A number of significant scientific events have occurred or are scheduled to occur in 2018.
Events
January
1 January – Researchers at Harvard, writing in Nature Nanotechnology, report the first single lens that can focus all colours of the rainbow in the same spot and in high resolution, previously only achievable with multiple lenses.[3][4]
2 January – Physicists at Cornell University report the creation of "muscle" for shape-changing, cell-sized robots.[5][6]
Scientists in Rome unveil the first bionic hand with a sense of touch that can be worn outside a laboratory.[10]
4 January – MIT researchers devise a new method to create stronger and more resilient nanofibers.[11][12]
5 January – Researchers report images (including image-1) taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars showing curious rock shapes that may require further study in order to help better determine whether the shapes are biological or geological.[1][2] Later, an astrobiologist made a similar claim based on a different image (image-2) taken by the Curiosity rover.[13][14]
A pattern in exoplanets is discovered by a team of multinational researchers led by the Université de Montréal: Planets orbiting the same star tend to have similar sizes and regular spacings. This could imply that most planetary systems form differently from the Solar System.[17]
Analysis of the stone Hypatia shows it has a different origin than the planets and known asteroids. Parts of it could be older than the solar system.[18]
University of Washington scientists publish a report in the journal Nature Chemistry of the development of a new form of biomaterial based delivery system for therapeutic drugs, which only release their cargo under certain physiological conditions, thereby potentially reducing drug side-effects in patients.[29]
17 January – Engineers at the University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Peking University scientists, announce the creation of a memory storage device only one atomic layer thick; a so-called 'atomristor'.[32]
18 January
NASA and NOAA report that 2017 was the hottest year on record globally without an El Niño, and among the top three hottest years overall.[35][36]
Researchers report developing a blood test (or liquid biopsy) that can detect eight common cancer tumors early. The new test, based on cancer-related DNA and proteins found in the blood, produced 70% positive results in the tumor-types studied in 1005 patients.[37][38]
Sharks are shown to move and feed across the world's oceans in characteristic ways as demonstrated by a global-scale study of stable isotopes in shark tissues led by the University of Southampton and published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.[39]
According to a new report published by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the US is facing increasing competition in scientific endeavours from China, with the latter now publishing more annual scientific papers, but the US still leads in research and development (R&D) and venture capital (VC).[40][41]
19 January – Researchers at the Technical University of Munich report a new propulsion method for molecular machines, which enables them to move 100,000 times faster than biochemical processes used to date.[44]
Scientists working for Calico, a company owned by Alphabet, publish a paper in the journal eLife which presents possible evidence that Heterocephalus glaber (naked mole-rat) do not face increased mortality risk due to aging.[54][55][56]
29 January – Scientists report, for the first time, that 800 million viruses, mainly of marine origin, are deposited daily from the Earth'satmosphere onto every square meter of the planet's surface, as the result of a global atmospheric stream of viruses, circulating above the weather system, but below the altitude of usual airline travel, distributing viruses around the planet.[57][58]
Researchers find additional evidence for an exotic form of water, called superionic water, which is not found naturally on Earth, but could be common on the planets Uranus and Neptune.[61][62]
16 February – Scientists report, for the first time, the discovery of a new form of light, which may involve polaritons, that could be useful in the development of quantum computers.[74][75]
19 February – Scientists identify traces of the genes of the indigenous Taíno people in modern-day Puerto Ricans, indicating that the ethnic group was not extinct as previously believed.[76]
28 February – Astronomers report, for the first time, a signal of the reionization epoch, an indirect detection of light from the earliest stars formed – about 180 million years after the Big Bang.[81][82]
March
5 March
Researchers at MIT and Harvard report in the journal Nature of discovering the phenomenon of graphene acting as a superconductor, when its atoms are re-arranged in a specific manner.[83][84][85]
8 March – Scientists report the first detection of natural ice VII on Earth, previously it was only produced artificially. It may be common on the moons Enceladus, Europa and Titan.[88][89]
Intel reports that it will redesign its CPU processors (performance losses to be determined) to help protect against the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities (especially, Meltdown and Spectre-V2, but not Spectre-V1), and expects to release the newly redesigned processors later in 2018.[95][96][97][98]
19 March – Uber suspends all of its self-driving cars worldwide after a woman is killed by one of the vehicles in Arizona. This is the first recorded fatality using a fully automated version of the technology.[101]
22 March – Scientists at Harvard Medical School identify a key mechanism behind vascular aging and muscle decline in mice. Their study shows that treating the animals with a chemical compound called NMN enhances blood vessel growth and reduces cell death, boosting their stamina and endurance.[102]
26 March
A study in Geophysical Research Letters concludes that West Greenland's ice sheet is melting at its fastest rate in centuries.[103]
The world's first total transplant of a penis and scrotum is performed by surgeons at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, operating on a soldier who was wounded in Afghanistan.[104]
19 April – The results of a new gene therapy trial of 22 patients with the blood disorder beta thalassemia, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicates 15 of the patients being cured entirely while 7 requiring fewer annual blood transfusions.[125][126][127][128]
25 April
The Gaia collaboration publishes its second data release containing 1.7 billion light sources, with positions, parallaxes and proper motions for about 1.3 billion of them.[129]
Scientists publish evidence that asteroids may have been primarlily responsible for bringing water to Earth.[130][131]
2 May – Scientists discover that Helium is present in the exoplanet WASP-107b.[145]
5 May – The InSight spacecraft, designed to study the interior and subsurface of the planet Mars, successfully launches at 11:05 UTC, with an expected arrival on 26 November 2018.[146][147]
Astronomers publish supporting evidence of water plume activity on Europa, moon of the planet Jupiter, based on an updated critical analysis of data obtained from the Galileo space probe, which orbited Jupiter between 1995 to 2003. Such plume activity, similar to that found on Saturn's moon Enceladus, could help researchers search for life from the subsurface European ocean without having to land on the moon.[151][152][153][154]
Anthropologists provide evidence that the brain of Homo naledi, an extinct hominid which is thought to have lived between 226,000 and 335,000 years ago, was small, but nonetheless complex, sharing structural similarities with the modern human brain.[155][156]
17 May – Scientists warn that banned CFC-11 gas emissions are originating from an unknown source somewhere in East Asia, with potential to damage the ozone layer.[157]
Scientists from Purdue University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences report the use of CRISPR/Cas9 to develop a variety of rice producing 25-31% more grain than traditional breeding methods.[161]
23 May – Paleontologists report finding the skull of a new species of haramiyida (a long lived lineage of mammaliaformcynodonts), called Cifelliodon wahkarmooshuh, underneath the fossilized foot of a large dinosaur that lived 130 million years ago in North America.[164][165]
Researchers at the University of Leeds report that climate change could increase arable land in boreal regions by 44% by the year 2100, while having a negative impact everywhere else.[169]
Physicists of the MiniBooNE experiment report a stronger neutrino oscillation signal than expected, a possible hint of sterile neutrinos, an elusive particle that may pass through matter without any interaction whatsoever.[172][173]
June
1 June – NASA scientists detect signs of a dust storm on the planet Mars which may affect the survivability of the solar-poweredOpportunity rover since the dust may block the sunlight (see image) needed to operate; as of 12 June, the storm spanned an area about the size of North America and Russia combined (about a quarter of the planet); as of 13 June, Opportunity was reported to be experiencing serious communication problem(s) due to the dust storm;[176] a NASA teleconference about the dust storm was presented on 13 June 2018 at 01:30 pm/et/usa and is available for replay.[174][175][177][178] On 20 June, NASA reported that the dust storm had grown to completely cover the entire planet.[179][180]
Footprints in the Yangtze Gorges area of South China, dating back 546 million years, are reported to be the earliest known record of an animal with legs.[184]
The spacecraft Dawn assumes a final (and much closer) orbit around the dwarf planetCeres: as close as 35 km (22 mi) and as far away as 4,000 km (2,500 mi) (see images).[185][186]
18 June – MIT publishes details of "VoxelMorph", a new machine-learning algorithm, which is over 1,000 times faster at registering brain scans and other 3-D images.[208]
26 June – Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, develop synthetic T cells that mimic the form and function of real human versions.[212]
27 June
Astronomers report that ʻOumuamua, an object from interstellar space passing through the solar system, is a mildly active comet, and not an asteroid, as previously thought. This was determined by measuring a non-gravitational boost to ʻOumuamua's acceleration, consistent with comet outgassing. (image) (animation)[213][214][215]
10 July – Researchers at the University of Michigan show that increased atmospheric CO2 reduces the medicinal properties of milkweed plants that protect monarch butterflies from disease.[222]
11 July – Scientists report the discovery in China of the oldest stone tools outside of Africa, estimated at 2.12 million years old.[223]
Using NASA's Hubble and ESA's Gaia, astronomers make the most precise measurements to date of the universe's expansion rate – a figure of 73.5 km (45.6 miles) per second per megaparsec – reducing the uncertainty to just 2.2 percent.[227]
16 July – A study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison concludes that thousands of miles of buried Internet infrastructure could be damaged or destroyed by rising sea levels within 15 years.[228]
17 July – Scientists led by Scott S. Sheppard report the discovery of 12 new moons of Jupiter, taking its total number to 79. This includes an "oddball", Valetudo (originally known as S/2016 J 2; Roman-numeral designation Jupiter LXII), that is predicted to eventually collide with a neighbouring moon.[229][230]
19 July – A complete fruit flyconnectome is mapped at nanoscale resolution for the first time, using two high-speed electron microscopes on 7,000 brain slices and 21 million images.[231]
A study published in Nature Climate Change finds that the death toll from suicide in the United States and Mexico has risen between 0.7 and 2.1 percent with each degree (Celsius) of increased monthly average temperature. By 2050, this could lead to an additional 21,000 suicides.[234]
Scientists at the University of Alberta report a new technique, based on quickly removing or replacing single hydrogen atoms, which can provide a thousand-fold increase in solid-state memory density.[235][236]
Using high-resolution satellite images, researchers from the Chizé Centre for Biological Studies report an 88% reduction in the world's biggest colony of king penguins, found on Île aux Cochons in the subantarctic Crozet Archipelago.[245]
A study by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center concludes that terraforming of Mars is physically impossible with present-day technology.[246]
15 August – Astronomers report the detection of iron and titanium vapours in the atmosphere of an 'ultra-hot Jupiter' in close orbit around the large B-type star, KELT-9.[266]
18 August – Research presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Boston concludes that water is likely to be a common feature of exoplanets between two and four times the size of Earth, with implications for the search of life in our Galaxy.[271]
20 August
Scientists report that life, based on genetic and fossil evidences, may have begun on Earth nearly 4.5 billion year ago, much earlier than thought before.[272][273]
21 August – Scientists announce the first direct evidence for exposed water-ice on the Moon's surface, which is found in permanently shaded regions.[275]
22 August
Scientists report evidence of a 13 year-old hominin female, nicknamed Denny, estimated to have lived 90,000 years ago, and who was determined to be half Neanderthal and half Denisovan, based on genetic analysis of a bone fragment discovered in Denisova Cave; the first time an ancient individual was discovered whose parents belonged to distinct human groups.[276][277][278]
Researchers report evidence of rapid shifts (in geological-time terms), nearly 30 times faster than known previously, of geomagnetic reversals, where the north magnetic pole of Earth becomes the south magnetic pole and vice versa, including a chronozone that lasted only 200 years, much shorter than any other such reversal found earlier.[279]
28 August – Physicists officially report, for the first time, observing the Higgs boson decay into a pair of bottom quarks, an interaction that is primarily responsible for the "natural width" (range of masses with which a particle is observed) of the boson.[280]
3 September – Astronomers present evidence that the 32,000 km (20,000 mi) wide hexagon at the north pole of the planet Saturn (possibly a jet stream of atmospheric gases moving at 320 km/h (200 mph)) may be 300 km (190 mi) high, well into the stratosphere, at least during the northern spring and summer, rather than lower in the troposphere as thought earlier.[283][284]
A group of Japanese and American scientists publish a research paper which concludes that “space weathering” on the surface of Phobos, in tandem with its eccentric orbit, has caused its surface to be divided into two distinct geologic units, known as the red and blue units.[288]
9 September – Astronomers report detecting another 72 Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), using artificial intelligence, from FRB 121102 that had been missed earlier, resulting in about 300 total FRBs from this object. FRB 121102 is the only known repeating fast radio source which is very unusual since all other currently known FRBs (very powerful and extremely short-lived astronomical objects) have not been found to repeat, occurring one time only.[289][290][291]
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announces "Dense Object Nets" (DON), a new system that allows robots to pick up any object after visually inspecting it.[295]
An international team of researchers predict the entire set of beneficial 3-D distortions for controlling edge localised modes (ELMs) in tokamakplasma, without creating more problems.[296]
12 September – Scientists report the discovery of the earliest known drawing by Homo sapiens, which is estimated to be 73,000 years old, much earlier than the 43,000 years old artifacts understood to be the earliest known modern human drawings found previously.[297]
15 September – NASA launches ICESat-2, the agency's most technologically advanced ice-monitoring spacecraft to date.[298]
Medical researchers conclude, based on a 19,114 person study conducted over five years, that use of low-dose aspirin by older healthy people may not be beneficial and, in some case, may be harmful.[292][293]
Researchers identify human skeletal stem cells for the first time.[305]
Scientists discover molecules of fat in an ancient fossil to reveal the earliest confirmed animal in the geological record that lived on Earth 558 million years ago.[306]
Using data from the European Space Agency’s X-ray observatory XMM-Newton, astronomers report the first detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light, located in the centre of the billion-light year distant galaxy PG211+143.[308]
21 September – The Japanese Hayabusa2 probe deploys two landers on the surface of the large asteroid Ryugu.[309]
24 September
Data from the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft, which explored Saturn and its moons between 2004 and 2017, reveals what appear to be three giant dust storms (see image), for the first time, in the equatorial regions of the moon Titan between the years 2009-2010.[310][311]
Scientists determine that Vorombe titan, an extinct elephant bird from the island of Madagascar which reached weights of 800 kg (1,800 lb) and heights of 3 m (9.8 ft) tall, is the largest bird known to have existed.[314][315][316]
27 September – A study in the journal Science concludes that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) could halve killer whale populations in the most heavily contaminated areas within 30–50 years.[319]
NASA-funded researchers find that lengthy journeys into outer space, including travel to the planet Mars, may substantially damage the gastrointestinal tissues of astronauts. The studies support earlier work that found such journeys could significantly damage the brains of astronauts, and age them prematurely.[321] However, unlike the conditions in space, the study admitted the full radiation doses over short periods.[322]
Astronomers using data from the Gaia mission report the discovery of rogue, high-velocity stars hurtling towards the Milky Way, possibly originating from another galaxy.[328]
5 October – The Hubble Space Telescope is hit by a mechanical failure as it loses one of the gyroscopes needed for pointing the spacecraft. It is placed into "safe" mode while scientists attempt to fix the problem.[335]
Researchers report low-temperature chemical pathways from simple organic compounds to complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) chemicals. Such chemical pathways may help explain the presence of PAHs in the low-temperature atmosphere of Titan, a moon of the planet Saturn, and may be significant pathways, in terms of the PAH world hypothesis, in producing presursors to biochemcals related to life as we know it.[339][340]
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^Lucile Pantel; et al. (5 April 2018). "Odilorhabdins, Antibacterial Agents that Cause Miscoding by Binding at a New Ribosomal Site". Cell. 70 (1): 83–94.e7. doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2018.03.001. PMID29625040.
^Thompson, Alexis A.; Walters, Mark C.; Kwiatkowski, Janet; Rasko, John E.J.; Ribeil, Jean-Antoine; et al. (19 April 2018). "Gene Therapy in Patients with Transfusion-Dependent β-Thalassemia". New England Journal of Medicine. 378 (16): 1479–1493. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1705342. PMID29669226.
^Aguilar-Arevalo, A. A.; Brown, B. C.; Bugel, L.; Cheng, G.; Conrad, J. M.; et al. (MiniBooNE Collaboration) (2018). "Observation of a Significant Excess of Electron-Like Events in the MiniBooNE Short-Baseline Neutrino Experiment". arXiv:1805.12028 [hep-ex].
^Fox, N. J.; Velli, M. C.; Bale, S. D.; Decker, R.; Driesman, A.; Howard, R. A.; Kasper, J. C.; Kinnison, J.; Kusterer, M.; Lario, D.; Lockwood, M. K.; McComas, D. J.; Raouafi, N. E.; Szabo, A. (2015-11-11). "The Solar Probe Plus Mission: Humanity's First Visit to Our Star". Space Science Reviews. 204 (1–4): 7–48. Bibcode:2016SSRv..204....7F. doi:10.1007/s11214-015-0211-6. ISSN0038-6308.
^Gallardo-Lacourt, B.; Liang, J.; Nishimura, Y.; Donovan, E. (20 August 2018). "On the Origin of STEVE: Particle Precipitation or Ionospheric Skyglow?". Geophysical Research Letters. doi:10.1029/2018GL078509.
^Rafikov, Roman R. (20 September 2018). "Spin Evolution and Cometary Interpretation of the Interstellar Minor Object 1I/2017 'Oumuamua". arXiv:1809.06389v2 [astro-ph.EP].
^Physicist John Bell depicts the Einstein camp in this debate in his article entitled "Bertlmann's socks and the nature of reality", p. 143 of Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics: "For EPR that would be an unthinkable 'spooky action at a distance'. To avoid such action at a distance they have to attribute, to the space-time regions in question, real properties in advance of observation, correlated properties, which predetermine the outcomes of these particular observations. Since these real properties, fixed in advance of observation, are not contained in quantum formalism, that formalism for EPR is incomplete. It may be correct, as far as it goes, but the usual quantum formalism cannot be the whole story." And again on p. 144 Bell says: "Einstein had no difficulty accepting that affairs in different places could be correlated. What he could not accept was that an intervention at one place could influence, immediately, affairs at the other." Downloaded 5 July 2011 from Bell, J. S. (1987). Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics(PDF). CERN. ISBN0521334950. Archived from the original(PDF) on 12 April 2015. Retrieved 13 October 2018. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)