Science news of 2015 by Mack

There were many discoveries in science in 2015. These three I feel are some of the most important. First we have Quantum spookiness is real, second is "Speed Cells" help make navigation possible, and the third is New dates, place proposed for dogs beginnings.
Quantum Spookiness Is Real:
       Some loopholes don't mess with a test for assessing how weird Quantum mechanics are. Quantum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that uses math equations that describe the motion and interaction of atom sized particles. In 2015 there were experiments that showed that the quantum world is messing with locality, which is that events that happen separated in spacetime are independent. The experiments perform a test showed by John Bell in 1964 to assess locality by showing the quantum equivalent of flipping two coins over and over at the same time. If locality works in the microscopic world, then watching one coin land on heads shows no insight into the landing side of the other coin.
      There isn't a limit to how many times one coin's face corresponds with the other one. But Bell showed that if the coins were entangled, (See Figure 1) if they had a mysterious non-regional connection that Einstein referred to to as "a spooky action from a distance" then the limit would hold no longer. Instead of observing the coins, John Bell's tests investigates correspondences between measurements of properties such as particles' spins. Some European scientists performed an experiment with electrons on separate sides of a college/university campus which is about 1.3 kilometers long. The trials lasted 2 weeks and 4 days, the team enticed the electrons into an entangled state 245 times, measuring the electrons' spins every time. The end results showed a very clear non-regional connection.

Figure 1:  These coins are not entangled  because their electrons have not been enticed.

"Speed Cells" help make navigation possible.: 
    Inside brains there is a cellular speedometers clocks a rat's swiftness. these "speed cells" were the missing puzzle piece in scientists understanding of how the brain makes and keeps track of a inner map of the world. Two scientists from Norwegian University of Science and Technology know a lot about these maps. They shared a Nobel Prize for finding special mental navigators called grid cells that help position an animal in space. It also requires the information of how fast the animal is moving. (See Figure 2)
    In the study, a certain amount of nerve cells fired off signals at rates close to the pace of a moving rat, from a slow walk to a run. Those cells are found with grid cells in a area of the brain that is important for navigation.

Figure 2: This mouse is using his "speed cells" to run and find his way around with the internal map in his brain..

New dates, place proposed for dogs' beginnings:

     Man's best friends aka dogs are probably older than we thought. In May, a genetic analysis of an ancient wolf's rib bone shows that dogs and wolves split around 27,000 and 40,000 years ago. This evidence shows us the possibility that dogs separating from wolves are quite ancient. It looks as though it was around the Neanderthal extinction. The early dogs may have not been tame or living with humans at this point, (See Figure 3) says Pontus Skoglund, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who led the study.
     The dogs earliest domestication was most likely around present-day Nepal and Mongolia, Laura Shannon from Cornell University and her colleagues wrote in a study that showed an analysis of 185,805 genetic markers revealed that modern day dogs from Central Asia are more diverse than dogs everywhere else.

Figure 3: Dogs start off as wolves and branch out after becoming tame.

    I think that these points are true and that they are very important
science break through's in 2015. I am amazed that I have a physiological map in my head, quarters can be "entangled" and land on the same side from far away, and that dogs were separated from wolves thousands of years ago.  In 2016 I hope that we have just as many or more break through's this year.