World’s largest experiment

It was a hugely expensive, hugely complex machine that was accused of bringing the world to the edge of disaster. But that’s enough about the financial system – for scientists, the story of the year was the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, the £4.4 billion device that promised to unlock the secrets of creation.

Unfortunately, just like the global economy, the LHC turned out to be more fragile than we had all assumed, quickly being put out of commission by a bad electrical connection. But despite the gloom among scientists and bankers alike, there is reason to hope that next year will be a bright one for discovery. The recent appointment of Nobel Laureate Steven Chu as America’s Energy Secretary suggests – as Sir Paul Nurse predicted on these pages last month – that the victory of Barack Obama in the US elections could mean a scientific revolution, with billions pledged for green energy, and a firm commitment to research on stem cells and action on climate change.

Much of our attention over the coming months will focus on the two great anniversaries of 2009. First, there will be a double dose of Darwin, who was born 200 years ago next February and published his masterwork, The Origin of Species, 150 years ago next November. Then there is Galileo Galilei, who in August 1609 demonstrated to the Venetian authorities the ability of a telescope to gaze into the heavens.

In many ways, the most exciting research of today is following the trail blazed by these two titans. Darwin, for example, gave us our first coherent, compelling explanation of where we came from – but the quest to understand precisely how natural selection operates has taken us deep into the world of genetics, to the point where we can analyse and alter DNA to make entirely new kinds of creature.

This year, Dr J Craig Venter, one of those who mapped the human genome, created the code for a customised bacterium, and his team could become the first to create artificial life: New Scientist editor Roger Highfield speculates that this could include a microbe that scrubs carbon dioxide from the air, helping to alleviate the effects of global warming. After piecing together the genetic code of the mammoth, we await the publication of the code and analysis of our Neanderthal cousins, along with those of maize, soybeans, oranges, tomatoes and a host of other crops.

On the health front, Professor Sir John Bell, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, believes that the ability to scan our genes for links to cancer, diabetes or mental illness will “transform the landscape of medical research”. Yet the implications of this quantum leap in knowledge are not just scientific: an example of controversies that lie in wait came this August, when America’s legislature passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which forbids insurers and employers from discriminating against people on the basis of genetic tests. (The British government, however, has decided not to incorporate similar statutory protection in its forthcoming Equality Bill.)

While Darwin’s heirs are busy looking inside our bodies, Galileo’s have their eyes on the skies. Although Prof Colin Pillinger points out that delays and budgetary constraints could make 2009 a tough year for space exploration, there are still exciting things happening: the Hubble Space Telescope, which is due for repairs, will be joined by the Herschel telescope and the Planck probe, which will analyse the cosmic radiation left by the Big Bang. The search for Earth-like planets will be stepped up – and following the exploration of Mars’s icy poles by Nasa’s Phoenix lander between May and November, a Russian craft should be voyaging to one of the planet’s moons.

Equally excitingly, there is at last the sense that space exploration is becoming a genuinely open market, as – credit crunch permitting – nations such as China and India seek prestige amid the stars alongside America, Russia and Europe, for example through a Chinese mission to the Red Planet. Private enterprise is also on the verge of making a truly significant contribution: Virgin Galactic will be testing its commercial shuttle, SpaceShip Two, ahead of taking paying passengers in 2010. Indeed, as we approach the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, in July, it seems ironic that the bulk of those who have experienced zero gravity could soon be tourists rather than scientists or explorers.

All this is, of course, barely scratching the surface of the potential for discovery in 2009. As our oil supplies dwindle, and climate change becomes more of a threat, research into renewable energy, nuclear fission and fusion, and techniques to compensate for the damage we have inflicted on the planet’s climate, will redouble (as will diplomatic efforts, ahead of the November conference in Copenhagen to agree a successor to the Kyoto treaty). Materials science is also making tremendous strides, whether it be creating “intelligent” fabrics that repel mosquitoes or become warmer in cold weather; bendable, paper-thin television screens; or employing nanotechnology to construct tremendously effective new substances and devices.

We will also march further down the path to artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, creating lightning-fast machines that understand and respond to our needs with ever greater intelligence and accuracy. One might, indeed, argue that we already have such a machine, in the form of the Google database, which is absorbing more and more of the body of humanity’s knowledge as the internet grows, and getting ever better at parsing it for meaning.

And let’s not forget the Large Hadron Collider. So far, the results have been unimpressive – not least because it broke down before the particles being sent round the vast tunnel were actually smashed into each other. But this is no billion-dollar boondoggle: once it is up and running in the summer, after repairs to the magnets costing £14 million, we will have access to a wealth of information about the nature of the subatomic world, and hopefully an explanation for the existence of the mysterious “dark matter” and “dark energy” that apparently make up so much of our universe, not to mention the mysterious Higgs boson (unless a rival accelerator, the Tevatron Collider in Illinois, detects the particle first).

Four hundred years after Galileo sought to examine the make-up of reality, it sometimes seems that all that’s really changed is the size of the telescope.

PREDICTIONS FOR 2009

Professor Sir John Bell, President, Academy of Medical Sciences

The ability to scan the human genome rapidly for genetic variants associated with diseases such as cancer, diabetes and mental illness will transform the landscape of medical research. At the beginning of 2008, we had linked 130 genes to particular diseases, by the end of the year more than 200, and in 2009 it should be well over 400. So we will start to see the promise of the human genome project being realised, in terms of better diagnosis and new avenues to treatment, as well as insights into how we can identify people at risk of disease.

Prof Colin Pillinger, Open University

Unfortunately, 2009 could be the year that never was for space exploration: NASA’s giant Mars Rover is over budget, and won’t be going until 2011. Europe’s ExoMars project has already been delayed from 2009 to 2013, and now won’t be expected to land until 2017. Russia has a mission to Phobos, one of Mars’s moons, but they play their cards very close to their chests, so we don’t know if that will set off next year. It seems a shame that in 2009, the main thing we’ll be celebrating is an achievement from the past, in the shape of Apollo 11’s 40th birthday.

Dr Roger Highfield, Editor, New Scientist

Scientists are still awaiting news from the Maryland-based lab of Craig Venter, who played a major role in the effort to crack the human genetic code in 2000, and is edging closer to creating the world’s first artificial life. A rough draft of the genetic code of our extinct cousins, the Neanderthals, is also due to be published early in the year, and the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is bound to throw up new particles and puzzles in equal measure.

Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society

Given that 2009 sees anniversaries for Darwin and Galileo, I hope we can focus on a perennially fascinating question that combines both of their work: is there life on other planets? At present, we know little about how life began here, and still less about what evolutionary paths it might take in alien environments. But we are learning very fast about the places where it might exist: planets like the Earth orbiting other stars. Before the end of 2009, we will know substantially more about whether Earth-like planets are common, and will at least know where to look for evidence of alien life.

Baroness Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institution

What I am most excited about is the work going on in the field of neurodegeneration – the class of brain disease that includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. While we might not see a miracle cure, unfortunately, researchers are using so many different approaches that I am sure that there will be significant progress from at least some of them.