At the frontiers of knowledge

By SIMON COLLINS

When the United States spacecraft Spirit lands on Mars today, it will dramatically illustrate how quickly our understanding of the natural world is changing.

Spirit and its partner Opportunity, due to land on January 24, are targeted at places on Mars which were thought to be former oceans - and therefore where life may once have existed. Britain's Beagle 2 had the same destination. Scientists are still not giving up hope of hearing from the spacecraft, which descended to the Martian surface on Christmas Day but has not yet established contact.

But in August, with the three spacecraft already on their way, scientists reported that a satellite in orbit around Mars could find only tiny traces of calcium carbonates (limestone) in the rocks that were thought to have been laid down under ancient oceans.

"In oceans on Earth you get heaps of it. They are just finding it in trace amounts on Mars," said Auckland University geologist Kathy Campbell. It is possible that the three spacecraft on the ground will find evidence of water on Mars that could not be found from the orbiting satellite. But for now, the available evidence suggests that what looked like oceans may turn out to be nothing of the kind - and life on the red planet will be that much harder to find.

The example is instructive. Such sudden lurches in our understanding are typical of our era of rapid scientific advances that gradually change the way we live.

Our understanding is being revolutionised in the three broad fields of matter (physical sciences), life (biology), and the ecological systems which link life with its physical environment (environmental sciences).

Matter

The fundamental nature of matter is still an open question. Ever since Rutherford split the atom in 1910 into peripheral electrons and a central nucleus, it has been impossible to talk of atoms as the indivisible foundation of things.

Since then, the nucleus has been split into positively charged protons and neutral neutrons, and protons and neutrons in turn have been split into half a dozen smaller particles called quarks. In addition, the electron turns out to be one of another half-dozen tiny fundamental particles such as muons and neutrinos, most of which exist for only a fraction of a second in nuclear reactions.

This "standard model" seems to fit most of the facts of nature, and has been used to predict several particles later discovered by experiments. But measurements of the rotation rates of distant galaxies suggest that there is far more matter in the universe than even our strongest telescopes can see. Unknown "dark matter" and "dark energy" may make up 97 or 98 per cent of all the stuff in the universe.

Auckland University physicist David Krofcheck says there are now so many apparently "fundamental" particles that physicists are beginning to suspect that there might be a further, simpler kind of basic thing out of which all the particles are made.

There could be an as-yet-undiscovered kind of energy called the "Higgs field". The weight of a particle may be determined by how strongly it interacts with this field.

A $4.6 billion machine now being built in Switzerland aims to find the Higgs field, and possibly new fundamental particles, by firing protons from lead atoms at one another at huge speeds in a circular tunnel underneath Geneva.

"Everything starts in 2007," says Krofcheck, who is one of 2000 researchers around the world working on the experiment. "This is a long-term thing."

Life

Just three-and-a-half years after scientists established the sequence of the 32,000 genes in human beings, we know what only a small fraction of those genes actually do. But our knowledge is growing at an extraordinary pace.

Already, clinics such as Auckland's clinical genetic service can do genetic tests for stomach, ovarian, breast and bowel cancers, brain disorders such as Huntington's disease, Down syndrome, spina bifida, sudden heart disorders and many other conditions. Otago University researcher Parry Guilford says that as the genetic tests are refined, it will soon be possible to target specific drugs at specific individuals.

Auckland University doctors, for example, hope to create a drug which exactly "mirrors" a molecule that transmits messages from a gene in patients with Huntington's disease, causing their bodies to produce toxic proteins which kill their brain cells. The "mirror molecule" may be able to block the messages.

They also hope to replace dead brain cells by extracting "stem cells" from a patient's brain, multiplying them in a laboratory and then transplanting them back into the brain.

At this stage no one is actually inserting genes into the human genome, but the technology to do it is being well practised in plants and animals. AgResearch, for instance, received funding from the Government's new "pre-seed accelerator fund" last month to promote bacteria which kill insects - a technology likely to be licensed to a company that will insert the insecticide into genetically modified plants.

AgResearch also hopes to bring in a private sector investor late this year for its controversial project to insert new genes into cows to produce valuable medical drugs in their milk.

"We are particularly looking at one company to invest in the commercial outcomes from the research - to take the research and turn it into commercial pharmaceutical products. They are interested in forming a biotech company with us," says Dr Adam Barker of AgResearch's commercial arm, Celentis.

But the debate surrounding the new technology will continue. The Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) may get its first application for conditional release of a genetically modified organism this year after a three-year moratorium ended last October.

Erma's Julie Watson says the agency has decided against appointing fulltime economic and ethical experts, as signalled last year.

"Because we don't have the numbers of applications that need that sort of input, it's not feasible for us to employ someone on staff," she says. "So we are establishing groups of experts we can call on for advice when needed on an individual contract basis - people we keep up to date with our business." Some are in New Zealand and some overseas.

The new Bioethics Council is due to publish a discussion document by next month on the ethics of putting human genes into other organisms. It plans a series of 30 "dialogue meetings" on the issue around the country.

The environment

Arguably the biggest threat facing our species in the next few years, apart from the constant risk of nuclear holocaust, is a possibly catastrophic change in the climate.

Similar climatic changes have been blamed for killing off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and for the sudden collapse of civilisations such as Mesopotamia and the Mayans. Global temperatures have risen by about 0.8C in the past 150 years, a change which most scientists trace to the "greenhouse effect" of the sun's rays being trapped by rising levels of carbon dioxide and other industrial and traffic pollutants.

The last report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2001, said temperatures were likely to rise by a further 1.4C to 5.8C this century. New Zealand officials have begun consulting on preparations for the IPCC's fourth report, due in 2007.

In the meantime, the Government has given carbon credits to three planned wind farms in the Manawatu and a small hydro power scheme proposed by Hawkes Bay's CJ Pask Winery on the Esk River. A further 13 business projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have been approved in principle, with details to be negotiated in the next few months.

Agreements are also being negotiated with the forestry sector and three other companies or industries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in return for exemption from the carbon tax which is planned for 2007. One agreement has been made with NZ Refining at Marsden Point.

New Zealand taxpayers are spending $23 million a year on research into climate change, including a search for ways to reduce the methane which cows and sheep belch out when they chew their cud.

The Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FoRST) is spending $6 million over the next four years on developing renewable energy technologies such as new wind turbines at Unitec, wave power around the coastline, and energy from sewage sludge and forestry wastes.

Internationally, the biggest hope is to convert cars from petrol to hydrogen fuel cells, mixing hydrogen fuel with oxygen from the air to produce water plus energy.

The technology is already available. Australia, the US, the European Union and 13 other countries (but not New Zealand) signed an "international partnership for the hydrogen economy" in November to support moves towards adopting it. But the cost will be huge.

Shell Hydrogen says the initial investment to supply 2 per cent of Europe's cars with hydrogen by 2020 will be US$20 billion ($31 billion). To support this, it wants "a consistent regulatory and fiscal climate".

New Zealand's role

New Zealand produces less than 0.2 per cent of worldwide research and development. Important changes are due this year, both on how the limited money is spent and to link us into the other 98.8 per cent of the world's R and D.

Helen Anderson of the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology says the ministry has given Science Minister Pete Hodgson proposals to consider on his holiday to move "a notch or two" away from the current competitive system for research funding.

The ministry has been looking at a possible "capability fund" to give the nine crown research institutes enough certainty to keep scientists in the key fields where New Zealand needs its own experts.

FoRST has recommended devolving detailed allocations in some research areas to the institutes, subject to achieving target outcomes such as using the renewable energy research to provide a further 25 to 55 petajoules of renewable energy a year by 2012.

"There are a number of people thinking about this," Anderson says. "I think the minister will pull those together in the first quarter."

Ministers are also due to decide in the next three months on a policy to fund major research infrastructure, including a proposed $10 million high-speed broadband internet link between the six university cities and the rest of the world.

Auckland University engineering professor Peter Hunter, who chaired a committee on the broadband proposal last year, says the link is desperately needed.

"If you look at a map of the world that shows that sort of high-speed coverage, you can see it all around Europe, the US, into South America, even parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, Japan, China, Australia," he says.

"Then it stops. It's quite remarkable when you see one of those maps and you see New Zealand completely left out, despite the fact that we have the Southern Cross cable [between Australia and the US] running through Takapuna. "There is a lot of research that is not happening because we don't have that link, particularly connections to US and European collaborators."

In November, the ministry launched a strategy proposing incentives in research contracts for more international collaboration.

This March, in Christchurch, Hodgson will host the fourth meeting of science ministers from the 21 countries in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) group. The event will highlight New Zealand science and technology. It is a good bet that by the time the meeting opens on March 8, he will have found the money to link New Zealand into the world's broadband research network.

With luck, he may also have fine-tuned a new funding strategy that will give the research institutes and their 4000 staff more confidence to plan for the future.