2002 in science

none 2002 science 2002 The year 2002 in science and technology involved some significant events. Astronomy and space science February 19 – NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system. May 26 – The Mars Odyssey finds signs of huge water ice deposits on the planet Mars. June 4 – The ringed dwarf planet Quaoar is discovered by astronomers Chad Trujillo and Michael Brown at the Palomar Observatory.2023-08-31 last obs JPL Small-Body Database Browser: 50000 Quaoar (2002 LM 60) NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=Quaoar 5 July 2024 June 6 – 2002 Eastern Mediterranean event: An object with an estimated diameter of 10 meters impacts with Earth's atmosphere over the Mediterranean and detonates in mid-air.http://www.spacedaily.com/news/deepimpact-02s.html Near-Earth Objects Pose Threat, General Says Bosker A. J. 2002-09-17 Space Daily 2016-06-04 June 10 – Solar eclipse of June 10, 2002: Annular solar eclipse. September 25 – 2002 Vitim event: Possible bolide impact in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia.https://www.wired.com/2009/09/0925vitim-meteorite/ Mysterious Meteorite Dazzles Siberia Alfred Randy 2009-09-25 Wired 2016-06-04 December 4 – Solar eclipse of December 4, 2002: Total solar eclipse. Biology 1 March – DNA barcoding of the dodo is published, confirming it as a member of the Columbidae family.10.1126/science.295.5560.1683 Shapiro Beth Beth Shapiro etal 2002 Flight of the Dodo Science 295 5560 1683 11872833 http://pgl.soe.ucsc.edu/dodo_Shapiro02.pdf 2024-12-22 2018-11-20 https://web.archive.org/web/20181120150854/https://pgl.soe.ucsc.edu/dodo_Shapiro02.pdf live 18 April – New suborder of insects, Mantophasmatidae, announced. Publication of Systema Porifera: a guide to the classification of sponges edited by John N. A. Hooper and Rob W. M. Van Soest.Kluwer/Plenum (New York) 0-306-47260-0 (2 vols.)Berry Lorraine 2003 Soaking up the limelight Nature 421 6925 791 10.1038/421791a 2003Natur.421Q.791B 766377 free10.1126/science.1082916 Invertebrate Zoology: Sorting Sponges: a review Joseph Pawlik Science 299 5614 1846b–1847 2003-03-21 85266676Chambers Susan 2003 Systema Porifera Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 13 5 461–2 10.1002/aqc.593 Cartography Hobo–Dyer projection commissioned. Computer science and cybernetics January 7 – The iMac G4 is introduced by Apple, Inc., as the next generation iMac. March 14 – Prof. Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading in England has part of his nervous system experimentally linked to a computer.Cyborg study draws fire https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1886700.stm BBC News 2002-03-22 2010-10-07 On June 10, he demonstrates the first direct electronic communication between the nervous systems of two humans. September 20 – Release of the Tor anonymity network is announced.Dingledine Roger pre-alpha: run an onion proxy now! or-dev 2002-09-20 http://archives.seul.org/or/dev/Sep-2002/msg00019.html 2008-07-17 September 23 – The first version of the web browser Firefox is released by the Mozilla Organization. October 1 – The Danger Hiptop is released, the first smartphone to incorporate instant messaging. Earth sciences January 17 – Eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people. Mathematics August 6 – Polynomial-time primality test published. November 12 – Grigori Perelman posts the first of a series of eprints to the arXiv in which he proves the century-old Poincaré conjecture. Palaeoarchaeology Ciampate del Diavolo (early hominid footprints in Italy) come to scientific attention. Philosophy 2002 in philosophy Physics March 8 – Claims regarding bubble fusion, in which a table-top apparatus is reported as producing small-scale fusion in a liquid undergoing acoustic cavitation, are published.Taleyarkhan R. P. Rusi Taleyarkhan West, C. D. Cho, J. S. Lahey Jr., R. T. Nigmatulin, R. Block, R. C. 2002-03-08 Evidence for Nuclear Emissions During Acoustic Cavitation 1868–73 Science 295 1868 http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/hottopics/bubble/index.shtml 10.1126/science.1067589 2012-03-15 11884748 2002Sci...295.1868T 11405525 0036-8075 subscription May – Experimental discovery of a new type of radioactivity: the 2-protons radioactivity.Giovinazzo J. Blank, B. Chartier, M. Czajkowski, S. Fleury, A. Lopez Jimenez, M. J. Pravikoff, M. S. Thomas, J.-C. de Oliveira Santos, F. Lewitowicz, M. Maslov, V. Stanoiu, M. Grzywacz, R. Pfützner, M. Borcea, C. Brown, B. A. amp 2002-08-19 Two-Proton Radioactivity of F45en 102501 Physical Review Letters 89 10 10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.102501 12225187 2002PhRvL..89j2501G Pfützner M. 2002-05-28 First evidence for the two-proton decay of 45Fe 279–285 The European Physical Journal A 14 3 10.1140/epja/i2002-10033-9 2002EPJA...14..279P etal 120370209 Physiology and medicine February – Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells in the eye identified by Samer Hattar and colleagues.2002 Melanopsin-containing retinal ganglion cells: architecture, projections, and intrinsic photosensitivity Science 295 5557 1065–70 2002Sci...295.1065H 10.1126/science.1069609 2885915 11834834 Hattar, Samer etal2002 Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock Science 295 5557 1070–3 2002Sci...295.1070B 10.1126/science.1067262 11834835 Berson, David M. 30745140 etal May 14 – Red wine is claimed by Spanish researchers to protect against the common cold.https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1986514.stm BBC News Red wine 'protects from colds' 2002-05-14 2013-03-21 June – The gene BRAF is shown to be faulty (mutated) in some human cancers.Davies, H. Bignell, G. R. Cox, C. Stephens, P. Edkins, S. Clegg, S. Teague, J. Woffendin, H. Garnett, M. J. Bottomley, W. Davis, N. Dicks, E. Ewing, R. Floyd, Y. Gray, K. Hall, S. Hawes, R. Hughes, J. Kosmidou, V. Menzies, A. Mould, C. Parker, A. Stevens, C. Watt, S. Hooper, S. Wilson, R. Jayatilake, H. Gusterson, B. A. Cooper, C. Shipley, J. Hargrave, D. Pritchard-Jones, K. Maitland, N. Chenevix-Trench, G. Riggins, G. J. Bigner, D. D. Palmieri, G. Cossu, A. Flanagan, A. Nicholson, A. Ho, J. W. Leung, S. Y. Yuen, S. T. Weber, B. L. Seigler, H. F. Darrow, T. L. Paterson, H. Marais, R. Marshall, C. J. Wooster, R. Stratton, M. R. Futreal, P. A. Richard Marais Michael Stratton Mutations of the BRAF gene in human cancer Nature 417 6892 949–54 June 2002 12068308 10.1038/nature00766 http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/121/1/Davis%2CH_2002_pdf.pdf 2002Natur.417..949D 3071547 November – Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic begins in Guangdong province of China.https://www.who.int/csr/sars/country/table2004_04_21/en/index.html Summary of probable SARS cases with onset of illness from 1 November 2002 to 31 July 2003 World Health Organization 2004 2011-06-24 https://web.archive.org/web/20110624025825/http://www.who.int/csr/sars/country/table2004_04_21/en/index.html 24 June 2011 live December 19 – Clozapine is the first drug approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for reducing the risk of suicidal behaviour. Technology November 4 – A Tactical High Energy Laser prototype shoots down an incoming artillery shell. Malcolm C. Smith introduces the inerter in the study of the mechanical network in control theory. Smith M. C. Synthesis of mechanical networks: The inerter 10.1109/TAC.2002.803532 IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 47 10 1648–1662 2002 Awards Fields Prize in Mathematics: Laurent Lafforgue and Vladimir Voevodsky Nobel Prizes Chemistry John B. Fenn (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA) and Koichi Tanaka (Shimadzu Corp., Kyoto, Japan) "for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules" Kurt Wüthrich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland and The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA) "for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution" Physics Raymond Davis Jr. (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA) and Masatoshi Koshiba (International Center for Elementary Particle Physics, University of Tokyo, Japan) "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos" Riccardo Giacconi (Associated Universities Inc., Washington, D.C., USA) "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources" Medicine Sydney Brenner, H. Robert Horvitz and John E. Sulston "for their discoveries concerning genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death" Turing Award: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman Wollaston Medal for Geology: Rudolf Trumpy Deaths January 8 – Alexander Prokhorov (b. 1916), physicist. February 6 – Max Perutz (b. 1914), biologist. February 10 – Harold Furth (b. 1930), expert in plasma physics and nuclear fusion. February 24 – David Hawkins (b. 1913), philosopher of science and mathematics and science educator. February 26 – Helen Megaw (b. 1907), crystallographer. March 3 – Roy Porter (b. 1946), medical historian. April 9 – Leopold Vietoris (b. 1891), mathematician. April 18 – Thor Heyerdahl (b. 1914), explorer, led the Kon-Tiki expedition. May 2 – W. T. Tutte (b. 1917), mathematician and cryptanalyst. May 20 – Stephen Jay Gould (b. 1941), paleontologist/evolutionist. June 20 – Erwin Chargaff (b. 1905), biochemist. June 29 – Ole-Johan Dahl (b. 1931), computer scientist, invented concepts in object-oriented programming. June 30 – W. Maxwell Cowan (b. 1931), neuroanatomist. July 4 – Laurent Schwartz (b. 1915), mathematician. August 6 – Edsger Dijkstra (b. 1930), computer scientist. August 31 – George Porter (b. 1920), Nobel laureate in chemistry. September 6 – Orvan Hess (b. 1906), obstetrician. September 21 – Robert Lull Forward (b. 1932), science fiction author and physicist. September 29 – Giuliana Tesoro (b. 1921), Italian-American organic chemist October 18 – Nikolai Rukavishnikov (b. 1932), cosmonaut. November 2 – Charles Sheffield (b. 1935), science fiction author and physicist. November 11 – Esther Somerfeld-Ziskind (b. 1901), neurologist and psychiatrist. References Category:21st century in science Category:2000s in science