Science and technology news weekly round up: April 6-10

This has been a very interesting week for science and technology enthusiasts so far. We’ve had plenty of news stories to read and analyze from Monday until today, of both the exciting and disturbing variety. Personally, I prefer both kinds, which is why I took the liberty of putting together a small round-up featuring the most interesting science and technology news stories found on our website this (work) week. Down below you will find fascinating topics such as alien life, robot spiders, woolly mammoths, 3-D printing, and of course, head transplants. Pretty good stuff if you ask me.

Definitive proof of alien life ETA: 10-20 years

Are we alone in the universe? Maybe, maybe not. There’s plenty of people on both sides of the argument, but with no concrete evidence to prove the existence of alien life just yet, it’s becoming a bit difficult for some to remain in the believer camp. Fortunately, big news came earlier this week when NASA announced that definitive proof of alien life will be found within the next decade of two. The good folks over at the agency are now confident in their means of combing the galaxy for E.T. and they also know precisely where to look according to NASA’s Ellen Stofan. I don’t know about you, but the prospect of alien life (intelligent or not) excites me greatly, so I wholeheartedly hope that NASA finds the solid evidence they’re looking for and shares it with us all.

Resurrecting the woolly mammoth – a short story

It seems like science is still attempting to bring back the woolly mammoth from the dead. Researchers are now actually trying more than ever to achieve this seemingly impossible feat and they’re getting surprisingly close to it. A new video by Motherboard takes us on a strange and wonderful journey that attempts to shed some light on how and why some of the world’s best (and most shady) geneticists are going about doing this. Although researchers at Harvard have recently announced a breakthrough that could lead to woolly mammoths walking the Earth within our lifetime, Korean scientists are using advanced cloning procedures to achieve the same feat, but much sooner. In any case, bringing back the woolly mammoth now seems like just a matter of time.

Robot spiders to construct our future space installations

Science and technology really went far and beyond the call of duty when they provided the means that allowed for the construction of the International Space Station, one of mankind’s greatest achievements to date if you ask me. We could certainly use more of these impressive installations, but the costs and manpower required are a major drawback when trying to built such massive space structures. But that’s where giant robot spiders come in. NASA have come up with a plan of having future space stations assembled by said robots with the use of 3-D printing technology. Instead of building installations on the ground and then launching them into space, this technology would allow companies to only launch the raw materials needed and then leave the robot spiders to do all the heavy lifting for them. Sounds a bit science fiction, but then again, what doesn’t these days?

NASA posts unboxing video of 3-D printed items from space

NASA have been in the news a lot lately. This week alone they promised evidence for alien life and announced spider robots in space, but those news stories were only the tip of the iceberg apparently. The agency also received a very special delivery this week, which contained the first-ever 3-D printed tools and parts created in space. The items were manufactured on the ISS and sent back home for inspection via the SpaceX Dragon shuttle. NASA is currently inspecting the items in question in an attempt to find out if zero gravity has any effect on the manufacturing process. The agency says that there are huge benefits to 3-D printing on the ISS because the astronauts on board are now able to build their own parts and tools without having to wait for the resupply mission that usually arrives every two months or so. Also, NASA made an unboxing video of the package and posted it on Youtube, so welcome to the bandwagon I guess.

Volunteer found for world’s first human head transplant procedure

Last year a certain Italian surgeon named Sergio Canavero promised that he will perform the world’s first successful human head transplant medical procedure during the summer of 2015. As unlikely as it sounds, earlier this week the good surgeon managed to find a volunteer willing to undergo the disturbing procedure. The volunteer is 30-year old Valery Spiridonov from Russia who suffers from Werdnig-Hoffman disorder, a rare genetic disease that results in sever muscle atrophy, the kind that leaves the sufferer confined to a wheelchair and leads to untimely death. In other words, the procedure might very well be the patient’s only chance of survival. Despite all of this, the medical community has greatly criticized Canavero for attempting to perform a head transplant on a human, with words like “outlandish” and “crazy” being used to describe the procedure. Has science gone too far? Guess we’ll find out in just a matter of months.