Merry Christmas!

Today is Christmas Eve. That is the day, when most children in Western countries are waiting for Father Christmas or Santa Claus - and many of them even think of him as a Finn.

I am also waiting for Santa Claus, even though I am not a child anymore. Or well, it is sometimes said that a person turns into a child again when he has lived enough. So why not me?

This year, I am expecting Santa Claus with a very special reason, because I will be in a company including both younger and older children. And that is why it will be interesting to follow their reactions when Santa steps in. And to notice once again that the older ones do not reveal the harsh truth about the old man with a huge white beard and red clothing to their younger siblings.

I find it difficult to understand how older brothers or sisters are almost always ready to join the adults and keep the secret on Santa Claus from their younger ones, even though they must burn from willingness to shed light on the matter.

Obviously the explanation is that they are even more interested in joining the group fooling the smallest in the family in a nice way.

With these words, I wish you - my dear readers - a Merry and Clandestine Christmas season!

Previous thoughts on the same topic (in Finnish, but readable in English by Google translation):
Enjoy Christmas!
Christmas memory
Christmas fairytale

Human curiosity altered an orbit of an asteroid

I am sure that all of my readers are aware of the cause of the end of the dinosaur era. It was caused 66 million years ago by a massive asteroid 10 to 15 km wide, which devastated the global environment, mainly through a lingering impact winter which halted photosynthesis in plants and plankton.

If a similar asteroid would land on earth, it would mean the end of human civilization, if not even the presence of humans on the planet. Therefore it has been considered as one of the most frightening threats to our future.

Two weeks ago NASA succeeded in altering an orbit of an asteroid using a spacecraft. The achievement showed that  humans could redirect future celestial threats to our planet, and allows us to forget about the threat caused by uninvited asteroids.

The physics and technology allowing the NASA achievement should also be considered as evidence on the importance of curiosity driven science. Without our will to find and learn about the true nature of stars, space and planets, we would have never heard about the possibility to alter orbits of asteroids. 

And actually, we would not even know that asteroids existed - nor that one of those would have been responsible on the disappearance of dinosaurs. And well, without human curiosity we would not even know that dinosaurs lived more than 60 million years ago. 

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Scientific community discriminates its youngsters
Should forbidden questions be answered or not?
Vikings and the technological cutting edge

World oceans are filled with previously unknown viruses

COVID-19 pandemic has been ongoing for ca. 1,5 years now. It started when a new RNA virus SARS-CoV-2 learned to reproduce in humans, and to efficiently transmit between different people. Furthermore, the pandemic has had several waves due to rapid evolution of the virus from the original form to ever increasing variants with more and more efficient transmission between people.

The pandemic underlined the dangers of new viruses. The human immune systems are not prepared for their attacks and neither has evolution prepared our genes to resist their effects. As a result, such a virus may be life threatening and kill millions and millions of people.

Therefore it was interesting to read about new research showing, that oceans of the world are full of unknown RNA viruses. And not only new versions of the kinds of virus types previously known, but completely unknown virus groups rooting in the earliest history of the life itself.

These new viruses are not causing diseases of humans, but mostly multiply in lower eukaryotes, bacteria and archaea. In doing that, these viruses affect evolution of their host organisms, affect marine community dynamics, speed up the cycles of matter in the biosphere and evolve themselves.

It remains to be seen, how the research described above affects practical human life. It is, however, clear that this piece of curiously driven science affects considerably the worldview of virologists and microbiologists and adds to their creativity towards new research projects. 

History has shown that such a cumulative increase of understanding is the basic value of the scientific inquiry. Any piece of new knowledge may ultimately lead to useful practical applications. And that has raised the western part of the world developmentally above rest of the human cultures.  

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Soil subsides under cities, but every cloud has a silver lining
American black population more vulnerable to the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2