2004 in science
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2004 in science |
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The year 2004 in science and technology involved some significant events.
Anthropology
- October 27 – Remains of a previously unknown species of human is discovered in Indonesia. Named Homo floresiensis, the hominin is a dwarfed version that lived 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores.[1]
Astronomy
- March 15 – Astronomers announce the discovery last year of trans-Neptunian object 90377 Sedna, one of the most distant objects in the Solar System.[2]
- April 19 – Partial solar eclipse.
- May 18 – Scientists using the accelerating.[3]
- July 1 (01:12–02:48 .
- June 8 – Transit of Venus across the Sun.
- September 13 – Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announce images that appear to show a planet orbiting a brown dwarf about 230 light-years away. The system is believed to be only around 8 million years old.
- October 14 – Partial solar eclipse
- November 20 – Launch of the Swift satellite to investigate gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and perform an X-rayall sky survey.
- December 27 – A flare of radiation from an explosion on the super-magnetic
Biology
- April 22 – Trees have a theoretical maximum height of 130 m (426 ft) before gravity restricts their growth, according to a study published in Nature.[5]
- July 30 – Marine biologists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute announce in the journal Science the discovery of the genus Osedax, deep sea worms that feed on lipids in decaying whale carcasses.
Computing
Earth sciences
- September 28 – A long-awaited earthquake strikes Parkfield, California, the most closely monitored earthquake zone in the world. The earthquake, which had been expected to have occurred by the late 1980s, strikes at a magnitude 6.0. The network of instruments that had been installed in the region make this the most well-recorded earthquake in history.
- December 26 – Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
Mathematics
- Michael Aschbacher and Stephen D. Smith publish their work on quasithin groups, filling the last (known) gap in the classification of finite simple groups.
Paleontology
- January – A 428 million-year-old fossil Pneumodesmus found in Scotland is identified as the world's oldest known creature to have lived on land.[6]
- Summer – A team led by Neil Shubin discover fossils of the sarcopterygian Tiktaalik on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, significant in the evolution of tetrapods.[7]
Philosophy
Physics
- January 14 – Physicists from Pennsylvania State University produce the first solid Bose–Einstein condensate.[8]
- January – A team from the JILA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado announce the creation of a fermionic condensate, the first such condensate made from atoms rather than molecules.
- February 3 – Russian and American physicists produce results that indicate the discovery of elements 113 and 115.[9]
- March 22 – A team from Australia, Russia and Greece announce a new material, made from a nano-foam of carbon that has the lowest density ever reported for a solid.[10]
- April 20 – NASA launches Gravity Probe B in an effort to test Einstein's general theory of relativity.
- May 19 – A team of European scientists produces the first Tonks–Girardeau gas.[11]
- September 24 – Physicists from the Université Joseph Fourier and the Institut Laue–Langevin in Grenoble, France announce the discovery of a solution (a-cyclodextrine, water, and 4-methylpyridine) that changes from liquid to solid when heated, and melts again when cooled down.[12]
- October 22 – Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov publish their rediscovery, isolation and characterization of graphene at the University of Manchester in England.[13][14]
Technology
- March 27 – hypersonicflight.
- April 30 – Scientists from the University of California at Irvine announce the first high-speed transistor made from a carbon nanotube, operating at microwavefrequencies.
Space exploration
- January 2 – coma.
- January 4 – NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission Spirit (MER-A), the first of two Mars rovers, lands successfully on Mars in the crater Gusev (Columbia Memorial Station) at 04:35 SCET.
- January 25 – NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission Opportunity (MER-B), the second Mars rover, lands successfully on Mars in the Meridiani Planum at 05:05 SCET.
- March 2
- NASA report that the area where their Mars rover Opportunity touched down shows unmistakable signs of contact with water in the geological past.
- The Rosetta mission launches, aiming to land on Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenkoin 2014.
- March 4 – NASA's Spirit finds evidence of past contact with water in volcanic rocks on Mars.
- April 1 – The Genesis probe closes and seals its particle collection instrument, and begins to return to Earth.
- June 11 – .
- June 21 – edge of space.
- July 1 – The Cassini-Huygens space probe arrives at Saturn and begins its nominal 4-year mission after successfully reaching orbit.
- August 2 – NASA successfully launches the MESSENGER probe on its 5-year trip to Mercury.
- September 8 – The Genesis spacecraft returns to Earth with captured solar wind particles, but crash-lands because of a failure to deploy any parachute.
- October 4 – SpaceShipOne wins the Ansari X Prize after reaching an altitude of over 100 km (62 mi) for the second time in less than five days.
- November 15 – The SMART-1 space probe reaches orbit around the Moon. It is the first European space mission to do so.
- December 25 – The Cassini probe successfully drops the Huygens probe, sending it onto a trip to land on Saturn's moon Titan.
Awards
- Nobel Prize
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Linda B. Buck and Richard Axel
- H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose
- Abel Prize in Mathematics: Michael F. Atiyah and Isadore M. Singer
- Millennium Technology Prize (inaugural year): World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee
- Descartes Prize for outstanding cross-border research
- Mitochondrial Biogenesis, Ageing and Disease project (co-ordinator Howard Trevor Jacobs)
- Long Distance Photonic Quantum Communication project (co-ordinator Anders Karlsson)
Appointments
- February 12 – Arden Bement, acting director of the U.S.A's National Science Foundation.
- August 26 – Neurobiologist Susan Hockfield is appointed as President of MIT.
- November 19 – Particle physicist Michael Witherell as director of Fermilab(from July 1, 2005).
Deaths
- January 6 – Thomas Stockham (b. 1933), American electrical engineer and inventor.
- January 12 – Olga Ladyzhenskaya (b. 1922), Soviet mathematician.
- February 6 – Humphry Osmond (b. 1917), English-born psychiatrist.
- February 21 – nuclear chemist.
- March 15
- Bill Pickering (b. 1910), New Zealand-born head of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
- Sir John Pople (b. 1925), British Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
- April 6 – Biswa Ranjan Nag (b. 1932), Indian physicist.
- April 19 – evolutionary biologist and geneticist.
- May 27 – Mikhail Postnikov (b. 1927), Soviet mathematician, known for his work in algebraic and differential topology.
- June 8 – biophysicist.
- July 3 – Andriyan Nikolayev (b. 1929), cosmonaut.
- July 28 – double helix structure for DNA.
- August 12 – Dolly the Sheep.
- August 15 – Nobel Prize for Medicine.
- August 31 – Fred Whipple (b. 1906), American astronomer who coined the term "dirty snowball" to explain the nature of comets.
- October 5 – X-ray diffraction.
- October 19 – Lewis Urry (b. 1927), Canadian inventor of the long-lasting alkaline battery.
- October 21 – acarologist.
- November 18 – Robert Bacher (b. 1905), American nuclear physicist and one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, Professor and Provost of the California Institute of Technology.
- November 20 – Ancel Keys (b. 1904), American nutritionist.
- December 26 – cardiologist.
- December 29 – Nobel Prize in Physiology for work with catecholamine neurotransmitters.
References
- S2CID 26441.
- S2CID 7738201.
- ^ "Chandra :: Photo Album :: Galaxy Clusters and Dark Energy". chandra.harvard.edu. 18 May 2004.
- .
- S2CID 11846291. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2012-10-21. Retrieved 2012-10-08.
- ^ "Fossil find 'oldest land animal'". BBC News. 2005-01-25. Retrieved 2014-05-25.
- PMID 16598249.
- S2CID 3112651.
- doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.69.021601. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2020-03-07. Retrieved 2019-07-04.
- ^ "Nano-foam makes magnetic debut – physicsworld.com". physicsweb.org.
- S2CID 4423003.
- PMID 15352791.
- S2CID 5729649.
- APS News. Series II. 18 (9): 2. October 2009. Retrieved 2016-11-27.
External links
- "The year in science and technology in Israel". IsraCast. Archived from the original on 2006-03-16. Retrieved 2006-01-12.