There is no doubt that in recent years science has grown by leaps and bounds, and the last decade was very fruitful in this field, as it was full of mostly allowed discoveries thanks to the technological advances that have been enhanced lately.
These changes have made us modify the way we see the universe, how diseases that we considered incurable are treated or have revealed to us how we lived millions of years ago. Without a doubt, they have opened our mind and if this was what we lived in this decade, we must wait for the next one, because great things come in science. Below we present the 5 milestones in science from 2010 to 2019.
1. Is there life on Mars?
The exploration of the Curiosity robot launched by NASA in 2012 has found evidence of the existence of rivers millions of years ago; and more recent explorations have found more information in this regard proving that on Mars there were not only rivers, but lakes, seas and oceans.
In addition to water, NASA concluded that on Mars there were the basic components for the existence of life, which would lead us to think that at least complex microcellular life could have inhabited the planet.
2. The cure for cancer: immunotherapy
Before the researchers arrived with immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer, the options to combat this disease were very corrosive to the human body and did not always mean 100% elimination of the disease: surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
In the mid-2020s, medicine has been opened to the study of immunotherapy, a technique that allows the white blood cells of the immune system to be treated so that they are agents for the detection and elimination of cancer cells in the system. Now more and more this type of therapy is recommended to treat more types of cancer and it is believed that in the next decade these treatments will present many improvements and will be more accessible to all people.
3. Crispr Molecular Scissors
No doubt in medicine there is a before and after Crispr. In 2015, the Princess of Asturias prize was awarded to researchers E. Charpentier and J. Doudna, who developed a technique that allows editing the genome of human beings as if it were a “DNA scissors”.
This technique has reduced laboratory costs to analyze DNA significantly and it is considered that in the future it may be useful to find the cure to the most dangerous diseases of humanity.
4. Homo denisova, the missing link in the human evolutionary chain
In a Denisova cave, in the mountains of Siberia, fragments of finger bones were found and when analyzed in the laboratory it was concluded that these remains belong to a species of hominids unknown to date, they were called Homo denisova.
This species belies the myth of primitive man and together with images painted in Spanish caves show that these beings wore jewelry and had funeral rites, such as burying their dead with flowers.
With Homo denisova, Homo sapiens (the current species of human beings) has finally completed his family tree.
5. To infinity and beyond
Cosmology has come to revolutionize the way in which we see the universe and helps us solve the biggest question of the human being: Are we alone?
In this decade, thanks to Kepler, one of the most powerful telescopes in the world, we have been able to discover more than 2,300 planets in neighboring solar systems. With the continuation of the Kepler, the TESS, launched just last year, we could see for the first time on video a real-time black hole.
Although there are clues to how the universe began, it remains one of humanity’s great doubts, in conjunction with the operation of dark matter, which constitutes the bulk of the universe.
