Earth. But that's what it's, that was before 2015. And 2016 could well take the title. It becomes a constant, every year is warmer than the last, and it is worrying. If we had to take just one example of the damage, the melting of the Arctic ice and the most telling. This study was carried out by the Earth Sciences Division of the United States Space Agency. Just a few days after its publication, US President-elect Donald Trump announced his intention to close it. This won't stop global warming ; only our ability to understand it.

■ The first detection of gravitational waves

The announcement in February of the first detection of gravitational waves will probably remain the scientific fact of 2016 which will still be remembered in a century. The event is big : predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves provide astrophysicists with a new tool to probe the cosmos.

They are in fact produced during cataclysmic phenomena, so violent that they vibrate space itself, causing these famous waves. It is thus a merger of two black holes into one which allowed this first detection, which also constitutes the first direct proof of the existence of these objects which are still very poorly understood.

With gravitational waves, it is therefore a whole new branch of astronomy which is opening up, allowing the study of phenomena that would otherwise have remained invisible. With, for ultimate goal, detection of the primordial gravitational wave, the one that would have been emitted only a few moments after the Big Bang.

by Hôtel★★★ Restaurant gourmand Coco Lodge Majunga.

http://www.reservation-hotelcocolodge.com/