5 Most AMAZING Scientific Discoveries of the Decade

The last decade was undeniably one of

the richest periods of scientific

discovery ever researchers across all

disciplines tested hypotheses found

proves and visited places that have made

us rethink our understanding of not only

our own planets but of the entire

universe it was the decade when we

finally begin to understand one of the

greatest challenges humankind has ever

faced and we've learned far more than

ever before about some of the most

destructive objects in existence so

let's take a look at five of the most

amazing scientific discoveries of the

2000 intense number 5 Pluto

despite having been unceremoniously

downgraded from being a fully fledged

planet in 2006 that year also saw the

launch of the New Horizons spacecraft

that was destined to travel to the

farthest reaches of our solar system to

study the dwarf planet it finally

reached its destination in July of 2015

in the images and data that were sent

back were astonishing far from being the

boring frozen rock that some had

expected it was found to have moving

glaciers floating ice mountains and a

huge frozen sea made of solid nitrogen

the ice is constantly moving Arbit at a

slow rates because it is warmed by the

pressure above it which in turn causes

it to rise the constant replenishment of

the top layer of ice creates a surface

structures that no one had expected and

that has given a new introduction and

understanding to what happens on the

mysterious dwarf planets at the edge of

our solar system number four the Higgs

bosons it took the construction of the

world's largest machine at a cost of

just under five billion dollars but in

2012 it was finally announced that the

mysterious Higgs a Bolton also known as

the god particle have been discovered at

the Large Hadron Collider in CERN

Switzerland the particle had first been

theorized in 1964 and is one of the most

influential pieces of the subatomic

world the reason that it's so important

is that the standard model of physics

which includes familiar particles like

electrons and protons and um from

such as muons and quarks doesn't

actually explain why objects have mass

the answer though is the elusive Higgs

boson particle which exists in the Higgs

field and due to its interaction with

other particles it's the reason why mass

exists his discovery was the

confirmation of the last unknown part of

the standard model of physics and now

researchers are able to repurpose the

LHC to begin investigating even stranger

phenomenon number 3 Kepler for thousands

of years humans have looked to the skies

wondering what's up there as

astronomical devices were invented we

learned that countless stars existed

throughout the universe and danced there

are other planets in our own solar

system but it was impossible to learn

how common it is for planets to orbit

stars this all changed in 2009 with the

launch of the first Kepler probe which

was used to study distant stars and

measured the amount of light they emit

fluctuations in their brightness can be

used to determine whether any objects

are orbiting them and the results have

been unbelievable by the end of the last

decade more than 4055 exoplanets have

been discovered including a few that are

potentially habitable and this number is

only expected to increase as we enter a

new decade the more we look the more

common our own solar system seems to be

and you can only imagine what else is

out there to be found number three the

world's climates throughout the Earth's

history the climate has changed

drastically there have been periods of

extreme heat and extreme cold and

there's no doubt that things are

noticeably changing again during our

lifetimes what's different this time

though is that the changes are largely

due to human behavior something that

became clearer than ever in the last

decade and we've begun to understand the

extent to how it's affecting the planet

in 2012 400 billion tons of ice was lost

from Greenland and more than 250 two

billion tons of ice has been lost from

Antarctica every year throughout the

decade this is an increase of almost six

times the amount being lost just thirty

years earlier and at the current rate

the world's sea levels are expected to

rise by 3 feet by the year 2100 this

would directly affect the homes and

lives of at least

630 million people but the consequences

are far further reaching human activity

has meant that 40% of all amphibian

species more than 33% of marine mammals

and 10% of insect species are endangered

and things continues to get worse while

the last decade was the time where the

extent of the problem was beginning to

be fully realized let's hope that the

next decade is when the solution is

finally found finally number one black

holes black holes have long been some of

the most mysterious objects in the

universe but thanks to researchers

dedicating their efforts to studying the

phenomena

we've uncovered far more about them and

they are much more interesting than you

may think

black holes are typically formed by

large stars at the end of their lives

and when all the material collapses in

on itself to create an unbelievably

dense structure and because of their

intense gravity costs some very unusual

things to happen in 2016 - black holes

were detected colliding into one another

which confirmed the prediction made by

Einstein in 1916 whereby they created

ripples in space-time known as

gravitational waves this amazing

discovery wasn't the biggest black hole

revelation of the last decade however as

a team working with the event horizon

telescope managed to capture the

first-ever image of a single arity it's

a massive black hole that lies at the

center of the Messier 87 galaxy about 54

million light-years away from us in his

mass is so big that that is the

equivalent to 6.5 billion of our Suns

black holes like those are thought to be

at the center of every galaxy and their

gravitational poles are the reason why

so many billions of stars orbit them in

such large structures the 2010 were an

incredible time for scientific

discoveries and we've learned so much

about the world and universe all around

us and I for one can't wait to see what

happens next thank you all so much for

watching see you next time