2017 SPECIAL .....Seven wildest scientific discoveries of 2017

Seven wildest scientific discoveries of 2017

Here are some of the wildest, coolest and most promising scientific findings of the year

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. Some argue it should be counted alongside our (visible) seven continents.

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 just invented two new letters, an unnatural pair of X-Y bases. Floyd Romesburg, who led the research at The Scripps Research Institute in California, says the new invention could improve the way we treat diseases.

Scientists witnessed how all the gold and platinum in the universe formed

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.

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 a new imaging technique that depends on high-speed particles called muons. The particles are made when cosmic rays from 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 tons of rock in the pyramids and reveal the hidden void via particle detectors.

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.

NASA found seven new planets that might be habitable to alien life

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 what’s known as 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.

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.

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