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It’s no wonder we keep finding and building cool things. But the things we find and build can surprise us. 2022 was another year full of science and technology advancements. It quickly recognizes the important events of the year; science takes time to develop. But here are eight times that surprised me, for experts in their fields, and even for those who do the work.

Our solar system is something of a mine. In the middle of the sun, the asteroid belt, and the planets and their rings and the moon is a scattering of small rocks, some of which cross paths with Earth. We want to avoid sharing the fate of dinosaurs, and so we tried to identify potential spoilers; currently, we know of no asteroid larger than 140 meters across that poses a serious risk of collision in the next century. But what we don’t know can still hurt us, and we must prepare for the unexpected.

Last year, SpaceX launched a NASA mission, led by Johns Hopkins University, called DART—the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. As David W. Brown explains, in his air talk about the mission, its target was the unspectacular asteroids, about 7 million miles across, called Didymos (measured about half a mile across) and Dimorphos (a little more than 500 meters long). At that time, Dimorphos orbited Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. The DART spacecraft, whose weight at launch exceeded half a ton, was not intended to destroy anything. But it could nudge one or two bodies out of the way – proof of concept that humans can alter an incoming asteroid’s trajectory, preventing it from colliding with Earth.

The achievement was described as a head-on collision with Dimorphos that would change its orbital period by 73 seconds. On September 26, DART hit its mark at nearly 14,000 miles per hour, reducing the orbit by a full 32 minutes. (Earth-based observatories measured the effect by tracking how often the two bodies overlapped each other.) It would have been a shot heard around the sun, if not for the deafening silence of space. Scientists are still analyzing the data on what will happen.

New Yorker writers reflect on the highs and lows of the year.

In the movie “Armageddon,” from 1998, Bruce Willis’ character detonates a bomb on an Earth-bound asteroid, to prevent the action of the movie. Forty years later, we have the technology to accomplish a very similar goal. A DART-like spacecraft, coupled with high precision and fast detection, now gives us the ability to protect the planet we are doing so much to plunder.

Magic Mushrooms Reduce Depression

Many people who have taken psychedelics understand their healing powers. I am one of them: 27 years ago, I prescribed acid and ecstasy in my battle with depression. Because of long-standing laws that prohibit recreational, therapeutic, and even scientific use of drugs, research is still thriving. But, this year, the findings about the effectiveness of psilocybin – magic in magic mushrooms – against depression left even some scientists worried.

Although antidepressants are often the first line of defense in treating depression, they often fail to provide relief. More than a quarter of a billion people worldwide face what is known as major depression, according to estimates, and some studies show that up to 30 percent of them suffer from chronic depression. Last month, The New England Journal of Medicine published the results of the largest clinical trial of psilocybin, in which 233 people with chronic depression took part. Each of them only received one dose, 10 milligrams, or 25 milligrams—under the guidance of an expert. Three weeks later, those who received the high dose were rated significantly less depressed than those in the low dose group.

Another study, published in Nature Medicine, showed the benefits of psilocybin over the antagonist escitalopram (brand name Lexapro). Using neuroimaging, the researchers also investigated other possible treatment methods: they found that patients who received psilocybin experienced an increase in the integration of activity in all areas of the brain in their brain. Perhaps psilocybin, by increasing cognitive flexibility, allows people to escape mental thoughts. Another study, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, looked at patients with major depressive disorder who received two sessions of psychotherapy. After a full year, 75 percent maintained at least a 50 percent reduction in their depression scores.

The authors of all three studies told me that they were surprised by the effectiveness of the treatment. There’s still work to be done—but these findings suggest that some people can find a way out from under a once-intractable disease.

During global warming, we expect temperature records to be broken. But they are now being broken by a surprising number, and by a shocking number. In July, the United Kingdom suffered a record heat wave: the previous high was 101.7 degrees Fahrenheit, but at least 46 weather stations met or exceeded that temperature, the hottest by 2.9 degrees. Of the more than 100 weather stations that have been collecting data for nearly half a century, most have broken the ceiling. One village removed its obstacle with a touch-my (warm-) beer of 11.3 degrees.

U.K. it was not alone. Some countries in Europe saw records fall, and the entire continent experienced its hottest June-to-August, on average. Huge forest fires spread across the continent. Meanwhile, India suffered an apocalyptic heat wave this summer; several continents experienced droughts; and China beat its heat wave with the longest heat wave on record.

In August, an international team of 11 scientists published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled “Climate Endgame: Assessing the risks of climate change.” They argue that the global goal of keeping temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) has led research to focus on global warming, leaving us unprepared for drastic changes. Carbon-dioxide-induced loss of stratocumulus cloud decks could warm the earth by an additional 8 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. “The biggest concern is ‘exploding food,'” they write. Damage to the environment is likely to be non-linear, leading to low-potential consequences that must be considered. The article states that climate change can cause or increase blackouts, famine, plague, mass destruction, nuclear war. In short, we must expect the unexpected.

Brain Cells in a Dish Played Pong

A form of science fiction (and philosophy) is the idea that you are just a brain in a vat, connected to the real world through wires. The other is that you are just a modeled creature in the universe. Experiments reported this year in Neuron combined both tropes. A series of brain cells wired up to a computer saw a world with a variation of the video game Pong, and learned to play.

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