If you’re wondering
what the LHC might do for you, how’s this: it might just find a whole quarter
of the universe. The collider is hoping to create some particles of what
physicists call “dark matter”, an enigma that is thought to make up roughly 25
per cent of the universe. Then there is the “dark energy”, a mysterious force
that seems to be ripping space and time apart. In total, a whopping 96 per cent
of the universe has gone AWOL. Unless, that is, we’ve got our maths all wrong.
2. THE PIONEER
ANOMALY
In the 1970s NASA
launched two space probes that have caused no end of headaches. About 10 years
into the missions of Pioneer 10 and 11, the mission head admitted that they had
drifted off course. In every year of travel, the probes veer 8000 miles further
away from their intended trajectory. It is not much when you consider that they
cover 219 million miles a year; the drift is around 10 billion times weaker
than the Earth’s pull on your feet. Nonetheless, it is there, and decades of
analysis have failed to find a straightforward reason for it.
3. VARYING
CONSTANTS
A decade ago, we
discovered that the fundamental constants of physics might not be so constant
after all. These are the numbers that describe just how strong the forces of
nature are, and make the laws of physics work when we use them to describe the
processes of nature. Light that has travelled across the universe from distant
stars tells us those laws might have been different in the past. Though the
physical laws and constants have helped us define and tame the natural world,
they might be an illusion.
4. COLD FUSION
In 1989, the world
was rocked by claims that you could release nuclear energy without a
catastrophic explosion. Various failures to replicate or explain these results
soon ended the careers of the scientists involved. But, despite what you might
have heard, “cold fusion” never really went away. Over a 10-year period from
1989, US navy labs ran more than 200 experiments to investigate whether nuclear
reactions generating more energy than they consume – supposedly only possible
inside stars – can occur at room temperature. Numerous researchers have since
pronounced themselves believers. With controllable cold fusion, many of the
world’s energy problems would melt away: no wonder the US Department of Energy
is interested again.
5. LIFE
Are you more than
the sum of the inanimate chemicals that make up your body? What turns a living
tree into a lifeless piece of wood? No one knows. Researchers have even given
up trying to define what life is. But they are still trying to understand it –
by making it from scratch. In labs across the world, people are taking the raw
materials of living things and trying to put them together in a way that makes
them come alive. In an effort to resolve the anomalous nature of life, the idea
of scientists playing God has taken a whole new turn.
6. METHANE FROM
MARTIANS
On July 20, 1976,
the Viking landers scooped up some Martian soil and mixed it with radioactive
nutrients. The mission’s scientists all agreed that if radioactive methane was
released from the soil, something must be eating the nutrients – and there must
be life on Mars. The experiment gave a positive result, but NASA denied an
official detection of Martian life. Today, there is even more evidence that
something is creating methane on Mars. Is it life? The Viking experiment
suggests it was. Martin Rees, England’s
astronomer royal, calls the search for extraterrestrial life the most important
scientific endeavour of our time. But have we already found it?
7. THE WOW! SIGNAL
It was an
electromagnetic pulse that came from the direction of the Sagittarius
constellation. It lasted 37 seconds and had exactly the characteristics
predicted for an alien signal. Maybe that’s why, on 15 August 1977 it caused
astronomer Jerry Ehman to scrawl “Wow!” on the printout from Big Ear, Ohio State University’s radio telescope in Delaware. The nearest star in that direction
is 220 light years away. If that really is where is came from, it would have
had to be a pretty powerful astronomical event – or an advanced alien
civilisation using an astonishingly large and powerful transmitter. More than
30 years later, its origin remains a mystery.
8. A GIANT VIRUS
Mimivirus is
sitting in a freezer in Marseille. Around thirty times bigger than the
rhinovirus that gives you a common cold, it is by far the biggest virus known
to science. But this virus’s biggest impact won’t be on the healthcare systems
of the globe. It will be, most likely, on the history of life on Earth.
Mimivirus doesn’t fit with the established story of how life on Earth got
going. Mimi has a genome that, in parts, looks like yours. Mimivirus seems to
be part of the story of life on Earth. It may even make us rewrite it.
9. DEATH
Why must we die? It
is a question that splits biologists, and over the years, theories have been
batted back and forth as new evidence comes to light. One answer is that death
is simply necessary – to avoid overcrowding, for instance. But evolution
doesn’t – can’t – select for a “death switch” because evolution is supposed to
be all about the individual. And yet there does seem to be a death switch:
researchers have managed to locate genetic switches that massively extend the
lifespan of some nematode worms. Can we solve the riddle of death?
10. SEX
There are better ways
to reproduce
Sex is everywhere,
but no one knows why. It is a question that “better scientists than I have
spent book after book failing to answer,” says Richard Dawkins. To Charles
Darwin, the reason for the prevalence of sexual reproduction was “hidden in
darkness”. All the arguments in favour of sexual reproduction are countered by
stronger arguments in favour of self-cloning: asexual reproduction, where an
organism produces a copy of itself, is a much more efficient way to pass your
genes down to the next generation. There’s no proof that sex makes a species
more resilient, or better placed to cope with change. Why is it still around?
11. FREE WILL
Our gut instinct,
our experience, is that we make the decisions to move, to think, to eat, to
steal, to lie, to punch and kick. We have constructed the entire edifice of our
civilisation on this idea. But science says this free will is a delusion.
According to the world’s best neuroscientists, we are brain-machines. Our
brains create the sense that somewhere within them is the “you” that makes
decisions. But it is an illusion; there is no ghost in the machine. What does
this mean for our sense of self? And for our morality – can we prosecute people
for acts over which they had no conscious control?
12. THE PLACEBO
EFFECT
The placebo effect
used to be thought of as just a manipulation, a mind-trick. Doctors wore white
coats, spoke in soothing tones, exuding confidence and medical know-how, and if
they told you a pill would make you better, it would. By the time you found out
it was just a sugar pill, you were feeling great, so who cares? Well, lots of
people, actually, because our new understanding of placebo is messing up
medicine. Some prescription drugs that were judged to perform “better than
placebo” in clinical trials don’t work unless you know you’re taking them. All
in all, the gold standard of medicine, the placebo-controlled clinical trial,
is looking a little peaky.
13. HOMEOPATHY
Homeopathy’s claim
is that you can take a substance of dubious properties, dilute it to the point
where there are no molecules of the original substance left in the sample you
have, and still use it to heal sickness. Sir John Forbes, the physician to
Queen Victoria’s
household, called it “an outrage to human reason.” There is no justification in
all of science for this idea - and yet there remains some slim evidence that
homeopathy works. How can this be?
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