Modern Man Trivia Quiz

Answer: The LIGO Project

In 1916 Albert Einstein predicted little wrinkles in spacetime called gravitational waves. These wrinkles are caused by some of the most violent episodes that the cosmos is able to conjure. To this end, we're talking about violence of the scale of giant stars exploding or two black holes merging. These gravitational waves have been washing over the Earth for ages. The problem is that all of the instrumentation we've had (to this point) has not been sensitive enough to detect them. Enter the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) project, a massive physics experiment built specifically to achieve this. First set up in 2002, it had failed to detect any waves by 2010. The quest for additional funding to install even more sensitive equipment had already begun in 2008 and by 2015 it was operational. A year later, they had success, detecting the gravitational waves that had been emitted by two colliding neutron stars from the Hydra constellation that had crashed some 130 million years beforehand. By the time these waves had reached Earth their overall distortion of spacetime was extremely tiny, so tiny that it was considered to be smaller than the width of a proton. That gives you an idea as to how sensitive the equipment needs to be to measure it.

So what's the big deal here? The big deal is that science now has a new way of "seeing" what is in space and how to untangle its mysteries. No longer is it relying on an event having a visible light with which to study it. A good example is their study of the formation of heavy metals in the universe. Previously it was believed that all the gold in the universe was the result of the death of a giant star but now the theory leans towards the merger of two neutron stars, which led to the ejection of a vast quantity of dense matter.

Answer: NASA's MRO Project

The MRO, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, is a $740 million spacecraft that orbits Mars in an observational capacity. In 2009 NASA was able to report the existence of a polar ice cap and water ice cap almost a third the size of Greenland's ice sheet. However, it was the discovery of hydrated salts in various locations on the planet that got scientists excited. These salts darkened during the warm season and faded in the cooler climes, leading them to confirm the existence of "flowing" water on Mars. NASA confirmed their findings in a press conference in 2015.

And why should we care about finding water on Mars? After all, the air on this planet is so thin that it wouldn't be able to support human life. And there's the magic word, life. The planet may well be able to support other life and that's what scientists are looking for. Our experience on Earth is that wherever there is water on this planet, there is life. It doesn't matter if the water is fresh or salty, frigid or steaming, some organism has found a way to adapt to it. This may also be the case on Mars.

Answer: The Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was officially launched in 1990. It was an international research project whose goal was to map out the sequence of nucleotide base pairs that make up human DNA. Their mission also included identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome. By 2003 they finished drawing up the three billion letters that make up human DNA.

OK, a limp "woo hoo": what did that achieve? By completing this sequence scientists now have a genetic blueprint (for want of a better term) that can point out the mutations that cause or lead to cancer. In this way they are now able to treat a wide range of deadly skin cancers and they have taken great strides in understanding the genes linked to leukemia, eczema and diabetes. That is a big "woo hoo" in my book.

Answer: University of Twente

The University of Twente, founded in 1961, is a public research university that is situated in Enschede, the Netherlands. Whilst it offers a range of science degrees, its specialty is engineering. They developed robotic arms that can provide assistance to people who have been affected by Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

They have gone further to create robotic suits that either replace the function of a lost limb or teach the patient to regain the use of a damaged limb. They are seen as tools to help stroke victims to stand and/or walk.

They can also be used to help employees who work with heavy loads. In 2018 Professor Herman van der Kooij, who leads the university's Wearable Robotics Lab advised that this is the tip of the iceberg and their organization is now working on suits that won't be reliant on the patient's skeleton but will act in response to their nerves and muscle movement.

Answer: Isabelle Dinoire

In France, in 2005, Isabelle became the first recipient of a face transplant, as distinct from a face replant, where the recipient's own face was stitched back on after horrific accidents. Isabelle was attacked by her own dog as she lay unconscious on the floor of her home and had the nose, lips and chin from a donor, pronounced brain-dead, transplanted onto her own face to repair the damage.

A year after the transplant Isabelle's doctor reported that the recovery was progressing smoothly and that her scars had become significantly less prominent. Isabelle, herself, announced that after a year she had finally managed to smile again. Admittedly this was only a partial transplant, but it set the foundations for numerous operations of a similar nature to follow.

The effect and changes that this form of surgery would have on the lives of people born with defects or have had severe disfigurements as a result of burns, diseases and other traumas would be profound.

Answer: Sunfire GmbH

In 1925 Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch developed a process that took a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen and turned into liquid hydrocarbons. In 2014 the Dresden based Sunfire GmbH took that process as a base for their own creation. They started by using solid oxide electrolyser cells (SOECs) to convert electricity (from renewable sources, of course) into steam. The steam would then have the oxygen removed from it and this would leave behind the hydrogen (H2) for the process. The hydrogen is then used to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) to carbon monoxide (CO). The CO2 is obtained either from the atmosphere or waste gas processes. Now, the Fischer-Tropsch process comes into play, combining the carbon monoxide and hydrogen into a green form of synthesized fuel that they have rated as being 70% efficient.

OK, that's the good news and the possibilities seem endless and so good for the environment. The negatives are that the Sunfire machine is only a prototype and there is still more work to be done. The other stumbling block is that our current infrastructure is built around technologies that encompass the use of fossil fuels. Changing that won't happen anytime soon and, even when that process starts, it won't be cheap to implement.

Answer: USC Stem Cell Initiative

On its own website the USC Stem Cell Initiative describes itself as a union of 100 research and clinical faculty members from disciplines across the university. These researchers collaborate to leverage the transformative power of stem cells to develop the therapies of the future.

Their researchers have contributed to clinical trials toward the treatments for colorectal cancer, spinal cord injury, vision problems, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease. But it is in the young field of regenerative medicine that they are creating waves, using stem cells to grow another human organ. The immediate thought is "wow, they can replace a lost limb, a scarred heart, a damaged kidney...". The answer at the moment is no, not quite. Some organs, like the kidney, are far too complex to replicate and they are still a way away. But, in respect to the kidney, what the scientists at USC have done is coax a stem cell to rearrange itself into a simple version of the kidney. They call it an organoid which, instead of the millions of nephrons in a kidney, has only one nephron. From there they produced an organoid with the genetic mutation that causes polycystic kidney disease. This then enables them to study the disease as it grows so that they can produce therapies that either halt it or cure it.

Answer: Mary Higby Schweitzer

Mary Schweitzer is a palaeontologist based in the University of North Carolina. She was handed the femur of a Tyrannosaurus (T-Rex) that was discovered in Montana in 2000. In 2004 she was able to retrieve proteins from this femur and then became the first researcher to isolate soft tissues from an ancient fossil.

The benefit of this discovery is that it provides valuable data into the physiology of dinosaurs, as well as the cellular and molecular structures. If you're anything like me after you've read that, then you're unimpressed. I'm thinking "yada yada..." until I read further.

The sample that she was looking at was fibrous and stretchy, the cells had still retained a 3D shape and the blood vessels looked like she'd extracted them from a live animal that morning. To this point, palaeontology had believed that these types of cells may have been able to survive ten to thirty thousand years in this condition.

This was taken from a dinosaur that had roamed around Montana sixty five million years before.

This has prompted the curator of palaeontology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Robert T. Bakker, to proclaim "Fossils have richer stories to tell-about the lub-dub of dinosaur life-than we have been willing to listen to, and this is one spectacular proof of that."

Answer: Timothy Ray Brown

It is estimated that there are over 35 million people across the globe who suffer with HIV/AIDS. Their lifespan is extended through the agency of antiretroviral treatment. Up until Timothy Ray Brown, who was diagnosed with the disease in 1995, it is believed that no patient had ever been cured of the disease.

In 2007, doctors in Germany, led by Dr. Gero Hutter, transplanted bone marrow from a HIV-immune patient across to Mr. Brown to achieve the result. OK, it wasn't as simple as that and there were numerous complications that the doctors had to work through. Brown continued to receive antiretroviral treatment afterwards and had the procedure a second time, twelve months after the first, before ceasing the antiretroviral treatment. Three years later they declared him free of the disease.

Whilst doctors have stated that his remission is unusual, by 2017, a further six people had been announced free of the disease after similar procedures.

Answer: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

First of all, what is dark matter. Dark matter is a collection of particles that don't absorb, reflect or emit light. That being the case they cannot be detected by observing electromagnetic radiation. In other words, scientist knew that it was there and they had a whole heap of theories about it, they just couldn't prove that it existed. That was until the year 2000 when a team studying object 1E 0657-56 uncovered a spectacular shock front on the cluster and called in an observation team from the Harvard-Smithsonian, the Universities of Arizona and Florida and the Kavli Institute in Stanford. Their results were published in a 2006 paper called "A Direct Empirical Proof of the Existence of Dark Matter".

"So what" I can hear you say. The "so what" is that scientist believe that in understanding dark matter it will help them to explain how galaxies and clusters were formed, how they evolved, if the universe is open and will continue to expand or if it will collapse once it reaches a certain point. Let me give an example, when a galaxy spins it should, technically, be torn apart. The fact that it doesn't is due to gravity. The amount of gravity that it takes to do this is staggering and the amount of matter that is visible to scientists in a galaxy is nowhere near enough to generate that sort of gravity. There is something else out there and now, they can prove it.