Mar 2, 2009
With 2008 done and dusted, it is now time to look back and reflect on the science year that was. It is also our 100th podcast episode, so I would like to say thanks very much to all my subscribers, whether you get your Mr Science fix via the podcast, email, in an RSS reader, however you do it, thanks!
The winner of our 2008 year in science competition is… Dr Steven Farrell from Cork in Ireland. Congratulations Steven! Steven won the random draw for suggesting the Large Hadron Collider as his favourite science story from 2008. Thanks to everyone who entered the competition and suggested stories - each story listed below was entered by at least one person. Steven has won the book The Open Laboratory: The Best Science Writing on Blogs 2008 - the book will be published very shortly and will feature one blog by me - I’ll put out a post about this when the book comes out, but in the meantime, check out the 2007 version.
Now to the countdown…. (Read more about this list, with links for each story and a greater explanation, at the Mr Science Show blog)
10. Weird Animals - 2008 was a year for weird science emanating out of Europe
9. Weird Research - Two bits of weird science that made the news in 2008 will have quite an impact on our sex lives.
8. The Kakeya conjecture - and now for some difficult science, and the work of Zeev Dvir and Australia’s own Terence Tao on the Kakeya conjecture is mind-blowing, if you understand it.
7. The creation of artificial bacteria by Craig Venter
6. Chandrayaan moon landing by India
5. Stem Cell Fraud
4. The Story of HM - The most moving science story from 2008, and certainly some of the best science writing, comes from the New York Times and concerns the life and death of Henry Gustav Molaison, known as HM.
3. Discovery of water ice on Mars
2. Climate Change - Climate change will feature in every top 10 of science from now until the year 3000, if we’re still here and writing blogs and recording podcasts - and it’s making its third appearance on this blog after topping the 2006 list and coming in 9th in 2007.
1. The Large Hadron Collider
In the words of Dr Steven Farrell, our competition winner…
I loved the LHC for a couple of great reasons. Firstly, growing up in the age of Bond villains who were intent on gigantic technological pieces capable of destroying the earth, I loved the idea that the collider might possibly generate a black hole and consume the earth thus destroying all evidence of human existence. Awesome. I don’t care if any number of physics associations came out and said it wouldn’t happen. They couldn’t be 100% sure that it wouldn’t. Fantastic. And the second reason is obviously that this rather expensive piece of technology that took a fair bit of time to put together broke. And pretty darn quick too. So yeah, that’s my highlight.
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So there you have it, the top 10 science stories from 2008 as contributed by Mr Science Show lovers. Thanks to all who contributed and we’ll do it all again next year! Please let me know of any stories you would have liked to have seen - and please write and say hi if you’re a long-time listener of the show!
Listen to his podcast here - includes short snippets from the music of 2008, plus a couple of shout-outs from friends of the show (thanks Brains Matter and Jacqui Hayes from Diffusion).