The greatest scientific discoveries of 2010 (Part 1)

We are entering a time of transition that is not just a new year but a new decade. Let's review the most important scientific findings in the past 10 years.

The 2010s are about to close to make way for another new decade to arrive. The past 10 years have been full of breakthrough discoveries or discovering new knowledge never before in history. These advances are either close to the human body, or far to the edge of the universe.

Taking a look at the innovations over the last decade, it is easy to see that the trend of large research groups to the scale of thousands of people is increasing compared to research groups with few members before. These groups are not just colleagues at a workplace, but also work together across the globe.

The selection of the 20 most typical findings of the decade is therefore not easy. Here is a list of amazing discoveries voted by National Geographic editorial staff.

1. First determine the gravitational wave

In 1916, Albert Einstein proposed an argument, that when objects of sufficient mass accelerate, they produce vibrations in space-time structure like ripples on a lake. . Einstein could not confirm this because there was no advanced tool to prove, he just called it gravitational waves.

The search for evidence of gravitational waves in practice has since become the fascination of many scientists and led many studies to be launched throughout the century to achieve that goal. In the 1970s, people received a bit of clues about this type of wave but it was still not clear enough and since then it has been silent until 2015.

Image simulating two black holes colliding to create gravitational waves in space-time.(Photo: SXS Collaboration).

In 2015, the US-based LIGO Observatory recorded aftershocks after two black holes collided with each other in the universe. This discovery was later announced in early 2016 and helps us learn a new way to listen to the universe. When two black holes collide, they form a common object of very large mass and create gravitational waves.

Then in 2017, LIGO and the Virgo Observatory in Europe recorded similar waves, this time created from the collision of two neutron stars with extremely high material densities. dense. Many other telescopes around the world have also recorded this event. This landmark event gave scientists an unprecedented insight into how gravity works as well as how the elements are created.

2. Update the human genealogy

The past decade has seen many findings that prompt us to rethink our own ancestors, the origins of humanity and the addition of many other species to the genealogy of humankind. These discoveries not only come from excavating new fossils, but the fossils found previously also provide a new knowledge of ourselves.

In 2010, National Geographic explorer Lee Berger found a distant ancestor of humankind called Australopithecus sediba . Five years later, he went on to announce a new human species in a cave complex in South Africa, called Homo naledi , which had many anatomical details similar to modern humans and lived some distance ago. 236,000 years to 335,000 years ago.

The image of reconstructing the face of Homo naledi, a species of the genus He is close to modern people today.Author John Gurche has spent more than 700 hours scanning the fossil skull and relying on the features to create this complete face.

Many other notable discoveries have been recorded in Asia. Also in 2010, a team of scientists reported that they had found DNA in a piece of pink bone in ancient Siberia. Through analysis, genetic information is unlike any human in modern times, thus showing the first clue about Denisovans.

In an archaeological site in China in 2018, a stone tool dating back 2.1 million years was found, leading scientists to confirm that humans in Asia have built it. furniture to live hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously understood.

In 2019, researchers in the Philippines announced that the fossils of humans were similar to Homo floresiensis, a branch of the Flores Islander (Indonesia). In addition, many stone tools discovered on the island of Sulawesi in the country also revealed another human species that has never been identified in Southeast Asia.

3. Discover thousands of exoplanets

Our knowledge of planets orbiting distant stars has grown tremendously over the years 2010. A big part of this progress is thanks to NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

From 2009 to 2018, Kepler alone discovered 2,700 exoplanets - more than half of the total number of exoplanets found worldwide. Among the thousands of planets outside this Solar System, there are a number of outstanding planets with unique and impossible features, including Kepler-10b, a rocky planet very similar to the Earth. .

Kepler-10b, a rocky exoplanet 1.4 times the size of Earth, lies 560 light-years away from us.(Graphic: NASA).

Succeeding by Kepler, TESS launched in 2018 is continuing this work and has confirmed 34 exoplanets. In addition to the observatories on Earth's orbit, ground-based telescopes also began a race to search for exoplanets.

In 2017, scientists used TRAPPIST-1 glasses and found a star system located 39 light-years from us possessing seven planets the size of Earth - this is the outer planetary system. Heaven has the most planets ever discovered. And most recently, researchers have found Proxima b - a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri - the closest star to the Sun with a distance of only 4.25 light-years.

4. Entering the era of gene editing

The past decade marked a tremendous advance in our DNA editing skills, thanks in large part to the Crispr-Cas9 system. Some bacteria in the wild use this system as an immune system because they allow the storage of viral DNA fragments, thereby recognizing the same virus if encountered in the future and will shred DNA fragments. of the virus.

In 2012, researchers proposed using Crispr-Cas9 as an effective gene editing tool, because it can cut DNA so precisely that we can adjust it to the right. Within a few months, many other research groups have confirmed this technique works well on human DNA.

Researcher Zhou Yin from the Yunnan Laboratory in Kunming, China, is holding a long-tailed macaque born and raised from CRISPR technology.(Photo: National Geographic).

Since then, laboratories around the world have begun racing to come up with similar systems based on Crispr-Cas9 , making DNA editing even more accurate for practical applications in fields. agriculture and medicine. While the benefits of Crispr-Cas9 are enormous, ethical limits also raise questions for this technology.

In 2018, the global medical community was surprised by the Chinese researcher Xia Jia Khue who gave birth to two girls whose genomes were edited with Crispr, these are the first humans created since DNA modifier. This research has sparked a lot of heated debate and led to a ban on the deep editing of human genes.

5. Write down knowledge about paleontology

The past 10 years have witnessed an explosion of our knowledge of the prehistoric world, as scientists continually find amazingly beautiful fossils through every refurbishment of excavation technology and finder. Search for fossils and analysis tools.

In 2010, scientists at the National Geographic Society published a study to reproduce the body color of a complete dinosaur, based on the discovery of pigments in fossils. Since then, the palette of paleontologists has been constantly expanded. Researchers have begun to color many of the prehistoric species, such as the dark blue feathers, the bright reds of the rainbow or the reddish brown skin of a horned dinosaur. .

The first true color image of the Sinosauropteryx was created based on the pigments found in their fossils.(Photo: Nature).

The most exciting step apart from finding biological colors is to analyze the chemical properties of these species. In 2018, Dickinsonia was a species that existed 540 million years ago, and scientists analyzed the fat through molecules stored in fossils. This is the first time this work has been done.

In 2014, paleontologists found the fossil of Spinosaurus carnivorous dinosaurs, and through analysis they believe this is the first known amphibian dinosaur. A year later, a research team in China published the fossil of Yi qi, a very strange dinosaur with webbed wings like a bat.

Also in the same decade, scientists also found that a 99 million-year-old piece of amber in Myanmar gave rise to the hypothesis of a furry dinosaur, a primitive bird that is the ancestor of modern birds. and several invertebrates trapped in fossilized sap.

6. Signs of life on other planets

Over the past 10 years, space exploration missions have given us a more detailed view of life forms outside of Earth, such as finding carbon-based organic molecules as the starting source. set for a life form on other planets.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission sent the ship landed on comet 67P Churyumov – Gerasimenko in 2014 and began collecting data until 2016, sending Earth a lot of new knowledge about how the Meteors sent life to Earth billions of years ago.

ESA's Rosetta spacecraft sends the Philae lander on the surface of comet 67P / Churyumov – Gerasimenko to explore and uncover many mysterious signs first discovered on a comet.(Photo: ESA).

Before NASA's Cassini spacecraft ended its mission in 2017, it confirmed that water on Saturn's Enceladus satellite contains the majority of organic ingredients, which is a clue that it is the right place. suitable for survival and development of life.

In 2018, NASA's Curiosity spacecraft on Mars found organic compounds on the planet as well as noted a strange cycle of the movement of methane gas masses in the associated Mars atmosphere. to the life of a certain species.

7. Preventing many dangerous diseases

In response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, medical researchers quickly launched and monitored the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine trial. After a successful test in 2015, European authorities approved the vaccine in 2019 and this is an important step to help combat this deadly disease.

A number of landmark studies have also opened new avenues to halt the advance of HIV. An experiment in 2011 showed that an antiviral drug significantly helped prevent the spread of HIV in heterosexual couples and a lower rate in gay couples.

8. New types of reproduction ever

In 2016, clinicians announced the birth of a child from more than one parent, namely sperm from the father, the mother's cell nucleus and the egg of another woman. Eliminates cell nucleus. While this therapy has succeeded in correcting maternal mitochondrial disorders, it is still ethically controversial.

Another study done in 2018 also created precursors of human sperm or created eggs from skin or blood cells that had been edited for genetic information. Another study on gene editing allowed two homosexual mice to conceive.

The strands of Ebola virus (green) reach out and grab a cell, rendering it inactive.(Photo: Callista Images).

Also in this year, Chinese scientists gave birth to two cloned monkeys, the first time a primate was born as Dolly the sheep. Although ethical standards do not allow the technology to be implemented in humans, scientists say it can be carried out smoothly on other primates including ours.

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