The month of June has been very prolific in terms of important findings of science, especially in the field of health. One of the major milestones has been the application of the CRISPR technique for the treatment of Huntington’s disease. Scientists have managed to ‘disrupt’ the mutation in the huntingtin gene through the use of gene editing, or the ‘genetic cutter’.
More good news for science has come in the field of oncology. A team of scientists have discovered a way to stop the cancer metastasis process. And how have they achieved it? Through nanotechnology. An extension of a set of fibers called lamellipodia, tiny ‘legs’, are what help healthy cells to move within tissue. But with cancer cells they are overproduced. Scientists have managed to cut these protrusions avoiding the migration of tumor cells.
Our oldest ancestor
The knowledge of the human being has not only expanded in the field of medicine, but during this month we have discovered the very root of Homo Sapiens . Our oldest ancestor has been discovered by an international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig (Germany) and the National Institute for Archeology and Heritage (INSAP, Rabat, Morocco), fossil remains of three young adults from more than 3,500 years old. The find implies rewriting our own history, since they represent the oldest fossil evidence of our own species.
Astronomy has also marked the science pages for this June. After the third detection of gravitational waves in history, which confirms Einsten’s Theory of Relativity, three of the scientists who have made this discovery in physics possible have received the 2017 Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific Research. Thanks to the LIGO observatory (Observatory of Laser Interferometry of Gravitational Waves) and together with the late Ronald Drever, have made three confirmations, to date, that gravitational waves do exist , through the collision of two black holes of unknown characteristics until that moment, marking the beginning of a new field of astronomy.
But this has not been the only goal that has been scored in favor of Einsten’s Theory of Relativity. In June, the mass of a star was measured for the first time thanks to the estimates of the famous German scientist. Einsten was never one hundred percent convinced that the mass of a star could be measured from the gravitational deflection of the light emitted by another star . But that’s how it has been, one hundred years after the predictions made by the scientist, fulfilling a posthumous dream.
Human beings increasingly expand knowledge about their own corner of the universe, but also about stars and planets outside of it. In June, the PLATO space mission was approved, a European expedition, with leading technology in the world and of Spanish origin, which aims to detect up to ten habitable exoplanets in a period of 3 years.
Human expeditions in the universe are not only digested to better know the cosmic neighborhood in which we live, but also to have more details about the surroundings of our own home. Some characteristics of the Sun remain a mystery to us, and that is why NASA will launch a mission in 2018 to ‘touch’ the surface of the star. It is the closest artifact ever to the outer layer of the Sun, which is mysteriously 300 times hotter than its core, and scientists hope to find out why.
And, as we expand the knowledge, other data that we thought we were sure about our universe turns out to be uncertain. For example, in June scientists questioned the existence of the inflaton, a sister particle of the Higgs boson that was believed to be responsible for the primary expansion of the universe. Furthermore, we discovered that the oldest body in the solar system is not the Sun, but Jupiter, the gas giant.
