Top 10 Major Scientific Discoveries Of 2018

New discoveries have occurred that humanity has never known about previously, things that you didn’t know about either. So what better way to finish off the year than to make you aware of them? And by the way, feel free to tell your friends and family about these and make yourself look extra smart. Here are the 10 craziest discoveries of 2018.

In July of 2018 it was announced that 12 new moons have been discovered in the planet Jupiter’s orbit. The actual visual confirmation that the masses existed occurred back in March of 2017, when a group of astronomers were attempting to discern the location of Planet Nine, a theoretical planet orbiting our sun on the outskirts of our solar system.

They realized that the technology that they were using, specifically the Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, could give them a better look at the gas giant. So they pointed it at it, only to see a dozen new items out there. But it wasn’t until the summer of 2018 when the previously documented masses were confirmed to be in fact 12 actual moons.

The discovery brings the total number of moons around Jupiter to 79, far more than any other planet. This could mean a lot of different things. Is there life on there? Are there materials on those moons that we could somehow harvest? Or could we look even further to discover aliens? Mm-hm.

With the number of times that the human body has been examined, it’s hard to believe that there could be an undiscovered organ inside of us. But on March 27th, 2018, an analysis was published in the journal Scientific Reports by doctors from Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center, which revealed just that The interstitium is the fluid-filled space that exists between structural barriers, such as cell walls or the skin, and internal structures, such as muscles or parts of the circulatory system.

The fluid inside the interstitium helps nutrients and hi Jill solutes travel around to organs, cells, and capillaries, and scientists believe that they also act as a form of shock absorber, protecting body tissues from becoming damaged.

Though nobody’s identified the interstitium before, it’s actually one of the biggest organs in the body. Side note, and this a bit less scientific, but have you ever thought about how weird your tongue is, like, it’s just like a big muscle hangin’ out your mouth

On September 12th, 2018, archeologists announced that the earliest known drawing created by the hands of a homo sapien had been found.

The artwork was discovered inside Blombos Cave, which is around 322 kilometers east of Cape Town, the capital city of South Africa. A seemingly simple place, the drawing consists of nine red lines drawn on a stone flake, and it’s estimated to be around 73,000 years old.

Prior to this, the earliest known drawing by a human being was only around 40,800 years old, a whole 30,000 years younger. According to Christopher Henshilwood, an archeologist from the University of Bergen in Norway, this is the first evidence that humans could draw that far back in history. This could actually shed light on the origin of humanity’s use of symbols to communicate and record information.

Wouldn’t it be funny if there was that one caveman that was like I’m gonna pull a prank and just starts drawing symbols of, like, crazy monsters and aliens to really freak out future humans? Ha ha, oh God that’d be scary.

Humankind has never been closer to proving that there was life on the red planet, as a recent discovery has established that something essential for that life to be possible is very much present.

Namely, water. While the evidence of water having once existed on Mars probably seems like old news, in July of 2018 a group of Italian researchers revealed that they’d found evidence that water exists there right now. The team was analyzing radar signals from the Mars Express spacecraft’s radar sounder, when they found some bright reflections that they eventually concluded were made by water. The liquid is unfortunately underneath the massive sheet of ice that makes up the planet’s southern pole, and experts say it’s definitely salt water.

This could absolutely mean that there’s really life on Mars. Now, don’t get too excited. It’s probably not little green men in helmets floating around in that water, but it could very well be amoebas, cells, who knows? We gotta work our way up, folks

In July of 2018 it was announced that astronomers in Socorro, New Mexico, had discovered the brightest object in the known universe. Known as P352, the object is a quasar, a massive, extremely bright, active galactic nucleus, or AGN, with a black hole inside of it.

P352 is trillions of times more luminous than our sun. Or at least it was. The quasar is so far away that it would actually be impossible to find out exactly what it looks like at this very moment within our lifetimes. This is due to the fact that although it’s amazingly bright, P352’s light takes 13 billion years just to reach us here on Earth. That means that the quasar is 13 billion light years away.

For that matter, it’s possible another object has stolen the record for brightest object, only it will take billions of years to claim that title.

Nearly 250 million people carry the gene responsible for sickle cell anemia, a potentially deadly disorder that affects hemoglobin, a molecule found in red blood cells that transports oxygen all over the body.

It gets its name from the shape that red blood cells form into, specifically sickles of crescents, and symptoms that include serious infections and blood loss.

However, hope may be just around the corner, because in March of 2018 scientists at the Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health announced that they had traced the origin of the disease to a single mutation that developed in West Africa 7,300 years, or 259 generations, ago. 300,000 babies are born every day with sickle cell anemia, but now it may be possible to predict how severe their symptoms will be. And from there, perhaps a cure. Who knows? Science is awesome.