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1989 in science |
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The year 1989 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.
Clyde William Tombaugh was an American astronomer. He discovered the ninth planet Pluto in 1930, the first object to be discovered in what would later be identified as the Kuiper belt. At the time of discovery, Pluto was considered a planet, but was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. Tombaugh also discovered many asteroids, and called for the serious scientific research of unidentified flying objects.
Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of Earth's moon, and one-third its volume.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disorder inherited in an autosomal recessive manner that impairs the normal clearance of mucus from the lungs, which facilitates the colonization and infection of the lungs by bacteria, notably Staphylococcus aureus. CF is a rare genetic disorder that affects mostly the lungs, but also the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and intestine. The hallmark feature of CF is the accumulation of thick mucus in different organs. Long-term issues include difficulty breathing and coughing up mucus as a result of frequent lung infections. Other signs and symptoms may include sinus infections, poor growth, fatty stool, clubbing of the fingers and toes, and infertility in most males. Different people may have different degrees of symptoms.
In astronomy and celestial navigation, an ephemeris is a book with tables that gives the trajectory of naturally occurring astronomical objects as well as artificial satellites in the sky, i.e., the position over time. Historically, positions were given as printed tables of values, given at regular intervals of date and time. The calculation of these tables was one of the first applications of mechanical computers. Modern ephemerides are often provided in electronic form. However, printed ephemerides are still produced, as they are useful when computational devices are not available.
The year 1938 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, which became a mission to 486958 Arrokoth. It is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.
The year 1988 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.
The year 1945 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
The year 1992 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.
The year 1980 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
The year 1936 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Marc William Buie is an American astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets who works at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado in the Space Science Department. Formerly he worked at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and was the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission Scientist for the B612 Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impact events.
Donald Vincent Merton was a New Zealand conservationist best known for saving the black robin from extinction. He also discovered the lek breeding system of the kākāpō.
Brian Jhan Fox is an American computer programmer and free software advocate. He is the original author of the GNU Bash shell, which he announced as a beta in June 1989. He continued as the primary maintainer of bash until at least early 1993. Fox also built the first interactive online banking software in the U.S. for Wells Fargo in 1995, and he created an open source election system in 2008.
132524 APL (provisional designation 2002 JF56) is a small background asteroid in the intermediate asteroid belt. It was discovered by Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research in May 2002, and imaged by the New Horizons space probe on its flyby in June 2006, when it was passing through the asteroid belt. The stony S-type asteroid measures approximately 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) in diameter.
1993 RP is a trans-Neptunian object discovered by astronomers David Jewitt and Jane Luu at Mauna Kea Observatory on 15 September 1993. It was one of the first few trans-Neptunian objects discovered after Pluto and Charon, but it was not observed long enough to determine its orbit and ended up becoming lost for over two decades. 1993 RP was serendipitously reobserved in 2015–2016 by Edward Ashton, John Kavelaars, and Brett Gladman at Mauna Kea Observatory, but was announced as a new trans-Neptunian object under the provisional designation 2015 VR202. 2015 VR202 was not recognized to be the same object as 1993 RP until it was identified by Peter VanWylen on 14 August 2023.
2008 LC18 is a Neptune trojan first observed on 7 June 2008 by American astronomers Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo using the Subaru telescope at Mauna Kea Observatories on Hawaii, United States. It was the first object found in Neptune's trailing L5 Lagrangian point and measures approximately 100 kilometers in diameter.
This article is a summary of the 1980s in science and technology.
Johanna Rommens is a Canadian geneticist who was on the research team which identified and cloned the CFTR gene, which when mutated, is responsible for causing cystic fibrosis (CF). She later discovered the gene responsible for Shwachman-Diamond syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes pancreatic and hematologic problems. She is a Senior Scientist Emeritus at SickKids Research Institute and a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto.