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The fabulous science of the first 20 years of 2000

2019-12-30T10:41:07.621Z


From the human genome to the Higgs boson, the discoveries and new open questions (ANSA)


They began with the map of human DNA to arrive at answers expected for decades, such as the discovery of the Higgs boson, thanks to which the mass exists and with it everything including humans, the discovery of gravitational waves predicted a century earlier by Albert Einstein and the first photograph of a black hole: the first 20 years of 2000 were a crescendo of epochal discoveries, made possible by the availability of complex and gigantic machines typical of Big Science, the new organization of research based on great international collaborations.

State-of-the-art computers have made it possible to reconstruct the map of the human genome , presented on June 26, 2000 by the international Human Genome Project and the Celera company, founded by Craig Venter.


The human DNA map was the first striking scientific result of the 2000s

Again Venter, four years later, exploited the union between computer and biology to obtain the first synthetic cell , called Syn 1.0: an unexplored frontier that has opened new questions and aroused expectations, such as that of the first computer-designed yeast, foreseen in the 2020.


The first synthetic cell, Syn 1.0 (source: JCVI.ORG)

Great expectations also for regenerative medicine, which in the last 20 years has taken the first steps in the company of the progress made in the knowledge of stem cells and emerging technologies, such as 3D printing.


3D printed stem cell blocks (source: Alan Faulkner-Jones et al, Biofabrication)

Between fears and hopes, another powerful machine came on September 10, 2008 in the CERN of Geneva: the Large Hadron Collider (Lhc) accelerator , which on July 4, 2012 allowed to discover the Holy Grail of particle physics, the Higgs boson; in the decade that is about to begin, it could reveal the existence of the so-called ' new physics ', which responds to unknown laws and which could explain, for example, what dark energy and dark matter are which together occupy 95% of the universe.


Example of an event that detected the Higgs boson in the CERN Lhc accelerator (source: Lucas Taylor / CERN)

Also at Cern on 17 November 2010 the first antimatter atoms were obtained and trapped.


The CERN experiment that obtained and trapped antimatter (source: Chukman So-ALPHA, CERN)

On February 11, 2016, other unique machines have opened up a new page in physics: the Virgo and Ligo detectors have discovered gravitational waves , recording the first signal produced by the collision of two black holes.


General relativity predicted black holes and gravitational waves (source: NASA / Ames Research Center / C. Henze)

Other powerful machines, such as the telescopes of the Event Horizon Telescope (Eht) network on April 10, 2019 have amazed the world with the photograph of a black hole : the first direct evidence of the existence of these cosmic objects.


General relativity predicted black holes and gravitational waves (source: NASA / Ames Research Center / C. Henze)

On May 10, 2016 , the discovery of 1,200 planets outside the Solar System by the NASA's Kepler space telescope took your breath away, which suddenly brought the number of alien worlds to thousands, whose knowledge will have much to say in the next decade.


Over 1,200 new planets discovered outside the Solar System discovered, the number of alien worlds rises and exceeds 3,200 (source: NASA)

The discovery of an underground lake of liquid and salt water on Mars , announced on 25 July 2018 by an Italian research, ignites fantasies and hopes in view of the next missions chasing life on the red planet


The South Pole of Mars, under the ice a salt lake (source: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin, G. Neukum, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

and the Cassini spacecraft , born from the collaboration of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), concluded the journey between the rings and moons of Saturn on September 15, 2017 , giving unforgettable images and data that will still require years of analysis.


Cassini on Saturn's Northern Hemisphere, getting ready for the final dive (source: NASA / JPL-Caltech)

The Rosetta spacecraft will continue to be talked about: on 12 November 2014 , its lander Philae was the first vehicle to land on a comet .


On 12 November 2014 the historic landing on the comet, with the Rosetta mission (source: ESA)

The 20 years that have ended have also seen the first step of Voyager probes in interstellar space


Representation of the position of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes beyond the boundaries of the Solar System (source: NASA / JPL-CaltechT)

50 years since the flight of Sputnik , the first artificial satellite in history that opened the Space Age, 50 years since the first man in space and 50 years since landing on the Moon , while on the Space Station there are more and more experiments that will help man to face the long journey to Mars. An adventure, the latter which since 8 July 2011 , with the last launch of the Space Shuttle , has seen private individuals enter the field alongside NASA, while other protagonists make their way, such as China and India.

Source: ansa

All tech articles on 2019-12-30

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