“Hidden Breakthroughs: 69 Scientific Marvels That Shocked Experts but Were Ignored by the World”
Not a scientist but a student here- central pattern generators. Neuroscientists figured out that our spine can generate rhythmic movement patterns (such as walking) without brain involvement. This is currently being explored for treatment options for spinal cord injury. A local researcher with a lab dedicated to this came to my neuroscience class last semester and did a guest lecture on it. He thinks we’re within 20 years of people paralyzed from SCI being able to walk again with an electric implant. I think about this at least once a week and have never heard this mentioned by non-neuroscience people.
The first picture of a black hole. It was a big news story but I don’t think the general public got how cool that is.
Here’s the image.
The fact that long ago there were several different species of humans who lived at the same time.
Laurence R. Doyle’s discovery that dolphins, similar to humans, have a structured language with syntactical complexity.
30 years ago, Japan developed a replacement for Saran Wrap or shrink wrap that was actually more durable and biodegradable. It failed test markers in America because 1) it was made out of shrimp shells 2) it had a pink hue 3) false belief that shellfish allergies would cause people to become sick 4) the packaging had shrimp 🦐 yes with the heads.
We are on the cusp of Nuclear Fusion as an energy source, and it seems to just get swept under the rug.
I also found the discovery of exoplanets so fascinating bc we are still discovering them as we speak. I read that early philosophers were speculating exoplanets existed, and now we have confirmation with technology. I just find it so fascinating. It makes me think of all the things we speculate on now that future technology and humans will discover when we are far gone.
The doctors in London who proved cholera was bacteria in water- it wasn’t the result of odours or bad smells as it were. Just by mapping where the cases were in relation to which street water pumps. Populace angry with them as one of the wells had the ‘nicest’ water.
Removed the pump handles. Cases went down then disappeared.
Until then cholera and many diseases (‘malaria- mal means bad so bad air) thought to be the cause of air borne smells. Of course a few like TB are droplet carried.
It’s less a specific technology and more a broad sense, but we’ve progressed more in the last 5 years than we did in the 200,000 years it took us to get here. We’ve had fusion reactions! Quantum computers! AI (while I dislike the art aspect) has revolutionized how we interact with information.
Basically, I’m so excited to see what technology will look like in the next 10-50-100 years i can barely contain my excitement! We’ve progressed Bit information so much that in the next few years we will need to discover a whole new way of processing information, because we’ve perfected it already!!!!!
Back in 2016, when the results of the CTE brain analysis on former football players went up in JAMA and showed just how extensive and common these injuries are, it should have caused an uproar. And people were aware of it, to be sure, but it seems like most have chosen to just ignore it and assume it’s someone else’s problem, along with hollow justifications like “they knew what they were getting into” and “they get compensated well enough for that risk.”.
Not a scientist, but the Theory of Inflation, how all matter and energy in the universe was created in the blink of an eye. Small variations at the largest scales are connected to quantum fluctuations at the smallest scales before the expansion. Basically the bang of the Big Bang, and yet nobody seems
To get how fundamental this is.
Don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but if you grew up in the 70s you heard a LOT about stomach ulcers k**ling people…it was blamed on stress, but one scientist figured out it was a bacteria and tested it on himself.
That guy needs a statue.
Next generation sequencing! This is how we are able to sequence people’s genomes in a few days for a few thousand dollars, while the original human genome project spent about $1 billion to sequence the first human genome. It’s what’s making medicine possible.
Μy husband has a rare autoimmune. He should be dead. He just takes a pill a day. The rare deceases dont take much publicity but they change and save peoples life. Shout out to everyone involved.
Published in late 2024 was a study showing that silicates played a catalytic role in the formation of amino-acids and proto-cells, taking a huge step in validating abiogenesis as the origin of life.
Basically, they redid the Miller-Urey experiment (which already showed simple organic compounds could emerge from inorganic compounds in conditions similar to early Earth), with a difference : in order to avoid external interferences, they coated the container with teflon and put it in a dark room.
