Twelve months ago We did not imagine that in 2020 science would have to park many of its ongoing projects to work towards solving the urgency of a pandemic. Quoting a Danish proverb, physicist Niels Bohr used to say that it is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. But now we know with certainty that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and Covid-19 will continue to account for much of the scientific research in the new year, since there is still much to do and know.
The first year of the pandemic ended with a spectacular achievement, the achievement of the first vaccines in just a few months, compared to the 15 years it used to take to develop these drugs. Those of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna-NIAID, Sinopharm, Sinovac or Sputnik V of Russia are already being administered or are close to doing so in different countries, but in the year that begins Oxford-AstraZeneca, Novavax, Janssen and others will follow. In 2021, the scientific work will be intense to collect data on the deployment of vaccines and clarify the panorama of their effectiveness in the real world, their limitations, contraindications and possible side effects.
All of it help refine and target immunization programs more effectively to move towards the most optimistic prediction, that before the end of 2021 the pandemic can be mastered and that the chimes of next December 31 find us in a situation as close to normal as possible.
–
At the same time, investigations into other aspects of the pandemic will continue. A universally effective treatment for Covid-19 could not be found in 2020, while improved therapies have saved many lives that would otherwise have been lost. At present there is no reason to trust that throughout this year we will have that saving treatment that makes Covid-19 something innocuous in all cases, but we should not rule out new advances either.
On the other hand, we should expect news regarding one of the great unknowns of the pandemic. This January a working group of the World Health Organization (WHO) will initiate a comprehensive investigation in Wuhan, which will be extended if necessary to other regions of China and the world, in order to clarify the origin of the virus. WHO experts face an immensely complex scientific task, a search for the needle in the haystack, during which they must also deal with possible political interference. There is no certainty that the investigation will conclude successfully. Doing so would not only solve one of the great mysteries surrounding this global crisis, but the lessons learned would also serve to help prevent future similar threats.
Beyond the pandemic: climate change, Mars …
Perhaps the possible control of the pandemic will return the focus of attention to another of the great global problems, climate change. In 2020 we learned that the previous year a new maximum was reached in the warming of the oceans, which in Antarctica broke the historical record for high temperatures and that climate change is accelerating, with the 1.5 ° C increase compared to pre-industrial levels set as a limit in the 2015 Paris Agreement could be exceeded by the middle of this decade.
In November the nations will meet in Glasgow for COP26 of the United Nations, a conference that should end with more demanding objectives in the reduction of CO2 emissions. Following the US abandonment of the Paris Agreement by decision of Donald Trump, the new president Joe Biden is expected to rectify and return his country to the path of fighting this global scourge.
–
As Earth continues to occupy herself with dealing with her problems, another nearby planet will see an unusual level of activity this year. In February three probes from as many countries will reach the Martian orbit. La Al Amal / Hope from United Arab Emirates study from above the meteorology and climate of Mars, while China’s Tianwen-1 and US Mars 2020 They will send two robotic vehicles to the surface. NASA’s Perseverance rover and its Chinese counterpart will search for traces of life in the past and present of Mars. The US mission also has the Ingenuity drone, the first device to fly over the surface of another world. For its part, the Chinese mission, if it succeeds in making landfall, will break for the first time the US monopoly on the exploration of Martian soil.
–
Also in space we will have other interesting news. In October NASA will launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most complex eye ever sent into space, which will serve as a relay for Hubble by increasing the capacity of its predecessor, especially in the infrared band.
It is expected that in 2021 we will receive new data on two of the most intriguing science news of the past year, the presence of phosphine gas – a possible sign of life – in the atmosphere of Venus, a finding that was disputed, and the strange radio signal picked up by the Australian radio telescope in Parkes that appears to come from the nearby star Proxima Centauri and that some experts have described as the most suggestive indication of a possible alien civilization since 1977, although it is likely that its origin is terrestrial.
Will it finally be possible in 2021 to decide if the drug aducanumab is capable of slowing down the progression of Alzheimer’s, after conflicting data in this regard? Will we have encouraging results from gene therapy trials with the CRISPR genome editing system? What new physics will the Large Hadron Collider find, which will restart in May? How will NASA’s Artemis program’s new moon race progress? The future is difficult to predict. But as another physicist, Albert Einstein, said, it comes sooner than later.
Dates to watch in 2021
- January: WHO starts its investigation in Wuhan on the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
- 18th of February: NASA’s Perseverance rover will land on Mars along with the Ingenuity drone.
- April 23rd: China’s Tianwen-1 mission will land a robotic vehicle on Mars.
- Mayo: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) starts up again in Geneva.
- 31 October: NASA will launch the James Webb Space Telescope.
- November 1st: COP26, the United Nations conference on climate change, begins in Glasgow.
— .
