5 Most Amazing Scientific Discoveries of the decade.

Undoubtedly, the past ten years have been among the richest in terms of scientific discovery. Researchers from various fields investigated theories, discovered proof, and traveled to locations that caused us to reevaluate our understanding of not only our own planets but also of the entire universe. It was the decade when we finally started to comprehend one of the biggest problems humanity has ever faced, and we also learned more than ever before about some of the most harmful things ever created. So let's look at five of the most remarkable scientific breakthroughs from the 2000 Intense.

Number 5: “Pluto”

Despite having been unceremoniously downgraded from being a fully-fledged planet in 2006, that year also saw the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft. That was destined to travel to the farthest reaches of our solar system to study the dwarf planet. It finally reached its destination in July of 2015. In the images and data that were sent back were astonishing. Far from being the boring frozen rock, that some had expected it was found to have moving glaciers, floating Ice Mountains and a huge frozen sea made of solid nitrogen. The ice is constantly moving Orbit at slow rates because it is warmed by the pressure above it which in turn causes it to raise the constant replenishment. The top layer of ice creates a surface structure that no one had expected and that has given a new introduction and understanding to what happens on the mysterious dwarf planets at the edge of our solar system.

Number 4: “The Higgs Bosons”

It took the construction of the world's largest machine at a cost of just under five billion dollars. But in 2012 it was finally announced that the mysterious Higgs Boson also known as the god particle have been discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN Switzerland. The particle had first been theorized in 1964 and is one of the most influential pieces of the subatomic world. The reason that it's so important is that the standard model of physics which includes familiar particles like electrons and protons and um from such as muons and quarks doesn't actually explain why objects have mass. The answer though is the elusive Higgs boson particle which exists in the Higgs field and due to its interaction with other particles. It's the reason why mass exists his discovery was the confirmation of the last unknown part of the standard model of physics and now researchers are able to repurpose the LHC to begin investigating even stranger phenomenon

Number 3: “Keplar”

For thousands of years humans have looked to the skies wondering what's up there as astronomical devices were invented. We learned that countless stars existed throughout the universe and danced. There are other planets in our own solar system but it was impossible to learn how common it is for planets to orbit stars. This all changed in 2009 with the launch of the first Keplar probe which was used to study distant stars and measured the amount of light they emit. Fluctuations in their brightness can be used to determine whether any objects are orbiting them and the results have been unbelievable. By the end of the last decade more than 4055 exoplanets have been discovered including a few that are potentially habitable and this number is only expected to increase as we enter a new decade. The more we look the more common our own solar system seems to be and you can only imagine what else is out there to be found.

Number 2: “The world's climate”

Throughout the Earth's history the climate has changed drastically. There have been periods of extreme heat and extreme cold and there's no doubt that things are noticeably changing again during our lifetimes. What's different this time though is that the changes are largely due to human behavior. Something that became clearer than ever in the last decade and we've begun to understand the extent to how it's affecting the planet. In 2012 400 billion tons of ice was lost from Greenland and more than 252 billion tons of ice has been lost from Antarctica every year throughout the decade. This is an increase of almost six times the amount being lost just thirty years earlier and at the current rate the world's sea levels are expected to rise by 3 feet by the year 2100. This would directly affect the homes and lives of at least 630 million people. But the consequences are far further reaching. Human activity has meant that 40% of all amphibian species more than 33% of marine mammals and 10% of insect species are endangered and things continue to get worse. While the last decade was the time where the extent of the problem was the beginning to be fully realized. Let's hope that the next decade is when the solution is finally found

Number 1: “Black holes”

Black holes have long been some of the most mysterious objects in the universe. But thanks to researchers dedicating their efforts to studying the phenomena we've uncovered far more about them and they are much more interesting than you may think. Black holes are typically formed by large stars at the end of their lives and when all the material collapses in on itself to create an unbelievably dense structure and because of their intense gravity costs some very unusual things to happen. In 2016 two black holes were detected colliding into one another which confirmed the prediction made by Einstein in 1916. Whereby they created ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves. This amazing discovery wasn't the biggest black hole revolution of the last decade however as a team working with the event horizon telescope managed to capture the first-ever image of a single arity. It's a massive black hole that lies at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy about 54 million light-years away from us. In his mass it is so big that that is the equivalent to 6.5 billion of our Suns. Black holes like those are thought to be at the center of every galaxy and their gravitational poles are the reason why so many billions of stars orbit them in such large structures.

The 2010 were an incredible time for scientific discoveries and we've learned so much about the world and universe all around us. I can't wait to see what happens next.