Every year, Science’s reporters and editors choose nine runners-up
and one Breakthrough of the Year.
But before we get to the Breakthrough, here are a few of the runners-up.
Fast radio bursts—short, powerful flashes of radio waves from distant galaxies—
have tantalized astronomers for 13 years.
Now, cosmic detectives have figured out where they come from:
magnetars, neutron stars that fizzle and pop with powerful magnetic fields.
In April, an FRB went off in the Milky Way.
Researchers quickly narrowed the source to a small area of sky,
and using powerful telescopes, they quickly linked it to a single magnetar.
Stay tuned for a sequel, as researchers try to understand
exactly how the magnetars produce these radio bursts.
Since the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR
burst onto the scene in 2012,
it’s given researchers new power to engineer crops and animals,
stirred ethical debates, and earned a Nobel prize.
Now, it's scored its first victory in a clinical trial.
It helped patients with two inherited blood diseases—beta-thalassemia,
where low levels of an oxygen-carrying protein called hemoglobin
lead to weakness and exhaustion,
and sickle cell disease, caused by a defective form of the same protein.
To treat sickle cell disease, researchers used CRISPR
to make the body produce the fetal form of hemoglobin.
But the CRISPR approach could cost $1 million or more per patient—
putting it out of reach for many.
Their eyes are beady and their brains no bigger than a walnut.
But two studies published this year
suggest birds have amazing mental powers.
Scientists took a closer look at the forebrain of homing pigeons and owls
and found nerves there that connect horizontally and vertically.
This is similar to the matrix of connections seen in the human neocortex,
the source of our occasionally incredible intelligence.
Another study suggested that carrion crows,
already well-known for their brains,
are aware of what they see and do.
This could mean that some form of consciousness
was present in our last common ancestor, 320 million years ago.
More than 40,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi,
a prehistoric Picasso ventured deep into a cave
and sketched a series of fantastic animal-headed hunters
cornering wild hogs and buffaloes.
It’s possible that the artist was depicting the hunters wearing masks or camouflage,
but they may also represent mythical animal-human hybrids,
which appear in other ancient works of art.
The age of the paintings makes them the earliest
known figurative art made by modern humans.
And now, the Breakthrough of the Year.
Not one, not two, but multiple COVID-19 vaccines
have now succeeded in large human clinical trials—
a mere eleven months after the first sequencing of SARS-CoV-2.
Vaccines have already been deployed in the UAE,
the United Kingdom, and now the United States.
The two vaccines at the forefront of this wave,
which use messenger RNA to carry the genetic code
for the coronavirus spike protein,
reported an amazing efficacy—roughly 95%.
But other approaches, like using inactivated cold viruses
to shuttle the spike protein,
or harmless versions of the virus itself,
could also soon make their way to market.
Never before have so many competitors collaborated so openly
and never before have governments, businesses, and institutions
all around the world poured this much money and manpower
into the hunt for a vaccine.
But even as this research has yielded remarkable results,
the pandemic also marks a breakdown:
in communication, public trust, and a sense of shared reality.
That has transformed the deadly threat of COVID-19 into something far worse.
As of mid-December, more than 1.6 million people
have died globally of complications from COVID-19,
with more than 300,000 deaths in the United States alone.
Science has delivered an exit strategy through effective vaccines,
but human behavior has been—and continues to be—
the most important variable in shaping our path forward.