”Thanks to science, we’ve experienced dramatic shifts in the way we understand ourselves, Earth and the universe in the past 12 months. But the hours, weeks and years people commit to the meticulous research that affects so much of our life can easily get buried in the flow of daily news.”
IN recognition of this year’s achievements—and in keeping with the Thanksgiving season’s spirit of gratitude—we at Scientific American want to share the things that we’re thankful for in the world of science this year:
- From Scientific American: I’m grateful that the James Webb Space Telescope has provided some of the most gorgeous photographs of space that we’ve ever had. —Clara Moskowitz, senior editor, space and physics
- From LiveScience: The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a cosmic ‘peanut’ and ‘fluff ball’ that happen to be two of the four oldest galaxies in the known universe. These ancient objects — estimated to be the second and fourth most distant galaxies ever detected — fall just shy of the earliest known galaxy, named JADES-GS-z13-0, which was previously spotted by JWST at around 300 million years after the dawn of time. The light from all three of these immensely old galaxies traveled for more than 13 billion years to reach JWST’s lens.
- “I’m grateful that millions of people around the world are alive today thanks to PEPFAR (the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and drugs that treat AIDS or prevent HIV from progressing to AIDS. Millions more avoided infecting others or were protected from being infected with HIV thanks to PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis)”. —Laura Helmuth, editor in chief
- “I’m thankful for the approval of lecanemab, a new drug to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. “—Gary Stix, senior editor, mind and brain
- “I am thankful for cats, which are perfect, even in terms of evolution. Additionally, I’m grateful that paleontologists discovered an epic chonker that swam the ocean nearly 40 million years ago and that Narcan is becoming a little more accessible.”Thanks to science, we’ve experienced dramatic shifts in the way we understand ourselves, Earth and the universe in the past 12 months. But the hours, weeks and years people commit to the meticulous research that affects so much of our life can easily get buried in the flow of daily news.” —Meghan Bartels, news reporter
- From World Economic Forum: “The speed with which vaccines against the virus were produced was unprecedented. At the time of writing, more than 13.5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered and more than 70% of the global population has received at least one dose. Now two scientists whose research led to the development of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine, the first laureates to be named in October of 2023, Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and her US colleague Drew Weissman .
From Scientific American: “I’m grateful for Ada Limón’s beautiful poem about Europa. “—Lauren Young, associate editor, health and medicine
In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.
