Lab notes: from ancient zero to space hero – this week's science goes down in a blaze of glory

And so farewell to Cassini, whose incredibly rewardingmission to Saturn has reached a fiery and dramatic end after 20 years, eight billion miles,a ton of stunning images andmasses of extremely intriguing data. The plucky spacecraft has now become one with the planet it so faithfully observed, which is a nice way of saying it ’s burned away to nothing – orzero, the expression of which has caused excitement this week. The origin symbol we use today has been traced to the Bakhshali manuscript, dating from the 3rd or 4th century - which makes it about 500 years older than scholars previously believed. And although one is more than none (which will still be too many for some) there ’s a good possibility that a new technology breakthrough will allow multiple time-delayed vaccines or drug doses to be delivered in single jab. This could see and end to booster jabs, and allow an improvement in vaccination rates in developing world countries. The practicality of this could be said to stand in sharp contrast to the weird and wonderful pieces of research celebrated bythis year ’s Ig Nobel prizes. Among the rich variety of winners, the judges rewarded work arguing that cats can be considered both solidandliquid, a study which pinpointed cheese disgust in the brain and another which proved that playing the didgeridoo is a cure for snoring. Hurrah for science.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Science Source Type: news