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Top 10 Scientific Advances of 2004

Posted by michael on from the rated-s-for-shoulders-of-giants dept.

TarrVetus writes "Science Magazine's The Top Ten Science Breakthroughs of 2004 have been announced. The winner: The NASA Rovers and their evidence of water on Mars. The runner up was the Hobbit species found in Indonesia. Other breakthroughs include cloned human embryos and the first discovered pulsar pair."

2 of 381 comments (clear)

  1. How many get debunked later? by JossiRossi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just as a generic curiosity. I wonder how many winners of the past eventually turned out to be false or incorreect? Cause the Hobbits are still debated (although it's not some big controversy). Just to put "breakthroughs" in perspective, because some breakthroughs just lead to empty mineshafts, not gold.

    --
    Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
  2. Re:Hobbits? by wronski · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "If I remember correctly, the finding of the new Hobbit species was discredited as a "dwarf" mutant of a long-discovered human ancestor. Was this discrediting discredited itself?"

    Most paleontologist believe this is a new species. The bones (they aren't even fossilised!) were found by an Australian/Indonesian team that was originaly lookng for evidence of the people who first colonized Australia. Apparently a bigshot Indonesian paleontologist got pissed of by being left out (some scientific bigshots expect to get their names papers without having to actually do any work), and then...

    One of Indonesia's leading palaeontologists, Professor Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University in Jakarta, has grabbed the hobbit remains and locked them away in his safe, refusing to let other scientists study them.

    In addition, he rejected the widespread view that the hobbits are a separate human species, claiming they are a pygmy form of modern humans who suffered microcephaly, a disorder that produces a small brain.

    The Australian scientists who dug up the bones of the hobbits, officially dubbed Homo floresiensis, have pleaded with Professor Jacob to return the bones as they may contain vital DNA clues as to their exact ancestry. The seven skeletons were found last year in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores by an Australian and Indonesian team.