Today we lost Professor Stephen Hawking, he made science cool for the masses while being a great theoretical physicist. Despite being afflicted with ALS, he persevered and made an impact on humanity, his contribution to the sciences will be remembered for generations to come.

Hawking first earned prominence for his theoretical work on black holes. Disproving the belief that black holes are so dense that nothing could escape their gravitational pull, he showed that black holes leak a tiny bit of light and other types of radiation, now known as “Hawking radiation.”

“It came as a complete surprise,” said Gary Horowitz, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It really was quite revolutionary.”

Horowitz said the find helped move scientists one step closer to cracking the unified theory.

Hawking’s other major scientific contribution was to cosmology, the study of the universe’s origin and evolution. Working with Jim Hartle of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Hawking proposed in 1983 that space and time might have no beginning and no end. “Asking what happens before the Big Bang is like asking for a point one mile north of the North Pole,” he said.

Source: The Star

I enjoyed his books and he will be sorely missed by many.

Here’s a great piece by Vox on the opiod crisis.

Krebs is the lead author on the first randomized trial, comparing chronic pain patients on prescription opioids (like morphine, hydrocodone, and oxycodone) to patients on non-opioid painkillers (like acetaminophen or Tylenol, naproxen, or meloxicam), measuring their pain intensity and function over the course of a year.

The striking result was that the patients on opioids did no better than those taking the opioid alternatives — despite the much higher risk profile of opioids. At one year, the opioid takers even reported being in slightly more pain compared to the non-opioid group.

Source: Vox

I really hope there’s further studies, so far the positive/negative benefits of one taking opiods seems to be really weighted in the negative column and if future research finds the same results the medical industry should move towards a different approach.

So after launching in 1997, 20 years in space and 13 years around Saturn, the Cassini mission over Saturn has come to a fiery end. Over those years the satellite has stunned us with beautiful images Saturn & the accompanying moons as well as greatly expanded our knowledge of that small local system. This is what science is about, absolutely amazing and there’s still so much for us to learn.

I encourage everyone to gaze at some of the beautiful photos on the NASA website thank the scientists & engineers that made this happen.  Keep inspiring the young to reach for the stars and I wish Juno the artificial satellite a long productive life as well!

So today LIGO announced that it detected gravitational waves!!!  This is huge news in the realm of physics and opens so many new research opportunities…

The groundbreaking discovery opens several doors, and has the potential to win a Nobel prize.

Since gravitational waves were predicted by general relativity, they offer a chance to verify that Einstein’s theory really is the correct account of gravity. So far, general relativity is passing with flying colours: the observed signal is perfectly explained by Einstein’s equations.

But the real excitement is that gravitational waves can show us a side of the night sky we’ve never seen before. Until now, there had been no sign of black holes in this size range – much less two of them.

Now that the first event has been detected, the era of gravitational wave astronomy is under way, says Avi Loeb of Harvard University in Massachusetts.

Source: NewScientist

Absolutely amazing, this is a peer reviewed discovery so yeah it’s confirmed.

So NASA announced today that it has evidence of water flowing on the surface of Mars during the warmer seasons and that’s freaking amazing!

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured the strongest evidence yet that salty liquid water flows on the planet’s surface during warm seasons.

Whether or not these salty flows could sustain life depends on how salty they are, says Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who has reported the findings, along with his colleagues. “If the water is completely saturated with perchlorates [hydrated salts], then life as we know it on Earth wouldn’t be able to survive in that sort of concentrated water,” he says. “But if the water only has a tiny percentage of perchlorates in it, then I think we should be fine.

Source: NewScientist

The presence of water doesn’t equal life but still if another planet in our celestial backyard could harbour life, just think about the possibilities in the universe!  Given enough time, what we consider rare events (like say life) are guaranteed to happen elsewhere.  I just hope I’m alive when we confirm it, that will be a wonderful time. 🙂

I saw this news article yesterday and thought it was pretty amazing.

For the first time, aggressive breast, lung and bladder cancer cells have been turned back into harmless benign cells by restoring the function which prevents them from multiplying excessively and forming dangerous growths.
Source: National Post

That’s pretty huge news but the cynic in me thinks that the pharmaceutical companies will try and quash this or hold it back as long as possible because cancer makes them a lot of money. Still it’d be nice if cancer became a thing of history in my lifetime. 🙂

Today is a great day for science and the New Horizons probe flew by the dwarf planet Pluto this morning.

NASA’s New Horizons probe flew by Pluto this morning (July 14), capturing history’s first up-close looks at the far-flung world — if all went according to plan. (Mission team members won’t declare success until they hear from New Horizons tonight.) Closest approach came at 7:49 a.m. EDT (1149 GMT), when the spacecraft whizzed within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto’s frigid surface. To celebrate, NASA unveiled the latest photo of Pluto, showing a reddish world with a stunning heart-shaped feature on its face.

Source: Space.com

After spending a bit of time with Pluto, it’s onto the Kuiper belt for New Horizons and who knows what it’ll find out there at the edge of the known solar system… I’m definitely going to share pictures and the video with Brandon when I get home tonight, it’s amazing what we’ve done since the start of the space age. 🙂