As we look back at 2016, it’s easy to focus on the negatives — the tumultuous presidential race, troubling race relations across the country and the end-of-the-year loss of high-profile celebrities. But while it might feel like it from the headline news stories, 2016 was not all doom and gloom. The now-ending year saw the development of some very exciting breakthroughs in science and technology that brought us closer to an effective cancer cure, led to the confirmation a 100-year-old theory, and possibly could even help us find our alien brethren. Read on for our list of the top scientific breakthroughs in 2016.
Scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) set the astronomy world on fire when they announced the discovery of gravitational waves. They not only detected the ripples in space-time, but they also pinpointed the source of the waves. According to their report, the waves were the result of a collision between two black holes that occurred over 1.3 billion years ago. The existence of these gravitational waves was theorized by Albert Einstein in the early 1900, but the world-renowned physicist lacked the technology to test his theory. Some 100 years later, the evidence for his prediction has been discovered.
This year, for the first time ever, scientists used the CRISPR-Cas9 genetic engineering tool to create immune cells that target cancer cells in a patient. A group of Chinese researchers used this technique to treat lung cancer. The team harvested white blood cells from patients, genetically engineered them to attack lung cancer cells, and then reintroduced the cells into the patient to treat cancer. If these early trials prove to be successful, oncologists may soon have another tool in their arsenal to treat cancer patients. This advancement is only the beginning of what is possible when technology meets the halls of medicine.
Once again, Tesla is pushing the envelope with its cutting-edge electric car technology. It all started in 2008 with the Tesla Roadster, the world’s first electric sports car. The company’s success continued with the Model S luxury sedan, which is the second best-selling plug-in electric vehicles in the world as of November 2016. The company this year announced that its entire fleet of cars, including the $35,000 Model 3, will soon include autopilot. Currently being tested by Tesla, the autopilot system will include autonomous navigation, radar processing, and collision avoidance so the occupants can relax while the car handles all the ins and out of driving on busy local roads and highways.
Up until now, rockets were typically an expensive, but expendable portion of every space mission. They were used to propel a spacecraft into orbit – at which point they are generally cast aside as a waste product of the mission. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk changed all that with a reusable rocket program that made it possible for a rocket to return to earth safely after completing its mission. Once on solid ground, the rocket can be retrieved and prepped for future missions. The company had its share of high-profile misses in the past, but in 2016, the technology had improved to the point where SpaceX was on target more than it was off. By July 2016, the company had logged an impressive string of successes with five perfect Earth landings in eight months.
Nathan Copeland has been paralyzed, unable to move or feel his limbs, for the past ten years because of an accident. However, thanks to a team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, Copeland now can move a robotic arm using only his brain. And if that wasn’t impressive enough, the team of scientists also added touch feedback to the robotic arm that allows Copeland to feel pressure applied to the artificial limb. The system is so sensitive that Copeland can feel pressure on each finger. “I can feel just about every finger — it’s a really weird sensation,” Copeland said following the surgery. “Sometimes it feels electrical and sometimes its pressure, but for the most part, I can tell most of the fingers with definite precision. It feels like my fingers are getting touched or pushed.”
Astronomers have long believed that we are not alone in the universe, and many have been searching for extraterrestrial life since the beginning of the discipline. The possibility of other living beings took a big leap forward in 2016 following the discovery of a possibly habitable planet in the Alpha Centauri system. Dubbed Proxima b, the exoplanet is 4.24 light years away from Earth, making it difficult to conduct a thorough study of the planet. Early results suggest the planet is terrestrial and not merely a gas giant. It’s also within thea habitable zone of the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to our Sun.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.