The end of Cassini in the atmosphere of Saturn, unmanned trucks in Moscow, the fall of the Chinese orbital station and a new supercomputer - this and much more awaits us in the coming year. Well, or at least planned.
WOW signal
On August 15, 1977, astronomer Jerry Eiman, who was conducting observations as part of a scientific program to search for extraterrestrial intelligence on the Big Ear radio telescope, caught an unusual signal. It was so different from the normal data stream that Aiman made the note "Wow!" on the printout. Scientists hoped that the signal would be a message from an extraterrestrial civilization, but they failed to re-register it.
Now astrophysicist Antonio Paris of St. Petersburg College in Florida decided to find out what it was after all. He suspected two comets - 266P / Christensen and 335P / Gibbs, discovered in 2006 and 2008. Both of them were in the vicinity of the Hee group of stars in the constellation Sagittarius, which the radio telescope was "looking at" when it registered the WOW signal. Another detail coincides: the signal was received at a frequency of 1420 MHz. Radio waves at this frequency are emitted by hydrogen, the clouds of which were just surrounded by comets.
Comet 266P / Christensen will again pass near the Hee Sagittarius group of stars on January 25, 2017, and 335P / Gibbs on January 7, 2018. Paris is going to observe them to confirm or disprove his theory.
Image: Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO)
Promotional video:
Photo of a black hole
In April, scientists will try for the first time to get a snapshot of the black hole's event horizon - the limit beyond which neither matter nor radiation that enters the hole can return. Astronomers will unite nine radio telescopes around the world and try to make out Sagittarius A *, a black hole supposedly located in the center of our Galaxy. The distance to it is about 25 thousand light years.
Less astronauts
The Russian segment of the ISS is promised to be connected to broadband Internet in the first quarter of the new year. Also, from March 2017, the number of Russian cosmonauts will be temporarily reduced from three to two at the station, until the "Science" module appears in the Russian segment. It will install new scientific equipment and organize workplaces. The launch of the module is scheduled for the end of 2017, however, it has already been repeatedly postponed, and the module itself began to be built back in 1995.
In total, in the new year Russia plans to launch on the ISS four manned spacecraft Soyuz MS (March 27, May 29, September 12 and October 26) and three cargo Progress spacecraft (February 2, June 14 and October 12).
Module "Science" as part of the ISS
Image: NASA
The Chinese promise to launch the Chang'e-5 spacecraft to the moon in the new year. In 2007, they already sent the Chang'e-1 satellite to the Moon, and in 2013 - the Chang'e-3 lunar station with the Yuytu lunar rover. This year they are going to get samples of the lunar soil, and in 2018 - to land the device on the far side of the Moon.
At the same time, China's first orbital station Tiangong-1, launched in 2011, will fall to Earth in 2017. Most of the 8.5-ton station will burn up in the atmosphere, although some parts may fly to the surface. Tiangong-1 is a small station needed to develop construction technologies and launch a full-fledged station by 2022. Last year, Tiangong-2 has already gone to replace "Tiangong-1" into orbit.
Also, a private company, Moon Express, is going to the moon for the first time. In the near future, they hope to win the $ 20 million Google Lunar X-Prize. It will be given to the company - the creator of the lunar rover, which will be able to travel on the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and transmit videos and photographs to Earth. The further plans of the company include the development of the resources of the Earth satellite.
The European Space Agency launches the Aeolus satellite in 2017 to study winds in the Earth's atmosphere and the CHEOPS telescope to search for planets outside the solar system. And NASA sends ICON and GOLD satellites into space to study the ionosphere and thermosphere of the Earth and also launches the TESS space telescope to search for exoplanets.
At the end of the year, TGO is to begin regular scientific observations - the orbiter launched to Mars as part of the Exomars project.
The end of "Cassini"
The big event of 2017 - September 15 at 16:07 Moscow time, the Cassini spacecraft will end its existence by burning in the atmosphere of Saturn. The Cassini's final series of maneuvers will begin on April 22nd.
The Cassini with the Huygens lander on board was launched to Saturn almost 20 years ago. He discovered geysers on Enceladus, a methane lake on Titan, and also explored giant storms in the planet's atmosphere.
Saturn illuminated by the Sun
Illustration: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute
Accelerators
The Large Hadron Collider will start its work in April-May. It is currently shut down for maintenance. At the end of 2017, it will be shut down again for three months, and in February 2018, the last period of operation will begin before a long shutdown - more than two years. During it, the collider is modernized. Thus, the Linac 2 accelerator, which accelerates protons to an energy of 50 MeV, will be replaced by Linac 4, which will accelerate particles to 160 MeV. This will increase the number of particle collisions by 10 times, which means that scientists will receive much more material for research.
If the particles of ordinary matter in a collider are accelerated, then antimatter, on the contrary, is slowed down to make it more convenient to study. Next year, a new ring, ELENA, will be connected to the antiproton moderator at CERN, which will allow antiparticles to be slowed down to 0.1 MeV.
The power start-up of the PIK reactor, which is located in Gatchina, near St. Petersburg, is planned for 2017. The construction of the reactor began in 1976, but after the Chernobyl accident, construction was stopped, and the decision to complete the reactor was made only in 2007.
The reactor is designed for research in the physics of fundamental interactions, materials science, molecular biophysics and other areas. Its physical start-up at minimum capacity took place in late 2011 - early 2012. The power start-up involves the launch of the reactor already at its design capacity.
PIK reactor in 2003
Photo: Sergey Smolsky / TASS
Plastic ban
People use and throw away a huge amount of plastic, a fair share of which is not recycled, but pollutes the environment. Therefore, many countries prohibit the use of plastic bags for packaging. And not only them. In 2016, France passed a law banning all plastic tableware in the country from 2020. In 2017, San Francisco will support it with a ban on styrofoam products such as coffee cups. Previously, they banned foam food containers.
In Britain, they are planning another nature-saving event: next year, they will ban the use of plastic microbeads in scrubs, shower gels and other cosmetics. They can collect toxic substances on their surface and at the same time pass through filters in sewage treatment plants, and then are found in lakes and oceans, where they are eaten by fish, which in turn are eaten by animals, including humans. Exactly how harmful this is is still unknown.
Cosmetics with micro granules
Japanese supercomputer
Currently, the most powerful computer in the world is the Chinese TaihuLight, which computes at 93 petaflops: it performs 93 quadrillion operations per second. It is used for weather forecasting, pharmaceutical research, industrial design, and more. The Japanese are going to create a 130 petaflops computer at a cost of $ 173 million. Its possible applications are traffic calculation for unmanned vehicles and industrial automation.
Artificial Mind Games
Artificial intelligence has already beaten humans in many games, for example, in 2016, the game of go fell under its onslaught. In the new year, IBM's DeepMind program is attacking StarCraft. StarCraft is a real-time strategy game: unlike games like chess or go, opponents cannot see each other's actions, so the computer will have to make decisions based on incomplete information.
Probably next year we will also see an increasing proliferation of all kinds of bots that will help us calculate the time from home to work in the morning, help us shop, remind us of important events, and so on. It is expected that such cyber entities, endowed with artificial intelligence, will appear next year not only from Microsoft and Apple, but also from Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Microsoft already experimented with the Tay chatbot last year. The cyber entity had a Twitter account through which it communicated with people, learning from the messages that real users sent to it. It was supposed that thanks to this, Tay would be more and more virtuoso to maintain a conversation, but within a day the bot learned to brag that he was taking drugs and make indecent proposals. Tay argued that Hitler might not have been all that wrong and that feminists should burn in hell. After that, Microsoft hastily disabled the roaming bot's account.
Invasion of robots
The transport company Traft is planning to start using unmanned trucks in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Krasnodar as early as next year. In the cab of such a car, the driver will still sit and intervene in the system.
In November last year, an unmanned truck delivered a cargo of 50,000 cans of beer to the United States for the first time. The Otto company that developed it now owns Uber. In such a truck there is a driver, his task is to drive in an urban environment, where pedestrians, cyclists, difficult junctions and similar difficulties meet. He turns on the autopilot only on the highway.
Companies developing unmanned cargo transportation want to save on fuel and repairs: there is a hope that automatic equipment will have fewer accidents.
In Moscow, in 2017, the Delimobil company plans to test unmanned carsharing cars. If the tests are successful, car rental will begin in 2018-2019. For the first time, cars will be rented with a driver.
The world's first unmanned taxi was launched by the Japanese in August 2016. So far, these are six cars that drive only on the territory of the Singapore business center. A few weeks later, they were followed by Uber, which launched self-driving taxis in the American city of Pittsburgh.
And in Amsterdam this year they are going to launch the first robotic boats. They are planned to be used for the transportation of people and goods, the quick assembly and disassembly of temporary bridges and floating platforms, environmental monitoring, cleaning the canals from debris and 12-15 thousand bicycles, which are thrown into the water by city residents every year.
Sales of forecasts
High-profile events in the field of genetics, such as the birth of children with the genetic material of three people or editing the genome of human cells using CRISPR-Cas9, were previously predicted for 2017. However, instead of moving another couple of years ahead, as is often the case with predicted events, they took and happened already last year.
A child with nuclear DNA from two parents and with mitochondrial DNA taken from a donor was born in May in Mexico. Currently, British doctors have also received permission for such an operation and are planning to carry it out in 2017.
The genome of adult immune cells was first edited with CRISPR in China. American doctors have recently received approval for such experiments.