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Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
- gremlinsinc 11y agoThis sounds more like an AskReddit post than AskHN... but I'd say printable organs, smaller and smaller computer chips, commercialization of space flight, possible warp drive tech(may get us there in 100+ years, lol not expecting anything soon).. anti-aging (expected to double or triple life expectancy by 2050.) etc...
- BerislavLopac 11y agoThose are mostly inventions, as opposed to discoveries.
- zmeden 11y agoI'd consider most of the things you listed to be inventions/innovations. Discovery, for me, is closely connected to uncovering of a new phenomena or an effect. And invention/innovation would be the use of it for some specific purpose.
- CoryG89 11y agoSurely the techniques and logic used to empower such inventions and innovation had to be discovered by someone at some point. For every great new invention is their not usually some discovery made sometime prior which ushered it in? For things like smaller and smaller computer chips. I'd say that Moore's Law was discovered, not invented.
- ghaff 11y agoMoore's Law really is neither as it's more of an observation (and, arguably, a self-fulfilling prediction). Many inventions (made possible by various discoveries in semiconductor physics and the like) have enabled Moore's Law to more or less continue. But Moore's Law itself is not any sort of natural law.
- recursive 11y agoThe warp drive is definitely a brand new effect.
- golergka 11y ago> AskReddit post than AskHN What's the difference, apart from the quality of answers?
- kang 11y agoblockchain
- BerislavLopac 11y agoI would say, in no particular order: * the fact that many of the dinosaurs had feathers * myriad of exoplanets * water on Mars (and many other new data on the planet) * Higg's boson (confirmed to 99.999% certainty) * Neanderthal genes present in modern humans * new ancient Mayan cities That's it from me for starters, hopefully others will join in.
- arethuza 11y agoGreat list - I'd certainly go for the exoplanets as #1
- danieltillett 11y agoWhat about the denosovians?
- jballanc 11y agoI'd argue that the discovery of Denisovans might be bigger than Neanderthal genes, but they're in the same ballpark. Modern sequencing technology has led to an explosion in discoveries about early human (and other organisms') evolution. Actually, I'd just put "rapid sequencing" right near the top of the list. When I started grad school (in 2003 if you must know), there was a feeling that it'd be very hard to get any better/faster than Sanger sequencing (and modifications of the same). Now there's a plethora of technologies that are both faster and more accurate.
- new299 11y ago> Now there's a plethora of technologies that are both faster and more accurate. Sorry to nitpick, but the inherent error rate of high throughput sequencing platforms is still higher than capillary sequencing. This is more than mitigated for by the massive throughput advantage though.
- nvusuvu 11y agoHow fast can we sequence now? What are the error rates?
- PaulRobinson 11y agoI'd say that in terms of what we are able to do next, Graphene wins by a long way. Graphene is remarkable stuff, literally. I'd say in terms of impact on philosophy, religion and way of life, the large number of planets we're discovering.
- jbrooksuk 11y agoHow is it literally remarkable stuff?
- chriswarbo 11y agoGraphene is a single layer of graphite. Graphite is used in pencils. Pencils can make marks, which are erasable, and hence re-markable. ;)
- brockers 11y agoI fear the graphene will fall by the wayside due to legal and social pressure. News sources have already pointed out that it is significantly more dangerous, if inhaled, than asbestos; another material this is insanely useful for a number of applications but is effectively blackballed as a engineer-able material. Another example is nuclear energy. Clean, abundant, and extremely safe. The fear of radiation exposer has turned it into a pariah in the world community; totally ignoring the fact the radioactive elements in coal emissions have kill more people in the last 30 years than 100 Three Mile Island incidences would.
- blumkvist 11y agoNuclear energy is very expensive. Not in the sense that your bills are high. Cost are hidden and paid by the government, largely. The initial project's cost is astronomical, but it always goes over budgets and deadlines. Those are provisioned for in the initial contract, so the additional cost is rarely talked about. Nuclear companies are in bad shape nowadays, because governments around the world caught up with the way they conduct business.
- VLM 11y agoA VERY specific request, no inventions, just things found and cataloged aka discovered. http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/systems/ http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/systems/ Also see pretty much every space probe of the "last few years". Pity you couldn't wait another month for the Pluto flyby, unless it completely fails there will be plenty to talk about. I would imagine the biological sciences could list all kinds of interesting, possibly useful, critters. The geologists and archeologists are always digging something cool up.
- coreyoconnor 11y agoI think the discovery of exoplanets will have far reaching cultural implications. We've gone from believing planets are extremely rare to knowing planets are relatively common. Now that planets are known to be common, does that mean life is common? What will that do to the cultures that, in effect, support themselves on the belief that humans and the earth are unique?
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoDenial has worked so far. Heck, even the relationship between forms of life on Earth is effortlessly denied by the Creationists.
- velavar 11y agoThough theoretically predicted long ago, I suppose the Higgs boson can be said to have been "discovered" in 2012 when its presence was first confirmed.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pcx 11y agoDeep learning is pretty old. People like Hinton, LeCun and Bengio have been working in the field for decades. From what I've read, Deep Learning has become popular because there is finally enough computing power to get it done.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- makeset 11y agoIt has become popular because they found a better way to initialize deep networks (by incrementally fitting auto-encoder layers), where simple gradient-based optimizations of yesteryear would not converge from scratch.
- zt 11y agoCRISPR for gene editing: "Since 2013, the CRISPR/Cas system has been used for gene editing (adding, disrupting or changing the sequence of specific genes) and gene regulation in species throughout the tree of life. By delivering the Cas9 protein and appropriate guide RNAs into a cell, the organism's genome can be cut at any desired location." (From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR) Edit: Hear a recent Radiolab episode on the topic (http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/)
- baldfat 11y agoThis means curing: Color Blindness, Liver Disease, Hopefully Cancers, Genetic Defects, MAYBE one day Aging?
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoMore likely the first (profitable) applications will be: changing eye color, hair color, losing fat, changing height, changing skin tone. Billions in each market.
- dragonwriter 11y agoMore likely, the first profitable applications will not have anything to do with editing the human genome, as bad been the case for every other technique useful for genetic engineering.
- baldfat 11y agoCuring Genetic Defects will be the first use starting with Children. OR they will have a gene that cures Diabetes which will cause a major change in millions of lives. I still think of CRISPER as the new graphine though. Awesome discovery with promise around the corner for years and years.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
- mrestko 11y agoCRISPER/Cas9 for targeted gene editing.
- JonnieCache 11y agoWhile it's not really "great", the absence of new fundamental physics this century is certainly striking... OTOH Quantum error correcting codes are pretty bananas. Won't be useful for a good while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_error_correction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_error_correction EDIT: the correct answer is that gene editing stuff though.
- bradneuberg 11y agoThe revolution in biotech happening from the discovery of the CRISPR process will be as important as the semiconductor in the long run: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR Neural networks via deep learning started showing incredible results the last few years (after about 40 years of development) across a range of fields, including speech recognition, machine vision, and more. It's still early days, but combining reinforcement learning with neural networks looks like it will be very exciting too: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7540/full/nature14236.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7540/full/nature1...
- lalalandland 11y agoUnraveling the link between brain, lymphatic system: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150615094258.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150615094258.ht...
- VLM 11y agoIs reality invented or discovered? Is math invented or discovered? Was automata theory invented or discovered? OK well then is the quicksort algorithm invented or discovered? Is LISP invented or discovered? Is my code invented or discovered?
- SuddsMcDuff 11y agoAre invented and discovered just a matter of perspective?
- contingencies 11y ago>> Are invented and discovered just a matter of perspective? invented
- rjcz 11y agoIf something did not exist prior to our action then it is an invention, otherwise it's a discovery.
- frozenport 11y ago>>Is reality invented or discovered? discovered, this is a tautology >> Is math invented or discovered? invented >> Was automata theory invented or discovered? invented >>OK well then is the quicksort algorithm invented or discovered? invented, unless you believe that humans do quicksort intuitively. In which case it wasn't invented by you, personally. >>Is LISP invented or discovered? invented >>Is my code invented or discovered? invented
- jonmc12 11y agoI thought the discovery of the quantity of distinct populations (~5k currently) and densities (relatively even) of upper-ocean viruses was perhaps an under-rated discovery that could lead to more advanced understanding of both the evolution of cellular organisms on earth and our current ecosystem. https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150521-ocean-viruses/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150521-ocean-viruses/
- lalalandland 11y agoAn invention but also a dicovery: The EmDrive (or RF resonant cavity thruster) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive
- robg 11y agoHow sleep washes the brain of toxins: http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/october2013/10282013clear.htm http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/october2013/10282013clear... This mechanism could also be the cause of the refreshment we feel after a short nap or meditation. Much harder to study though!
- etrautmann 11y agoThis study didn't show that. They showed that toxins that are injected into the brain clear faster during sleep, but not that the brain is actually clearing anything endogenous. Sounds like a technicality but the claims were overblown based on their data.
- chintan 11y agoMermistor (discovery in 1971 but actual implementation in 2008) http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-plans-to-launch-memristor-silicon-photonic-computer-within-the-decade/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-pla...
- aerovistae 11y agoWasn't sure if you had misspelled "memristor" or if there was some sort of aquatic resistor I had not heard of.
- miduil 11y ago* Hackerspaces
- moron4hire 11y agoThey're an older concept than you think.
- miduil 11y agoThat's true. :)
- steven2012 11y agoPreserved soft tissue was found in dinosaur bones, allowing us to see the actual structures, and apparently this is not a rare phenomenon. Maybe DNA can be extracted?
- AC__ 11y agoVampires! Technically speaking, parabiosis. Although it is not actually a new discovery at all, personally I'm convinced there are humans who have already transfused young blood plasma(as the linked article points out illegal stem cell transplants are common as well). Yeah, that's right, vampires. http://www.nature.com/news/ageing-research-blood-to-blood-1.16762 http://www.nature.com/news/ageing-research-blood-to-blood-1....
- AC__ 11y agoI went a massive life extension technology reading binge a few months back, IMHO it is, right now, possible to extend human life indefinitely.
- pault 11y agoDo you have a recommended reading list?
- AC__ 11y agoJust off the top of my my head: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO_%28antiviral%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO_%28antiviral%29 CRISPR as mentioned, anything nano(robotics, surgery etc.), as well as stem cell tech.
- loup-vaillant 11y agoAgeing has several causes, including the accumulation of clutter (basically poison) inside and outside of our cells. I'm not sure becoming a vampire is enough to overcome that. Given the uncertainties, I'd still want to keep cryonics as a back up. (Though it looks unavailable here in Western Europe.)
- erkkie 11y agoThe wear and tear theory of aging is just one of many currently popular, the body is not a mechanical machine necessarily bound to wear and tear, it can in some cases successfully heal itself, some species basically don't age (some can actually revert in lifecycles). A competing theory is programmed aging (in which "clutter" would be an effect of, not a cause): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369273/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369273/
- etrautmann 11y agoGrid cells are pretty cool, and thought to form the basis for spacial navigation in the brain, and the discovery of these cells in 2006 won this year's Nobel prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_cell
- unusximmortalis 11y agoResearchers at Audi are making synthetic diesel fuel using only water and air. Miracle? No. Science. http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/28/technology/audi-diesel-air-water/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/28/technology/audi-diesel-air-w...
- jobu 11y agoNeat! It looks like "e-diesel" may not be price competitive yet, but hopefully it goes somewhere. "Audi and Sunfire claim that the process to make e-diesel is 70 percent efficient. They estimate that once production is ramped up, the cost to consumers in Europe would be comparable to traditional diesel, at 1.00 to 1.50 euro per liter (approximately $4.00 to $6.00 per gallon)." http://blog.caranddriver.com/powering-your-car-with-water-audi-realizes-the-green-dream-synthesizes-diesel-from-h20/ http://blog.caranddriver.com/powering-your-car-with-water-au...
- Toast_ 11y agoHydrocarbon production from seawater. https://www.google.com/patents/US20110281959 https://www.google.com/patents/US20110281959
- rtb 11y agoUsing water, air and large amounts of heat. (Where does that heat come from? Many possibilities, but currently from fossil fuels.)
- meric 11y agoNot for e-diesel: First, the researchers heat up steam to very high temperatures to break it down into hydrogen and oxygen. This process requires temperatures of over 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 Fahrenheit) and is powered by green energy such as solar or wind power.
- ableal 11y agoSynthetic fuel is not exactly new, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process
- stillsut 11y agoRyan Gosling and fracking.
- figure8 11y agoIn nutrition and medicine, why red meat causes cancer in humans: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/01/02/red-meat-cancer-immune/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/01/02/red-mea...
- riemannzeta 11y agoCRISPR, blockchain, and direct connection between brain and lymphatics system are way bigger, but this was a big one for economics and political science: Zero-Determinant Strategies in Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10409.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10409.full.pdf
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoThe most wildly fundamental paper I have seen recently is last December's "Anytime Algorithms for Non-Ending Computations" by Calude and Desfontaines. NOW HANDS OFF IT'S MINE! MINE I SAY!
- natrius 11y agoBlockchains. Distributed consensus is incredibly powerful. It will allow us to rebuild our society around individuals instead of corporations and governments that formed because economic transaction costs were so high that economies of scale (and sometimes the use of force) were required to coordinate our society. All economic activity will be blockchain-mediated. It will make us wealthier and freer.
- ForHackernews 11y agoThe "low costs" of bitcoin are a myth. Bitcoin transactions are extremely expensive, both financially and ecologically, it's just that those costs are currently subsidized by block rewards to miners instead of paid by consumers/end-users. If bitcoin were ever to be widely adopted, the high fees would have to be passed on to users: http://www.coindesk.com/new-study-low-bitcoin-transaction-fees-unsustainable/ http://www.coindesk.com/new-study-low-bitcoin-transaction-fe... At some level, this basic fact should be incredibly obvious to anyone with any technical background: It's much cheaper and easier to operate a centralized, eventually-consistent database (today's banking system) than a distributed ledger that requires constantly burning electricity and computing resources on useless math puzzles. Nevertheless, I still see bitcoin advocates claiming bitcoin will be cheaper than the legacy transaction system.
- fizx 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake
- natrius 11y agoI am not talking about Bitcoin in particular, nor am I talking about transaction fees. I am talking about transaction costs and blockchains in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_cost
- nostrademons 11y agoOf the categories of transaction cost listed in that article, the only one blockchains address is the policing & enforcement cost. Even then, it only addresses one side of the policing cost: it ensures that the seller receives payment without need for a trusted intermediary, but it does nothing to ensure that the buyer receives a good that is of acceptable quality and performs the function agreed upon.
- r2 11y agoIn solar cell research, the biggest recent breakthrough was probably the creation of efficient perovskite solar cells [1]. They're cheap, easy to make, and their efficiency in the lab is rising more rapidly than that of just about any other research cell since NREL began tracking (up from 3.5% in 2009 to 20.1% today) [2,3]. If their chemical stability problems can be resolved, they'll have big commercial applications. [1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6165/1438.2 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6165/1438.2 [2] http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/images/efficiency_chart.jpg http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/images/efficiency_chart.jpg [3] http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517811/a-material-that-could-make-solar-power-dirt-cheap/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517811/a-material-that-...
- jotux 11y agoNot very "fundamental" but I'm very excited about low-power advancements in ICs. There are companies like AmbiqMicro making microcontrollers that are reaching 30uA/MHz and 100nA sleep modes. This is starting to make ambient and RF energy harvesting viable. http://ambiqmicro.com/low-power-microcontroller http://ambiqmicro.com/low-power-microcontroller
- agumonkey 11y agoAwesome, never heard of their work.
- pfh 11y agoOxford Nanopore is about to hit in a big way. Expect a lot more DNA sequencing for environmental monitoring.
- Ar-Curunir 11y agoFully Homomorphic Encryption will have far reaching applications. That along with things like efficient MPC.
- anotherevan 11y agoThat we basically know bugger all about nutrition. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-fail http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-f...
- bootload 11y agoMary Schweitzer extracting collagen, haemoglobin, elastin, laminin from 80 million year old Hadrosaur and verifying it. [0],[1] [0] 2012: http://www.nature.com/news/molecular-analysis-supports-controversial-claim-for-dinosaur-cells-1.11637 http://www.nature.com/news/molecular-analysis-supports-contr... [1] 2009: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17060-first-dino-blood-extracted-from-ancient-bone.html#.VYIpCVK9azM http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17060-first-dino-blood...
- alpha1234 11y agoEugene Podkletnov gravity beam generator and TT Brown experiments showing coupling between electricity and gravitation [1]. [1]http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Antigravity-Propulsion-Classified-Technology/dp/159143078X http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Antigravity-Propulsion-Classif...
- advanderveer 11y agoAminoacids in the tail of comets