2024: The year in science


BANANA-SHAPED GALAXIES

JANUARY: Astrophysicists report that newborn galaxies in the very early universe - about 500 million years after the Big Bang - were "banana-shaped." First spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope, the powerful James Webb Space Telescope has examined 4,000 newborn galaxies, seeing them too


SPACEX CATCHES BOOSTER

OCTOBER: For the first time SpaceX catches its Starship super heavy first-stage booster as it returns to the launch-pad in Texas

SpaceX plans to use 121-metre rocket - world's biggest - to send people back to Moon

Human to scale

Starship 71-metre booster


SPARK OF LIFE

AUGUST: Four billion years ago, Earth’s atmosphere was composed of inert nitrogen and carbon dioxide gasses

Now, Harvard scientists have identified how lightning strikes may have acted as a vital spark, creating chemical reactions necessary to form the building blocks of life


RECHARGEABLE CALCIUM BATTERY

APRIL: A battery based on calcium is potential alternative to lithium – calcium being 2,000 times more abundant on Earth

Coin-cell battery 
Powering blue light-emitting diode bulb relies on reaction between calcium and chlorine to form calcium chloride (white powder)

Battery charges and discharges 700 times at room temperature


FACTORY OF THE FUTURE

APRIL: A giant 3D printer has been unveiled by the University of Maine. The university says it has beaten its own record for world’s largest polymer 3D printer – the new unit is four times bigger
than its previous machine

Dubbed Factory of the Future 1.0, the device can use thermoplastic polymers to print objects
as large as 29m long by 9.8m wide and 5.5m high, at rate of 230kg per hour


HUMAN CELL ATLAS TAKES SHAPE

NOVEMBER: Researchers have created an early map of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) of the human body’s estimated 37.2 trillion cells

HCA scientists plotted cells in mouth, stomach, intestines and those that guide how bones
and joints develop to help fight diseases


FAR SIDE OF THE MOON

Landing site
Spa Basin
South Pole

MAY: China launches its Chang’e-6 probe, a robotic sample-return mission to Moon’s far side

JUN: Probe collects 1.9kg of lunar soil

NOV: Volcanic rock contained in sample dates back 2.8 billion years, suggesting landing site was volcanically active at that time


DECEMBER: Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Literature and economic science are presented in Sweden

The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony will be held in Norway


Sources, pictures: Associated Press, CNN, Hao Sun, HCA, Harvard Gazette, New Scientist, New York Times, Nobel, UMaine, Xinhua, Yahya Chaudhry
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