August 2022 – @alvaroriosroca – Human beings, apparently we cannot cultivate ourselves to live in peace and harmony, despite the fact that evolution forged us as “homo sapiens”, unlike other living beings. The scientific community has always been against all this and has been adding more and more remarkable achievements through rigorous research and development in science and technology. With this we have been able to understand a great part of the universe that surrounds us, stop being primates and thus lead a life with less suffering and greater welfare.
The recent events in Ukraine and those predicted in Taiwan confirm this situation and have been a kind of straw that broke the camel’s back, highlighting the abominable religious, ethnic, political and geopolitical differences we have among the inhabitants of the planet. This is causing serious shortages, high prices and, therefore, greater poverty. Why not, perhaps even a new world war.
Energy, which gives meaning to the modern life we know and seduces us, undoubtedly plays a fundamental role in this current world disorder. Europe in panic at the possibility of running out of energy, diesel in short supply on the planet without which the supply of food and goods is not possible, social protests by high energy costs everywhere and even a very possible global economic recession.
In the midst of this confusion, this opinion piece, unlike those I have been writing for 27 years, will not focus on energy issues. Rather, it will focus on a subject that also excites me and is closely related to science and technology. While we confront each other, science continues to advance.
It is about the incredible recent images being received and interpreted from the James Webb Telescope System (JWTS). With this marvel of an instrument, located 1.6 million kilometers from our planet, thousands of new galaxies, dantesque black holes and new stars are clearly visualized through infra-red waves. This brings us closer to a clearer understanding of what happened in the initial moments of the formation of the universe as we know it.
In the coming months, we will also be able to visualize and have more detailed knowledge about some of the planets in our solar system. Even more exciting is to learn that we will have information about “exoplanets”, with their atmospheric conditions and geology, which could support life similar to the one we know. They would no longer be Martians but “exotians” or some other alias. The JWTS brings us closer and closer to the reality of the universe, the origins of life and moves us away from the established dogmas.
On April 22, the scientific community once again started up the largest particle accelerator or collider (LHC – CERN) located in Europe. This center investigates the very small, i.e. the fundamental subatomic particles (quarks) and their behavior. Some time ago, the LHC already gave us the so-called “God particle” (Higgs Boson) which experimentally confirmed how matter affects mass to form stars and planets. That is, it proves experimentally what the physical and mathematical theory that the “Standard Model” predicted.
Now the revamped particle accelerator is colliding protons very close to the speed of light, to obtain new subatomic particles that will help to understand even better what happened fractions of a second after the big bang. Three new exotic sub particles have already been obtained. A time machine, we could say, that will help us to better understand the origins and future of the universe. Let us remember that we already have certain theoretical models that must be tested experimentally. Understanding the fundamental laws of the universe and how it works is more than fascinating. This improved accelerator brings us closer to the reality and secrets of the universe and away from the dogmas of the past.
Likewise, while the planet is being torn apart, the scientific community is working on the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) project, which is for now the purest place on the planet, 1.5 km below the earth, where they are looking to find signs of the mysterious dark matter and reveal to us what this large percentage of the universe that we do not know is made of. Currently, we only understand that 5% of the universe is made of ordinary matter that we can see or touch. The remaining 95% of matter is a mystery.
Finally, the scientific community is moving forward with thousands of start-ups to implement gene editing with CRISPR, which uses guides and a protein (Cas9) to target selected areas of DNA in order to cut and make genetic mutations. Countless diseases could be prevented and cured in the future. In addition, this research is also useful in agriculture to feed a growing population.
*Alvaro Ríos is a former Minister of Hydrocarbons in Bolivia and current partner of Gas Energy Latin America.