Remembering the top discoveries of 2017

2017 was a year of monumental discoveries. With potential to drastically change the future, these discoveries should be acknowledged as the bridges that will lead to new breakthroughs in the New Year.

In February, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Spitzer Space Telescope observed seven Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting the dwarf star Trappist-1.

Found in the Aquarius constellation, the observation is significant for the exoplanets’ similarities to Earth.

Michaël Gillon, an astrophysicist at the University of Liège in Belgium explained, “ is so small and cold that the seven planets are temperate, which means that they could have some liquid water and maybe life, by extension, on the surface.”

Of further implications of life, Ian Sample, science editor for The Guardian, explained, “It is the first time that so many Earth-sized planets have been found in orbit around the same star…suggest the Milky Way may be teeming with worlds that, in size and firmness underfoot at least, resemble our own rocky home.”

At 39 light years away, compared to the approximately 92 billion light-year-wide universe, Trappist-1 and its exoplanets are promising as potential nearby sources of water, or even life.

Other significant news for the universe was observed fairly close to home.

In August, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) at Hanford, Washington joined its sister LIGO site in Louisiana and a new, third observatory out of Italy, called Virgo, in detecting both gravitational waves and light from the same collision of two neutron stars.

While this was not the first time that gravitational waves had been directly observed, LIGO observed waves and provided empirical evidence for Einstein’s theory of relativity in 2016. This was the first instance that both gravitational waves and light were observed from the same event.

Additionally, the collision was the first cosmic event to have data collected by three gravitational wave observatories; both LIGO sites in Hanford and Louisiana, as well as the new non-LIGO observatory in Italy.

Using three data points helps astronomers and physicists to triangulate a more precise location of the neutron star collision.

Of the observations, France A. Córdova, director of the National Science Foundation (a benefactor of LIGO) explained, “It is tremendously exciting to experience a rare event that transforms our understanding of the workings of the universe.”

Through the development of LIGO and Virgo, Córdova continued on LIGO’s website, “[W]e are able to expand our opportunities to detect new cosmic phenomena and piece together a fresh narrative of the physics of stars in their death throes.”

New opportunities also arose in the field of bioengineering this year: advances were made with the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR).

With rudimentary developments by Yoshizumi Ishino in 1987, CRISPR is an organization of short, repeating DNA sequences in the genomes of microorganisms.

The CRISPR sequences are critical to immune systems, as Ekaterina Pak is a Ph.D. student at Harvard Medical School explained, “If a viral infection threatens a bacterial cell, the CRISPR immune system can thwart the attack by destroying the genome of the invading virus.”

Controlling CRISPR has monumental applications in bioengineering, including treatment of human diseases. This year, however, a change in regulations from the National Science Foundation added human gene editing to CRISPR’s potential applications.

This allowed Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his team at Oregon Health and Science University to alter the genomes of human embryos.

The research included “editing dozens of viable embryos and effectively correcting a gene mutation that causes a heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy,” explained Alessandra Potenza, associate editor on The Verge.

The embryos successfully developed without the unwanted heart condition, but were not implanted. Consequently, they could not develop into what bioethicists warn could become genetic “super babies.”

CRISPR has the potential to revolutionize the way bioengineers approach medicine, but ethical complications regarding eugenics will play a role in regulating future research.

These are only some of the discoveries and innovations of 2017 that will continue to change the world in 2018.

Other examples of revolutionary progress in research include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s proof-of-concept technology that uses solar energy to harness water from thin air, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s artificial womb capable of keeping fetal lambs alive, or Worcester Polytechnic Institution’s reprogramming of a spinach leaf into heart tissue.

As the New Year brings new research, society will continue to reap the rewards of innovation.