Science's annual top ten scientific research announcements: the Webb telescope was selected, accompanied by AIGC!

Finally, the biggest award for science magazines in 2022 has been announced!

On December 16, the science official website released the "Top Ten Scientific Breakthroughs in 2022", among which the Webb Telescope won the crown and was published on the cover of the latest issue.

Science magazine gave the reason for the award:

Due to the technical feats of its construction and launch As well as the huge prospects for exploring the universe, the James Webb Telescope was named Science magazine's 2022 Scientific Breakthrough of the Year.

In addition, major achievements in the scientific community in the past year, including AIGC, NASA's successful impact on an asteroid, and Yunnan University's creation of perennial rice, have also been were selected one after another.

Let’s review these blockbuster studies in the past year.

Annual Breakthrough—Webb Telescope

On July 12, NASA released the first batch of full-color deep space images from the Webb Space Telescope, allowing humans to pass JWST for the first time The "Eye of the Universe" glimpsed the mysteries of the deep space universe.

But the significance of the Webb telescope goes far beyond that. Science magazine is quoted as saying, "The Webb telescope will completely change mankind's view of the universe."

NASA stated that the Webb Telescope will continue to push the limits of astronomical observation, and the release of this deep space image is just the beginning.

The Webb Telescope is larger and more sophisticated than Hubble. It allows us to see earlier images of the observable universe, and also provides us with more possibilities for discovering more exoplanets. sex.

NASA engineer Scott Friedman said that as long as the Webb telescope keeps working, it will provide humans with a glimpse of the early universe that has never been seen.

Capturing light from the first generations of stars and galaxies, mapping their evolution from birth in clouds of gas and dust to their supernova deaths, we will see the earliest How galaxies interact and grow.

From art to mathematics, AIGC makes a strong appearance

The award-winning work Théâtre D'opéra Spatial by artist Jason Allen , created by AIGC

AIGC can be said to be brilliant in 2022, from Dall-E to AlphaFold, from Stable Diffusion to ChatGPT, many creative works that only belonged to humans in the past All can be done through AI.

Starting from OpenAI’s Dall·E 2, there has been a boom in text-image generation.

Immediately afterwards, giants such as Meta and Google also began to launch their own products and competed to recruit people.

In addition, machine learning has also shown its creativity in the fields of science, mathematics and programming.

Science magazine's 2021 Breakthrough Award recognizes AlphaFold2 for predicting the 3D structure of proteins based on the sequence of their amino acid building blocks.

The AlphaTensor and AlphaCode released by Deepmind this year have shown strong capabilities in matrix multiplication and programming competitions.

As a review in Science magazine put it:

There is no doubt that in the future humans will use these tools just as we used to accept looms in the past , cameras and other inventions like that.

Yunnan University Perennial Rice—PR23

The world’s major food crops such as rice, wheat, and corn must be replanted every time they are harvested.

This is a lot of work for farmers and can lead to environmental problems such as soil erosion.

While perennial grains can ease the burden, cultivating long-lived, high-yielding plants has been a challenge.

This year, Hu Fengyi’s team at Yunnan University announced that it has successfully cultivated rice PR23 that can grow continuously for many years.

It is harvested twice a year. Once planted, it can be harvested continuously for 3-4 years without tillage. The average yield per season is as high as 6.8 tons/hectare.

The team also stated that PR23 has been promoted in China and some African countries, and the planting area in 2021 has exceeded 15,553 hectares.

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