Top 10 Science Discoveries of the 2010s Decade

An interesting list of Live Science's Top 10 scientific discoveries for the 2010s, from the Higgs boson to gravitational waves, and synthetic life to exoplanets in habitable zones and new CRISPR techniques, have fun reading and seeing videos on these game-changing discoveries. We cannot even imagine what discoveries await today's teenage, future scientists!!

Generating electricity from potential differences of natural systems: Rivers meeting Oceans

The notion of "blue energy" is intriguing. What this means is using the coastal regions where rivers of freshwater meet oceans or seas that are salt water. With special filters/membranes, one can use this mixing area of nonionized water with ionized salt water to separate electric charges - effectively making a battery, from which electricity is the result. Because so much of the world's population lives on or within miles of coastlines, there is great interest in this as of now untapped electrical energy. The trick will be to make these membranes on a massive, cost-effective manner; presently these are too expensive for companies to try and scale up to industrial sizes.

While we won't be able to build large power plants in a high school, great projects for those interested in electricity, electrical engineering or electrochemistry would be to try to identify and create 'batteries' with any combination of materials you can find that will allow for a potential (i.e. voltage) difference. Are there other natural systems we could tap into to generate even small amounts of electrical power? Interfaces between different types of soil, minerals, plants, or other? There could be some really interesting, but unknown, combinations out there that could surprise us!

Think about this, be curious, explore and investigate!! Take a multimeter/voltmeter outside and look for combinations to test!

Good example of the science process in action: Large black hole

Astronomers have recently discovered a really large stellar black hole (meaning a star died and turned into a black hole). This black hole has a mass some 70 times the mass of the sun. The trouble is, according to current theories of star formation and deaths, a stellar black hole of this type should not exist - it is too massive according to our best understanding of stars.

So, either our best understanding is not good enough yet since we have something that does exist that is outside those theories, or perhaps the measurements are wrong and we are calculating too big a value for the mass. Or there could even be a little bit of an issue with both the theories and measurements, although this is the least likely possibility.

Whatever the case, this is a wonderful example of how science works! Nature often throws us curveballs that are outside of our best models and theories, and scientists need to sit back, rethink things, and figure out what is wrong with the theoretical understanding of the topic or what new information needs to be added to a model or theory. Scientists must be humble enough to accept we do not know everything, but the whole point of what we do is to learn and grow and gain better understanding of our crazy, fascinating universe! Below is the now famous first photo taken of any type of black hole (this is a supermassive type, at the center of a galaxy)!

Online course, ideas, and summer program for Space Biology

Carthage College in Wisconsin has put a course for space biology online for anyone to use. This is a rare chance for high school students and teachers to begin learning about this exciting, relatively new field, and also get ideas for experiments and techniques used in the field. Check it out if interested!

Also, there is a high school summer camp (4 weeks in California) some may be interested so they can learn about space biology and other aspects of that work NASA is involved in.

If interested in plants and botany, get some ideas from this: improving photosynthesis

We face many challenges in the future when one considers population growth, human migrations from coastal regions, and climate change. It is estimated we will need to produce about 60% more food by 2050 to feed the 10 billion people who will be living on earth.

Photosynthesis turns out to be inefficient, and if scientists can figure out how to make plants better at producing more food per plant, that will literally help to feed the world. Check out what some scientists are doing to improve the photosynthetic process of plants. Can you get any ideas of things you can try to improve the food yield of certain plants? New ways of growing and farming plants? Be creative, get inspiration and motivation from what some of the professional scientists are doing, and try your ideas! In science, one never knows what the 'right' idea is until it is tried and tested - just talk with a teacher or other adviser and go for it!!

Scientists to try and solve 'the last great problem of classical physics' - Turbulence

Turbulence in fluid flow is everywhere, from the little whirlpools you see when you put your hand into a sink full of water, to the curling motions of water when a wave crashes on the shore, or the craziness of the air during storms, to the bumpy ride you may have experienced when a plane goes through regions of turbulence in the atmosphere. Turbulence has been studied for centuries, and yet there is still no mathematical law or rules that allows us to fully understand the nonlinear nature of this phenomenon. Fluid dynamics is a challenging area of research.

An international group of world-renowned scientists just received a $4 million grant to take on this challenge, using very sophisticated statistical physics techniques to try and better understand this behavior. If successful, computer models may be able to do things like help develop better designs to minimize the energy-sapping process of turbulence on motion of cars and planes through the air, perhaps saving billions of dollars in energy costs. Or improving the flow of water in the water systems of cities or directing water to where people need it.

For a high school student, check out a variety of fluid flow experiments you can set up to investigate turbulence in different situations, and see if you can make an experimental contribution to our understanding of this fascinating topic! One idea is to take different shaped objects, place them in the flow of water, and try to find shapes that minimize turbulent flow around that object. This is an example of looking at aerodynamics/hydrodynamics...if you can come up with shapes that have not been studied before, guess what, you are doing original research and should pursue it and share it!

Interested in Climate Science and its Modeling?!

The Educational Global Climate Modeling site, EdGCM, is a professional level climate simulation available to students and teachers to use. Using a user friendly interface, anyone can run climate models on their laptop or desktop computer, change parameters, and research how those changes affect future climate. This site allows you to use the same type of software, analysis tools, and data presentation tools as professional climate scientists.

This could be an ideal way to get students with next to no coding experience working on real computational research! Teachers, you can even develop classroom lessons that use this site and its software if you choose. Have fun!

Good example of computational/theoretical research via simulations

A half-century old problem involving black holes has been solved using a sophisticated mathematical and computer simulation. This article summarizes the area of science research that allows theorists to develop mathematical computers models to go after complex problems, in this case in a system we will never be able to experimentally test. This work was done by Sasha Tchekhovskoy, a professor and friend of ETHS at Northwestern University, and his colleagues, who used the Blue Waters supercomputer at the U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Blue Waters is the world's most powerful computer at the moment.

The problem involved rotating black holes, and how materials and the accretion disk are formed and get twisted in strange ways due to the complex structure of the warping space-time around the black hole, ending up aligned with the rotating plane of the black hole. The math used to do this comes straight from Einstein's field equations in the general theory of relativity. Super cool!

Structures to collect drinking water from air

Check out structures that started to be built a few years ago in parts of Ethiopia, that collect ~25 gallons of water overnight via condensation or moisture from the air.

Can we think of other cheap ways to do this? Are there natural structures or organisms that can do this? Keep in mind that these structures cost about $1000 US, but that is a fortune in local currencies in poor parts and countries of Africa and other continents. Clearly this is the type of thing that is necessary with population growth and climate change. This could be a new path of research for high school students!

Good example of simulation of solar system formation - testing theories and models

Scientists use advanced computer simulations to test theories. For anyone who has done even basic programming, mathematical equations can be put into code and the computer does the calculations. For simulations, this takes the equations from some theory or mathematical model and runs them to see what happens in one tiny amount of time, called a time step. For something like a solar system, where everything is moving and things like the gravitational force, acceleration, speeds, energy, momentum, radius from other objects, and so on, are all changing constantly, by advancing an object through some small time then allows the computer to re-calculate all of those quantities through another small time interval, readjusts where everything is, and then re-computes the next advancement of all quantities, over and over and over again. This is why fast computers are needed for simulations with multiple objects moving around and interacting with each other, such as through gravity.

In the end, astronomers can use the relevant mathematics like Newton's laws of gravity and motion, and even corrections coming from Einstein's general theory of relativity, to create a simulation for the creation and evolution of our solar system over billions of years of simulated time. This is a computer experiment that produces results from a theory, that can then be compared directly to the present structure and behavior of the actual solar system. If there is agreement, of course we then have good confidence that the theory is valid and providing some understanding for how Nature works.

Potential mathematics-based research: fractal patterns in geology

As I watch a Netflix show, "Forces of Nature," there are stunning aerial photos of crevices in the earth's surface. These look more like patterns in fern leaves, or of artery networks of the body. Perhaps there are students who are interested in learning about and applying fractal geometry to the analysis natural systems. Geological features of the earth could provide some interesting possibilities for such a study. This could be done locally in various parts of the country if one had a drone to get some aerial photos of nearby locations, and see what type of geometrical/fractal patterns exist and may be interesting to analyze. Other students may be interested in trying to explain how and why such patterns are formed in the first place.

Regeneron Science Talent Search Semifinalists

See the names of the 300 Regeneron Science Talent Search Semifinalist Scholars when they are announced on January 9, 2019!  You can find the list here.