Friday, December 28, 2012

Top Discoveries of 2012

 2012 was a great year for discoveries, here are some of the top scientific discoveries of 2012 !!!

17. Earth’s Exoplanet Twin

A rocky, roughly Earth-size exoplanet orbits Alpha Centauri B, one of the stars in the nearest stellar system to our own. Reported in October, the planet is just 4.4 light-years from Earth. But, with a year lasting 3.2 Earth-days, the planet is probably too close to its star to host life as we know it. A team using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher found the planet after detecting its small, gravitational tugs on Alpha Centauri B.

Scientists suspect that Alpha Centauri’s three stars might host a few more planets: Where there’s one rocky planet, there are usually more. But don’t plan on visiting the system any time soon. Though Alpha Centauri is a favored destination for proposed interstellar space missions, it’s still too far away to reach with today’s technology.

16. SpaceX Launches to the International Space Station

It was a very good year for the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, better known as SpaceX. After successfully launching and orbiting its Dragon spacecraft around the Earth in 2010 – the first time a private company has done so – SpaceX celebrated ever greater milestones in 2012. In May, it delivered Dragon to the International Space Station for the first time. A second mostly successful launch in October actually transferred cargo to the orbiting laboratory, proving that SpaceX was capable of bringing supplies and potentially U.S. astronauts to the ISS.

While it remains to be seen exactly what the achievements will mean in the long run, they have bolstered SpaceX’s reputation as the most successful company in the burgeoning private space sector. This could be good news for NASA, which will soon start relying on SpaceX to get to the ISS. Such schemes are part of SpaceX’s good business sense, but the company has longer term and far more ambitious goals. Their CEO, Elon Musk, has stated many times that he hopes to build a human colony on Mars and is even starting to test fully reusable rockets toward this end.

15. Life's New Chemical Code

For the last three billion years, life on Earth has relied on two information-storing molecules, DNA and RNA. Now there's a third: XNA, a polymer synthesized by molecular biologists Vitor Pinheiro and Philipp Holliger of the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom.

Just like DNA, XNA is capable of storing genetic information and then evolving through natural selection. Unlike DNA, it can be carefully manipulated. For now, researchers hope it might be used for medical or industrial purposes. It will also be a useful tool for researchers studying the origins of life. And while both XNA and human understanding are still too rudimentary to synthesize a life form fundamentally unlike any yet known, it can now be imagined.

14. Quantum Teleportation Distance Record Broken

Over the summer, two teams of researchers, one from China and the other from Austria, broke a world record by teleporting quantum particles more than 50 miles through the open air. This little trick involves entangling two particles, like photons, so that they both have the exact same properties. Using a third particle, the characteristics of one of these photons are beamed to a distant location, creating a remote copy.

Scientists now think they will one day be able teleport particles to a satellite in space and then beam them back to any location on Earth. Such technology could allow spies to pass unbreakable codes back and forth and might one day form the backbone of a quantum internet. China plans to test this possibility with a dedicated quantum information satellite, to be launched in 2016, while other countries are racing to make sure they don’t fall too far behind on this important technology.

13. Genome Sequencing for Fetuses

In June, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle announced the successful sequencing of a complete fetal genome using nothing more than snippets of DNA floating in its mother's blood. Unlike earlier techniques, it was completely noninvasive and posed no risks to the baby-to-be. They said the test might be clinically available in just five years -- an optimistic outlook, perhaps, but even if it takes a decade, the consequences could be profound.

After all, genetic tests for newborn babies are already routine. Millions of parents would almost undoubtedly want to scan their fetuses, too. The scans might pick up potentially fatal conditions early, saving lives and easing pain. The scans would also, however, detect more ambiguous medical signals, such as predispositions to disease, or information about traits like personality or physique. What would parents do with that information? What should they do? Is there a limit to how much genetic information parents want about their babies? And how much of that information should be shared with a child? None of these questions have clear answers, and they'll be debated in years to come.

12. Sugar Found in Space

Astronomers have made a sweet discovery: simple sugar molecules floating in the gas around a star some 400 light-years away, suggesting the possibility of life on other planets. The August discovery doesn't prove that life has developed elsewhere in the universe—but it implies that there is no reason it could not. It shows that the carbon-rich molecules that are the building blocks of life can be present even before planets have begun forming. Scientists use the term "sugar" to loosely refer to organic molecules known as carbohydrates, which are made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.

11. New Planet Found in Our Solar System?

An as yet undiscovered planet might be orbiting at the dark fringes of the solar system, according to a study published in May. Too far out to be easily spotted by telescopes, the potential unseen planet appears to be making its presence felt by disturbing the orbits of so-called Kuiper belt objects, said Rodney Gomes, an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. Kuiper belt objects are small icy bodies—including some dwarf planets—that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune.

10. Nine-Planet System Discovered?

A star about 127 light-years from Earth may have even more planets than the sun, which would make the planetary system the most populated yet found. According to an April study, HD 10180—a sunlike star in the southern constellation Hydrus—may have as many as nine orbiting planets, besting the eight official planets in our solar system.

9. New-Species "Heaven" in Peru

A new species of night monkey (pictured) is one of eight new mammals found during an expedition to northern Peru's Tabaconas Namballe National Sanctuary, scientists announced in September.
A team of Mexican and Peruvian biologists found this "new heaven of unknown biodiversity" during a 2009-2011 expedition, according to a press statement.

8. Limbless Amphibians Discovered

They aren't worms or even snakes. They're soil-burrowing, limbless amphibians, and they're completely new to science, a February study suggested. Pictured guarding a brood of eggs in its native northeastern India, the animal above is one of about six potentially new species belonging to a mysterious group of animals called caecilians. What's more, the newfound critters represent an entirely new family of amphibians.

7. Maya Mural Contradicts Doomsday

In the last known largely unexcavated Maya megacity, archaeologists have uncovered the only known mural adorning an ancient Maya house—and it's not just any mural, scientists said in May. In addition to a still vibrant scene of a king and his retinue, the walls are rife with calculations that helped ancient scribes track vast amounts of time. Contrary to the idea the Maya predicted the end of the world in 2012, the markings suggest dates thousands of years in the future.

6. "Dramatic" Maya Temple Found

Some 1,600 years ago, the Temple of the Night Sun was a blood-red beacon visible for miles and adorned with giant masks of the Maya sun god as a shark, blood drinker, and jaguar. Long since lost to the Guatemalan jungle, the temple—our most popular discovery of 2012—is finally showing its faces to archaeologists, and revealing new clues about the rivalrous kingdoms of the Maya, scientists said in May. Unlike the relatively centralized Aztec and Inca empires, the Maya civilization—which spanned much of what are now Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán region — was a loose aggregation of city-states.

5. Giant Crocodile Breaks Size Record

Lolong has hit the big time—at 20.24 feet (6.17 meters) long, the saltwater crocodile is officially the largest in captivity, the Guinness World Records announced in July. The monster reptile is the subject of the tenth most visited National Geographic News story of 2012. Suspected of attacking several people and killing two, the giant reptile was captured alive in the Philippines' Bunawan township  in September 2011. The Guinness listing is based on data by experts including crocodile zoologist Adam Britton, who measured the beast in his home, the new Bunawan Eco-Park and Research Centre.

4. Curiosity Lands on Mars

Millions of people stayed up very late, or got up very early, to witness the nail-biting but successful landing of NASA’s latest and greatest Mars rover, Curiosity, on Aug. 6. Anxiety had been running high in the days prior to the event, with the rover’s descent sequence including the fully automated “seven minutes of terror” and a never-before-attempted, seemingly crazy sky crane maneuver to bring the probe safely down to the soil. Engineers at JPL mission control broke into laughter, applause, and a few tears when touchdown was declared. The entire sequence can be relived in the many mind-blowing videos made from Curiosity data by both NASA and video professionals.

Since then, Curiosity has fascinated the public, beaming back amazing information about the rocks, regolith, and atmosphere of Mars. But most importantly, it has sent back pictures, pictures, and more pictures, transporting us Earth-bound humans to the Red Planet. The rover will continue on its 2.5-year trek up the slopes of Mount Sharp, searching for organic compounds and signs of habitability on Mars, past or present. The entire mission has been so successful that NASA recently announced a new rover built from leftover Curiosity parts that will be sent to Mars in 2020 (and that our readers think should be named "I Should Be on Titan").

3. "Lost World" in Antarctica

An unnamed new species of Yeti crab swarms near hot, mineral-rich hydrothermal vents in the oceans off Antarctica—a newfound "lost world" of strange deep-sea species, scientists say.
(See picture below: "'Yeti Crab' Discovered in Deep Pacific.")

A camera-equipped submersible robot filmed species such as barnacles, crabs, anemones, and even an octopus, all of which are mostly colorless and live in utter darkness at depths of 7,875 feet (2,400 meters), according to a January study.

2. Scientists Search for Prehistoric Life in Lake Vostok

After more than a decade of drilling, Russian scientists finally reached Lake Vostok,14-million-old Antarctic lake buried beneath the ice, in February. About the size of Lake Ontario, Vostok is the largest of some 300 lakes carved into the southern polar cap. The Russians broke through to the lake’s surface -- after drilling through 2.2 miles of ice -- just as the drilling season was coming to an end.

In October, a preliminary analysis of ice that had frozen to the drill bit revealed no evidence of microbial life in the pristine subglacial oasis, a disappointment to those who had been hoping for evidence of extremophiles living in icy darkness. But the lake itself could still harbor life, and two teams from the U.S. and the U.K. are currently in Antarctica preparing to drill through the ice and hoping to retrieve samples from Lake Vostok itself.

1. "God Particle" Found!

In July, two separate teams working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reported they were more than 99 percent certain they've discovered the Higgs boson, aka the God particle—or at the least a brand-new particle exactly where they expected the Higgs to be. The long-sought particle may complete the standard model of physics by explaining why objects in our universe have mass—and in so doing, why galaxies, planets, and even humans have any right to exist. This could also help us understand portals, time travel and more. The discovery opens new doors for science and proves anything is possible in our paranormal Universe.

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