Here are some of the wildest, coolest and most promising scientific findings of the year
Scientists made a ‘quantum’ leap into teleportation
Scientists in China teleported properties of light particles called photons from the ground into outer space for the first time this year, using mirrors and lasers. It was a huge success for quantum physicists, who say the finding could completely change how we move energy and information around the world.
An international team of 32 scientists found a new continent in the South Pacific
The lost land of ‘Zealandia’ sits on the ocean floor between New Zealand and New Caledonia. It wasn’t always a sunken land — researchers have found fossils that suggested novel kinds of plants and organisms once lived there. Zealandia is approximately the area of greater India. Some argue it should be counted alongside our (visible) seven continents.
A robotic spacecraft that had been exploring Saturn and its moons for 13 years took a monumental — and fatal — dive
Before the Cassini probe plunged to its death on September 15, it beamed back amazing photos of Saturn as we’d never seen the planet before. After 13 years orbiting Saturn, Cassini’s ‘grand finale’ mission began with a flyby of the planet’s moon, Titan. The spacecraft ultimately headed down into the planet’s clouds and burned up.
NASA found seven new planets that might be habitable to alien life
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The seven globes orbit a star in a neighbouring solar system, known as TRAPPIST-1. Six of them are rocky planets like our own. Scientists say these exoplanets are in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ — not too hot, not too cold, but just right for life to thrive. And they are just 40 light years from Earth.
Scientists peered into the Great Pyramid of Giza in a new way, and found a secret chamber there
Researchers found a 100-foot-long cavern using an imaging technique that depends on high-speed particles. The particles are made when cosmic rays form supernovas, black holes, and other high-energy objects that reach Earth and interact with air molecules. Researchers used these cosmic rays to penetrate millions of rocks in the pyramids and reveal the hidden void via particle detectors.
Scientists created the ‘closest thing anyone has ever made’ to a new life form
Living creatures have two kinds of amino acid pairs: A-T (adenine – thymine) and G-C (guanine — cytosine). This alphabet of four letters writes our DNA. But scientists say they have invented two new letters, an unnatural pair of X-Y bases. The new invention could improve the way we treat diseases.
What a find! Huge stores of silver and platinum
The formation of a cool $100,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000 of gold happened when two super-small, neutron stars smashed into each other 130 million light years away from Earth, researchers discovered. The crash also produced huge stores of silver and platinum. The findings, reported by a group of 4,000 very excited astronomers in October, came from scientists' first-ever sighting of two neutron stars colliding.