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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."

8 of 381 comments (clear)

  1. What about the Beagle? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Largest man-created crater on the surface of Mars? That's got to count for something!

  2. what about SpaceshipOne? by hsmith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I consider that a pretty awesome feat as i assume many others do

    1. Re:what about SpaceshipOne? by arkanes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      An impressive engineering, technical, and economic feat, but not one that really impacts science. It's not about the coolest applications of science, but rather about the coolest discoveries in science.

  3. 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.
  4. Award should go to creation scientists by Nine+Tenths+of+The+W · · Score: 5, Funny

    For discovering that all previous science and history is false and the world is in fact a giant ant farm created 6000 years ago by a cloud dwelling egomaniac

    --
    Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
  5. Discrediting mention of junk DNA by lukesl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a biologist, I have to say that I'm incredibly disappointed by the inclusion of "junk" DNA in the list. I don't know what specific research results they're referring to when they say there's a breakthrough there, but the entire concept of "junk" DNA is absurd. I've never met a single molecular biologist who believed that non-coding regions were unimportant, and in fact it's been known for at least forty years that non-coding regions are important in regulation of gene expression. Maybe what bothers me most is the term "junk" DNA, which I've never actually heard another scientist use. It's a fictitious concept perpetuated by science writers so that they can feign surprise every time someone can attribute a function to a non-coding piece of DNA (and claim that the scientific community was surprised as well).

    All that aside, I'm sure there are big breakthroughs in our understanding of the role of non-coding regions, and it probably deserves to be mentioned. However, one important point to make is that in spite of all this, there ARE parts of the genome that are unquestionably useless evolutionary vestiges. This is not necessarily mysterious, but it is interesting (for example, providing what is in my mind the most convincing evidence of evolution).

  6. 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.
  7. 1st physical evidence for string theory by thievery1017 · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... seems to blow all that other crap away, even if the news was released in december. evidence of water once being on mars is big... but hardly surprising enough to rank at #1.