Scientific discoveries of the decade. Chapter 4

Are you all keeping up?

Colin Pillinger Professor of planetary science at the Open University is excited about the discovery of ice on the moon, and the prospect of an astronaut base there. Yes, boys and girls, another corner of the universe that mankind can go and befoul. I don’t rate the ice’s chances of survival. If we (the species, you fool – my readers and I will be lucky to get past Thursday) survive the next century then the news will be full of the threat of lunar warming.

Charlie Burton, who is only a journalist and not an academic, but he probably tries hard, champions the cause of wireless power transfer. He says “meaning that inconvenient clutter, such as mobile-phone chargers, will soon be a thing of the past”. Oh goody. This means that the owners of cellular telephones will never have to go home, and can entertain us all with their conversations – 24/7 as annoying people like that say.

Roger Highfield is another journalist, and I can barely follow the reasons for his being excited. The clue may be in the surname, but perhaps I am being uncharacteristically cynical. He thinks that the discovery of “Homo floresiensis” is important. This refers to a bunch of remains of creatures now extinct who lived 18,000 years ago. Dave is nearly that old, and still with us, but does he get that kind of recognition? Most unfair.

Vicus Scurra, head of applied obfuscation at North East Hampshire Faculty of Physics Deniers heralded the discovery that you don’t have to review the rest of the contributions in this particular offering from the Torygraph. Apparently, it gets even more boring and is filled with similar piffle.