Top 10 Groundbreaking Scientific Breakthroughs of the 21st Century

Gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time produced by the acceleration of massive objects in space, were detected by LIGO. This wave originated from the collision of two black holes about 1.3 billion years ago, with the discovery not announced until 2016.

In September, NASA confirmed the presence of water on Mars using an imaging spectrometer from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This spectrometer detected hydrated salts in various locations.

During warm seasons, these salts darken and flow down steep slopes, fading away in cold seasons. Importantly, the presence of hydrated salts indicates that water plays a crucial role on Mars.

If we're talking about the world's first full face transplant, it dates all the way back to 2010 in Spain. The world's first partial transplant, on the other hand, was conducted in 2005 in France.

MIT scientist Katie Bouman easily takes the cake for generating the first image of the black hole at the M87 galaxy. It was captured by an Event Horizon Telescope.

The ATLAS and CMS experiments discovered the God Particle, which is responsible for providing mass to particles, using the Large Hadron Collider created by CERN. Peter Higgs, who predicted the existence of this particle nearly 50 years ago, saw the culmination of this quest.

A year after the discovery, Peter Higgs and François Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work.

Quantum Supremacy refers to quantum computers outperforming classical supercomputers with incredible speed, achieving results in seconds compared to the years it would take classical supercomputers. Key figures, including Richard Feynman, predicted its occurrence.

Google achieved Quantum Supremacy with its 54-qubit Sycamore processor, which performed a calculation in 200 seconds. This task would take the world's most powerful supercomputer about 10,000 years to complete.

Predicted in 2007 by MIT, photonic molecules were discovered six years later. They draw an analogy to lightsabers from Star Wars because of the physics of how photons push away and deflect each other. Despite the playful analogy, this discovery is crucial for quantum computing by contributing to the development of quantum logic gates.

A team of researchers confirmed the existence of dark matter by measuring the Bullet Clusters, or the location of mass, in the collision of galaxies. Although dark matter is one of the most poorly understood and mysterious substances in space, this discovery puts us one step closer to unraveling its mystery.

NASA confirms that dark matter comprises at least 68% of the universe.

A German cleantech company has developed a device capable of converting water and carbon dioxide into liquid hydrocarbons, including synthetic diesel, petrol, and kerosene.