2004 in science

The year 2004 in science and technology involved some significant events.dranmo

Anthropology

• October 27 – Remains of a previously unknown species of human is discovered in Indonesia. Named Homo floresiensis , the hominin is a dwarfed version that lived 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores. ^[1]

Astronomy

• March 15 – Astronomers announce the discovery last year of trans-Neptunian object 90377 Sedna, one of the most distant objects in the Solar System. ^[2]
• April 19 – Partial solar eclipse.
• May 18 – Scientists using the Chandra X-ray Observatory announced their findings that supports the notion that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. ^[3]
• July 1 (01:12–02:48 UTC) – Saturn orbit insertion of Cassini–Huygens.
• June 8 – Transit of Venus across the Sun.
• September 13 – Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announce images that appear to show a planet orbiting a brown dwarf about 230 light-years away. The system is believed to be only around 8 million years old.
• October 14 – Partial solar eclipse
• November 20 – Launch of the Swift satellite to investigate gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and perform an X-ray all sky survey.
• December 27 – A flare of radiation from an explosion on the super-magnetic neutron star (Magnetar) SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth – astronomers later calculate that it is the largest explosion observed in the Milky Way galaxy for 400 years. ^[4]

Biology

• April 22 – Trees have a theoretical maximum height of 130 m (426 ft) before gravity restricts their growth, according to a study published in Nature . ^[5]
• July 30 – Marine biologists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute announce in the journal Science the discovery of the genus Osedax , deep sea worms that feed on lipids in decaying whale carcasses.

Computing

• February 4 – Facebook launches: Mark Zuckerberg launches “TheFacebook” as a social networking website for Harvard University students. ^[6]
• April 1 – Gmail launches.
• November 9 – Firefox launches.

Earth sciences

• September 28 – A long-awaited earthquake strikes Parkfield, California, the most closely monitored earthquake zone in the world. The earthquake, which had been expected to have occurred by the late 1980s, strikes at a magnitude 6.0. The network of instruments that had been installed in the region make this the most well-recorded earthquake in history.
• December 26 – Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

Mathematics

• Michael Aschbacher and Stephen D. Smith publish their work on quasithin groups, filling the last (known) gap in the classification of finite simple groups.

Paleontology

• January – A 428 million-year-old fossil Pneumodesmus found in Scotland is identified as the world's oldest known creature to have lived on land. ^[7]
• Summer – A team led by Neil Shubin discover fossils of the sarcopterygian Tiktaalik on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, significant in the evolution of tetrapods. ^[8]

Philosophy

Main article: 2004 in philosophy

Physics

• January 14 – Physicists from Pennsylvania State University produce the first solid Bose–Einstein condensate. ^[9]
• January – A team from the JILA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado announce the creation of a fermionic condensate, the first such condensate made from atoms rather than molecules.
• February 3 – Russian and American physicists produce results that indicate the discovery of elements 113 and 115. ^[10]
• March 22 – A team from Australia, Russia and Greece announce a new material, made from a nano-foam of carbon that has the lowest density ever reported for a solid. ^[11]
• April 20 – NASA launches Gravity Probe B in an effort to test Einstein's general theory of relativity.
• May 19 – A team of European scientists produces the first Tonks–Girardeau gas. ^[12]
• September 24 – Physicists from the Université Joseph Fourier and the Institut Laue–Langevin in Grenoble, France announce the discovery of a solution (a-cyclodextrine, water, and 4-methylpyridine) that changes from liquid to solid when heated, and melts again when cooled down. ^[13]
• October 22 – Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov publish their rediscovery, isolation and characterization of graphene at the University of Manchester in England. ^{[14] [15]}

Technology

• March 27 – NASA succeeds in a second attempt to fly its X-43A experimental airplane from the Hyper-X project, attaining speeds in excess of Mach 7, the fastest free flying air-breathing hypersonic flight.
• April 30 – Scientists from the University of California at Irvine announce the first high-speed transistor made from a carbon nanotube, operating at microwave frequencies.

Space exploration

• January 2 – NASA's Stardust space probe flies by comet 81P/Wild and collects particle samples from its coma.
• January 4 – NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission Spirit (MER-A), the first of two Mars rovers, lands successfully on Mars in the crater Gusev (Columbia Memorial Station) at 04:35 SCET.
• January 25 – NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission Opportunity (MER-B), the second Mars rover, lands successfully on Mars in the Meridiani Planum at 05:05 SCET.
• March 2
  • NASA report that the area where their Mars rover Opportunity touched down shows unmistakable signs of contact with water in the geological past.
  • The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission launches, aiming to land on Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014.
• March 4 – NASA's Spirit finds evidence of past contact with water in volcanic rocks on Mars.
• April 1 – The Genesis probe closes and seals its particle collection instrument, and begins to return to Earth.
• June 11 – Cassini–Huygens , the NASA/ESA mission to Saturn, makes a flyby of one of Saturn's small outer moons, Phoebe.
• June 21 – SpaceShipOne, the first civilian space ship is launched in California, reaching an altitude of 100 km (62 mi), just passing the edge of space.
• July 1 – The Cassini-Huygens space probe arrives at Saturn and begins its nominal 4-year mission after successfully reaching orbit.
• August 2 – NASA successfully launches the MESSENGER probe on its 5-year trip to Mercury.
• September 8 – The Genesis spacecraft returns to Earth with captured solar wind particles, but crash-lands because of a failure to deploy any parachute.
• October 4 – SpaceShipOne wins the Ansari X Prize after reaching an altitude of over 100 km (62 mi) for the second time in less than five days.
• November 15 – The SMART-1 space probe reaches orbit around the Moon. It is the first European space mission to do so.
• December 25 – The Cassini probe successfully drops the Huygens probe, sending it onto a trip to land on Saturn's moon Titan.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Linda B. Buck and Richard Axel
  • Nobel Prize in Physics: David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek
  • Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose
• Abel Prize in Mathematics: Michael F. Atiyah and Isadore M. Singer
• Millennium Technology Prize (inaugural year): World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee
• Descartes Prize for outstanding cross-border research
  • Mitochondrial Biogenesis, Ageing and Disease project (co-ordinator Howard Trevor Jacobs)
  • Long Distance Photonic Quantum Communication project (co-ordinator Anders Karlsson)

Appointments

• February 12 – Arden Bement, acting director of the U.S.A.'s National Science Foundation.
• August 26 – Neurobiologist Susan Hockfield is appointed as President of MIT.
• November 19 – Particle physicist Piermaria Oddone is appointed to succeed Michael Witherell as director of Fermilab (from July 1, 2005).

Deaths

• January 6 – Thomas Stockham (b. 1933), American electrical engineer and inventor.
• January 12 – Olga Ladyzhenskaya (b. 1922), Soviet mathematician.
• February 6 – Humphry Osmond (b. 1917), English-born psychiatrist.
• February 21 – John D. Hoffman (b. 1922), American nuclear chemist.
• March 15
  • Bill Pickering (b. 1910), New Zealand-born head of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
  • Sir John Pople (b. 1925), British Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
• April 6 – Biswa Ranjan Nag (b. 1932), Indian physicist.
• April 19 – John Maynard Smith (b. 1920), English evolutionary biologist and geneticist.
• May 27 – Mikhail Postnikov (b. 1927), Soviet mathematician, known for his work in algebraic and differential topology.
• June 8 – David Mervyn Blow (b. 1931), English biophysicist.
• July 3 – Andriyan Nikolayev (b. 1929), cosmonaut.
• July 28 – Francis Crick (b. 1916), American Nobel laureate in Physiology for discovering the double helix structure for DNA.
• August 12 – John Clark (b. 1951), English-born molecular biologist, head of the Roslin Institute and part of the team that cloned Dolly the Sheep.
• August 15 – Sune K. Bergström (b. 1916), Swedish biochemist, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Medicine.
• August 31 – Fred Whipple (b. 1906), American astronomer who coined the term "dirty snowball" to explain the nature of comets.
• October 5 – Maurice Wilkins (b. 1916), New Zealand-born British Nobel laureate in Physiology for discovering the double helix structure for DNA using X-ray diffraction.
• October 19 – Lewis Urry (b. 1927), Canadian inventor of the long-lasting alkaline battery.
• October 21 – Magdalena K. P. Smith Meyer (b. 1931), South African acarologist.
• November 18 – Robert Bacher (b. 1905), American nuclear physicist and one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, Professor and Provost of the California Institute of Technology.
• November 20 – Ancel Keys (b. 1904), American nutritionist.
• December 26 – Frank Pantridge (b. 1916), Northern Irish cardiologist.
• December 29 – Julius Axelrod, (b. 1912), American biochemist, Nobel Prize in Physiology for work with catecholamine neurotransmitters.

References

1. Brown, P.; Sutikna, T.; Morwood, M. J.; Soejono, R. P.; Jatmiko, Wayhu; Saptomo, E.; Rokus Awe Due (October 27, 2004). "A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia" (PDF). Nature . 431 (7012): 1055–1061. Bibcode:2004Natur.431.1055B. doi:10.1038/nature02999. PMID   15514638. S2CID   26441.
2. Brown, Michael E.; Trujillo, Chadwick; Rabinowitz, David (10 December 2004). "Discovery of a Candidate Inner Oort Cloud Planetoid". The Astrophysical Journal . 617 (1): 645–649. arXiv: astro-ph/0404456 . Bibcode:2004ApJ...617..645B. doi:10.1086/422095. S2CID   7738201.
3. "Chandra :: Photo Album :: Galaxy Clusters and Dark Energy". chandra.harvard.edu. 18 May 2004.
4. Giles, Jim (2005). "Huge explosion traced to exotic star". Nature. doi:10.1038/news050214-18.
5. Koch, George W.; Sillett, Stephen C.; Jennings, Gregory M.; Davis, Stephen D. (2004). "The limits to tree height" (PDF). Nature. 428 (6985): 851–854. Bibcode:2004Natur.428..851K. doi:10.1038/nature02417. PMID   15103376. S2CID   11846291. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-21. Retrieved 2012-10-08.
6. Tabak, Alan J. (2004-02-09). "Hundreds Register for New Facebook Website". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on 2019-05-18. Retrieved 2024-12-22.
7. "Fossil find 'oldest land animal'". BBC News . 2005-01-25. Retrieved 2014-05-25.
8. Daeschler, Edward B.; Shubin, Neil H.; Jenkins, Farish A. Jr (6 April 2006). "A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan". Nature . 440 (7085): 757–763. Bibcode:2006Natur.440..757D. doi: 10.1038/nature04639 . PMID   16598249.
9. Kim, E.; Chan, M. H. W. (2004). "Probable observation of a supersolid helium phase". Nature. 427 (6971): 225–227. Bibcode:2004Natur.427..225K. doi:10.1038/nature02220. PMID   14724632. S2CID   3112651.
10. Oganessian, Yu. Ts; Utyonkoy, V. K.; Lobanov, Yu. V.; Abdullin, F. Sh; Polyakov, A. N.; Shirokovsky, I. V.; Tsyganov, Yu. S.; Gulbekian, G. G.; Bogomolov, S. L.; Mezentsev, A. N.; Iliev, S.; Subbotin, V. G.; Sukhov, A. M.; Voinov, A. A.; Buklanov, G. V.; Subotic, K.; Zagrebaev, V. I.; Itkis, M. G.; Patin, J. B.; Moody, K. J.; Wild, J. F.; Stoyer, M. A.; Stoyer, N. J.; Shaughnessy, D. A.; Kenneally, J. M.; Lougheed, R. W. (2004-02-02). "Experiments on the synthesis of element 115 in the reaction ²⁴³Am(⁴⁸Ca,xn)^291−x115" (PDF). Physical Review C. 69 (2): 021601. Bibcode:2004PhRvC..69b1601O. doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.69.021601. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-03-07. Retrieved 2019-07-04.
11. "Nano-foam makes magnetic debut – physicsworld.com". physicsweb.org.
12. Paredes, Belén; Widera, Artur; Murg, Valentin; Mandel, Olaf; Fölling, Simon; Cirac, Ignacio; Shlyapnikov, Gora V.; Hänsch, Theodor W.; Bloch, Immanuel (2004). "Tonks–Girardeau gas of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice" . Nature. 429 (6989): 277–281. Bibcode:2004Natur.429..277P. doi:10.1038/nature02530. PMID   15152247. S2CID   4423003.
13. Plazanet, M.; Floare, C.; Johnson, M. R.; Schweins, R.; Trommsdorff, H. P. (2004). "Freezing on heating of liquid solutions". The Journal of Chemical Physics. 121 (11): 5031–5034. Bibcode:2004JChPh.121.5031P. doi:10.1063/1.1794652. PMID   15352791.
14. Novoselov, K. S.; Geim, A. K.; Morozov, S. V.; Jiang, D.; Zhang, Y.; Dubonos, S. V.; Grigorieva, I. V.; Firsov, A. A. (2004-10-22). "Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films". Science. 306 (5696): 666–669. arXiv: cond-mat/0410550 . Bibcode:2004Sci...306..666N. doi:10.1126/science.1102896. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   15499015. S2CID   5729649.
15. "This Month in Physics History: October 22, 2004: Discovery of Graphene". APS News . Series II. 18 (9): 2. October 2009. Retrieved 2016-11-27.

External links

• "The year in science and technology in Israel". IsraCast. Archived from the original on 2006-03-16. Retrieved 2006-01-12.