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IN a recent experiment at Harvard University, scientists have discovered a technique that not just slows down the ageing process, but reverses it.
OK, the experiment was conducted on mice, and it’ll be a long time before I can fit into the jeans I wore in my youth. But the prospect of finding the fountain of youth is a very exciting one.
Ronald De Pinho, the scientist who led the Harvard team, said of the experiment: “These were severely aged animals, but after a month of treatment they showed a substantial restoration, including the growth of new neurons in their brains.”
Already, Hubble has pushed the frontiers of knowledge.
The mice also grew glossy coats, but me, I’ll take those new neurons any day. Older readers will empathise with my constant struggle to remember names: the embarrassment of bumping into people you’ve known for years but whose names escape you is a recurring reminder of the passage of years.
Apart from regenerating a failing memory, why else would I want to live longer? I’m not greedy for yet more pleasures of the senses: been there, done that. What I really would like to do is satisfy my curiosity about how the universe works.
Specifically, will we be able to finally detect dark matter? This mysterious substance is said to account for 84.5pc of the universe’s mass, and yet it has not been directly observed. Physicists think it is composed of weakly interacting massive particles, or wimps, that pervade the universe.
Currently, the search for dark matter is being pursued in a deep mineshaft in South Dakota. Here, a tank of xenon gas and the purest water available has been set up to register the faint impact of wimps. This isolation is necessary to avoid interference from the billions of subatomic particles that bombard the Earth’s surface every second.
The ongoing effort, known as the LZ experiment, may be the last one for a long time if no wimps are discovered. So why should we care? Well, because dark matter is the stuff that keeps galaxies from tearing themselves apart.
And how do we know it even exists? Its existence has been inferred through its gravitational effects as well as in the motion of visible matter. But as long as it’s doing its job of holding galaxies together, why do we need to actually observe it? Ah, here we go to the heart of human curiosity, and our desire to find out how our world functions at its most basic level.
This is the spirit that motivated scientists to launch their search for the elusive Higgs boson. Four decades and billions of dollars later, the breakthrough came in 2012 when the particle was finally observed at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
At the other end of the scale from subatomic particles, I am waiting impatiently for the wonders that will be revealed by the extraordinary new telescopes that are being constructed. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to be launched in 2018, will have a 6.5-metre mirror, as against the Hubble Telescope’s 2.4m, and is expected to peer into the distant past by imaging the distant-most galaxies at the edge of the universe. These were first formed by the Big Bang, and have been accelerating away at mind-blowing velocity for nearly 14 billion years.
Already, Hubble has pushed the frontiers of knowledge immeasurably, apart from providing us with stunning images of distant stars, galaxies and nebulae. The JWST, apart from probing the edge of the universe, will also search for planets outside our solar system.
Then there is the prospect of colonies on the moon and on Mars. With the private sector entering the market and developing reusable rockets, progress might be faster than it has been thus far. And while I might not be an early colonist on Mars, the thought of human beings landing and living on the Red Planet fills me with vicarious anticipation.
The Chinese are aiming to place a rover on the moon in the near future, to be followed by a cosmonaut. The Indians have sent a rocket to Mars. The Europeans and Japanese have sent missions to examine distant asteroids. So, gradually, space research is gathering momentum.
Seventeen countries have cooperated in constructing the JWST. CERN has 22 member states that have contributed to its constructions and running costs. Not a single Muslim country figures on these lists. Small surprise here, given the low priority given to research and science in the Islamic world.
But these larger issues apart, I am impatient to see mankind’s journey unfold. Although I write regularly about current affairs, I must confess that our petty politics often bores me stiff. Our politicians display a singular lack of imagination and vision, and are preoccupied with their perpetual search for power.
Me, I’m waiting for the Harvard team to make new neurons available so I can hang on for a bit longer to watch newly discovered wonders of the universe.
Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2017
