When someone says: “10 years ago”, we think they talk about the 90s.
(Come on, I can’t be the only one.)
Yet, in just a decade, we’ve had so many new discoveries and fun facts that brought
us closer to understanding how the world works.
Let’s go back in time and check it out: 2010
• Scientists found an ancient finger which belonged to an undiscovered ancestor of ours.
The species was given the name Denisovans but we’re still not sure what they looked
like.
• The world’s tallest building opened in Dubai.
It’s the Burj Khalifa and it stands at 2,723 feet.
• It was also the year of the longest traffic jam in history.
It stretched 62 miles and lasted 12 days.
• Experts found some sharks in the Gulf of Mexico that are as small as 5 & 1/2 inches.
They look like mini sperm whales.
• A yellow-bellied lizard finally evolved to give birth.
It’s a species of an Australian lizard that reproduces by laying eggs.
Yet, a few of its kind that live in colder environments, started giving birth to live
young instead of eggs.
2011 • The space shuttle Discovery, which had
been active since 1984, took its 39th and final flight that year.
• On October 31st the world population reached 7 billion.
• We’ve discovered Neptune more than 150 years ago.
Yet, on July 12th, it completed its first known orbit around the Sun.
Yeah it’s probably been doing that a long time, but we didn’t notice.
• A person put a grape cut in half in the microwave to discover that it caught fire.
Scientists later used that experiment in their physics studies.
Okay, to be clear, let’s not go blowing up grapes.
2012 – The year that made us believe that the world would come to an end.
Oops, not so fast.
• Venus passed directly between the Sun and the Earth.
This won’t happen again until 2117.
• NASA landed a rover on Mars called Curiosity.
It was the 4th one sent by NASA and it cruised around to find out whether there had been
life on Mars.
• Felix Baumgartner became the first person to break the sound barrier without any mechanical
assistance by free-falling from the stratosphere.
• A new research by the National Academy of Science found that aging apes experience
the same midlife crisis we humans go through.
• Fishermen found european catfish can take down pigeons.
They filmed the fish jumping out of the water and targeting the birds at the shore.
• Scientists discovered bacteria can use minerals in soil to conduct electricity despite
their tiny size.
Really shocking news.
• Scientists studied a 300-year-old unique plant, growing only on two cliffs in Spain.
According to their findings, ants are the ones that keep the plant alive.
• There’s a blue African fruit with the most intensely colored tissue ever found in
a biological study.
It reflects 30% of light and has a bluish/purple color.
2013 • The California Institute of Technology
reported that there are at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy alone.
• A skeleton was found beneath a parking lot in England.
After months of research, they determined that it belonged to King Richard the third.
No sign was found of his car.
• Scientists discovered that cheetahs don’t overheat when they run at 70 mph despite being
the fastest land animals.
And I’m sweating sitting here thinking about it.
• A study in social psychology concluded that fonts which are harder to read are more
convincing.
This is because readers are forced to slow down, read things word-by-word, and spend
longer thinking about the facts.
• A full lab-grown burger was finally made.
It took 2 years to produce and it cost 325,000 bucks.
Cows across America began to have hope.
2014 • Scientists discovered that water vapor
was coming out of the dwarf planet “Ceres” – that’s also the largest asteroid in
our solar system.
• Archaeologists excavated a site that was below two ancient temples in central Rome.
There, they found votive offerings, figurines and drinking vessels too.
Maybe even a Vespa.
• NASA’s MAVEN Spacecraft reached Mars for its mission to study the red planet’s
atmosphere.
• A probe named Rosetta let its lander loose on the 67P comet.
It observed the comet’s closest approach to the sun and studied its surface.
• Scientists studied 48 bird species for over 4 years, and they finally announced that
according to genetics, birds evolved from dinosaurs.
• Researchers studied a pink spot on the head of leatherback sea turtles.
As it turned out, it acts as a biological clock which alerts them about changes in sunlight
and seasons.
• Inside the constellation of the Giraffe (yup, seriously), scientists discovered two
massive blue stars merging into one.
2015: It was all about space this year • The spacecraft named Messenger had been
sent to study Mercury’s matter, and after 4 years of orbiting the planet, it crashed
onto its surface.
• 10 years after NASA’s April Fools joke that water existed on Mars, scientists discovered
that there’s actually liquid water occasionally flowing on Mars despite its freezing temperature.
• A guy named Sven held the world record for the longest birthday ever.
His day lasted around 46 hours as he crossed multiple time zones to achieve his goal.
• NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto and gave us a closer look at what
it looks like.
Scientists found a huge floating mountain made of water ice.
And some signs reading “hey, we’re still a planet”.
2016: • Bottled water was sold more than carbonated
soft drinks for the first time ever.
• The daily Google searches began to approach 3 billion.
• 123456 was the most commonly used password for 3 years in a row.
• The world’s largest blue star sapphire was found in Sri Lanka.
It’s a little more than 1,400 carats.
• A paleontologist isolated a fossil from 440 million years ago and it was the oldest
fossilized fungi ever found.
• DNA showed that Nile crocodiles, which eat any living being in their path, made their
way to Florida’s swamps.
The alligators there were not thrilled by this.
2017: • A 16-year-old was asking a fast food chain
through social media for free chicken nuggets for a year, and it worked.
Why didn’t I think of that?
• An airline filled a plane with puppies to help them escape from Hurricane Harvey.
• NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft found a possible energy source for life on Enceladus – one
of Saturn’s moons.
• Speaking of, researchers found that you can actually “hear” the universe through
gravitational waves.
Those waves came when two neutron stars collided.
2018: • Experts found that citrus fruits go all
the way back to the foothills of the Himalayas.
• There were 65,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain made by the Neanderthals.
This makes them the first species on earth to begin documenting history.
• The world’s oldest message in a bottle was discovered in Australia and it was around
132 years old.
It had been thrown from a German ship called Paula in 1886.
• Scientists also discovered that unlike modern reptiles, dinosaurs possibly shed their
skin gradually.
• During a solar eclipse, scientists found out that bees stopped buzzing.
When the moon blocked the sunlight, they all just went quiet.
• Scientists discovered that even though our eardrums have nothing to do with our sight,
they move when our eyes move.
• Researchers found that we store around 5,000 faces in our memory, yet the number
could go as high as 10,000.
• It was estimated that there are 10 million black holes in our galaxy alone.
• A new study showed that some types of spiders can produce milk for their babies,
and it’s even more nutritious than cow’s milk.
Uh uh, not me.
You can go milk a spider.
• Scientists discovered a new organ in our body that contains little spaces filled with
fluid and it holds up to 20% of our body weight.
• It was proved that playing video games can affect our moods positively and impact
our motivation.
2019: • Because our diets changed in the last
centuries, scientists found out that our teeth and jaws evolved and altered the way we talk.
• This year, we saw a naturally green colored puppy being born, it was given the name Hulk.
Another one was born two years ago and got the name Forest.
I can’t wait for the little “pea” to arrive.
Hey!
What name would you give to a green colored puppy?
Let me know down in the comments!
• Giraffes with dark spots were found to be more dominant than the ones with lighter
colored spots.
• Another research about bees showed that they can do math.
They can add, subtract, and understand the concept of Zero.
• Mars Opportunity Rover’s mission ended after 15 years because of a powerful sandstorm
that damaged all communications.
• A stolen Picasso painting was finally found in March of 2019 – it was recovered
after 20 years by an art detective.
• We had the first photo of a black hole that made the Internet go crazy.
It’s 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun and 55 million light years away.
• Vantablack is a material that used to be the darkest human-made object in the world.
But now, MIT engineers developed something 10 times darker.
It doesn’t have a name yet, but it absorbs more than 99.99% of light.
Can’t wait to see what happens this decade!
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