Ten Scientific Discoveries From 2021 That May Lead to New Inventions
From nanobots to cancer treatments, nature inspires a wide variety of innovations

In science, inspiration can come from anywhere.

A researcher might wonder about the thrust produced by butterfly wings as they flit through a meadow. Maybe watching squirrels navigate campus trees like parkour artists sparks curiosity about what goes through their furry little minds as they decide to jump from branch to branch. Others, of course, get their spark from less likely sources: analyzing shark intestines or studying how microscopic water bears walk.

These scenarios and more inspired scientists to take a closer look at the natural world this year, but their influence won’t stop there. Discoveries in nature often inspire new designs for water filtration, solar panels, building materials and lots and lots of robots.

Here are ten findings from 2021 that could one day lead to new inventions.

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Microbes in The Ocean Depths Can Make Oxygen Without Sun. This Discovery Could Be Huge

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A Rare, Isolated Script Invented From Scratch Holds Clues to The Evolution of Writing

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Evolution study suggests DNA mutations are less random than we thought

Chance plays a big part in evolution. Conventional thinking goes that DNA mutations will randomly arise in an organism’s genome, and if these new traits happen to help the organism survive and reproduce, then those mutations will be passed down to the next generation. Over a long enough period, the traits can become characteristic of a population or species.

But is there a pattern to where in the genome DNA mutations occur?
To investigate, researchers from UC Davis and the Max Planck Institute grew hundreds of thale cress plants in the lab, then sequenced their genomes and compared where DNA mutations had taken place – and a non-random pattern seemed to emerge.
“We always thought of mutation as basically random across the genome,” says Grey Monroe, lead author of the study. “It turns out that mutation is very non-random and it’s non-random in a way that benefits the plant. It’s a totally new way of thinking about mutation.

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There's a Hidden Mathematical 'Law' in The Sand Megaripples Found All Over Earth

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A Common Virus Can Trigger Multiple Sclerosis, According to Huge New Study

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60 Million Fish Nests in Antarctica Found in Single Largest Breeding Colony to Date

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A new artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm has got your chess style pegged. AI software can already identify people by their voices or handwriting. Now, an AI has shown it can tag people based on their chess-playing behavior, an advance in the field of “stylometrics” that could help computers be better chess teachers or more humanlike in their game play. Alarmingly, the system could also be used to help identify and track people who think their online behavior is anonymous.

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This Ancient Peruvian Empire Put Hallucinogenics in Beer For Political Reasons

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Data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument's (DESI's) first survey run has produced the largest and most detailed 3D map of the universe so far. The stunning image reveals the gigantic cosmic web of galaxies across billions of light-years – and this is only the beginning for the project.

The image contains 7.5 million galaxies within a distance of about 5 billion light-years in the direction of the constellation Virgo, with Earth located at the lower left. With the large-scale structure of the cosmos clearly visible, it’s not hard to see why it’s often referred to as the cosmic web, and there’s plenty that astronomers can learn from the data.
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The extremely hot interior of the Earth is slowly cooling down, but exactly how fast remains unknown. By studying how well a common deep-Earth mineral conducts heat, researchers from Carnegie and ETH Zurich have found that the planet’s interior may be cooling much faster than we thought.
Earth is essentially a giant pie that’s been cooling on a windowsill for 4.5 billion years. At first, it was broiling hot from surface to center, covered in oceans of magma, but as it cooled from the outside in, a solid crust of rock formed. The core is still emanating huge amounts of heat into the mantle, which drives vital processes like plate tectonics and volcanism, but it too will eventually cool off.
Exactly how long this will take is a mystery, but the scientists on the new study sought some answers by investigating a key mineral called bridgmanite.

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NASA's Curiosity Rover Drilled Holes Into Mars, And Found Something Very Strange

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We're Facing a Myopia 'Epidemic', Scientists Say. Here's Why

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In 2000, while visiting the Central Museum of Nagpur in Western India, the paleontologist Jeffrey A Wilson found himself hunched over one of the most fascinating fossils he had ever set eyes on. One of his colleagues had excavated the specimen in 1984, in the village of Dholi Dungri in Gujarat, on the western coast of India.
India has some of the most spectacular fossils on the planet, from vast beds of dinosaur eggs to strange prehistoric creatures new to science. But many are just sitting in the ground.

||Why India's fossil wealth has remained hidden||

S.E.E. has unveiled plans to build a space station module that contains a sports and entertainment arena as well as a content studio by December 2024. (An artist’s rendering is pictured above.)

Named SEE-1, the module is intended to host films, television, music and sports events as well as artists, producers and creatives who want to make content in the low orbit, micro-gravity environment. The facilities will enable development, production, recording, broadcasting and livestreaming of content.

Axiom Space, who in January 2020 won NASA’s approval to build a commercial component of the International Space Station (ISS), will undertake the construction of SEE-1. The module will dock on Axiom’s commercial arm, named Axiom Station, which will also host other commercial ventures, including space tourism.

This jelly is one of the most colorful residents of the ocean’s midnight zone. The remarkable coloration of this jelly tipped off scientists that they had found a previously unknown species. It was named in honor of Claudia Mills for her dedication to studying the ocean’s delicate drifters. MBARI has observed several species of Crossota in Monterey Canyon, a submarine canyon off the coast of California. Unlike many jellies, we can see obvious differences between the males and females. The eggs in the females are large and globular, while the male gonads are shaped like sausages. The baby medusae stay attached under the mother’s bell until they are ready to launch. While brooding behavior is not unique to this jelly, it is always exciting to observe in the deep sea. MBARI’s robotic submersibles give us a peek at how animals thrive in the ocean’s dark depths.

In February 2021 Joe Davis, a conservation team leader at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in Great Britain, stumbled upon something that, at first, seemed like a series of rocks or pipes. Davis, however, soon realized he’d actually discovered the fossil remains of a giant 200-million-year-old marine reptile. A marine reptile that swam in the oceans during the Jurassic period. And, thanks to its appearance, has earned the moniker Sea Dragon.

On Monday, January 24, engineers plan to instruct NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to complete a final correction burn that will place it into its desired orbit, nearly 1 million miles away from the Earth at what is called the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or “L2” for short.
Mathematically, Lagrange points are solutions to what is called the “restricted three-body problem.” Any two massive, gravitationally significant objects in space generate five specific locations – Lagrange points – where their gravitational forces and the centrifugal force of the motion of a small, third body such as a spacecraft are in equilibrium. Lagrange points are labeled L1 through L5 and are preceded by the names of the two gravitational bodies that generate them (the big one first).

So why send Webb to orbit Sun-Earth L2? Because it is an ideal location for an infrared observatory: https://youtu.be/HGKH0TmwZsM
A detailed breakdown of Webb’s orbit can be found here

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We Have a 'Sixth Sense' That Is Key to Our Wellbeing, But Only if We Listen to It

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NASA will not be broadcasting from mission control during the burn of James Webb Space Telescope, as the agency did for some previous key milestones. However, NASA plans to carry several follow-up events live today after executing the crucial burn at about 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT):

https://youtu.be/pWklR2PBfQU