From finally identifying the human genome two decades after an asteroid was redirected on a collision course with Earth, there have been many weird and wonderful scientific discoveries in 2022.
What are the most interesting developments in 2022?
get busyAl-Mayadeen NetOver the past year, we have monitored the most important discoveries, innovations, and developments, and this is an observation of the most important of them, as the Daily Mail takes a look at the most interesting developments during 2022.
Asteroid character mission
Scientists succeeded in carrying out the first-ever planetary defense test by deflecting an asteroid slightly from its path last September.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission saw a spacecraft intentionally crash into Dimorphos, a small asteroid moon in the Didymos twin asteroid system 7 million miles (11 million km) from Earth.
It was the world’s first test of kinetic impact mitigation technology, using an object to deflect an asteroid that poses no threat to Earth and modify its orbit.
Footprints from the Ice Age
A study published in August revealed that scientists found 88 fossilized footprints of adults and children, likely dating back 12,000 years, in shallow riverbeds in Utah.
Contrary to the rolling, the study suggests that humans occupied this region 7,500 years ago, which could shake up our current understanding of how humans evolved.
Footprints from the Ice Age
The discovery of the oldest dinosaur fossil in Africa
Dinosaur enthusiasts have been thrilled with an unusual discovery, after paleontologists unearthed the oldest dinosaur ever found in Africa.
The creature, dubbed Mbiresaurus raathi, was about 6 feet long and roamed Zimbabwe 230 million years ago.
The oldest dinosaur fossil in Africa
Analysis of the fossils revealed that it was a type of sauropodomorph, a relative of the sauropod, that walked on 4 legs, had jagged teeth, and had a long neck and tail.
The most complete woolly mammoth baby
This creature looks a bit like a mummified baby elephant, but it’s actually a very well-preserved baby mammoth that lived over 30,000 years ago.
It was discovered by gold miners in Yukon, Canada, in June.
The most complete woolly mammoth baby
The Yukon government said it was “the most complete mammoth found in North America” and the second such find in the world.
Nun cho ga was frozen in permafrost, mummifying his remains.
Lab-grown brain cells learn to play video games
The classic table tennis-themed video game Pong was groundbreaking and very popular when it was released in 1972.
Human brain cells grown in the lab have been shown to be able to move a paddle vertically across a screen to hit a ball.
Brain cells learning video games
And researchers from Melbourne-based Cortical Labs have demonstrated for the first time that 800,000 brain cells can perform goal-directed tasks — in this case, Pong.
The results suggest that even brain cells in a petri dish can display inherent intelligence, modifying their behavior over time.
Microplastics are everywhere
The scourge of plastic waste and its impact on the environment has come into sharper focus lately.
In particular, scientists have been studying microplastics – small pieces of plastic less than 0.2 inch (5 mm) in diameter – and where they have been discovered, including as far afield as Antarctica.
The worrying thing is that it was also found inside us after scientists discovered it in human blood for the first time.
Microplastics are everywhere
Researchers in the Netherlands took blood samples from 22 healthy, unidentified adult donors and analyzed them for particles as small as 0.00002 of an inch.
They found that 17 out of 22 volunteers (77.2%) had microplastics in their blood – a finding described as ‘extremely worrying’.
Microplastics were also detected in live human lungs for the first time this year – proof that we breathe them in from the air.
First images of the new Super Space Telescope
There was plenty of excitement in the summer as NASA’s new $10 billion (£7.4 billion) space telescope sent back its first pictures of the early universe.
Astronomy enthusiasts received unprecedentedly dazzling images of a “stellar nursery”, a dying star covered in dust and a “cosmic dance” among a group of galaxies.
First images of the new Super Space Telescope
Hailed as the ‘dawn of a new era in astronomy’, it was taken by James Webb – as the successor to the famous Hubble Observatory – and released by NASA in July.
Webb’s capabilities in the infrared of the electromagnetic spectrum mean he can “see past time” within just 100-200 million years of the Big Bang, allowing him to take pictures of the first stars to shine in the universe more than 13.5 billion years ago.
The human genome is finally complete
It took two decades but in 2022 the human genome has finally been fully mapped.
And in April, researchers published a gap-free sequence of nearly 3 billion bases (or “letters”) of a single person’s DNA, 20 years after producing the first draft.
Completeness of the human genome
They said the complete, gap-free sequencing of the bases in our DNA was crucial to understanding human genetic variation and genetic contributions to specific diseases.
In addition to the medical implications, the whole genome also helps answer the question of what makes us so uniquely human.
First photo of Sagittarius A * (Sagittarius A)
In a historic first, in May, astronomers revealed how they captured a remarkable image of a supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.
The eagerly awaited image showed Sagittarius A* – which has a mass about 4.3 million times that of our Sun and is located about 27,000 light-years from Earth.
This came just over 3 years after astronomers revealed the first-ever image of a black hole.
The two black holes bear striking similarities, despite the fact that Sagittarius A* is 2,000 times smaller than Messier 87, which is located in a distant galaxy 55 million light-years away.
Fossil from the day the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago
In April, paleontologists revealed that they had unearthed the first-ever fossil remains of a dinosaur killed on the day a massive asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago.
The Thescelosaurus leg was discovered alongside a section of a seven-mile-wide space rock.
Experts believe the tip, which is covered in skin, was likely to have been ‘broken off’ when the Chicxulub asteroid struck, and then buried in the falling debris on the day of the impact.
Dinosaur analogy
The fossilized leg was discovered, along with a series of fascinating discoveries, at the Tanis Fossil Site in the US state of North Dakota.
Paleontologists said this is the first discovery of a dinosaur that became a famous victim of an asteroid strike, which left a 93-mile-wide crater in what is today the Gulf of Mexico.
They also said they believed they had discovered a small part of the space rock that ended the age of the dinosaurs and gave rise to mammals.