http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8435246.stm

 

This article is telling the most important advances in science of the last decade.

What's your opinion?

I'm thinking our advances in biofuel technology and materials from biological organisms (corn into plastic) will be one of the more important things that came out of the last decade.

i'm not sure if it can be classed as an achievment but the discovery of climate change and the effects that will have is I believe going to become the most important scientific progress thispast decade

I can't believe any list of the past decade doesn't have something about computers or nanotechnology.

I am not qualified to comment on most of these, but I would dispute the two particle physics ones.

 

On the dark matter front, the two events from Soudan are not statistically significant. The statistical error on 2 events is [math]\sqrt{2}[/math], so the result is basically [math]2 \pm 1.4[/math] (the systematic error is small). This is not even evidence, never mind discovery. (CDMS, the actual collaboration, agree with me: "We estimate that there is about a one in four chance to have seen two backgrounds events, so we can make no claim to have discovered WIMPs.")

 

As for the LHC, it is not a scientific achievement until it does some science. So far, it is an engineering achievement (albeit a great one).

No mention of Grigori Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture? The conjecture states that every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere.

 

The journal Science in 2006 said the proof was the "Breakthrough of the Year".

 

Perelman refused the Fields medal in the same year.

No mention of Grigori Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture? The conjecture states that every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere.

 

Not sure I would call that science. I would call that maths.

Not sure I would call that science. I would call that maths.

 

Don't want to get into that argument again, LOL