5 greatest scientific discoveries

Unquestionably, the past ten years have been among the most productive in terms of scientific discovery ever. Scholars from all fields have examined theories, discovered evidence, and traveled to locations that have caused us to reconsider how well we understand not only our own planets but also the entire universe. It was also the decade in which we began to comprehend one of the biggest problems that humanity has ever faced. 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 Arbit at a slow rates because it is warmed by the pressure above it which in turn causes it to rise the constant replenishment of the top layer of ice creates a surface structures 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 four 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 a Bolton 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 elusive Higgs boson particle, which exists in the Higgs field and is responsible for mass owing to its interaction with other particles, is the solution, His finding confirmed the last piece of the standard model of physics, and now researchers may use the LHC to start looking into even crazier phenomena number three. The first Kepler probe was launched in 2009 and was used to study distant stars and measure the amount of light they emit flu. For thousands of years, people have gazed up at the sky wondering what's up there. As astronomical instruments were developed, we learned that there are countless stars in the universe and that there are other planets in our own solar system. However, it was impossible to learn how common it is for planets to orbit stars. number three the world's climates 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 250 two 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 continues to get worse while the last decade was the time where the extent of the problem was beginning to be fully realized let's hope that the next decade is when the solution is finally found lastly, the top black holes Black holes have long been among the universe's most enigmatic things, but owing to experts who have devoted their time to researching the phenomenon, we now know a lot more about them and they are really a lot more fascinating than you may imagine. Black holes are normally created when massive stars die and all of the material collapses in on itself to produce a very tight structure. Because of their enormous gravity, black holes cause some extremely strange things to occur in 2016 - The discovery of black hole collisions supported Einstein's 1916 prediction that they would produce gravitational waves, which are ripples in space-time. This incredible discovery wasn't the biggest black hole discovery of the past ten years, but it was still significant because a team using the event horizon telescope was able to take the first-ever picture of a single black hole. This black hole is located at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, which is 54 million light-years away from Earth. Its mass is enormous, equal to 6.5 billion of our Suns. Black holes like those are believed to be at the center of every galaxy, and their existence. Thank you all so much for reading; see you next time. 2010 was a fantastic year for scientific discoveries, and we've learnt so much about the world and cosmos around us. I, for one, am eager to see what happens next.