KIRSTEN: Do I have to reset this little button? Push buttons. Push the little button and make it go boom.
JUSTIN: Push button. Push the button.
KIRSTEN: We’ll be back in just a few moments in This Week in Science.
[Music]
KIRSTEN: Oh.Yes.
JUSTIN: Science…
KIRSTEN: That’s right! That’s Anton Barbeau, local singer song-writer who actually spends a lot of time in England these days. Doing singing and (songing).
JUSTIN: Yes?
KIRSTEN: Yes. Anton Barbeau, he was on our 2006, that’s from our 2006 Science Music Compilation. The song previous to that was Robots Are Great. That was also on our – that was Chris Taylor on our 2006 Music Compilation. Last year we had a good 2007 Music Compilation that I’ve been sending out to people. And we are going to have a 2008 Music Compilation CD.
JUSTIN: Wow!
KIRSTEN: We are. We are. We are. And I’m putting the call out right now for those of you out there with bands, little guitar tinkerers, arm chair musicians.
JUSTIN: Sounds like me. I’ll do it.
KIRSTEN: All right!
JUSTIN: Does it have to be SCIENCE-Y though?
KIRSTEN: Yes. It has to be SCIENCE-Y. Yes! Science oriented songs. We would like original music. YOU did it. I want something from you out there! You! Send me the music and yes, if you would like information about this, e-mail me kirsten@thisweekinscience.com and I’ll get back to you.
JUSTIN: If you want information on any other subject…
KIRSTEN: [Laugh] e-mail Justin.
JUSTIN: @thisweekinscience.com. Put TWIS in the subject otherwise my spam filter will boot you. But you can ask me anything, I am an “opinionologist”. I have it and even if I’m not right, I will still form an opinion about something.
KIRSTEN: You will form an opinion about anything. So, let’s opinionate on Number six.
JUSTIN: Number six.
KIRSTEN: Bacteria.
JUSTIN: Stop hitting the mic.
KIRSTEN: What are you doing Justin?
JUSTIN: Bacteria. We almost sort of covered this with disease and stuff but that’s not a big deal with bacteria. They’ve been doing good.
KIRSTEN: It’s been actually, it’s not disease related at all in my head.
JUSTIN: Oh…
KIRSTEN: Bacteria have had –I guess kind of disease related. There has been a lot of research at about personal medicine, personalized medicine and how the role of bacteria in our gut play a role in our health.
JUSTIN: 99% of your DNA is bacterial.
KIRSTEN: Bacterial. Yes. We are a super organism. You think you’re a person? You’re really a super organism that is mostly made of bacteria and a little bit of human.
JUSTIN: You’re kind of a host?
KIRSTEN: Yes – yes. Mostly.
JUSTIN: But it’s a good thing, you couldn’t digest half the food you eat if you didn’t have bacteria.
KIRSTEN: Right. Right. We would not be able to. We see a lot of health problems currently due to the lack of digestion of certain compounds by bacteria. And it’s a big, it’s of a lot of interest these days that personal biome. What little population, or actually huge population of bacteria exist in your digestive tract?
JUSTIN: What’s living in your bubble?
KIRSTEN: And how – and how does it make you, YOU?
JUSTIN: Yes.
KIRSTEN: How does it help to keep you healthy when it is distressed, how does it make you distressed? What are the – what can medicine do to help your metabolism work most efficiently by helping to keep your bacteria happy? And how are your bacteria different from your neighbors?
JUSTIN: Mine are smarter.
KIRSTEN: These are very interesting questions that research has been looking into a lot this year.
JUSTIN: My bacteria is better-looking.
KIRSTEN: My bacteria is better.
JUSTIN: My bacteria doesn’t have a job as good as my neighbor.
KIRSTEN: [Laugh]
JUSTIN: My bacteria…
KIRSTEN: My bacteria loves chocolate.
JUSTIN: Wow.
KIRSTEN: Yes. That one of the studies this year looking at like chocolate eaters and there was something to do with, like the bacteria of certain people? I’m not. And it seems like there’s a certain bacterial population for people who love chocolate (chocoholics) and those who don’t.
[Laugh] That was a really interesting study that came out this last year.
On the other bacteria front, the most – one of the most amazing successes in science this year is Craig Venter. He is continually pushing the envelope of bacterial and genome research. And this last year, 2007, he did a genome transplant within bacteria.
It’s on his – he’s really working towards creating synthetic organisms. That’s what he wants to do. He wants to create bacteria that would do things for us.
JUSTIN: Right. It’s an incredible idea. Incredibly, one of these things –it’s like yes that’s – you know, 50 years from now. A hundred years from now maybe science. But he’s like actually making progress in the year now.
KIRSTEN: That’s right! And this last year, he took the genome of one bacterial species and he basically put it into another. That’s very simplified. It’s simplifying it a lot but he put it into another species of bacteria. And the species of bacteria that gained the new genome started acting like the original species where the DNA came from.
So, it’s just an amazing success in the first step of proof of concept – of being able to create and really manipulate the DNA of these bacterial organisms to make them do what we want. I think it’s great. I can’t wait to see what he does this year.
[Laugh] Every year he comes out with something big, so I’m waiting – I’m waiting. We’ll see.
JUSTIN: Do you know what he called that bacteria?
KIRSTEN: Bob?
JUSTIN: Adam.
KIRSTEN: Adam?
JUSTIN: No. I don’t know. Just – better be… that’s how I would do it.
KIRSTEN: Yes. The bacterial were big this year that’s why they are Number 6 on our list. Number…?
JUSTIN: Five – number five – number five…
KIRSTEN: Must not kill humans.
JUSTIN: Robots – run…
KIRSTEN: Must not kill humans.
KIRSTEN: Yes.
JUSTIN: So big year – big year for robots. Crazy year for the robots.
KIRSTEN: Oh come on Justin.
JUSTIN: What?
KIRSTEN: Robots. It’s just robot. It wasn’t that big a year?
JUSTIN: No. It’s not just robots Kirsten.
KIRSTEN: [Laugh]
JUSTIN: Well, they try to do everything. Right? They’ve been trying to – now they’ve gotten better at being able to drive cars by themselves?
KIRSTEN: That’s true. This year there was the Carnegie Mellon Team …
JUSTIN: Yes
KIRSTEN: …won the DARPA Challenge…
JUSTIN: Yes.
KIRSTEN: Robot cars…
JUSTIN: They’re doing robot.
KIRSTEN: (Robot) races.
JUSTIN: They’ve already taken our jobs people. Do you worry about the outsourcing? The in-sourcing?
KIRSTEN: [Laugh]
JUSTIN: No. They took our jobs and our life didn’t become easier now that we don’t send our robot out to work and it doesn’t go out to work for us and we stay at home or go play golf.
KIRSTEN: Nope.
JUSTIN: No. We’re now competing against robots at our work. We have to work faster. We have to be quicker. We have to more efficient. We have to be more robot-like.
KIRSTEN: It’s not so bad though, in terms of military. The military and the military robots are taking over a lot of our jobs and that’s great – fewer people will die.
JUSTIN: Not … tell that to the South Africans. These robotic missile system whatever gunner system which killed like nine people.
KIRSTEN: [Laugh] Yes.
JUSTIN: Yes. Robots have been murdering and the thing is where is that robot now? Is that robot in prison? No– no. “It’s just malfunctioned.”
KIRSTEN: [Laugh] Junk pile..
JUSTIN: Can you imagine they can get away with that?
KIRSTEN: That robot is in the junk pile.
JUSTIN: Like “Mr. Jackson we caught your red handed robbing a bank.” “Yes. I was like having a malfunction. I think I’ll go and get it fixed. What do you say?” “Alright, ok have a good day.”
They can get away with anything. Now they want to be our lovers.
KIRSTEN: That’s right. There was a dissertation that someone came out with this last year huh?
JUSTIN: And that was actually your prediction a couple of years ago that there will be a hooker bot.
KIRSTEN: That was like 2006, so I’m still behind the time.
JUSTIN: You’re still in.
KIRSTEN: But I’m in the game. I’m in the game [Laughs].
JUSTIN: No. No way! You’re way ahead of the time. You’re way ahead of the time.
KIRSTEN: That was ahead. [laugh]
JUSTIN: You’re way ahead of the time. That’s the thing.
KIRSTEN: [laugh]
JUSTIN: You predicted that the hooker bot will outsell the new Playstation or whatever.
KIRSTEN: That’s right.
JUSTIN: You know I think.
KIRSTEN: It hasn’t yet but it’s still may.
JUSTIN: Did they smell us? Was that this year or last year when they smelled the reporter?
KIRSTEN: I think we smell like bacon this year.
JUSTIN: Yes. They smelled the reporter and said (“persuto.”)
KIRSTEN: Yes. Sorry people. We smell like bacon to robots and you know what? Everybody likes to eat bacon. The vegetarians that tell you they don’t are lying. [laugh] Hmm salty, fatty goodness. And I’m a vegetarian.
JUSTIN: Yes?
KIRSTEN: Yes. But I don’t eat bacon. I don’t. I don’t.
JUSTIN: I believe you.
KIRSTEN: Bacon…
JUSTIN: See, a big year for robots and every stride they make, I think we become a little less — for some reason people aren’t concerned about this in the mainstream media.
KIRSTEN: No.
JUSTIN: We’re too busy trying to dominate ourselves right now.
KIRSTEN: Right. We’re not worried about the world robot domination.
JUSTIN: Yes. They’re not even thinking about it.
KIRSTEN: Not thinking about it because it makes them scared.
JUSTIN: But I think that will unite the human race. I mean it will be in a work camp, labor camp somewhere out in an asteroid.
KIRSTEN: That’s right.
JUSTIN: But it’s going to unite the human race once the robots really turn on us.
KIRSTEN: Yes. Well, they’re not there yet. This was a big bumper year for advancements in robotics. But they’re not there yet. Number…?
JUSTIN: Number four, Human Genetics.
KIRSTEN: [Mmm] What’s going on inside of us. Well this year was a crazy year for determining a lot about ourselves through geneticists. The personalized genome analysis…
JUSTIN: And through geneticists..
KIRSTEN: And through geneticists…
JUSTIN: We are learning a lot about ourselves.
KIRSTEN: The geneticists are kind of NOT behind the whole thing, right?
JUSTIN: Well I’m meant to Watson.
KIRSTEN: Yes, Watson that was crazy. Two weeks after we interviewed Watson, he goes off.
JUSTIN: He could have made us. If he just made his rambling racist comments on our show – everybody would have phoned in to request for him to stay.
KIRSTEN: Everyone would have listened to that show [laughing]. Oh man, I’m kind of glad we missed out on that fun.
JUSTIN: Thanks for nothing!
KIRSTEN: Personalized genome analysis. There’s a big like a 1,000 dollars you can send in your DNA samples and they will tell you everything that they know at the moment about it.
JUSTIN: But don’t trust the results because they might tell you you’re from an area and your ancestors may have never been there.
KIRSTEN: It’s true. It’s very possible; there is always an area of uncertain amount of error involved.
JUSTIN: What I have been hearing is it’s pretty good deal of error.
KIRSTEN: Yes, yes.
JUSTIN: Pretty good deal of ERROR in the system.
KIRSTEN: But they’re looking for genetic markers. The most important thing they’re looking for genetic markers of disease and that kind of stuff to find out whether or not you might potentially have predilections for cancer or heart disease or whatever it might be.
However, I think I’m of the – as much as it would be really great to get a little DNA analysis and see what I’m made up of and what’s actually in my DNA at the moment, I think I’d rather not know.
JUSTIN: Really?
KIRSTEN: It’s the same reason I’ve never gone to get an MRI. I just don’t want to see anything I don’t want to know. If it happens, it happens.
JUSTIN: Wow!
KIRSTEN: And then, I’d deal with it. I’d deal with it then. I mean whatever!
JUSTIN: I’m different. I don’t think – if I was like had a predilection for a disease, any disease I’d probably just look at it, I’d be dead before that happens.
Sure, I wouldn’t care. But I would love to like be hooked up to MRI’s like daily. Like I don’t know why that’s not something like you put on a little skull cap when you’re in the bathroom mirror brushing your teeth.
KIRSTEN: [have you seen] my brain.
JUSTIN: And you’ll get a little read out that shows you what’s your brain’s doing today and like gives you suggestions, you know maybe cut back on the coffee this morning Justin ’cause you don’t really need it you’re already going…
KIRSTEN: Well maybe, who knows it might be the next technology of the future. It would be pretty cool.
JUSTIN: That would be awesome. A little read out on the bathroom mirror and then it can tell you how your – you need another one too to tell you how your bacteria is doing on your body. Your skin bacteria and you’ve got a little sample.
KIRSTEN: Oh Yes, I think that’s good.
JUSTIN: There is a gargle that tells you if you have cancer, but that’s sort of like you know, you did the gargle swishing around, spit it out and it’s like, you’ve got throat cancer! That’s no way to start the day.
KIRSTEN: Great!
JUSTIN: It’s no way to start a morning.
KIRSTEN: No.
JUSTIN: You’re right! Some bad news maybe you just put it off a while.
KIRSTEN: [laughing] We also found out about our human evolution and the fact that it’s probably still going on.
People, humans have thought that we’re above evolution first all along, but now as we start digging into our genome we’re finding that there’s evidence of evolution as recent in our genome as a 100,000 maybe 10,000 years ago.
JUSTIN: I’ve seen more recent than that. I’ve seen pictures of myself like 20 something years ago, I was shorter. I was much smaller back then.
KIRSTEN: [Laughs] That’s not evolution, that’s developments silly. Silly billy. Yes, but there’s genetic evidence of we are still evolving people as much as we think we’ve gotten out of the evolution game with what you know, we’re beyond that. Well, we’re not.
And it’s good to know. We’re just down to earth. Migration. Genetics allowed us to be able to see where we migrated.
JUSTIN: Tracking our routes out of Africa, Yes.
KIRSTEN: That’s right and determining that there was really only one.
JUSTIN: Oh?
KIRSTEN: Was it?
JUSTIN: No. There was two. Two separated by about …
KIRSTEN: Here in North America right?
JUSTIN: Oh in North America? Oh no I was talking about out of Africa.
KIRSTEN: Maybe out of Africa.
JUSTIN: There’s more than one.
KIRSTEN: You keep forgetting. Yes there are more and more.
JUSTIN: More than one separated by many ice ages or something like that a
hundred thousand years, but there’s a couple tracks out there. And then yes,
there’s some debate over the Americas. How the people got here – the north sea passage.
KIRSTEN: Right, across Siberia, but it seems like there were evidences last year that there were a couple of different movements out of Siberia.
So it’s really neat to be able to take that we are using genetics as this tool to be able to find out our own history. Where did we come from? How did we get to where we are today? It’s so neat to know all these things about ourselves.
JUSTIN: There’s a really interesting like when I was in Greenland, right? The study thing that was going on was about this small group that had migrated from Canada to Greenland.
And when they got there, there’s only a couple hundred Inuits there. And the people that came over, there were only about 40, but they had all this new technology. They had bows and they had kayaks and it transformed the population that was there, with just 40 people moving.
KIRSTEN: Right, they brought their technology.
JUSTIN: You know, they taught them how to use musk ox. You know nobody was using…
KIRSTEN: At least they didn’t kill them.
JUSTIN: No, no. Well I think there was some of that that went on too, but mostly it was a cohabit
But the thing is that it takes very few people migrating to change an entire you know island, continent, whatever area of the world. It’s just amazing. And nowadays even we could still do that to some degree.
Number three. [wind roaring sound]
KIRSTEN: Is it that what it sounded like? I’d like to imagine it sounded like this [making a bird like sound] [laughing]
JUSTIN: They may have. All I know – I went and saw “Walking with the Dinosaurs”. Took my four and a half-year-old, which was a great age, because she was young enough to still believe they were real dinosaurs there possibly.
But it’s also maybe too young because they were a little scary. But by the end of it, everything was cool. And they were huge. They were awesome. They looked like real dinosaurs on the stage. It was very impressive.
Only complaint the music was so loud. They were like stadium blaring. Not like – if they just made the dinosaurs really loud. Great, that’s fine. I expect that, but there was like [dum dum dum] background music. It was like, I was covering my ears and I was like you know grow up going to the garage band, the big amps and the whole thing.
KIRSTEN: [Have you heard] of ear plugs.
JUSTIN: I don’t even think my hearing’s very good. And I’m plugging my ears. That was ridiculous. But at the show they looked awesome!
KIRSTEN: Yes.
JUSTIN: Huge year for Dinosaurs.
KIRSTEN: Walk with Dinosaurs.
JUSTIN: Expensive though.
KIRSTEN: This last year was an amazing year for palaeontology and dinosaurs. Like you said in the beginning of the show like there’s a lot going with a soft tissue research. They’re looking at DNA of dinosaurs.
JUSTIN: They figured it out. They saw some sort of blood cells …
KIRSTEN: It’s amazing.
JUSTIN: …it looks like, you know in the fossil and I can’t remember her name, but brilliant scientist lady figured out a way with some acids and some other techniques and things in chemistry what have you, to extract soft tissue from the fossil. For example this gooey – and I guess they can look at some of the DNA from ants now.
KIRSTEN: Yes, which is – and this year like you said they got the relation between bird, between the dinosaur and the chicken.
JUSTIN: Yes.
KIRSTEN: The T-Rex and the chicken. [laughing]
JUSTIN: T-Rex may have tasted like chicken. Very possible. So Yes, maybe he was a [making a sound like a bird].
KIRSTEN: Exactly.
JUSTIN: And all kinds of weird like the lizard head. Again, the lizard head dinosaurs had the feathers. And the beaks, there’s a bunch with the beaks too. It’s all …
KIRSTEN: Well, there were a bunch of big dinosaur finds. The big large dinosaurs.
JUSTIN: Yes. Big dinosaurs like the biggest dinosaurs ever. Like they were running out of names like there was like colossalsauraus, humongo-extra-big-a-saurus, like XXXL-sauraus. Like they’re going to – these [Sauro-pods] they find they keep getting bigger.
KIRSTEN: They found like the biggest bird-like dinosaurs, didn’t they?
JUSTIN: Yes, [ginormous] 60-foot wing span? Something crazy like that. It’s insane and they figured out that – and this is also a mistake in the “Walking with the Dinosaurs” when they have the big Pterodactyl flappity flap dinosaur coming down.
And every time it would swoop down over the waters and gather up fish in its beak and it kind of go up like a pelican might as well. But I think they’d figured out this year one of the stories we covered was that the neck wouldn’t support that.
KIRSTEN: You’d have the lower jaw strike the water and the whole bird would go tumbling.
JUSTIN: The whole spine would just break, it would end badly.
KIRSTEN: Ouch. That would not be good for evolution.
JUSTIN: They found fully intact, fossilized like with the skin so you could see the skin was fossilized.
KIRSTEN: Right. Right.
JUSTIN: There was even a creature inside the dinosaur that had died eating it that was fossilized inside of it. Just incredible finds.
KIRSTEN: Yes. So we’re learning a lot more about again, the world we live in – where we came from. Move on to number two.
JUSTIN: Stem cells.
KIRSTEN: Stem Cells. Big time.
JUSTIN: Big time.
KIRSTEN: We started out the year with the “Who sacked Wang”, the Korean researcher who would …?
JUSTIN: Is that this year?
KIRSTEN: I believe it was 2006 was when he got in trouble for falsifying and like you know, all those reports carried over into the beginning of 2007 and then we didn’t hear about him for a while.
We didn’t actually hear a lot about any kind of stem cells research for a while. It was like every once in a while someone says, “Oh yes I made a mouse skin cell via a heart muscle tissue or whatever”, but …
JUSTIN: But they did figure how to keep them from migrating in the spine, which is huge. Or why they migrate …
KIRSTEN: Why they migrate in the spine, which is great for paralysis research to be able to heal people.
JUSTIN: Human spinal cord… (injuries)
KIRSTEN: Yes. That’s great. And also around – I guess that’s the middle like three or four months in 2007. We found out more information on the Korean research that Wang had actually NOT noticed.
He’d falsified – he’d been so intent on getting a certain result that he hadn’t noticed another result that actually fairly significant.
JUSTIN: Right.
KIRSTEN: In the stem of research. That he actually had parthogenic cells – which is amazing.
JUSTIN: They – yes. They actually have a huge break through. But I think part of the thing is yet always people working for him. And he was like “here’s the result and you need to get – I don’t want to see your papers.“
KIRSTEN: (Probably).
JUSTIN: Like degree separation. So, missed the discovery by the degree of separation…
KIRSTEN: Totally missed the discovery.
JUSTIN: …with the blinders on.
KIRSTEN: And then – then in August, there was a report that came out from scientist who took adult mouse skin cells and turned them into the reproducing stem cells.
JUSTIN: Incredible.
KIRSTEN: Yes. They could turn into – just about any type of tissue. And from there, it was like, “Oh yes, everyone was really excited because, hey we’ve got – you know, this adult stem -“
JUSTIN: Blastocyst free.
KIRSTEN: Right. Embryo free.
JUSTIN: Blastocyst.
KIRSTEN: Blastocyst free. Right. You know, the buzz word people used is embryo. We prefer blastocyst on This Week in Science. And – it wasn’t big enough because it wasn’t human. We haven’t done anything with human.
And then in November, the news came out. Two separate teams published papers in stem cells – cell – stem cells and in science. That they had gotten adult human cells to become the stem cells.
JUSTIN: Here we go.
KIRSTEN: And so, here we go.
JUSTIN: Off we go.
KIRSTEN: Off we go.
JUSTIN: Into the future.
KIRSTEN: Right. And so, it – we’re going to see that they could also different tissues. It still going to be a lot of work before we find out whether we can do therapeutic cloning to be able to create organs for people who need transplants. There is just a lot of research still has on going. But this is a – it was a major re-discovery.
JUSTIN: Huge breakthrough.
KIRSTEN: Yes. And so this year was big. There was also – some really big – were some really big breakthroughs on the blastocyst side of the research as well. Doing a lot of – they have them –
JUSTIN: Which still is the most viable way of doing this? They have – they don’t –
KIRSTEN: It is – it is still.
JUSTIN: There’s some stability is use or some – I’ve heard at least there was some sort of like mutation. The skin cells – there’s more likely a chance of mutation.
KIRSTEN: Yes. In the adult?
JUSTIN: Yes.
KIRSTEN: In the adult cells. Yes.
JUSTIN: In this – in the skin cells.
KIRSTEN: Yes. Because skin cells divide and reproduce so rapidly. They have the rapid turn over which means, in any tissue that has rapid turn over, there’s a greater possibility for mutation.
So, that is a kind of iffy-tricky cell to work with. But it also is easy to work with because it does divide so much. Yes. So, that’s why they used that cell as opposed to one that’s like a very long lived cell. On to the very last one, we’ve got time for I think, our final number one!
JUSTIN: Climate change. We didn’t get to the prediction.
KIRSTEN: We’ll – we just do number one. We’ll finish it. Number one.
JUSTIN: Climate change. For the third year in a row.
KIRSTEN: For the third year in row. And as much as I wanted to put something else at number one. We really couldn’t.
JUSTIN: No.
KIRSTEN: No. This year, the IPCC reports came out, there were huge studies showing – that more extreme weather is happening now than has ever happened or that has happened in X numbers of years.
JUSTIN: Al Gore was right.
KIRSTEN: This was not a bad hurricane near, but it – there is the suggestion that stronger hurricanes are going to be forming more often as a result of the changes to the atmosphere.
The North West Passage open in the middle of the summer – there’s so much and the IPCC and Al Gore did win the noble prizes here -which is something that – I think – I don’t know if that would have been expected at any other time.
JUSTIN: Well, you know, that was official – unofficial man of the year – a couple of – person of the year – for the show, couple of times BEFORE winning.
KIRSTEN: Before winning, he was.
JUSTIN: So I think we did predict it.
KIRSTEN: We’ve done some prediction there so, we’re about done. So, our prediction very quickly for this next year. Justin you’ve got – a list of them. Why don’t you run down…?
JUSTIN: Algae field takes over corn based bio-diesel as the alternative energy of the future.
KIRSTEN: Nice.
JUSTIN: No new evidence for the graviton. I’m sticking with this one, again this year, large hadron collider will be found to be useful but for other things.
KIRSTEN: Oh really? I think they will find the illusive Higgs-Boson. I think they’ll find what they’re looking for –
JUSTIN: I don’t see – I don’t think so. No Higgs-Boson either. No gravity.
KIRSTEN: I think they’re going to find what they looking for it. It’s going online this year, we’ll see. That’s my prediction. My prediction. Yes.
JUSTIN: Let’s make a bet. Whoever loses has to shave their head.
KIRSTEN: Oh dear. I’m really pretty ugly with a shaved head. I’ve got a lumpy skull.
JUSTIN: Is that Britney? Oh wait, its Kirsten.
KIRSTEN: Oh what? Great.
JUSTIN: Giant meteor will be discovered to be heading for the earth with the potential to cause great damage. We will begin studying it intently. We will then discover that a larger more destructive asteroid is heading for the Earth even sooner.
In fear of finding more bad news, scientists stop looking for near Earth objects all together. So, one of my prediction.
KIRSTEN: Wow. Just forget it.
JUSTIN: Just stop looking. Just like here – I don’t want to know. Religion will attempt to disprove the existence of science?
KIRSTEN: I think –
JUSTIN: Again?
KIRSTEN: Again. Yes.
JUSTIN: And again.
KIRSTEN: I think this last year was the creation museum, we saw a lot of fighting science on the fundamental religious side. I think this year, we are either going to find common ground or there will be some big blow out. There’s going to be …
JUSTIN: Long term prediction?
KIRSTEN: There’s going something big this year. Happen in –
JUSTIN: Long term prediction?
KIRSTEN: Evolution and religion.
JUSTIN: Religion banned by 2020. It’s my long term…
KIRSTEN: Long term.
JUSTIN: My long term -bird based respiratory disease most people never heard them can barely pronounce. Will become extremely prolific. It will not be the bird flu and it won’t kill you but nearly everyone will catch it. That’s a teaser – it’s something like – my future CDC guy was telling me is on the horizon. I’m going to find out about that.
KIRSTEN: Awesome, new bird diseases. I love it.
JUSTIN: Global warming predictions turn out to be all wrong. In 2008, we will find that things are going to be much worse and sooner than we thought in 2007.
KIRSTEN: Yay! I predict that there will be more solutions on the table for the climate change problem.
JUSTIN: Yes. Perhaps some better one.
KIRSTEN: Some better solutions – cleaner solutions things are going to start booming this year.
JUSTIN: New evidence suggests that our ancestors did in fact to attempt to cohabitate with Neanderthal. But that our advances were politely turned down. Our “Dear John” letters on the caves of the Neanderthal at the time. Dinosaur findings will abound but still no justinosaurous. Don’t know why that is people. Let’s work on that one.
KIRSTEN: Let’s work on it. And I think that there is going to be a huge blastocystal stem cell breakthrough this year.
JUSTIN: Scientists –
KIRSTEN: Something to do with Parkinson’s disease maybe.
JUSTIN: Not just scientists but people of the United States are going to over throw their current government. By the end of this year, I think we’re going to have a new government –
KIRSTEN: I think were going to have –
JUSTIN: Revolutions of some sort of –
KIRSTEN: Someone new will be in office at the end of this year.
JUSTIN: And here’s the big one –
KIRSTEN: Hopefully. I think it’s going to be a science friendly…
JUSTIN: Right. It better be.
KIRSTEN: …politician.
JUSTIN: We need to really do some more – Here’s my big one now, mercury in vaccines will be found to have been limiting autism in children. And with the removal of mercury, we will see higher rates of autism in children.
KIRSTEN: That already happened.
JUSTIN: I know. That’s why I’ve – but we didn’t report on it. Now it’s going to be like next week –
KIRSTEN: I’ve –
JUSTIN: Already! One of my predictions came true!
KIRSTEN: We reported on it.
JUSTIN: We did?
KIRSTEN: Oh I’ve had some rants about mercury in vaccines in the past.
JUSTIN: But that mercury – no, no my prediction is that mercury will actually been found to be limiting autism.
KIRSTEN: Yes. We’re late. We are way over, we need to stop doing predictions and get off the air. This has been This Week in Science. And this is the beginning of 2007. Stay tuned for some –
JUSTIN: It’s not the beginning of –
KIRSTEN: 2008. Oh my gosh.
JUSTIN: You can’t end the show with wrong year.
KIRSTEN: Oh my gosh. This is the beginning of 2008.
JUSTIN: I’m not going on that year again. No way.
KIRSTEN: 2008.
JUSTIN: It’s a rough year.
KIRSTEN: Two thousand great.
JUSTIN: Oh jeez. You learn anything from today show off, I hope you know, its not 2007.
KIRSTEN: It’s 2008. And it is all in your head.