Science This Week | 2022 Nobel Prize, evidence of liquid water on Mars and more

Here are this week’s latest findings and updates in the world of science.

This week has been full of new discoveries and interesting research in the world of science. With the declaration of the winners for the 2022 Nobel Prizes in physical and life sciences, novel research and scientific endeavours have come to the forefront. Here is a look at some of the latest science news.

On October 3, Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo has won the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physiology “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominids and human evolution.” 

Dr Pääbo, through his research, has been able to successfully sequence the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans. He also established a new scientific discipline called paleogenomics.

Physicists Alain Aspect, John F Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have been jointly awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on quantum mechanics. 

Their research included “experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities, and pioneering quantum information science.” Intense research and development are underway to utilise the special properties of individual particle systems to construct quantum computers, improve measurements, build quantum networks and establish secure quantum encrypted communication.

Another trio, Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless, cinched the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for “an ingenious tool for building molecules.” 

The laureates were awarded for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry. Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University has taken click chemistry to a new dimension and started utilising it in living organisms. Her bioorthogonal reactions take place without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell.