Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years? - forgottenacc56
======
zt
CRISPR for gene editing:

"Since 2013, the CRISPR/Cas system has been used for gene editing (adding,
disrupting or changing the sequence of specific genes) and gene regulation in
species throughout the tree of life. By delivering the Cas9 protein and
appropriate guide RNAs into a cell, the organism's genome can be cut at any
desired location."

(From Wikipedia
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR))

Edit: Hear a recent Radiolab episode on the topic
([http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-
part-1-crispr/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/))

~~~
baldfat
This means curing: Color Blindness, Liver Disease, Hopefully Cancers, Genetic
Defects, MAYBE one day Aging?

~~~
Protostome
I would first want to see people accept GMO crops. Then I'll be willing to
think of people going to the doctor to change their eye color.

~~~
beat
The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for
agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food
problems we face.

Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political
nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it
attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of
monocropping. But productivity isn't the problem of our food chain. We can
grow plenty of food, and cheaply.

So what are problems? Loss of biodiversity. Modern nutrition-related health
problems like obesity and diabetes that are related to factory-manufactured
junk food. Et cetera.

We should be focusing on making food fresher, better tasting, more nutritious,
more interesting, and more ethical. Racing to the bottom on price isn't good
for anyone but the companies that provide vendor lock-in.

~~~
vinceguidry
> But productivity isn't the problem of our food chain. We can grow plenty of
> food, and cheaply.

 _We_ can. The rest of the developing world has a lot of trouble keeping
people fed. There's only so much aid can do, but if we can find ways for
small-time farmers to produce more, and also to transport those goods, then
the rest of the world could feed itself, something small-time agriculture has
historically had a lot of trouble doing.

Better, hardier crop strains aren't just a profit-making scheme, they're
absolutely critical in the fight against world hunger.

~~~
beat
GMO crops aren't invented for developing world conditions. They're invented
for the developed world that can afford them. They're an extension of Green
Revolution agriculture ideas. The core of Green Revolution is a focus on cash
crops rather than subsistence farming - high intensity monocropping to create
raw feedstock for junk food factories in the global market, rather than
immediately edible food for local consumption. You don't eat soybeans. You eat
things made in a factory out of soybeans.

Green Revolution is often the cause of rather than cure for hunger in the
developing world. Here's an example. Ethiopia is one of the most
agriculturally bountiful places on Earth. For thousands of years, it has been
farmed effectively, and nomadic cattle herding was a key part of that. In the
1970s, it joined the Green Revolution. River valley land was "bought" and
fenced in for industrial cattle farming, raising low quality beef for the
European pet food market. This cut off access to the rivers during dry season
for the nomadic herders, backed up in force by a now internationally funded
army. The nomads were forced to stay in the hills, overgrazing during the dry
season. A decade or so later, and the hill country desertified and the rivers
silted up, ruining both the nomadic and Green Revolution cattle farming.
Suddenly, a peaceful and well-fed land became the scene of a world-shaking
famine and civil war.

The picture is much, much bigger than just GMO.

~~~
prewett
Could you give some links? I'd love to read about this but can't find anything
on Google that talks about anything earlier than 2000.

~~~
beat
I got this back in the 1990s from reading actual books. Don't know about links
offhand... I was actually thinking about this myself.

~~~
cactusface
Search Google books for "green revolution ethiopia", lots of hits.

~~~
beat
The hits are mostly modern, unfortunately.

------
bradneuberg
The revolution in biotech happening from the discovery of the CRISPR process
will be as important as the semiconductor in the long run:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR)

Neural networks via deep learning started showing incredible results the last
few years (after about 40 years of development) across a range of fields,
including speech recognition, machine vision, and more. It's still early days,
but combining reinforcement learning with neural networks looks like it will
be very exciting too:
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7540/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7540/full/nature14236.html)

------
BerislavLopac
I would say, in no particular order:

    
    
        * the fact that many of the dinosaurs had feathers
        * myriad of exoplanets
        * water on Mars (and many other new data on the planet)
        * Higg's boson (confirmed to 99.999% certainty)
        * Neanderthal genes present in modern humans
        * new ancient Mayan cities
    

That's it from me for starters, hopefully others will join in.

~~~
jballanc
I'd argue that the discovery of Denisovans might be bigger than Neanderthal
genes, but they're in the same ballpark. Modern sequencing technology has led
to an explosion in discoveries about early human (and other organisms')
evolution.

Actually, I'd just put "rapid sequencing" right near the top of the list. When
I started grad school (in 2003 if you must know), there was a feeling that
it'd be very hard to get any better/faster than Sanger sequencing (and
modifications of the same). Now there's a plethora of technologies that are
both faster and more accurate.

~~~
new299
> Now there's a plethora of technologies that are both faster and more
> accurate.

Sorry to nitpick, but the inherent error rate of high throughput sequencing
platforms is still higher than capillary sequencing. This is more than
mitigated for by the massive throughput advantage though.

~~~
jballanc
Right, thanks for clarifying that bit. An individual run still has a much
higher error rate, but the ability to do exponentially more runs results in a
higher accuracy per "experiment". This is not that dissimilar from the
direction that other technologies have taken when facing physical measurement
limits (cryo-electron tomography comes to mind, for example).

~~~
new299
Yes, though there's the added complication of time to answer however.

You can turn a Sanger run around relatively quickly (I'd guess hours). High
throughput runs sequence many millions of fragments of DNA in parallel very
slowly. The highest throughput runs take several days to complete.

This means that it's there are still (rapidly diminishing) scenarios where
Sanger sequencing makes sense. Because you don't need the throughput, and you
want an answer quickly.

------
r2
In solar cell research, the biggest recent breakthrough was probably the
creation of efficient perovskite solar cells [1]. They're cheap, easy to make,
and their efficiency in the lab is rising more rapidly than that of just about
any other research cell since NREL began tracking (up from 3.5% in 2009 to
20.1% today) [2,3]. If their chemical stability problems can be resolved,
they'll have big commercial applications.

[1]
[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6165/1438.2](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6165/1438.2)

[2]
[http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/images/efficiency_chart.jpg](http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/images/efficiency_chart.jpg)

[3] [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517811/a-material-
that-...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517811/a-material-that-could-
make-solar-power-dirt-cheap/)

------
jotux
Not very "fundamental" but I'm very excited about low-power advancements in
ICs. There are companies like AmbiqMicro making microcontrollers that are
reaching 30uA/MHz and 100nA sleep modes. This is starting to make ambient and
RF energy harvesting viable.

[http://ambiqmicro.com/low-power-microcontroller](http://ambiqmicro.com/low-
power-microcontroller)

~~~
agumonkey
Awesome, never heard of their work.

------
natrius
Blockchains. Distributed consensus is incredibly powerful. It will allow us to
rebuild our society around individuals instead of corporations and governments
that formed because economic transaction costs were so high that economies of
scale (and sometimes the use of force) were required to coordinate our
society.

All economic activity will be blockchain-mediated. It will make us wealthier
and freer.

~~~
ForHackernews
The "low costs" of bitcoin are a myth. Bitcoin transactions are extremely
expensive, both financially and ecologically, it's just that those costs are
currently subsidized by block rewards to miners instead of paid by
consumers/end-users. If bitcoin were ever to be widely adopted, the high fees
would have to be passed on to users: [http://www.coindesk.com/new-study-low-
bitcoin-transaction-fe...](http://www.coindesk.com/new-study-low-bitcoin-
transaction-fees-unsustainable/)

At some level, this basic fact should be incredibly obvious to anyone with any
technical background: It's much cheaper and easier to operate a centralized,
eventually-consistent database (today's banking system) than a distributed
ledger that requires constantly burning electricity and computing resources on
useless math puzzles. Nevertheless, I still see bitcoin advocates claiming
bitcoin will be cheaper than the legacy transaction system.

~~~
natrius
I am not talking about Bitcoin in particular, nor am I talking about
transaction _fees_. I am talking about transaction _costs_ and blockchains in
general.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_cost)

~~~
nostrademons
Of the categories of transaction cost listed in that article, the only one
blockchains address is the policing & enforcement cost. Even then, it only
addresses one side of the policing cost: it ensures that the seller receives
payment without need for a trusted intermediary, but it does nothing to ensure
that the buyer receives a good that is of acceptable quality and performs the
function agreed upon.

~~~
natrius
All of those transaction costs can be handled by decentralized communication
backed by reputation systems. Blockchains are great platforms for reputation
systems. We will soon see that while it's hard to get systems off the ground
that require network effects, making them entirely open and run by no one
makes them a great choice for developers and consumers. I expect that
decentralization yields its own sort of network effects.

------
jonmc12
I thought the discovery of the quantity of distinct populations (~5k
currently) and densities (relatively even) of upper-ocean viruses was perhaps
an under-rated discovery that could lead to more advanced understanding of
both the evolution of cellular organisms on earth and our current ecosystem.
[https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150521-ocean-
viruses/](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150521-ocean-viruses/)

------
chintan
Mermistor (discovery in 1971 but actual implementation in 2008)

[http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-
pla...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-plans-to-
launch-memristor-silicon-photonic-computer-within-the-decade/)

~~~
aerovistae
Wasn't sure if you had misspelled "memristor" or if there was some sort of
aquatic resistor I had not heard of.

------
lalalandland
Unraveling the link between brain, lymphatic system:
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150615094258.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150615094258.htm)

------
unusximmortalis
Researchers at Audi are making synthetic diesel fuel using only water and air.
Miracle? No. Science.

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/28/technology/audi-diesel-
air-w...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/28/technology/audi-diesel-air-water/)

~~~
rtb
Using water, air and large amounts of heat.

(Where does that heat come from? Many possibilities, but currently from fossil
fuels.)

~~~
meric
Not for e-diesel:

 _First, the researchers heat up steam to very high temperatures to break it
down into hydrogen and oxygen. This process requires temperatures of over 800
degrees Celsius (1,472 Fahrenheit) and is powered by green energy such as
solar or wind power._

------
riemannzeta
CRISPR, blockchain, and direct connection between brain and lymphatics system
are way bigger, but this was a big one for economics and political science:

Zero-Determinant Strategies in Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma
[http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10409.full.pdf](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10409.full.pdf)

------
PaulRobinson
I'd say that in terms of what we are able to do next, Graphene wins by a long
way. Graphene is remarkable stuff, literally.

I'd say in terms of impact on philosophy, religion and way of life, the large
number of planets we're discovering.

~~~
brockers
I fear the graphene will fall by the wayside due to legal and social pressure.
News sources have already pointed out that it is significantly more dangerous,
if inhaled, than asbestos; another material this is insanely useful for a
number of applications but is effectively blackballed as a engineer-able
material.

Another example is nuclear energy. Clean, abundant, and extremely safe. The
fear of radiation exposer has turned it into a pariah in the world community;
totally ignoring the fact the radioactive elements in coal emissions have kill
more people in the last 30 years than 100 Three Mile Island incidences would.

~~~
discardorama
> Another example is nuclear energy. Clean, abundant, and extremely safe.

Yeah, but what do you do about the waste? The US has tons of waste sitting
around. The grand plan of using Yucca Mountain to store the waste fizzled. We
have just postponed the cost to a future generation who'll have to deal with
the waste we're producing today.

~~~
anigbrowl
Harry Reid is due to retire from the Senate and whoever replaces him will not
wield nearly as much power as he did when Senate leader. I think it will go
into operation in 5-10 years.

------
lalalandland
An invention but also a dicovery: The EmDrive (or RF resonant cavity thruster)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive)

------
etrautmann
Grid cells are pretty cool, and thought to form the basis for spacial
navigation in the brain, and the discovery of these cells in 2006 won this
year's Nobel prize

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_cell)

------
robg
How sleep washes the brain of toxins:
[http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/october2013/10282013clear...](http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/october2013/10282013clear.htm)

This mechanism could also be the cause of the refreshment we feel after a
short nap or meditation. Much harder to study though!

~~~
etrautmann
This study didn't show that. They showed that toxins that are injected into
the brain clear faster during sleep, but not that the brain is actually
clearing anything endogenous. Sounds like a technicality but the claims were
overblown based on their data.

------
VLM
A VERY specific request, no inventions, just things found and cataloged aka
discovered.

[http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/systems/](http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/systems/)

Also see pretty much every space probe of the "last few years". Pity you
couldn't wait another month for the Pluto flyby, unless it completely fails
there will be plenty to talk about.

I would imagine the biological sciences could list all kinds of interesting,
possibly useful, critters.

The geologists and archeologists are always digging something cool up.

~~~
coreyoconnor
I think the discovery of exoplanets will have far reaching cultural
implications.

We've gone from believing planets are extremely rare to knowing planets are
relatively common. Now that planets are known to be common, does that mean
life is common? What will that do to the cultures that, in effect, support
themselves on the belief that humans and the earth are unique?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Denial has worked so far. Heck, even the relationship between forms of life on
Earth is effortlessly denied by the Creationists.

------
gremlinsinc
This sounds more like an AskReddit post than AskHN... but I'd say printable
organs, smaller and smaller computer chips, commercialization of space flight,
possible warp drive tech(may get us there in 100+ years, lol not expecting
anything soon).. anti-aging (expected to double or triple life expectancy by
2050.) etc...

~~~
zmeden
I'd consider most of the things you listed to be inventions/innovations.
Discovery, for me, is closely connected to uncovering of a new phenomena or an
effect. And invention/innovation would be the use of it for some specific
purpose.

~~~
CoryG89
Surely the techniques and logic used to empower such inventions and innovation
had to be discovered by someone at some point. For every great new invention
is their not usually some discovery made sometime prior which ushered it in?
For things like smaller and smaller computer chips. I'd say that Moore's Law
was discovered, not invented.

~~~
ghaff
Moore's Law really is neither as it's more of an observation (and, arguably, a
self-fulfilling prediction). Many inventions (made possible by various
discoveries in semiconductor physics and the like) have enabled Moore's Law to
more or less continue. But Moore's Law itself is not any sort of natural law.

------
JonnieCache
While it's not really "great", the _absence_ of new fundamental physics this
century is certainly striking...

OTOH Quantum error correcting codes are pretty bananas. Won't be useful for a
good while.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_error_correction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_error_correction)

EDIT: the correct answer is that gene editing stuff though.

------
eli_gottlieb
The most wildly fundamental paper I have seen recently is last December's
"Anytime Algorithms for Non-Ending Computations" by Calude and Desfontaines.

NOW HANDS OFF IT'S MINE! MINE I SAY!

------
figure8
In nutrition and medicine, why red meat causes cancer in humans:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/01/02/red-
mea...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/01/02/red-meat-cancer-
immune/)

------
mrestko
CRISPER/Cas9 for targeted gene editing.

------
bootload
Mary Schweitzer extracting collagen, haemoglobin, elastin, laminin from 80
million year old Hadrosaur and verifying it. [0],[1]

[0] 2012: [http://www.nature.com/news/molecular-analysis-supports-
contr...](http://www.nature.com/news/molecular-analysis-supports-
controversial-claim-for-dinosaur-cells-1.11637)

[1] 2009: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17060-first-dino-
blood...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17060-first-dino-blood-
extracted-from-ancient-bone.html#.VYIpCVK9azM)

------
anotherevan
That we basically know bugger all about nutrition.

[http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-
biggest-f...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-fail)

------
velavar
Though theoretically predicted long ago, I suppose the Higgs boson can be said
to have been "discovered" in 2012 when its presence was first confirmed.

------
kang
blockchain

------
Ar-Curunir
Fully Homomorphic Encryption will have far reaching applications. That along
with things like efficient MPC.

------
steven2012
Preserved soft tissue was found in dinosaur bones, allowing us to see the
actual structures, and apparently this is not a rare phenomenon. Maybe DNA can
be extracted?

------
alpha1234
Eugene Podkletnov gravity beam generator and TT Brown experiments showing
coupling between electricity and gravitation [1].

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Antigravity-Propulsion-
Classif...](http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Antigravity-Propulsion-Classified-
Technology/dp/159143078X)

------
miduil
* Hackerspaces

~~~
moron4hire
They're an older concept than you think.

~~~
miduil
That's true. :)

------
advanderveer
Aminoacids in the tail of comets

------
AC__
Vampires! Technically speaking, parabiosis. Although it is not actually a new
discovery at all, personally I'm convinced there are humans who have already
transfused young blood plasma(as the linked article points out illegal stem
cell transplants are common as well). Yeah, that's right, vampires.

[http://www.nature.com/news/ageing-research-blood-to-
blood-1....](http://www.nature.com/news/ageing-research-blood-to-
blood-1.16762)

~~~
AC__
I went a massive life extension technology reading binge a few months back,
IMHO it is, right now, possible to extend human life indefinitely.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Ageing has several causes, including the accumulation of clutter (basically
poison) inside and outside of our cells. I'm not sure becoming a vampire is
enough to overcome that.

Given the uncertainties, I'd still want to keep cryonics as a back up. (Though
it looks unavailable here in Western Europe.)

~~~
erkkie
The wear and tear theory of aging is just one of many currently popular, the
body is not a mechanical machine necessarily bound to wear and tear, it can in
some cases successfully heal itself, some species basically don't age (some
can actually revert in lifecycles).

A competing theory is programmed aging (in which "clutter" would be an effect
of, not a cause):
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369273/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369273/)

------
stillsut
Ryan Gosling and fracking.

------
VLM
Is reality invented or discovered? Is math invented or discovered? Was
automata theory invented or discovered? OK well then is the quicksort
algorithm invented or discovered? Is LISP invented or discovered? Is my code
invented or discovered?

~~~
SuddsMcDuff
Are invented and discovered just a matter of perspective?

~~~
rjcz
If something did not exist prior to our action then it is an invention,
otherwise it's a discovery.

