It doesn’t seem real that the clock is ticking into the last days of 2013. The nostalgia is kicking in and I find myself reflecting on some monumental moments: the government shutdown, legalization of gay marriage, and even Beyonce’s surprise album. These events were highly publicized, both on the news and through an exhaustive amount of Buzzfeed shares on Facebook.
I’ve done a little research and discovered five interesting events from 2013 that were not plastered all over social media or the news. They aren’t necessarily important occurrences to know about, but are definitely some quality icebreakers before the party gets rowdy on New Years.
603 Earth-like Planets
The Keplar space telescope was launched in 2009 to detect Earth-like planets that are orbiting nearby stars. It surveyed 42,000 stars in order to find the “Goldilocks Zones” which are areas somewhat close to the right temperature to house a planet like ours. After sifting through a majority of the data this year, astronomers from the University of California, Hawaii, and Berkeley said they found 603 planets that are eligible candidates in the battle to uncover extra terrestrials. At least ten of these planets are the same size as Earth and are in the near perfect condition to have water. The nearest planet is thought to be only 12 light-years away from us, a pretty short distance considering the foreboding size of our galaxy.
Glow in the Dark Cockroaches
The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University releases an annual Top 10 New Species list on the birth date of Carolus Linnaeus, a strangely named scientist who actually created a system for naming new species. My personal favorite was the glowing cockroach, the Luchihormetica luckae (wtf does this even mean, Carolus), because it would be a lot easier to kill than a normal roach. It was found scuttling around rain forests in Ecuador and is so rare that scientists are worried if they continue to collect more of these buggers for research they’ll become extinct altogether.
Google Glass
Google is in the process of perfecting a pair of glasses that have their own WiFi connection, which means you’ll no longer need to carry your smart phone with you when you leave the house. According to Google, its lenses are so clear that it’s “equivalent of a 25 inch high definition screen from eight feet away.” That’s pretty impressive. There are touch controls on the sides, where you can swipe forward or backward in order to view photos, messages, emails, videos, or app notifications. You can even use the glasses without your hands. There are certain ways to move your head and phrases that when spoken aloud, will activate the features on the glasses for you, like taking a photo or sending a message. Read more in depth about the product here.
JK Rowling Revisits the Wizarding World
JK Rowling is developing a cinematic adventure about Newt Scamander who lived in New York seventy years before Harry was even born. Newt was mentioned in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as the author of a book called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and a former Hogwarts professor. When asked about her new movie Rawling said, “although it will be set in a worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for seventeen years, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world”. It looks like one of the most popular series in the world is not actually over and Rowling will continue to gift us with more stories from her imaginary world.
Microsoft Develops a New Bra
As if wearing a bra wasn’t uncomfortable enough, the Microsoft Research Institute and the University of Rochester has created a bra that detects emotional stress eating. It’s only a matter of time before Victoria Secret Models will be strutting down the runway and attributing their thinness to the bra that curbs binge eating. The bra holds an EKG sensor that sends a message to your iphone whenever you’re at the risk of consuming too many spoonfuls of Ben and Jerry’s. The inventors of the bra didn’t forget about males… they tried placing the EKG sensor into underwear, but it was too far from the heart to be effective.
2013 was full of popular news stories and less publicized hidden gems. We continue to expand and perfect inventions, discover new things about our planet, and further explore the planets around us. There’s an endless amount of possibilities awaiting us in 2014, so let the countdown begin.
