Podcast: A look ahead at science in 2020

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Hi, listeners – Benjamin here. Happy New Year to you all. We’ve a short show this week just to ease you in to the new decade, and we’re going to be doing a little bit of future gazing at what science might throw up for us in 2020. Joining me on this journey is Davide Castelvecchi, a senior reporter here at Nature, who’s been compiling a list of what the year might hold in store. Davide, hi.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Hello, Ben.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Let’s start with space then, and to me when I was a kid in the 1980s, 2020 seemed like the dim, distant future when we’d be out there exploring the stars. Things haven’t quite progressed to that level just yet, but it does seem there’ll be a lot of missions heading to Mars this year.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Yes, indeed, there will be at least four, including three landing on the surface of Mars and for the first time, an orbiter sent by an Arab country, the United Arab Emirates.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And why such interest in Mars then this year?

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Part of it is that there is a propitious alignment of the planets. It’s one of those times, it happens about every two years, when the Earth and Mars are in a favourable position that makes it easier to get there.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

So, I think ‘easier’ may be doing a lot of lifting there, Davide – it’s not easy to send anything that far out into space.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

And indeed, until not long ago, two of these missions were in the balance because, well, one of them, the Chinese one, depends on the functioning of the Long March-5 rocket, which had a disaster two years ago, so it was not clear whether China would be able to make it work again in time for the launch which will happen in July, but on 27 December, they had a successful launch. And on the same day also, the European Space Agency reported that they managed to have a successful deployment of the parachute that will hopefully safely deliver its lander on Mars.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

So, we’ve got China, Europe and the United Arab Emirates. Who’s the fourth group sending a mission to Mars this year?

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

That would be NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, which is almost a repeat of its Curiosity lander, which is still there and still roving, but this one will carry a very innovative feature. It will be able to stash samples of Martian rock and Martian soil and it will keep it there so that hopefully in the future another mission will get there and pick up the samples and deliver them back to Earth.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Speaking of delivering samples back to Earth, let’s leave Mars and head to the Moon, where a mission launching this year aims to do just that.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Yes, China has a lander planned for towards the end of 2020. It will be a follow-up on its Chang’e-4, which is there and it has a rover that is still exploring the far side of the Moon as we speak, but the follow-up mission will attempt to collect samples from the lunar surface and also take them back to Earth.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Well, the Moon and Mars are some of our closest neighbours in the Solar System, of course, but astronomers and astrophysicists are peering a lot further out into the cosmos as well, Davide, in 2020, and what are they hoping to find?

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

One of the most eagerly awaited events of the year will be hopefully when the Event Horizon Telescope will unveil the first image of Sagittarius A* – that’s the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And this is the telescope then that you and I talked about last year that looked at the M87 black hole and showed that amazing photograph.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Exactly.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

What are researchers hoping that this new picture of a different black hole will tell them?

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Well, first of all, it will confirm or disprove a number of other observations and theories that have been made about this black hole – whether it has jets spewing out, do we see it rotate from the side or from kind of face on and we might even be able to see not just a single still image but a whole animation.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Well, let’s stick with physics for the time being, Davide. What’s happening down here on Earth in 2020 that’s getting physicists excited?

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Particle physicists are especially excited and hopeful about a future successor to the LHC, which is the accelerator that discovered the Higgs boson. They’ve set forth a plan that would span several decades and include an accelerator that would be six times more powerful than the LHC and would cost up to €21 billion.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

A fairly large chunk of change then. Is that likely to come true, do you think? Will the money be spent?

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

The moment of truth will be a meeting of the CERN council, which will decide the future of European particle physics, and it’s due to meet in Budapest in May. And that’s not all – there’s a number of ongoing experiments which hopefully will give us new discoveries. One that would be especially exciting is an experiment in the United States called Muon g–2, which if it confirms some earlier strange anomalies that have been seen by other experiments, it could be a complete revolution for particle physics.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And what might it find then, Davide?

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

The experiment studies muons and the magnetic properties of muons, and muons are supposed to be kind of heavier twins of electrons, but if the anomalies are confirmed, it would mean that muons are not quite twins of electrons, but maybe it would reveal new properties, perhaps even new particles, that are getting in the way.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Well, let’s change tack completely, Davide. There are some big events happening in 2020 that we’ll be keeping an eye on here.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

One probably the whole world will be keeping an eye on, and that’s the Tokyo Olympics, and during the Tokyo Olympics, according to various indiscretions, Toyota is supposed to unveil the first prototype of an electric car run by a solid-state battery.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And this is a lithium-ion battery presumably, Davide. We’ve had those for a while in electric cars – why is this one so different?

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Yeah, it’s a new twist on the technology. Current batteries have what’s called a liquid electrolyte, and that’s the substance that carries electric charges between the electrodes inside the battery, and liquids have advantages but also disadvantages and in particular, they can make the battery flammable. So, these prototype batteries – we should say, at this stage the technology is still immature – could be safer, could be also longer lasting and carry more energy.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

If the eyes of the world are going to be on Tokyo then, Davide, in the summer, the gaze is going to shift to Glasgow here in the UK in November when the COP26 climate conference takes place.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Yes, this will be a really crucial step that will determine whether the Paris accord of 2015 actually can deliver on its promises. In Glasgow, countries will have to come up with specific, strict targets for reducing their emissions so that global warming can be kept to within 2 °C. So far, most countries have not stayed on track on their targets, and the United States actually has announced that it wants to drop out of the agreement altogether.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Well, a lot of efforts by a lot of researchers are being done to try and mitigate the effects of the warming planet, and a big report is due out this year that’s been looking at that sort of thing.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Yes, that will be in August when a United Nations agency is supposed to release a major report on geoengineering, which is the idea of limiting climate change or its impact by either pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere or blocking sunlight.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Davide, let’s round this off then. One thing we haven’t looked at is the biological sciences, and there’s certainly a lot going on there in 2020.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Yes, and a lot of attention right now is on Japan. There’s a very hot field, which is the idea of taking human stem cells and using them to grow organs in another animal so that then the organ can be transplanted back into the human. A lot of attention will be pointed on Japan, where the government has recently relaxed some of the regulations that limited what could be done in this field, for example, on how many days you could grow human animal embryos, and there’s one lab in particular that announced that it plans to grow fully formed organs in pigs and rats.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

So, a lot of ethical questions then to be had during the year.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Yes, indeed, and a lot of researchers say that maybe this approach is not the best one or even the ethically safer one, and they think that it would be better to grow organoids in vitro, basically, in the lab.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Well, from modifying embryos then, let’s move on to modifying mosquitoes and a big public health story that’s potentially going to happen later this year.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Yes, there is a long-awaited study that will reach its conclusion in Yogyakarta in Indonesia, where scientists infected mosquitoes with bacteria that prevent the transmission of viruses from mosquitoes to humans, and this has shown a lot of promise, in particular, to prevent dengue fever. And at the same time in Africa, there is another promising front which is for a malaria vaccine, which is being trialled on an island on Equatorial Guinea. And also, hopefully some good news this year, the World Health Organisation expects that sleeping sickness, the disease that’s carried by tsetse flies, will essentially cease to be a public health problem.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Which would be a really good news story, of course. Oh my goodness, Davide, we have covered a lot of ground today. Thank you so much for joining me.

Interviewee: Davide Castelvecchi

Thank you very much.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And there we have it. 2020 is shaping up to be quite the year, and listeners, to stay up to date on all the latest science developments, head over to nature.com/news. We’ll be back next week with a regular edition of the Nature Podcast. I’ve been Benjamin Thompson. See you then.