Best advancements in science in 2020.

Hello web wanderers have you ever wondered whether science has made any progress despite the spread of the pandemic all around. The answer is yes. And we will be discussing all that today in this article. From discovering more about our neighbors in the solar system to making commercial flights to the space, this year has truly been remarkable. So, let's delve right in.

SpaceX makes commercial flights possible

Oh yes this has been something that needs to be in this list. I mean just see how cool it is, making spaceflights accessible to common people at affordable rates. This vision of Elon Musk has finally taken a big step as it's first commercial spaceflight mission to launch 2 astronauts from Florida to the ISS (International space station) succeeded on Aug 2nd as astronauts Bob Behenken and Doug Hurley landed back on earth. The next mission to carry 4 astronauts to the ISS has also been initiated as the rocket launched on 15th November. This is the first step of Elon to achieve his dream to terraform mars. With the help of NASA and the persistence of Mr. Musk and his crew SpaceX is on its way to create history.

An attempt to colonize space

Taking off directly from the previous topic here we are in Elon Musk's dream of colonizing space. We have seriously made some progress in this department. From knowing more about our solar system to locating the resources in the space that can be instrumental to our survival in space. We confirmed the presence of water on moon and even located water in some new places of the moon that was never speculated. We found traces of salt water in mars and the dwarf planet Ceres. Even we got to know more about water on Jupiter's moon Europa.

NASA has also launched a rover to the soil of mars with an oxygen synthesizer to know more about the feasibility of life on mars. We also discovered a material on earth that is older than our solar system. This will help us solve various mysteries of our solar system. There were many more things that happened in this field like NASA's probe and Japan's Hayabusa-2 got us samples from asteroids. Hopefully we will be able to know about our solar system in detail in the immediate future and solve it's mysteries. And hopefully gather enough information so that life beyond earth will be possible.

The fastest developed vaccine

The list will not be complete if we won't include the things that humanity has learnt from the COVID outbreak. Majority of the research in 2020 has been dedicated to study the effects and structure of corona virus and develop efficient solutions to tackle it. This includes development of vaccines. Vaccination is the only way that we can rely on to terminate any disease. Due to the hard efforts of scientists all over the globe, the COVID vaccine came out in the record time of less than a year. Russia vaccinated some of it's citizen with the Sputnik V vaccine on the 5th of December. A couple of days later the same was done by UK using Pfizer vaccine. This was possible only due to mRNA technology.

Superconductivity at room temperature

Like most of the stories in our list, this is also a work in progress project. Conductors are substances that conduct electricity. But Conductors posses some resistance due to which power is lost during transmission, especially in long distance transmission of electricity. Superconductors are solids which are cooled down to extremely low temperatures. At those temperatures the electrons pair up and move in a single direction. The important part here is this actually produces no resistance to the current flow. Hence power transmission can be more efficient.

But the condition of extremely low temperature is not possible for application. Hence this discovery was important. Ranga Dias and his team developed a system which put immense pressure on the solid. This high pressure compensated for the required low temperature and we obtain superconductivity at room temperature. Though those high pressures are not feasible and cannot be used in present application. Still this discovery means a lot, as this can be considered as the first step towards power transmission and storage without any loss.

Closing words

Overall this has been a tough year for all of us. But we should take some time and appreciate the work of the scientists and all the heroes that are working in the shadows for our betterment and safety. Science has not taken a hit from the pandemic but has risen sharply.

 

There have been many more breakthroughs this year like the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in the human body for the first time, finally recognizing the origin of radio bursts from the cosmos and many more. But I'm short of words now to include all of them. If you want any of those topics or anything from the list in detail, please do comment. The list was based on my knowledge and research. If I missed something, let me know. Let's hope for a great 2021 in science.