In the second week after New Year's Day, two major events took place.
The prestigious academic journal Science, as is customary, named the top 10 scientific and technological advances of last year, 2016.
As the last piece of the general relativity puzzle, the discovery of gravitational waves took the top spot without a doubt.
If electromagnetic wave telescopes are the eyes of mankind, gravitational wave detectors are like the ears of mankind, and since then mankind has finally been able to listen to the sounds from the universe.
Coming in second is Synthia V3.0. Compared to the world sensation of gravitational waves, most people probably don't even know what this thing is, but it's the closest mankind has ever come to becoming God in the true sense of the word.
With 473 genes, it contains the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life's activities, and at the same time, it's the simplest life form mankind is currently able to create.
As for the third place, the modified PDMS film that solves lithium dendrimer, undisputedly made the list.
For the materials science community, which has not seen a "major breakthrough" in many years, this is certainly a remarkable achievement.
Meanwhile, "the seventh row of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements has been filled up" has also been selected, which is a great achievement for the chemistry community this year.
Also on the list is Google's AlphaGo, the ultimate learning system built by combining Monte Carlo decision tree algorithms with deep neural network algorithms, which has made it a worthy winner in the field of artificial intelligence.
As well as breakthroughs in space exploration technology, the seeds of mankind sowing into space, are gradually sprouting ......
These research results are ranked in no particular order, after all, the results of different fields can not be directly compared.
But while this is nominally true, in reality the list given by Science each year still reflects the subjective opinions of the journal's editors to a certain extent.
According to the list given by Science, many people on the Internet are speculating that with this outstanding research result, Orion may possibly become the second mathematician to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry after John Pople.
Of course, this is just a layman's opinion.
After all, the views of Science only represent the journal Science, and not the entire scientific community.
The Nobel Prize has quite strict criteria for the selection of outstanding achievements in the field of application. As an outstanding achievement in the field of application, the modified PDMS material is unlikely to be awarded the Nobel Prize in the year following the confirmation of the achievement, as was the case with gravitational waves.
Whether an applied technology is considered great or not, time will tell.
But like Craig Venter, the "father of artificial life" and renowned science nerd, it wouldn't surprise anyone if the Nobel Committee one day did award the chemistry prize to Orion.
The problem of lithium dendrites, after all, has really plagued the entire materials science community for decades.
As for the other big event that took place at the beginning of the year, it was Trump's inaugural announcement at the White House.
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Orion Crest, Series_1
Science FictionIt is a memoir that depicts the history of human civilization hundreds of years into the future. In the next hundreds of chapters, Orion guides humanity towards the stars. How would you feel if someone said to you that our earth, our solar sy...
