It’s that time of year again. Time to dust off your brain’s power cord and plug it into the outlet you’ve ignored all summer: school. I’m sure a lot of you vowed that this summer was going to be productive and that you weren’t going to waste it sitting in the sun and drinking beer and … sorry, I have to stop. I can’t even keep a straight face writing that. I shouldn’t expect that any of you had a thoughtful, productive, academic summer, so I have compiled a short list of exciting things that happened over the last few months to get you back on track for a thoughtful, productive, academic fall!
1. Einstein might have been wrong about something, for once
Scientists in Italy seemed to have discovered a particle that can go faster than the speed of light. If this discovery is deemed true, all that we know about time and space could change. Albert Einstein told us that nothing — NOTHING — could travel faster than the speed of light. Information cannot arrive before light, and cause cannot come after effect. Einstein told us in his theory of special relativity that once something travels faster than the speed of light, the universe has to compensate by slowing down because the laws of physics are constant no matter where, when or how you are. But this month scientists at Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy may have made a groundbreaking, theory-shattering discovery: neutrinos (a tiny, mysterious, neutrally charged particle) seem to have traveled faster than light. When sent between two detectors 730 km (about 450 miles) apart, the detector at the receiving end detected the neutrinos before it detected light — 60 billionths of a second before, to be exact. Needless to say, scientists are overwhelmingly skeptical and are continuing to study this phenomenon. For their sanity, some are hoping to find a flaw in the experiment that would deem it scientifically wrong, because if it were true, all we know about causality and the function of the universe would change.
2. George Lucas predicted the future
Star Wars fans rejoice! NASA’s Kepler telescope has found Tatooine, and Luke Skywalker is ready for his interview. OK, OK, calm down. So it’s not actually Tatooine, and Luke isn’t actually a real person, but NASA did find a star system resembling Luke’s home planet: a planet orbiting two stars. Orbiting every 229 days, to be exact. The Kepler program was launched in 2009@@not confirmed on site, but confirmed via google/fb@@ and its mission is to explore deep space and find new planets. To find these planets, NASA uses a giant telescope that detects changes in light. For example, when a star seems to be getting dimmer on a periodic basis, that probably means there’s a planet orbiting it. So far, they’ve found hundreds of planets (some remarkably like Earth) and many, many more stars. At a time when things like exoplanet discovery aren’t high on the White House’s list of things to fund, discoveries like this help NASA make a case for itself.
3. An HIV vaccine is peering over the horizon
Human Immunodeficiency Virus has plagued the world for decades, but only recently have promising vaccines started to surface around the world. At a conference in Bangkok, Thailand, earlier this month, scientists presented a vaccine that made it 30 percent less likely for trial subjects to contract HIV. That may not sound like much, but it’s an important step toward finding an effective treatment for HIV and the prevention of AIDS. What’s even more important about the study is that researchers were able to identify why some people took positively to the vaccine while others weren’t even affected by it. They found it had to do with a difference in the kinds of antibodies individual people were producing. Now that the researchers have this kind of information, they can re-engineer  the vaccine to make it even more effective.
4. Thighs beware: Potato chips are your greatest enemy
A study at Harvard University must be working on a conspiracy to bring down Frito-Lay @@changed from Lays. Yes? No?@@: in a two-decade-long study of weight gain, the research team found that potato chips account for the most added poundage per four-year period. With their satanic combination of salty and crunchy deliciousness, potato chips are wreaking havoc on America’s collective thighs. Among other culprits of America’s expanding bottom is alcohol (0.51 pounds in four years) and watching one hour of TV per day (0.31 pounds in four years). The stuff that made people lose weight? You guessed it: exercise, eating fruits and vegetables, and not smoking. It looks like we’re going to have to stop denying what our parents told us all along and start eating healthy.
5. Archaeologists find our great, great, great, great, great …
Last year, researchers in South Africa stumbled upon the fossilized remains of what looked kind of like an ape and kind of like a human. They had pelvises that looked like a human’s, but arms that looked like a chimp’s. Their faces and teeth were also very human-like. It turns out these specimens, which they think are the remains of a middle-aged woman and a young boy, are examples of the oldest human ancestor found to date. This year, the bones have been dated to about 1.98 million years ago. They represent what seems to be a link between the “ape-like” Australopithecines and modern human genus, Homo. Dubbed Australopithecus sediba, the specimens were found in deep in a cave. Researchers guess the two australopithecines died when they fell into a crevasse in the cave. They’re so old that the Earth’s magnetic field was the polar opposite of what it is now.