so a wormhole bends space like this so
you can take a shortcut through
a higher dimension welcome to watchmojo
and today we're counting down our picks
for the top 10 discoveries that changed
history a dna strand like me
is a blueprint for building a living
thing my beak is different see it
evolved a slightly bigger hook over the
generations to help me eat the cactus on
this part of the island gotta locate the
closest medical research facility a cdc
a wh o something that uh makes vaccine
for this list we're ranking concepts
theories objects and anything that
altered life as we know it after being
discovered we won't be tackling
inventions because they deserve a list
of their own let us know in the comments
which other influential discoveries you
stan
number 10 quantum theory isolated
completely a quantum system would revert
back to separate states of matter each
entangled with a distinct state of its
environment in the 20th century quantum
theory came along and blew up everything
we thought we knew about mata that is
everything that physically exists in the
universe a century after the true
discovery of atoms we finally started to
decipher them atoms are made up of
subatomic particles protons neutrons and
electrons while light itself is made up
of photons quantum mechanics explains
how all matter at the smallest level
interacts with itself and with light
without quantum theory we wouldn't
understand electromagnetism radiation or
atomic structure meaning that neither
modern physics nor chemistry could exist
it's quantum entanglement between the
quantum states of posenar molecules in
your brains yeah that's what i was
thinking
it was pioneered by major physicists
like max plunk and niels bohr and is one
of science's most important disciplines
do you guys just put the word quantum in
front of everything number nine
so guess we can skip all this huh well
we're here machines on may as well take
a look abundant in the universe x-rays
are a form of ionizing high frequency
radiation totally invisible to the human
eye they were first discovered by
wilhelm rontgen whose name is still used
as a unit of radiation x-rays rapidly
became an indispensable part of modern
medicine the calcium in bones absorbs
the x-rays and allows images to be taken
of the inside of the body wow wow what
what what is wow what is that that's um
yep this allows us to study all kinds of
afflictions we previously had to guess
about at the same time radiation and
radioactivity were being studied by
scientists from henry baccarel to marie
and pierre curie marie curie ultimately
received a nobel prize for her work in
the field of x-rays
number eight dinosaurs
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for a long time what existed on earth
before us was a mystery then in the
1800s paleontology was invented as a
discipline after the first almost
complete fossil of an archaeopteryx was
discovered it wasn't the first dinosaur
bone ever found however this discovery
of a fossil meant people had the most
substantial link to the widespread
existence of dinosaurs
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humanity had uncovered the remains of an
entire ecosystem that died out millions
of years ago now dinosaurs are a fixture
in every natural history museum in the
world they've also been the subject of a
few popular movies you may have heard of
stand down
hey hey
what did i just say and who doesn't have
a favorite dinosaur
number seven the big bang theory our
whole universe was in a hot dance state
the nearly 14 billion years ago
expansion started waiting in the 1920s
it was observed by influential
physicists george lemaitre and edwin
hubble that the universe was expanding
they also realized that this expansion
was getting faster earth began to cool
the autotrophs began to drool
neanderthals developed tools we built a
wall
so if you go back in time the universe
would theoretically get smaller at a
slower rate and by that logic our
massive universe started as a small and
dense singularity ready to get bigger
scientists theorized that it exploded at
some time and gave birth to the universe
in an astonishing explosion and now
nicknamed the big bang it took most of
the 20th century for the big bang to
become the most widely accepted
cosmological model of the universe but
it's now one of the most important
discoveries in science isn't that right
sheldon science history unraveling the
mystery that all started
number six electricity
proof that electricity existed appeared
in the magnetic fields across the
universe and lightning in the sky for
millennia but it took a long time for
humans to work out how to harness the
natural power of electricity perfectly
safe
when we did it created a technological
revolution like no other while founding
father benjamin franklin conducted many
experiments to study lightning the true
father of electricity is michael faraday
this scientist built on centuries of
research to invent the electric motor
faraday's work in turn led to
revolutions like the light bulb decades
later nikola tesla would even invent a
way to wirelessly transmit electricity
what's conducting the electricity
our bodies mr angie are quite capable of
conducting and indeed producing energy
while that discovery was virtually
ignored for another hundred years it was
another huge stepping stone in this
crucial field
number five penicillin that wasn't so
bad
that was penicillin
you might not think that mold would be
the basis for modern antibiotics but
that's exactly where penicillin the
world's first antibiotic originated the
compound and its medicinal properties
were discovered by alexander fleming in
1928. he also named it empire near the
production process penicillin is used to
fight off a wide range of infections
most often those caused by strep
bacteria like strep throat and strep
meningitis she needs a massive dose of
penicillin or a broad spectrum
antibiotic immediately
fleming built upon similar developments
that were achieved in the previous
century by louis pasteur he pioneered
germ theory and realized that microbes
and bacteria were responsible for
causing illness thanks to pasteur people
learned the importance of disinfection
to prevent disease
hey guys i found it
what
how do you know
because it says penicillin on the bottom
number four theory of relativity
every hour we spend on that planet will
be
seven years back on earth
that's relativity folks in the early
1900s a young scientist named albert
einstein realized that isaac newton's
ideas about gravity were largely wrong
he expressed this discovery through his
theories of general and special
relativity which have formed the
backbone of modern physics for many
decades einstein's groundbreaking
equations described how gravity is
created by massive objects bending
space-time around them time is relative
okay it can stretch and it can squeeze
but
it can't run backwards
you can't he also predicted phenomena
like black holes and gravitational waves
which decades later were proven
conclusively to exist it was a
revelation on par with the copernican
system that put the sun at the center of
the solar system instead of the earth
relativity was yet another theory that
changed our entire perspective of the
universe the only thing that can move
across dimensions like time is gravity
number three dna
mr dna where did you come from from your
blood just one drop of your blood
contains billions of strands of dna
the building blocks of life humans just
like every other organism on earth have
dna but we didn't always know what that
was the team behind the discovery of the
double helix was james watson francis
crick maurice wilkins and the often
forgotten rosalind franklin while they
weren't the first to think about dna
like this all of them did invaluable
work in the 1950s their research
eventually led to the human genome being
completely sequenced in 2003. if we
looked at screens like these once a
second for eight hours a day it'd take
two years to look at the entire dna
strand it's that long brilliant minds
use this invaluable resource to better
understand genes traits and diseases
caused by dna and genetics is still
advancing at an unprecedented rate most
recently the development of crispr a
gene editing tool could cure genetic
conditions and possibly eradicate cancer
we use the complete dna of a frog to
fill in the
holes and complete the
code
number two vaccines it has to be viral
there is no plausible alternative
and like any virus once we find its
origin we can develop a vaccine the
development of vaccines particularly
modern ones like the polio vaccine might
be considered more of an invention than
a discovery but the very first one made
to combat smallpox is a different story
if we knew where this thing started then
we'd have a chance of developing a
vaccine to stop it british doctor edward
jenner observed that milkmaids who had
been exposed to the cowpox virus didn't
develop smallpox later on in life using
that knowledge he used the pus from the
cowpox virus itself with no
modifications to successfully inoculate
people against smallpox this wasn't the
first time a similar process had been
attempted however jenna's method was one
of the most effective and paved the way
for the virtual eradication of smallpox
in the late 20th century
world health organization has created a
vaccine that works as a kind of
camouflage
making people who receive it invisible
to the infected
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number one evolution mutation
it is the key to our evolution
it is how we have evolved from a
single-celled organism into the dominant
species on the planet after some long
voyages on the hms beagle charles darwin
was finally ready to publish his magnum
opus
on the origin of species in this book he
laid out his theory of evolution it
basically states that animals were all
related if you go far enough back and
species gain adaptations over time
including humans genetic mutation the
evolution of the human genome evolution
shook the world to its core and was
interpreted by many religions as
indictment of their beliefs around 150
years later evolution is regarded as
fact by scientists and a large majority
of the public the theory helped us
figure out how humans and animals
adapted to even the harshest
environments over time by understanding
how living creatures changed in the past
scientists can theorize how they'll
evolve in the future i saw the next
stage in evolution
what charles and i dreamt of finding
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you