As 2024 rolls to a close, this year’s top science stories show inspiring advances while leaving much to ponder.
The year started with scientists reporting that newborn galaxies in the very early universe were “banana-shaped.”
“This is both a surprising and unexpected result, though there were already hints of it with Hubble,” Dr Viraj Pandya, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, told the New York Times.
Dr Pandya said the observation could offer insight into the mysterious nature of dark matter, an unknown and invisible form of matter that astronomers say makes up a major part of the universe and outweighs atomic matter 5 to 1.
China launched its Chang’e-6 probe in May, a robotic sample-return mission to the Moon’s far side.
A month later, Chang’e-6 collected 1.9kg of lunar soil for return to Earth. The volcanic rock contained in the samples dates back 2.8 billion years, suggesting that the landing site was volcanically active at that time.
In October, SpaceX conducted its boldest test flight yet, returning the first-stage booster of its enormous Starship rocket to its Texas launch pad using giant mechanical arms.
A year after project planning began, some 130 biologists, scientists and clinicians launched the Human Cell Atlas initiative. This international collaboration aims to create comprehensive reference maps of the human body’s estimated 37.2 trillion cells.
The atlas could help researchers compare healthy cells with diseased ones, facilitating the development of better drugs. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft will host data and analysis in public clouds.
