Jesus Christ in Islam

By Yahya Ibrahim - Lecture delivered Perth, Australia

All Praise is for Allah alone. He is the Rabb^[1] of all that exists. Surely, we send the highest Salah and Salam^[2] upon the Final Prophet, the leader of the pious and upon his family, companions and those who follow their example with Ih’san^[3] till the Day of Reckoning.

Amma Ba‘du^[4]:

Primer

Before we begin, I will give you a primer on some of the Arabic words that I will use in my lecture today:

Allah: Literally means "the God", "the One who is deserving of worship".
Qur’an: The final scripture according to Muslim tradition; the final Word of God.
Sala Allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam: You may hear me use this phrase after mentioning the names of the prophets. It means "may the peace and blessings of God be upon him".

Introduction 

Today’s lecture is intended as an educational discussion. But it will also be useful for us to learn about each others’ beliefs, because the scholars – past and present – have said, "The root cause of hatred is ignorance".

Jesus is known to the Muslims as ‘Issa – this is the name for Jesus that we have been given in our scriptures.

To Muslims, Jesus – or ‘Issa – is a saviour, a reformist, the Messiah (the anointed one), the "Word of God". He was elevated to heaven. He could cure the ill, raise the dead, fashion inanimate objects and blow life into them, all by the Will of God.

We believe that the one who disbelieves in Jesus is not a Muslim, because the person who disbelieves in one the prophets disbelieves in all of them. So Muslims believe in Jesus and in his message. His message was one with all the other messengers. In the Qur’an, it is said that God never sent a messenger to mankind except that he was sent with one warning: Worship Allah alone.

Muhammad (sala allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam) said:

"I am the most worthy of ‘Issa bin Marium in this life and in the hereafter." They (Sahaba) asked: "Why is that O Messenger of Allah (sala allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam)?"

He (sala allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam) replied: "The Prophets are paternal (bloodline) brethren (from fathers side). Their mothers may be different (races, peoples, bloodlines) yet their Deen is always one (Islam)." Reported by Bukhari and Muslim.

Therefore this necessitates that he who disputes the validity of one of the true Prophets and Messengers has in fact reviled and disputed all of them. One cannot believe in Muhammad (sala allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam) and not believe in ‘Issa (Alihi as-Salaam). Equally, one cannot truly believe in ‘Issa and not believe in Muhammad (sala allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam). To truly accept one Prophet or Messenger necessitates the acceptance of all those who came before him and all who will come after him, ending with Muhammad (sala allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam).

My lecture today will cover four main points:

1. Who was Mary – because before looking at Jesus in Islam, we must first recognise the status of Mary in Islam.
2. The immaculate conception.
3. The special traits sent to Jesus by Allah as a way of proving to all humanity of the truth of the essential divine
message.
4. The Muslim perspective on the crucifixion, and what came after. 

1. Maryam (Mary) the daughter of ’Imran 

Of the most poignant and telling mother-son relationships in the Quran is that of ‘Issa bin Marium (Alihi as-Salaam). For the first and last time in history a Prophet would not be addressed by his father’s name. Rather, he is referred to as Jesus the son of Mary.

To assess and grasp the true virtue of ‘Issa (Alihi as-Salaam) it is necessary to learn about his mother Marium ibnata ‘Imran (Alihi as-Salaam).

Mary’s mother grew to be of an old age, and became barren. She prayed to God for one final child, whom she would dedicate in God’s service. When she conceived in old age, she said as records to us in the Quran says:

"Allah chose Adam, Nuh (Noah), and the family of Ibrahim and the family of ‘Imran above the ‘Alameen (all creation during their respective times). Offspring, one of the other and Allah is the All-Hearer, All-Knowing.

(Remember) when the wife of ‘Imran said: ‘O my Lord! I have vowed to You what (the child that) is in my womb to be dedicated for your services (free from all worldly work and obligations; solely for your worship) so accept this from me. Verily you are the All-Hearer (You hear my Du‘a) and the All-Knowing (and you know my sincere intention in fulfilling this vow).’

Then when she gave birth to her (Marium), she said ‘O my Lord! I have given birth to a female child.’ – And Allah knew better what she brought forth (He is the Creator), - ‘And the male is not like the female, and I have named her Marium (literally = pure maidservant of Allah), and I seek refuge with You (Allah) for her and her offspring from the Shaytan (Satan), the outcast.’

So her Lord (Allah) accepted her with goodly acceptance. He made her grow in a good manner and put her under the care of Zakariyya (Prophet Zachary)." Ali-‘Imran 3:33-37

When Mary’s mother gave birth to Mary, she was saddened that the child was a girl. This was because, in Jewish tradition, there are very few religious acts of devotion that could be performed by a female. Of 514 daily acts of devotion, only 4 required of a Jewish woman.

She named her child Maryam, which means "the pure one", or "the one who is purified". Allah accepted the young female child into His service, and chose Zakariyyah – or Zacchariah – to be her caregiver. Zakariyyah was one of the prophets of Islam. He was chosen out of all of the scribes of his time, who were gathered together and instructed to throw their pens into a stream. They were told that whoever’s pen flowed against the current would be the child’s guardian. Zakariyyah’s pen was the one that flowed against the current.

Of Maryam, the Prophet Muhammad (sala Allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam) said: "Of men, many have attained completion with their Lord. But of women, there were four – Marium the daughter of ‘Imraan, Asiyah the wife of Pharoah, Khadeejah bint Khuwaylid and Fatimah the daughter of Muhammad." (Agreed Upon)

The Prophet Muhammad (sala Allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam) also said of Maryam, that when every child is born, the devil pricks the child at the time of its birth, and the child cries out, except for Maryam and her son.

Rasool ul Allah (sala Allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam) mentions: "No new born escapes the prick (touch) of the Shaytan at the time of their birth. (The touch is what) causes them to begin to scream. Only Marium and her son (escaped being molested by the Shaytan)." Reported through authentic narrations in the Musnad of al-Imam Ahmed and the Sahih of al-Imam Muslim.

Allah said in the Qur’an:

"And (remember) when the angels said: "O Maryam! Verily, Allah has chosen you, purified you (from polytheism and disbelief), and chosen you above the women of the ’?lam?n (mankind and jinn)." Qur’an – Surat ?l-Imr?n 3: 41
Thus, Maryam was chosen above all of humanity to bear ‘Issa.
Chapter 19 of the Qur’an is titled "Maryam", and is dedicated to her story and the immaculate conception.

2. Immaculate conception 

In the Qur’an, Muhammad is told to recite the story of Maryam:

"And mention in the Book (the Qur’an, O Muhammad, the story of) Maryam, when she withdrew in seclusion from her family to a place facing east. She placed a screen (to screen herself) from them; then We sent to her Our Ruh (the angel Gabriel), and he appeared before her in the form of a man in all respects. She said: ‘Verily, I seek refuge with the Most Gracious (Allah) from you, if you do fear Allah.’ (The angel) said: ‘I am only a messenger from your Lord, (to announce) to you the gift of a righteous son.’ She said: ‘How can I have a son, when no man hath touched me, nor am I unchaste?’ He said: ‘So (it will be), your Lord said "That is easy for Me (Allah): And (We wish) to appoint him as a sign to mankind and a mercy from Us (Allah), and it is a matter (already) decreed (by Allah)." ‘ " Qur’an – Surat Maryam 19: 16-21

Jesus was named the "Word of God", because Allah said "Be" and he was. Allah sets forth a parable between Jesus and Adam: Adam was taken from the earth, not born from the womb of a woman. Allah says:

"Verily the likeness of ‘Issa (Jesus) before Allah is the likeness of Adam. He created him from dust, then (He) said to him: ‘Be’ – and he was." Qur’an – Surat ?l-Imr?n 3: 59

Jesus did not have a father. But this does not mean that Jesus is divine and worthy of worship, because Adam’s existence was more miraculous than that of Jesus.

Allah also says in the Qur’an that Jesus and his mother would become tired, and would need sustenance. Therefore, they could not be divine.

The story of the Immaculate Conception is continued in the Qur’an:

"So she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a far place. And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a date palm. She said: ‘Would that I had died before this, and had been forgotten and out of sight!’ Then [the baby ‘Issa] cried unto her from below her, saying: ‘Grieve not: your Lord has provided a water stream under you.’ " Qur’an – Surat Maryam 19: 22-24
Jesus spoke to Maryam as a miracle from God, to tell her that she should not be fearful and she should not be in sorrow. Maryam was instructed that when she returned to her family, she was not to answer any of their questions. So when they confronted her, she pointed to the child. They said, "How can we ask this child in the cradle?" Then the baby Jesus spoke, and said:
" ‘Verily I am a slave of Allah, He has given me the Scripture and made me a Prophet; and He has made me blessed wheresoever I be, and has enjoined on me Salaat (prayer) and Zakaat (alms-giving or charity), as long as I live. And to be dutiful to my mother, and made me not arrogant, unblest. And peace be upon me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive!’ Such is ‘Issa, son of Maryam. (It is) a statement of truth, about which they doubt." Qur’an – Surat Maryam 19: 30-34
That is the story of the immaculate conception as it is related to us in the Qur’an.

3. Special attributes of Jesus 

The immaculate conception was one of the many miracles that Allah gave to Jesus.

In Islamic sources, Jesus began as a shepherd, as were all of the prophets of God before they received their Message. Jesus knew the Torah, and could read and write from the time of infancy.

Jesus grew up knowing his cousin Yahya (John the Baptist). Both of them would together call to the worship of God.

Jesus never once said: "Worship me" – this was not befitting for any of the Messengers of God.

Jesus lived a full life, but he was fought against and hated and reviled by different enemies, including the evil rabbis of the time, who wished for power and status.

The scholars state that every Prophet and Messenger was sent with the type of evidence, signs, and proofs that their respective nations would respond to. During the time of Musa (Alihi as-Salaam), magic and illusions were widespread and falsely attributed to false deities. So Allah sent Musa with what would eclipse Pharaoh’s magicians. During the time of ‘Issa (Alihi as-Salaam) curing the ill was seen as a divine power. Allah therefore sent ‘Issa and granted him unique abilities.

Allah will remind ‘Issa of these abilities on the Day of Judgment as Allah describes them to us in Suratil Ma’idah (5:110-115):

"(Remember) when Allah will say (on the Day of Resurrection), ‘O ‘Issa son of Marium! Remember My Favour to you and to your mother when I supported you with Ruh ul-Qudus (Jibreel) so that you spoke to the people in the (from the) cradle (at a young age) and (while) in maturity. Jibreel aided you in ordering the people to work good deeds and to submit themselves to Allah while staying away from evil deeds throughout the whole of your time with them (people).

And when I taught you writing, al-Hikmah (the power of reasoning, logic, understanding. Putting everything in its proper place at the proper time for the proper reason), and the Torah and the Injeel (Gospel). Allah granted ‘Issa all of these intellectual capabilities from his inception as some of the people of Tafseer have stated. We do not establish this claim as truth, nor do we deny it as falsehood.

And when you made out of clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, by My Permission, and you breathed into it, and it became a bird by My Permission.

And you healed those who were born blind (not just those who happened to have lost their sight), the lepers by My Permission.

And when you brought forth the dead by My Permission.

And when I restrained the Children of Israel from you (when they resolved to kill you) since you came unto them with clear proofs, and the disbelievers among them said, ‘This is nothing but evident magic.’ This was the greatest miracle granted by Allah to ‘Issa. We will shortly begin discussing the intricacies of how ‘Issa was saved from the Jews and the Romans. This ayah also shows that those who sought the death of ‘Issa were the Jews and not the Romans per-say. The ayah also shows that there were Jews who believed (Hawarieen or Disciples) and those who disbelieved.

And when I (Allah) put in the hearts of al-Hawarieen (the Disciples of ‘Issa) to believe in Me and My Messenger (you O ‘Issa), they said: ‘We believe. And bear witness that we are Muslims.’ This ayah shows clearly that Allah places guidance in the hearts of individuals. There were many that rejected the truth although they also witnessed the aforementioned miraculous occurrences. Guidance is solely from Allah, as is the misguidance of those whom were destined to reject the truth and Light of Tawheed.

(Remember) when the disciples said: ‘O ‘Issa, son of Marium! Is your Lord able to send down to us a table spread (with food) from heaven?’ ‘Issa said, ‘Fear Allah, if you are indeed believers!’ Although they have seen clay birds being brought to life, the blind and lepers alleviated of their illness, the raising of the dead and many other miracles, they still say, "Is your Lord able!" The syntax of their question implies that if your Lord does not furnish us this table spread then He is UNABLE, not unwilling!

They said, ‘We wish to eat thereof and to be stronger in Faith, and to know that you have indeed told us the truth and that we ourselves be its witnesses.’

Once again the weakness of their faith is apparent. The syntax in their statement indirectly implies that if you have told us the truth and you really are a Prophet and a Messenger then your Lord will bring down the table spread that we request. Otherwise you have not spoken the truth. They admit that their faith is weak. ‘Issa (Alihi as-Salaam) therefore invokes Allah for the table spread.

‘Issa, son of Marium, said, ‘O Allah, Our Lord! Send us from Heaven a table spread (with food) that there may be for us – for the first and the last of us – a festival and a sign from You; and provide us Sustenance, for You are the Best to Sustain.’ The request although seemingly simple enough in comparison with the other miracles performed by ‘Issa is of a different nature. The request of the Disciples is a challenge to Allah. Sufyan ath-Thawri (radiya Allahu ‘Anhu) states: A day of festivity means a day that we can mark with your worship.

Salman al-Farisi (radiya Allahu ‘Anhu) said: A day for us to mark by remembering you.

Allah said, ‘I am going to send it down unto you, but if any of you after that disbelieves, then I will punish him a torment such as I have not inflicted on anyone among (all) the ‘Alamin (all that exist, mankind and Jinn).’

‘Abullah bin ‘Amr bin al ‘Aws (radiya Allahu ‘Anhu) states: "The three most punished peoples on the Day of Ressurrection shall be: The Hypocrites (at time of Rasool ul Allah), those who disbelieved after the Table spread was brought down, and Pharaoh and his legions.

Ma’idah (5:110-115)


4. The Muslim perspective on the crucifixion 

Jesus was saved by God for the end of times. Allah said in the Qur’an:

"And because of their (the Jews) disbelief and uttering against Marium a grave false charge (that she has committed illegal sexual intercourse);

And because of their (the Jews) saying (in boast), ‘We killed the Messiah ‘Issa, son of Marium, the Messenger of Allah (they say this in mockery),’ – but they killed him not, nor crucify him, but the resemblance of a ‘Issa was put over another man (and they killed that man). And (surely) those who differ therein are full of doubts (amongst themselves). They have no (certain) knowledge, they follow nothing but conjecture (speculation). For surely they killed him not.

But Allah raised him (Rafa‘ahu) up (‘Issa’s body and soul together) unto Himself. And Allah is Ever All-Powerful, All-Wise." Qur’an – Surat An-Nis?’ 4: 157

The Jews and the Romans proclaimed in joy: "We have killed the Messiah!" But they did not kill him or crucify him; but he was saved by God and raised to heaven.

Allah says in Surati Ali-‘Imran (3:54-58):

"And they (the disbelievers from the Jews and Romans) plotted (to kill ‘Issa), and Allah Planned too. And Allah is the Best of Planners.

And (remember) when Allah said: ‘O ‘Issa! I will take you (Mutawaafeek) and raise you to Myself and clear you (of the forged statements) of those who disbelieve, and I will make those who follow you (Monotheists) superior to those who disbelieve (in the Oneness of Allah) till the day of Resurrection. Then you will return to Me and I will Judge between you in the matters in which you used to dispute.’"

We Muslims believe that one day the Antichrist will come, and then Jesus will descend from the heavens and slay him, and will live among the Muslims and rule them. During those times the earth shall be filled with justice and blessing.

Mohammad (sala Allahu ‘alihi was-Salaam) said:

"The earth would be told to bring forth its fruit and restore its blessing and, as a result thereof, there would grow (such a big) pomegranate that a group of persons would be able to eat that, and seek shelter under its skin.

A cow would give so much milk that a whole party would be able to drink it. And the camel would give such (a large quantity of) milk that the whole tribe would be able to drink out of that.

And the sheep would give so much milks that the whole family would be able to drink out of that.

At that time, Allah would send a pleasant wind, which would soothe (people), even under their armpits, and would take the life of every Muslim and only the wicked would survive who would commit adultery like asses and the Last Hour would come to them." Reported by Imam Muslim."

Muhammed (sala Allahu ‘Alihi was-Salaam):

"How glorious will be the time when Jesus lives among you, and you will plant a seed on a barren rock and it will sprout; there will be no drought; vegetation will cover the earth, and a man will be able to sit next to a lion and feel no harm." Authentic – reported by Ad-Dailamee.

Jesus will come again, and will marry and have children, and live for 40 years among us. And soon after he dies, the Day of Judgment will come.

Conclusion: 

This is the empirical belief of the Muslims as regards Jesus.

Allah (subhanhu wa Ta‘aala) said:

"And they say: ‘The Most Gracious (Allah) has begotten a son (or offspring or children).’ Indeed you have brought forth (said) a most terrible, evil thing. Whereby the heavens are almost torn, and the earth is split asunder, and the mountains fall in ruins, that they ascribe a son (or offspring) to the Most Gracious!

But it is not befitting (the Majesty) of the Most Gracious (Allah) that He should beget a son (or offspring).

There is none in the heavens and the earth but comes unto the Most Gracious as a slave." Marium (19:88-93)

Allah (Subhanhu wa Ta‘aala) says:

"No son (or offspring or children) did Allah beget, nor is there any god along with Him. (If there had been other gods or rivals or sons), behold, each god would have taken away what he had created, and some (gods) would have tried to overcome other (gods)! Glorified is Allah above all that they attribute to Him!" Al-Mu’minoon 23:91

There are more similarities than differences between Muslims and Christians. In Islamic law, we have special rules for "the People of the Scripture", who are similar to us except for some minor differences in major areas of dogma.

We conclude by saying:

"O people of the Book (Jews and Christians): Come to a word that is just between us and you, that we worship none by Allah (alone), and that we associate no partners with Him, and that none of us shall take others as lords besides Allah." Qur’an – Surat Al-Imran 3: 6

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

New biodegradable, cellulose food packaging cuts down waste

A Swedish design duo are developing a biodegradable, cellulose food wrapper that cooks your food, morphs into a bowl, and can be dissolved in water or tossed on the compost heap when you're done.

Image: Tomorrow Machine

Think about how much food packaging you throw out every day. That plastic sushi wrapper. The container your yoghurt came in. The plastic bag that held your grapes in one place, and the sachet that contained the sugar that you just poured into your coffee. We take for granted how much packaging our food is wrapped up in, and it’s having an enormous effect on our environment.

So Swedish designers Hannah Billqvist and Anna Glansén from a group called Tomorrow Machine are creating a product called the 'Sustainable Expanding Bowl'. This biodegradable, cellulose wrapper can be used to contain all kinds of freeze-dried food. All you need to do is pour some hot water through the wrapper’s ‘spout’, and it will cook the food inside, and cause the wrapper to soften and expand out into a bowl shape. Once you’re done with it, the packaging will wither, allowing you to dissolve it in water or throw it on the compost heap.

Tomorrow Machine has come up with three products for their prototype design - Basmati rice, olive oil, and a raspberry smoothie. “The good thing about plastic is that it does not react with other materials very easily,” Glansén told Margaret Rhodes at Wired. “But that is also the bad thing about plastic, because it means that it makes the natural decomposition process difficult.”

So Tomorrow Machine has come up with a solution for their packaging - it has the same shelf-life as the food it contains. Rhodes explains:

"The trick to making that possible lies in finding material combinations that don’t react to each other. The olive oil, for example, comes in a wax-coated caramelized sugar container. But that couldn’t work with the smoothie, because water breaks down sugar. But the smoothie or fresh fruit juice could come in an agar seaweed gel container. Once it’s un-refrigerated, 'the package will wither at the same speed as its contents’.”

The packaging is expected to be on supermarket shelves in five years or so, but in the meantime, the design pair will be releasing another product called a Microgarden. This miniature paper greenhouse uses agar seaweed, says Wired, which helps people to grow micro-greens and herbs for use at home. 

This new radio is the size of an ant, and powers itself

Engineers in the US have invented a new ant-sized radio that's so energy efficient, it gathers all the power it needs from harvesting radio waves.

Image: Amin Arbabian

If, like us, you’re wading through a sea of wires and cables and battery packs, this new invention should make you very happy. Researchers at the University of Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley in the US have invented a radio the size of an ant. And the best part? It doesn’t need an external power source to function.

These minuscule silicon chips are powered through the harvesting of radio signals, and have been designed not for your smartphone or tablet, but for a brand new wave of electronics that will bring the capability of the Internet into everyday objects at home. So think smart lightbulbs, smart coffee makers and smart fridges, all communicating wirelessly with each other to make decisions to suit you, with minimal human intervention to get them working.

The key to making these chips so small, says Dalmeet Singh Chawla at Science, is scaling down every component. “The antenna, for example, is one-tenth the size of a Wi-Fi antenna - and yet, it runs at a fast speed of 24 billion cycles per second,” he says.

“The advantage of moving to this kind of architecture is that we can have the scalability that we want, we can scale the number of radios to thousands in a very dense environment,” says Amin Arbabian, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, in the video below. "Because there’s no battery connected, there’s essentially no lifetime associated with these devices, as long as the signal’s coming in, they can recover the power, communicate and communicate back, and the cost is extremely low, because we’re talking about a few millimetres of silicon chip, which is a few cents to manufacture on a large scale."

We can’t wait to move into our new smart homes.

Is Earth at risk from more unexpected asteroid fly-bys?

Last night an asteroid skimmed the Earth at a distance of around 40,000 km with only a few days warning.

Image: NASA

Asteroid 2014RC was only detected on August 31, just a few days before it whizzed past us, getting uncomfortably close to many of the satellites we rely on for telecommunications. So are we at risk from other asteroids of a similar size?

As astronomer Alan Duffy from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourneexplained on Australia’s ABC News Breakfast this morning, it’s likely we’ll see more of these asteroids appear “out of nowhere”. 

Asteroid 2014RC is around the size of a school bus, with an initially estimated width of 20 metres and weight of 8,300 tonnes. Updated measurements from NASA on 9 September puts the width at 12 metres and 1,800 tonnes. This is a similar speed and slightly smaller size to the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia last year, releasing around 20 to 40 times more energy than the Hiroshima atom bomb blast and injuring 1,000 people.

If something roughly this size hit the Earth all in one spot, it could potentially destroy a city, says Duffy. But it would take something significantly larger, around 1 kilometre in width, to cause mass devastation of the type that wiped out the dinosaurs. Perhaps what is most worrying is that it’s very likely we wouldn’t know about it until a few days before.

“While NASA believes it has found over 90 percent of the dinosaur-killing sized asteroids of 1 kilometre and larger, these smaller 'city'-killers are far harder to find and we've seen only a few thousand of the expected 1 million objects that pass the Earth. On average we find a new asteroid each month, so there's a long way to go,” Duffy told ScienceAlert over email. The reason these asteroids are so hard to spot is because they’re often coal black, so they reflect very little light and are billions of times fainter than the Moon.

But that doesn’t mean we need to panic about them hitting us all the time. Duffy cites a 2006 article published in Meteoritics by fireball experts Philip Bland and Natalya Artemieva, which calculates the risk of something like asteroid 2014RC hitting Earth's surface once every 20 to 30 years.

“As Chelyabinsk was hit by just such an object last year I wouldn't expect something that big again until the 2030s,” said Duffy.

Larger impacts are far rarer. Asteroids that are at least 200 metres across, which could cause explosions on land and devastating tsunamis, predicted to hit us once every 100,000 years on average, and dinosaur killing kilometre-sized objects occurring only once ever hundreds of millions of years.

And with asteroids that size, it’s very likely we’d see them coming long before they arrived. Which is good news, because the only chance we have of avoiding impact requires at least a decade of lead time, Duffy explained. Our best bet in this scenario is simply to park a spacecraft beside an asteroid and let gravity take over, he adds.

“The asteroid will pull the satellite towards it, but so too by a tiny amount, will the satellite pull the asteroid towards it,” said Duffy. “Slowly over time the asteroid will move off course and sail by the Earth just like 2014RC did this morning.” 

If nothing else, last night’s near miss was yet another reason that we need to invest in the monitoring of asteroids and the telescopes and spacecraft that detect them. 

Watch the full ABC interview here.

**UPDATE 9 September 2014: The article originally stated the asteroid was 70,000 tonnes in mass due to calculations being based on a radius of 20 metres, rather than a width of 20 metres. NASA has now updated its measurements of the asteroid and so the new estimated mass is 1,800 tonnes, and the new width is 12 metres. This makes the asteroid school-bus-sized rather than house-sized.**

Robot captures first images of Great Pyramid's secret chamber

An autonomous robot has transmitted the first images from inside a tiny chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt - something that has not been seen by anyone in 4,500 years.

Image: Djedi Team

Thought to be a gigantic tomb built for the the pharaoh Khufu over a 10 to 20-year period that ended somewhere around 2560 BC, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is the single remaining vestige of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. When it was first built it was 146.5 metres high, before crumbling to 138.8 metres tall, where it stands now. 

There are three known chambers in the Great Pyramid - the base chamber sits on the bedrock and supports the rest of the pyramid, while the upper two chambers are called the Queen’s and King’s Chambers. Extending from the north and south walls of the Queen’s Chamber are two tunnels - about 20 cm by 20 cm - that are blocked off by stone doors. No one knows what these tunnels were originally intended to do, but one theory is that they led to a secret chamber.

According to Rowan Hooper at New Scientist, researchers have tried several times to send little robots into the Great Pyramid to solve this mystery. In 1993, a robot made it 63 m up the south wall tunnel to find a small pair of stone doors set with metal pins. This was strange enough on its own, because metal was not found in any other part of the Great Pyramid, so what function was it performing here? Door handles, perhaps? Or a key?

Almost a decade after that, another robot drilled into a stone block in the tunnel and found a small, strange empty chamber that ended with a large stone block. 

This year, a team of engineers led by Rob Richardson from the University of Leeds in the UK decided to further investigate this mystery, and developed a new robot to help them explore the chamber. They got it to crawl up into the tunnel, and use its flexible “micro snake” camera to see into and around all the nooks, crannies and corners. What this robot found was 4,500-year-old hieroglyphs written in red paint, and carvings in the stone that could have been made by the stone masons at the time the chamber was being built.

"If these hieroglyphs could be deciphered they could help Egyptologists work out why these mysterious shafts were built,” Richardson told Hooper at New Scientist.

"Red-painted numbers and graffiti are very common around Giza,” added Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian from Harvard University and director of the Giza Archives at the Museum of Fine Arts in the US. "They are often masons' or work-gangs' marks, denoting numbers, dates or even the names of the gangs."

The robot was also able to get its stretchy camera in and around the mysterious empty chamber to get a look at the back of the stone door for the first time. This allowed it to film parts of the metal pins that had never been seen before, and their beautifully looped tips suggest that rather than being functional, they were probably just ornamental features.

Egyptologist Kate Spence from the University of Cambridge in the UK, who was not involved in the study, says it’s almost certain that these tunnels were made to be symbolic rather than functional. "The metal pins look like symbolic door handles, and the shafts from the Queen's Chamber are oriented north-south, not east-west, so I strongly suspect that their function is symbolic and relates to the stars, not the sun," she told New Scientist.

Teenager from India invents device that can convert breath to speech

A high school student from India has invented a device that can convert a person’s breath into speech, to give millions of people around the world suffering from speech impediment a 'voice' for the first time.

Image: Arsh Shah Dilbagi

Sixteen-year-old Arsh Shah Dilbagi has developed a new technology called ‘TALK’, which is a cheap and portable device to help people who are physically incapable of speaking express themselves. Right now, 1.4 percent of the world’s population has very limited or no speech, due to conditions such as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), locked-in syndrome (LIS), Encephalopathy (SEM), Parkinson’s disease, and paralysis. So that's literally a group of people that could match the entire population of Germany, and all of them unable to speak.

Stephen Hawking has a device to help him communicate, but it's extremely expensive, costing several thousand dollars, and is also quite bulky. What Dilbagi has managed to do is invent a device that achieves the same thing, but can be purchased for just $80.

The way TALK works is that it’s able to translate the user’s breath into electric signals using a special device called a MEMS Microphone. This technology is composed of a pressure-sensitive diaphragm etched directly into a silicon chip, and an amplifying device to increase the sound of the user’s breath.

By expelling two types of breaths into the device, with different intensities and timing, the user is able to spell out words in Morse code. "A microprocessor then interprets the breathes into dots and dashes, converting them into words. The words are then sent to a second microprocessor that synthesises them into voice,” says Whitney Mallett at Motherboard. "The morse code can either be translated into English, or specific commands and phrases. The device features nine different voices varying in age and gender."

People who do not have a means of properly expressing themselves, like those living with speech disorders, experience a lower than average life expectancy because of it. Dilbagi’s aim for this device is to give millions of people like this a 'voice' for the first time.

"After testing the final design with myself and friends and family, I was able to arrange a meeting with the Head of Neurology at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi and tested TALK (under supervision of doctor and in controlled environment) with a person suffering from SEM and Parkinson's Disease," Dilbagi reports. "The person was able to give two distinguishable signals using his breath and the device worked perfectly.”

TALK was developed by Dilbagi as part of Google’s Global Science Fair, which is a competion that’s open to 13 to 18-year-olds from anywhere in the world. Dilbagi is the only finalist left from Asia. Here he is talking about his device:

99 percent of Sweden’s waste is now reused

Sweden is so efficient at managing waste they’re now importing garbage from other European countries.

Image: Huguette Roe/Shutterstock

Swedes generally waste as much as people in other countries, around 461 kilograms per person each year - but only one percent of that is ending up in landfill, thanks to the country’s innovative “recycling” program.

While the Scandinavian country focusses primarily on reducing waste and reusing and recycling items, it has an important extra step in the waste cycle - it burns half its rubbish to generate energy.

The country has 32 waste-to-energy (WTE) plants, where waste is incinerated to produce steam, which is then used to turn generator turbines and produce electricity. Across Sweden, WTE plants provide almost one million homes with heating, and 260,000 with electricity, Zi-Ann Lum reports for the Huffington Post Canada.

This not only cuts down on the amount of waste that ends up in landfills, it also helps reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.

“A good number to remember is that three tonnes of waste contains as much energy as one tonne of fuel oil … so there is a lot of energy in waste,” Göran Skoglund, spokesperson for Öresundskraft, one of the country’s leading energy companies, explains in the video below.

Each year, more than two million tonnes of trash is burnt in Sweden, which means it’s producing approximately 670,000 tonnes worth of fuel oil energy.

To keep up the demand of its WTE plants, Sweden is now even buying waste from the UK, Italy, Norway and Ireland.

However, it’s not a perfect solution - there is plenty of controversy surrounding the burning of garbage. Critics are concerned that the process is counteracting any positive affects by sending more toxins into the atmosphere. The WTE process produces filter ash and flue gas, both byproducts that contain dioxins, and environmental pollutant.

But Sweden has heavily regulated their WTE plants to reduce emissions and according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the introduction of flue-glad cleaning has reduced airborne dioxins produced to “very small amounts”.

There are still some objects, however, that can’t be incinerated safely - any goods that contain porcelain, insulation, asbestos, tiles and other construction debris have to be dumped into landfill.

And although it’s a good solution, an even better one is to reduce waste altogether. “The world needs to produce less waste,” Skoglund told the Huffington Post.

'Electronic skin' detects breast cancer

This new e-skin could drastically improve patients' chances of survival.

Image: Nguyen and Saraf, 2014/American Chemical Society

Screening for breast cancer is a relatively clumsy process of feeling around for lumps. MRI, mammograms and ultrasounds can improve accuracy but they are too expensive to be used during every check-up. 

Now, biomolecular engineers Ravi Saraf and Chieu Van Nguyen from the University of Nebraska in the US have devised a new way of detecting the disease. They've created an 'electronic skin' that could 'feel' through tissue and locate small lumps.

To test their design the scientists created an artifical breast from silicone and embedded tumour-like objects into it. Using the same pressure as would be applied during a manual exam, they were able to image lumps that were only 5 millimetres wide and 20 millimetres deep.

The 'skin' consists of a thin-film tactile device, which is made up of layers of gold nanoparticles, cadmium sulfide nanoparticles and polymers.

The devise measures the local deformation of the tactile film through contact pressure with breast tissue, in much the same way that a manual examiner would with their hands.

The study was published in the journal American Chemical Society Applied Materials & Interfaces last month. 

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women and early detection saves lives.

Mammography, which uses x-rays to examine human breast tissue, is unreliable, particularly for women with dense breast tissue. In most medical examinations doctors generally miss lumps that are smaller than 21 millimetres long. 

Finding lumps that are less than half that size improves survival chances by a whopping 94 per cent. 

Smoking weed daily as a teen reduces probability of high school completion by 60%

Scientists found that smoking also decreased probability of university degree attainment and increased suicide risk.

 

A new study has shown that children under 17 years of age who smoke marijuana daily are over 60 per cent less likely to complete high school than those who never smoke weed at all.

The same children are also 60 per cent less likely to graduate from university and seven times more likely to attempt suicide.

Australian scientists working with the Cannabis Cohorts Research Consortium published their research this month in The Lancet.

Study co-author Edmund Sillins told The Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingraham that even low-level cannabis use resulted in significant negative outcomes in the study, suggesting that there is no safe level of cannabis use for teenagers. 

Cannabis use was associated with lower odds of high-school completion and university degree attainment, and substantially increased odds of later cannabis dependence, use of other illicit drugs, and suicide attempt.

The research analysed data from three large, long-running studies from Australia and New Zealand, which included over 2,500 individuals under the age of 17.

The researchers said their study showed, "clear and consistent associations between frequency of cannabis use during adolescence and most young adult outcomes investigated, even after controlling for 53 potential confounding factors including age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, use of other drugs, and mental illness," as reported by The Washington Post. 

The study concluded that preventing the use of cannabis by teenagers would have health benefits and that any effort to legalise the drug should carefully consider the effects on this age group. 

However, as Ingraham from The Washington Post reports, "First, the causality isn't 100 per cent clear. The researchers did a fantastic job of trying to account for a number of confounding factors. But particularly when it comes to the educational outcomes, there are a lot of factors at play. For instance, if a teacher knows or even suspects that a certain kid is using drugs, that may predispose the teacher against that student."

Bacteria found in bees show potential as an alternative to antibiotics

Scientists have shown that a unique group of bacteria found in the stomach of bees can fight antibiotic-resistant superbugs in the lab.

Antibiotic resistance is an increasingly serious problem in the western world, and in April this year, the World Health Organisation declared it a major threat to public health. For centuries, people have used raw honey to help fight infections, but scientists have struggled to figure out what gives it its antimicrobial properties.

Now a team of researchers from Lund University in Sweden has identified a unique group of 13 lactic acid bacteria (LAB) that come from the honey stomach of bees, and are found in fresh honey, that have an impressive ability to fight pathogens. The honey stomach is one of two stomachs found in bees, and it stores nectar, which worker bees later suck out and store in the hive.

Together, these live bacteria produce a number of active microbial compounds, such as hydrogen peroxide, fatty acids and anaesthetics, that can kill other harmful bacteria - it’s believed that this is the formula that protects the bee colony against collapse. Unfortunately, these LAB are processed out of the honey we buy in shops, but the researchers now believe they could be used to help treat anitibiotic resistance.

The team tested the bee bacteria in the lab against pathogen strains that cause serious infections in humans, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which can lead to fatal staph infections. The LAB was added to these superbugs and, impressively, it counteracted all of them. The results are published in the International Wound Journal.

The scientists also mixed the LAB with honey and applied it directly to horses who had wounds that wouldn’t heal and had been resistant to other treatments. After using the honey/bee bacteria substance, all of the wounds healed up. 

So far, the bee bacteria has only been tested against human pathogens in the lab, so we don't know that they'll be as effective on human wounds, but these results are extremely promising.

The team explained in a press release that they believe the LAB are so powerful because they produce a broad range of substances, which change in response to they pathogen they’re up against.

"Antibiotics are mostly one active substance, effective against only a narrow spectrum of bacteria,” said Tobias Olofsson, the lead author of the study, in a press release.

“When used alive, these 13 lactic acid bacteria produce the right kind of antimicrobial compounds as needed, depending on the threat. It seems to have worked well for millions of years of protecting bees' health and honey against other harmful microorganisms. However, since store-bought honey doesn't contain the living lactic acid bacteria, many of its unique properties have been lost in recent times," he added.

The researchers will now move onto clinical trials in humans to see whether the LAB can help treat antibiotic-resistant infections. In the meantime, we might start stockpiling fresh, unprocessed honey.

Lifting the toxic curse

Humans haven't just poisoned the planet with potentially dangerous chemicals, we've also poisoned ourselves. So why is no one talking about it, asks Julian Cribb.

Something more sinister than climate change stalks the human future – and it is high time we gave it the same attention. Few people have any idea of the universal chemical deluge to which we are now subject, daily, and of the growing peril which we—and all our descendants—face.

Humanity currently produces more than 140,000 different chemicals, around a third of which are known or suspected of causing cancer, mutations and birth defects or are toxic in some way. Global output of industrial chemicals is around 30 million tonnes a year, which the UN Environment Program (UNEP) thinks could triple by the mid-century.

But industrial chemicals are just the tip of the iceberg. Each year humanity also release 130 million tonnes of nitrogen and phosphorus (mainly from food production or poor waste disposal), 400 million tonnes of hazardous wastes, 13 billion tonnes of fossil fuels, 30 billion tonnes of mineral wastes, 35 billion tonnes of carbon, and 75 billion tonnes of topsoil. This is, by far, our biggest impact on the planet and all life on it, including ourselves. Yet most citizens and governments seem unaware of its true scale.

Scientific evidence shows these substances are now moving relentlessly round the Earth in water, air, soil, animals, fish, food, trade, in people and in our very genes. Researchers have found toxic man-made chemicals from the stratosphere to the deep oceans, from the peak of Mt Everest (where fresh snow is too polluted to drink, by Australian standards) to remote Pacific atolls, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Toxic chemicals are now being routinely found by researchers in birds, fish, mammals and other life-forms which have never had contact with humans. They occur throughout our food chains.

Tests reveal that the modern citizen is a walking contaminated site. The US Centers for Disease Control’s regular survey find industrial ‘chemicals of concern’ in the blood of 90-100 per cent of Americans.  The Environmental Working Group, a US NGO, in independent tests reported finding 414 industrial toxins in 186 people ranging in age from newborns to grandparents. 

EWG also found 212 chemicals of concern, including dioxins, flame retardants and known carcinogens in the blood of new-born babies, who were contaminated while still in the womb. Tests from China, America and Europe have revealed pesticides in the breast milk of nursing mothers – and most loving parents now immerse their children in petrochemicals of known and unknown toxicity – toys, clothing, furnishings, bottles, tableware, food, the home itself, the car, scents and cleansers. Australian research has found that even when dead and buried, people re-release some toxins back into groundwater. Groundwater beneath many of the world’s big cities is now so polluted from this and from industrial emissions as to be undrinkable.

Complex mixtures of chemicals now reach us in the air we breathe, the food and drink we consume, and the things we touch every day. We are passing their effects on to our children and grandchildren in our genes, ensuring they lead less healthy lives. This has all happened in just a few decades, and especially in the last 25 years.  No previous generations of humans were so exposed, or so polluted.

UNEP estimates about 5 million people die and 86 million are disabled yearly by chemicals directly, making it one of the world’s leading causes of death – yet this does not include millions more cases where chemicals are implicated in common diseases like cancers, heart disease, obesity, autism, depression and other life-threatening mental disorders. 

These chemicals – intentional and unintentional – interact with the tens of thousands of others in our environment and daily intake to create billions of potentially toxic mixtures. The eminent Harvard medical Professor Philippe Grandjean, in recent article in The Lancet, called on all countries to ‘transform their chemical-risk assessment procedures in order to protect children from everyday toxins that may be causing a global ‘silent epidemic’ of brain development disorders’.

Every year up to 1000 new chemicals are released onto markets worldwide, mostly without proper health, safety or environmental testing. Regulation has so far banned just eighteen out of 143,000 known industrial chemicals in a handful of countries. At such rates of progress it will take us another 50,000 years to assess and ban all the substances that may be harmful, country by country – so national regulation holds few answers. 

Furthermore, the globalised chemical industry is rapidly moving out of the developed world (where it is generally well-regulated and ethical) and into developing countries, mainly in Asia, where it is largely beyond the reach of the law. Its toxic emissions are already returning to citizens well-regulated countries in wind, water, food, wildlife, consumer goods and people – and there is little done to stop this.

Doctors report the emergence of ‘new’ conditions, like ADHD and certain childhood cancers in young children, as well as unexplained increases in once-uncommon  diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinsons, depression, autism and other mental disorders, obesity, diabetes and cancers, whose modern upsurge is now linked in thousands of medical research papers to humanity’s multiple chemical exposure. 

The issue to consider is that most, if not all, of these conditions are preventable. Nobody has to suffer or die from chemical exposure.

The world has been aware of chemical pollution since Rachel Carson wrote ‘Silent Spring’ haslf a century ago - but has regarded it as local issue, restricted to specific sites, chemicals or end uses.  This is no longer true: chemotoxicity is now universal and represents a challenge at the species level. An Australian-led scientific effort to assess the full extent of our risk is now under way – the Global Contamination Initiative (GCI).

Chemicals and minerals are valuable and extremely useful.  They do great good, save many lives and much money. Nobody is saying they should all be banned. But something must be done about the current uncontrolled, unmonitored, unregulated and unconscionable mass release and planetary saturation.

If governments cannot stem the toxic flood, the task must fall to millions of individual citizens, acting in their own best interests and those of their grandchildren. In a globalised world only we, the people, are powerful enough, as consumers, to send the market signals to industry to cease poisonous emissions – and to reward it for producing clean, safe, healthy products or services. For the first time in human history, the means exist to share a universal understanding of a common threat and what we can each do to mitigate it – through the internet and social media. This will be an expression of people power and global democracy like none before.

Finally, as I argue in the book Poisoned Planet, we need a new human right: a right not to be poisoned. Without such a right, and its universal observance, there will probably never again be another day in our history when we are not.

Schizophrenia is actually eight genetically distinct disorders, study reveals

New research has revealed that schizophrenia is not a single disease, but eight different disorders with their own set of symptoms.

Image: Jonathan Bailey, NHGRI

Scientists have identified eight separate clusters of genetic variations that, together, carry a 70 to 100 percent risk of a patient developing a certain type of schizophrenia.

The discovery could revolutionise diagnosis and treatment for the debilitating psychiatric illness. Scientists already knew that around 80 percent of the risk of schizophrenia is inherited, but have struggled for decades to identify specific genes linked to the condition. 

But a new approach has analysed the DNA of more than 4,000 people with the illness, and have identified that there are actually eight different classes of schizophrenia, each influenced by distinct gene clusters.

The research was led by scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis in the US.

“Genes don’t operate by themselves,” said C. Robert Cloninger, one of the senior investigators,in a press release. “They function in concert much like an orchestra, and to understand how they’re working, you have to know not just who the members of the orchestra are but how they interact.”

To unravel these interactions, the scientists analysed the DNA variations between 4,200 people with schizophrenia and 3,800 people without the disease. They also matched these DNA variations to specific symptoms in individual patients.

After looking at 700,000 small changes in DNA, known as single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), the scientists mapped which changes influenced which symptoms, and patterns began to emerge.

For example, in patients with hallucinations or delusions, they identified specific genetic variations that led to a 95 percent certainty of schizophrenia. And for patients who have disorganised speech and behaviour, they found a separate group of DNA variations that carried a 100 percent schizophrenia risk.

Overall, despite no single genetic changes being strongly linked to the disease on their own, the eight clusters the scientists identified all carried a 70 to 100 percent risk of developing schizophrenia. The results are published in The American Journal of Psychiatry.

As the press release explains, this makes it almost impossible for people with these genetic clusters to avoid the condition.

“What we’ve done here, after a decade of frustration in the field of psychiatric genetics, is identify the way genes interact with each other, how the ‘orchestra’ is either harmonious and leads to health, or disorganised in ways that lead to distinct classes of schizophrenia,” said Cloninger.

The scientists also went a step further and replicated their findings in two additional DNA databases of people with schizophrenia.

This work could now help researchers find targets for new drugs that could treat specific schizophrenia symptoms. And their DNA mapping technique could also be applied to help scientists find gene clusters that influence other diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Prolonged drought causes air bubbles to “choke” trees

An Australian-led study has highlighted the danger that increased periods of drought pose to forests and important carbon stores across the globe. 

An x-ray micro compound tomography image showing the vessels of a conifer, which contain gas bubbles that don’t refill after drought.

Image: Brodersen et al, 2010

One of the main ways drought affects trees is by forming air bubbles in the tiny vessels that carry water inside their trunks. 

Usually after short periods of drought, these trees are able to bounce back when the rain returns. But with more severe droughts being triggered by climate change, new research is revealing that trees are now struggling to refill these air bubbles.

These air bubbles are similar to the ones that cause "the bends", or decompression sickness, in humans and kill divers who surface too quickly - and when droughts last too long, they're causing die-off in forests under frequent heat stress, such as those in Tasmania, Australia, last year.

Because we rely on forests to help store carbon and mitigate the effects of climate change, this problem could feed back into climate systems leading to more extreme weather.

A team of researchers led by Dr Brendan Choat from the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at the University of Western Sydney is now investigating more about what's happening inside the trunks. They're using advanced imaging techniques, similar to CAT scans, to track the progression of these air bubbles, known as emboli, during periods of drought and following rainfall.

He’s found that some flowering plants (scans shown below) are able to bounce back quickly after drought, because they can refill gas bubbles once it rains again. However, coniferous plants, such as pines and cypresses (scans shown above), are not able to dissolve gas bubbles as easily, suggesting that they may take longer to recover from droughts.

Image shows air bubbles (emboli) in the steam of a grapevine. These air bubbles are refilled much easier following drought than the air bubbles in the vessels of coniferous plants.

Image: Brodersen et al, 2010

The next step is to model how long trees can survive drought and still bounce back. This will help forest managers determine which species are best suited to particular environments, as well as help us protect carbon sinks and important ecosystems around the planet. 

The Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment is interested in hearing from the world's future scientists. Scholarship opportunities are available until late October - make contact with a researcher today.

Researchers have developed an artificial spleen that cleans up blood infections

A new device can clean up blood infections and remove “everything from E. coli to Ebola”.

Top images show the magnetic nanobeads binding to Escherichia coli (left) and Staphylococcus aureus(right)  in the blood. Bottom images show the artificial biospleen set up.

Image: Harvard University's Wyss Institute

Scientists from the US have developed a new, high-tech device that can clear infections from blood - even those caused by unknown pathogens.

The technology was inspired by our own spleen, and, as Sara Reardon reports for Nature News, it can rid the blood of “everything from Escherichia coli to Ebola”.

Blood infections are extremely difficult to treat and can lead to sepsis - an extreme immune response that can be fatal. More than half of the time, doctors don’t know what causes these blood infections, and they have to rely on broad-scale antibiotics in an attempt to treat the original infection, Reardon explains. This isn’t always effective, and can lead to antibiotic resistance.

But this new artificial “biospleen”, developed by a team of researchers led by Donald Ingber from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Boston, promises to filter the blood and get rid of these infections more effectively.

The device's power lies in a special, magnetic-nanobead filter. To create the filter, the scientists took magnetic nanobeads and coated them with a modified version of a protein called mannose-binding lectin (MBL). This protein is found in humans and it binds to sugar molecules on the surface of more than 90 different bacteria, viruses and fungi - including the toxins that dead bacteria release, which can trigger sepsis.

As a patient’s blood passes through the biospleen, these MBL-coated magnetic nanobeads bind to the majority of pathogens. A magnet in the artificial spleen then pulls the beads and the bacteria and viruses they’re attached to out of the blood, leaving the blood purified and ready to be pumped back into the patient. 

The device has now been tested on rats infected with either E. coli or Staphylococcus aureus. Five hours after infection, 89% of the rats whose blood had been filtered through the biospleen were still alive, compared to only 14% of those who were not treated. Impressively, the scientists found that the device had removed more than 90% of the bacteria from the rats’ blood. Theresults are published in Nature Medicine.

“The rats whose blood had been filtered also had less inflammation in their lungs and other organs, suggesting they would be less prone to sepsis,” writes Reardon.

The team then tested the biospleen on five litres of blood, which is the volume in the average human, and found that within five hours, the device could remove most pathogens.

Reardon explains at Nature News: “That degree of efficacy is probably enough to control an infection, Ingber says. Once the biospleen has removed most pathogens from the blood, antibiotics and the immune system can fight off remaining traces of infection — such as pathogens lodged in the organs, he says.”

The biospleen could also be used to treat viral infections such as HIV and Ebola, according to Ingber, and testing as now begun in pigs.

Nigel Klein, an infection and immunity expert at University College London in the UK, told  Reardon that he expects the biospleen could be trialled in humans within a couple of years.