Powell expects new evidence of pre-Columbian mingling to shake-up the field as well.
"I think in the coming year you're going to see some discoveries announced that shed light on the New World/Old World contacts before Columbus came," Powell said.
"We may realize that there was much more contact than we previously thought."
Astronomy: New Research Takes Flight
The United Nations has designated 2009 the International Year of Astronomy in honor of Galileo, who four hundred years ago became the first to use a telescope for astronomical observation.
This year promises advancements the famous Italian could not have imagined.
This spring, the European Space Agency is launching its Planck spacecraft, which will study cosmic microwave background radiation.
"This is relic [microwave] radiation from the big bang that bathes the whole universe," said Matin Durrani, editor of the United Kingdom-based Physics World.
David Leckrone, senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, said the fifth and final service mission, in May 2009, will make the telescope more powerful than ever—even after 18 years aloft.
Hubble's camera, which has delivered many a jaw-dropping image to desktops around the world, will be replaced with a new model that will capture a much bigger, crisper slice of the sky.
(Related: "Shuttle Crew's Repairs Will Leave 'Best Hubble Ever'" [September 10, 2008].)
Also aboard Hubble, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph "will allow us to look farther back across the universe and farther back in time to probe the material that's between the galaxies in great depth," Leckrone said.
The COS analyzes the intergalactic medium—the gas between the galaxies—by studying changes in light from distant quasars as it shines through. Quasars are powerful, compact celestial bodies that emit as much energy as our entire galaxy.
"Galaxies formed from the gasses and as you follow the course of this story over time you see that this material has changed over time, and that is hand in glove with the story of how galaxies formed and evolved," Leckrone said.
Biology: Revealing Pollutants at Work in the Cell
A suite of developing molecular technologies is allowing a much closer look at the essential processes unfolding inside the cell—and how they can be seriously altered by chemicals.
"[We're finding] that [chemicals] can be active and have an effect at concentrations far smaller than anybody would have thought," BioScience's Beardsley said.
He cites recent research suggesting that tributylin, a common pollutant used as a preservative and pesticide, impacts cells at even tiny concentrations and could be contribute to a rise in human obesity.
Tributylin alters cell receptors, which control the genes that grow fat cells and govern the body's metabolism, new research suggests.
"It's not just a rotten chemical—it has specific effects on receptors in cells," he said.
"Without these molecular technologies, we'd never know that."
One such technique uses genetically modified mammal cells that carry genes for firefly enzymes. "The crafty way this is done means the cells produce the enzymes and so light up when they are exposed to test chemicals that alter gene expressions," Beardsley said.
Evolutionary Biology: Group Selection Returns?
One "new" debate in biology may revolve around the largely discredited idea of group selection.
In his recent book "The Superorganism," well-known scientist E.O. Wilson suggested that the once-popular idea of group selection may have been discarded in error decades ago.
Group selection could help explain certain social behaviors in animals, "particularly some remarkable behaviors we see in insects," Beardsley said.
Wilson cites ant colonies as "superorganisms," in which individuals live not for themselves but for the good of the group.
Because ant colonies are in near-constant conflict over resources, an individual's genetic survival may be best ensured by boosting the fitness of the group. If the colony prevails, the fitter genes that ensured success pass to the next generation.
The concept is not popular among the many evolutionary biologists who favor theories in which individuals propagate their genes by reproduction or by helping relatives.
Could group selection reveal an evolutionary root for a "tribe versus tribe" behavior that has made inter-human warfare a behavioral constant throughout our history?
Wilson isn't going beyond insects at this stage, but Beardsley believes the scientist has already reignited what's likely to be a raging debate.
Geoscience: Rocks Reveal Strange Earlier Earths
Paleobiologist Douglas Erwin sees a big year ahead for isotopic geochemistry, a field in which scientists measure levels of elements in rock. The technique has revealed huge changes in the ancient Earth's past environment and provided new clues to the origins of life.
"The main lesson here is that there basically have been three Earths," said Erwin, of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.
"Most of [isotopic geochemistry] is about how organisms have modified the Earth that we live on," Erwin said.
"These changes have been largely generated by the activities of different kinds of organisms."
Prior to about 2.4 billion years ago, our oxygen-poor planet was home only to simple, single-celled organisms such as cyanobacteria. The blue-green algae produced oxygen as a waste product, changing Earth dramatically.
A subsequent "second Earth" featured seas rich in iron and sulfur. Climbing oxygen levels gave rise to more complex life forms—the multicelled animals first seen in the fossil record about 600 million years ago.
We're still living on this "third Earth," in which the oceans and atmosphere are rich in oxygen.
"What causes these big shifts?" Erwin asks.
"New isotopic systems [like iron] are building on what we've learned from sulfur and carbon systems and giving us new tools to understand that."
One thing is becoming clear: Climate change notwithstanding, humans would not be the first species to irrevocably alter the global environment.
Medicine: Personalized Pills?
"The big theme in biomedicine at the moment is the field of personalized medicine, where medicine appropriate for our individual genome is becoming a practical possibility," said Jason Pontin, editor in chief of MIT's Technology Review magazine.
Developing technologies are quickly driving down the costs of genome sequencing, Pontin said.
Companies can now read dozens of medically significant parts of an individual's genome—to determine whether cancer is a risk, for example—for less than U.S. $500. Just a few years ago such tests cost several thousand dollars.
In the future, genomic data will likely be used to create drugs customized to individuals.
Today, such information can be a road map to a person's health.
"It makes a big difference in how you think about life choices when you know that you have a high likelihood of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease," Pontin said.
"There are simple things we can do, like eating fewer calories, to make a big difference. So to understand who you are genetically is a big trend for 2009 that's finally real."
Physics: Subatomic Smashing Begins
Physics World's Durrani said scientists remain abuzz about the 2009 startup of the Geneva, Switzerland-based Large Hadron Collider, which malfunctioned just nine days after it was turned on. The machine is expected to be up and running again in June.
(Related: "Large Hadron Collider 'Actually Worked'" [September 10, 2008].)
The 17-mile (27-kilometer) long particle collider is designed to probe the mysteries of the big bang and illuminate puzzling phenomena like dark matter, an invisible material that neither emits nor reflects light, yet accounts for the vast majority of mass in the universe.
"Hopefully some real results will start rolling in next summer when they actually start smashing protons into each other and studying the stuff that comes out," Durrani said.
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