By Majahid M Qazi,
The 2011th year has left us and like every year; it had its share of good and bad. With world’s population touching 7 billion mark on October 31 & South Sudan appearing as a new nation on the world’s map; this year started with wave of people’s uprising sweeping the Arab world, came to be known as the “Arab Spring”. There was another popular protest in New York’s financial district (the Wall Street) against social and economic inequality, high unemployment, and corporate greed and drawing inspiration from the “Arab spring” came to be known as the “American Autumn”.
The world also witnessed “Anna phenomenon”- the biggest anti-corruption crusade ever in the world’s largest democracy. The economies of the United States and the countries of Europe continued to struggle on Global economic stage. In comparison to emerging economies; India performed better but with an undesirable trend of slow growth with high inflation.
Netizens around the world mourned Apple’s Ace Steve Jobs death; the brain behind the IT’s iRevolution- iPod, iPad and iPhone. Indian cricket team repeated 1983’s history again by winning ICC World Cup. The year 2011 also hosted the royal weddings of England’s Prince William with Kate Middleton and Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck with Jetsun Perma. 2011 was equally disastrous. Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods & Droughts took a heavy toll of human lives around the globe.
Apart from these events, the year 2011; also designated as the International year of Forests & Chemistry by the U.N, involved many significant discoveries & events in science as well, some of which are listed below:
• Three astronomers Adam Riess, Saul Perlmutter & Brian Schmidt working on dark energy discovered that a kind of inverse gravity is causing cosmos to expand at accelerating pace which won them Nobel Prize in Physics for 2011.
• The 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Professor Dan Shechtman of Iowa State University for the discovery of quasi-crystals.
• The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared by Bruce Beutler of the United States, Jules A. Hoffmann of France and Ralph M. Steinman of Canada (posthumously), for their research into the human immune system.
• The world’s first artificial organ transplant was achieved by surgeons in Sweden, using an artificial windpipe coated with stem cells created by Scientists in London.
• Elements 114 and 116 were officially added to the periodic table, becoming its heaviest members yet. Scientists suggested “flerovium” and “livermorium” as names for them.
• NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft successfully entered orbit around the planet Mercury– the first probe to do so.
• India’s space agency ISRO successfully launched 8 satellites- Megha-Tropiques, Jugnu, SRMSat, VesselSat, RESOURCESAT-2, YOUTHSAT, X-SAT & GSAT-12 using its own PSLV from Sriharikota & one Communication satellite GSAT-8 through Arine 5 from Kourou, French Guiana.
• CERN scientists confined anti-hydrogen atoms for 1,000 seconds, four orders of magnitude longer than has ever been achieved before in capturing and maintaining anti-matter atoms.
• A 120-million-year-old fossil is the oldest pregnant lizard ever discovered, according to scientists. The fossil, found in China, is a very complete 30-cm (12-inch)-long specimen with more than a dozen embryos in its body.
• Artificial sperm was created using stem cells for the first time in a scientific breakthrough that can lead to new treatments for infertile men.
• A piece of amber discovered in Alberta, Canada, contains an 80-million year old feather that can provide clues to the relationship between dinosaurs and modern avian species.
• An international team of scientists at CERN had recorded neutrinos apparently travelling faster than the speed of light. If confirmed, the discovery would overturn Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that nothing can travel faster than light.
• China’s unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft robotically docked with the orbiting Tiangong-1 space station module, marking China’s first orbital docking, and a major milestone in its efforts to construct a full-scale space station by 2020.
• Researchers at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider [LHC] reported the discovery of a new particle, dubbed Chi [3P]. The discovery marked the LHC’s first clear observation of a new particle since it became operational in 2009.