Glaciers are melting faster than expected due to global warming, depleting ice around the world. The human genome was fully mapped between 2000-2003 in a massive scientific effort. In 2008, the Phoenix lander confirmed the presence of water ice on Mars, fueling hopes of microbial life. Stem cells were found in new sources like adult skin cells in 2007, avoiding ethical issues with embryonic stem cells. Direct evidence in 2006 confirmed the long-inferred existence of dark matter through observations of the Bullet Cluster collision.
2. 1. Glaciers Melting Fast
When the 21st century began, scientists studying Earth’s climate
thought the gigantic ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica would melt
slowly around the edges and lag behind the overall global warming of
climate.
But this past decade, the warmest on record, proved the climate
modelers wrong.
Glaciers have been melting much faster than ever expected and
researchers have been trying to understand why.
The uptick in melting ice has not been restricted to the Arctic and
Antarctic. Europe’s glaciers are now thought to be entering their final
decades.
The famous snows of Kilimanjaro and other low-latitude mountains
could disappear completely. The thick, perennial sea ice of the Arctic is
fast disappearing, which will likely bring ice-free summers to the Arctic
Ocean.
There are global consequences to this melting. Rising seas will make
more cities and islands vulnerable to catastrophic flooding like that
which nearly killed New Orleans. Mountain glaciers around the world
bring fresh water to billions. Any way you slice it, an Earth with less ice
is a less hospitable planet.
3. 2. Human Genome Mapped
Coiled up inside every human cell sit 23 molecules that, if
unwound and placed end to end, would stretch about three feet.
Those molecules, known as chromosomes, contain all the
instructions necessary to build an entire human being.
It took more than 10 years and an international collaboration of
scientists, but the year 2000 saw a rough draft of the entire human
genome, followed by a completed version in 2003.
The publicly funded Human Genome Project and its private
competitor, Celera Genomics, constitutes one of the largest
scientific endeavors in history, one that revealed in intimate detail
just what makes up a human being.
With the information from individual genome maps, scientists can
uncover new clues about everything from a person's body odor to
mental disease.
Since decoding the human genome, dozens of other species have
had their genomes sequenced, including pigs, dogs, bees,
mosquitoes, puffer fish, chimpanzees, yeast, corn, and rice. With
these maps in hand, scientists can and will discover new ways to
heal diseases or improve crop yields.
4. 3. Mars Surface Gives up Signs of Water
In 2008, NASA's Mars Phoenix lander touched down on the Red Planet
to confirm the presence of water and seek out signs of organic
compounds.
Eight years before, the Mars Global Surveyor spotted what appeared to
be gullies carved into the landscape by flowing water. More recently,
the Mars Exploration Rovers have uncovered minerals that also
indicated the presence of ancient water. But proof of modern-day water
was elusive.
Then Phoenix, planted on the ground near the North Pole, did some
digging for samples to analyze. During one dig, the onboard cameras
spotted a white powder in the freshly dug soil. In comparison images
taken over the coming days, the powder slowly vanished. After intense
analysis, the white powder was confirmed as water ice.
This discovery not only confirmed the presence of water on the Red
Planet, it reenergized the hope that some kind of microbial life might be
using this water supply to survive.
5. 4. Stem Cells Found in New Sources
In 2001, President George W. Bush cut federal funding to scientists
working with embryonic stem cells -- found in a tiny, hollow ball of
about 70-100 human cells that could become anything in the human
body -- because of ethical concerns.
Embryonic stem cells were one of the most promising medical
advances in years, with the potential to cure diseases from diabetes to
cancer to genetic disorders, and more.
In 2007, scientists from Kyoto University and the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, working separately, essentially turned back the
clock for adult skin cells, allowing these mature cells, which were
preprogrammed to become skin, to act like embryonic stem cells. The
adult cells became pluripotent cells, or cells that could end up being
virtually any other kind of cell.
These pluripotent adult cells solved two big problems. Ethical
concerns and financial restrictions could be avoided, and doctors could
ultimately use cells with a person's own DNA to grow replacement
organs that a patient would be less likely to reject.
6. 5. Humans Meld with Machines
Cyborgs are becoming reality. In the last decade, much progress has
been made with people controlling robotic limbs and computers with
their minds.
In 2000, researchers at Duke University Medical Center implanted
electrodes in monkeys’ brains and then trained them to reach for food
using a robotic arm. Such a neurochip could one day restore motor
function in paralyzed patients.
A team from the MIT Media Lab Europe developed a non-invasive
method for picking up brain waves and, in 2004, used those signals for
the first time to control the movements of a video game character.
Robotic limbs operated with nerve signals debuted in 2001 at the
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. There, Jesse Sullivan, a double
amputee, used the method to control both of his robotic arms.
And in 2009, amputee Pierpaolo Petruzziello learned to control a
biomechanical hand connected to his arm nerves with just wires and
electrodes. Petruzziello became the first person to make complex
movements -- finger wiggling, a fist, grabbing objects -- with a robotic
limb, using just his thoughts.
7. 6. Alien Planets Seen Directly
The first alien planets -- called exoplanets -- were being detected in the
early 1990s, but not directly. In 2000, astronomers detected a handful by
looking for a star's "wobble," or a star's slight dimming as the exoplanet
passed in front of it. Today we know of 400 exoplanets.
In 2008, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and the infrared
Keck and Gemini observatories in Hawaii announced that they had "seen"
exoplanets orbiting distant stars. The two observatories had taken images
of these alien worlds.
The Keck observation was the infrared detection of three exoplanets
orbiting a star called HR8799, 150 light-years from Earth. Hubble spotted
one massive exoplanet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light-years from
Earth.
These finds pose a profound question: How long will it be until we spot an
Earth-like world with an extraterrestrial civilization looking back at us?
8. 7. New Human Ancestors Emerge
In 2002, researchers in northern Chad unearthed the 6- to 7-
million-year-old skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis -- known as
Toumai. Only skull bones have been discovered, so it's not
confirmed whether Toumai walked upright on two feet. But other
Toumai remains make a stronger case that it greatly extends the
human family timeline.
Then along came Ardi. In 2009, the nearly complete skeleton of
Ardipithecus ramidus, a.k.a. “Ardi,” in northeastern Ethiopia
bumped the famous “Lucy” as the earliest, most complete skeleton
of a human ancestor ever found.
The 4.4-million-year-old Ardi could walk on two legs, but was also a
skilled tree-climber. Her teeth suggest she ate many different types
of food. And scientists theorize that males and females may have
paired off at this time, significantly boosting survival, since females
could intensify their parenting while males provided food.
If the studies prove true, Ardi marks the closest we have come to
discovering the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans.
9. 8. Dark Matter's Existence Confirmed
Directly
In the summer of 2006, astronomers made an announcement that
helped humans understand the cosmos a little better: They had
direct evidence confirming the existence of dark matter -- even
though they still can't say what exactly the stuff is.
The unprecedented evidence came from the careful weighing of gas
and stars flung about in the head-on smash-up between two great
clusters of galaxies in the Bullet Cluster.
Until then, the existence of dark matter was inferred by the fact that
galaxies have only one-fifth of the visible matter needed to create
the gravity that keeps them intact. So the rest must be invisible to
telescopes: That unseen matter is "dark."
The observations of the Bullet Cluster, officially known as galaxy
cluster 1E0657-56, did not explain what dark matter is. They did,
however, give researchers hints that dark matter particles act a
certain way, which future research can build on.
10. 9. T. rex Tissue Dug from Bone
In 2005, Mary Higby Schweitzer and her colleagues reported in
Science the discovery of what appeared to be soft tissues -– blood
vessels, bone matrix and other cells –- inside the fossilized femur of
a small T. rex.
Since then, the bones have revealed amino acids that resemble
those of modern chickens, firming the link between dinosaurs and
birds.
Schweitzer's discovery comes in a decade of other stunning
revelations about the soft parts of dinosaurs.
In 2004, one of the few mummified dinosaurs ever found -- an
amazingly well-preserved 66-million-year-old hadrosaur with intact,
mostly mineralized skin -- was excavated from a ranch in North
Dakota.
Then, in June 2009, researchers announced they had isolated
molecules related to soft skin tissues from that hadrosaur.
11. 10. Pluto-Sized Eris Rocks Solar System
In January 2005, Mike Brown and his team at Palomar
Observatory, Calif. discovered 136199 Eris, a minor body that is
27 percent bigger than Pluto. Eris had trumped Pluto and
become the 9th largest body known to orbit the sun.
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided
that the likelihood of finding more small rocky bodies in the
outer solar system was so high that the definition "a planet"
needed to be reconsidered. The end result: Pluto was
reclassified as a dwarf planet. Pluto acquired a "minor planet
designator" in front of its name: "134340 Pluto."
Mike Brown's 2005 discovery of Eris was the trigger that
changed the face of our solar system, defining the planets and
adding Pluto to a growing family of dwarf planets.
