2013 in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
-
Morocco in 2011, and report that it is a new type of Mars rock with an unusually high water content.[8][9][10] American researchers state that a gene associated with active personality traits is also linked to
-
Astronomers affiliated with the Kepler space observatory announce the discovery of KOI-172.02, an Earth-like exoplanet candidate which orbits a star similar to the Sun in the habitable zone
-
13 January – Massachusetts doctors invent a pill-sized medical scanner that can be safely swallowed by patients, allowing the esophagus to be more easily scanned for disease
- ...101 more annotations...
-
17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue
-
2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta
-
3 January
-
8 January
-
20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells
-
25 January
-
An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology
-
30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch
-
6 February
-
Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets
-
Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans
-
American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice
-
10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane
-
15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people
-
28 February
-
Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta
-
A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart
-
1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot
-
3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year
-
researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants
-
7 March
-
A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies
-
11 March
-
12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals
-
14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson
-
18 March
-
NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm
-
27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.
-
NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station
-
3 April
-
15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital
-
18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft
-
21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight
-
After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh
-
29 April
-
1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope
-
A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life
-
NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like
-
15 May
-
16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine
-
27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory
-
29 May
-
Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia
-
A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent
-
4 June
-
During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory
-
20 June
-
China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date
-
26 June
-
20 June
-
20 June
-
6 July
-
Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms
-
15 July
-
ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector
-
19 July
-
NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover
-
Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn
-
29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth
-
exoplanet
-
7 January
-
Astronomers
-
report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy
-
20 February
-
NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon
-
10 June
-
Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence
-
25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667
-
11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere
-
NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered
-
15 August
-
Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination
-
3 September
-
12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977
-
NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples
-
26 September
-
In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type
-
mafic
-
as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi
-
perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site
-
earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts
-
Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b
-
30 September
-
8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"
-
16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.
-
Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through
-
17 October
-
22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet
-
4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy
-
11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars
-
5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan
-
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System
-
21 November
-
1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16
-
3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b
-
9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater
-
12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter
-
14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there
-
18 December
-
nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away
-
20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported
