Some people do not like science, some people love it. Some people only want to hear about it as far as CSI or science fiction, but anything beyond that bores them. However, science discoveries can be important in medical research, the environment and so forth. So, out of curiosity, since I was doing top 10 lists, I looked up the top 10 scientific discoveries for 2008 and here is what I found:

1. Large Hadron Collider – The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the massive particle accelerator straddling the Swiss-French border — didn’t destroy the world! The bad news: The contraption didn’t really work either.  They think they can have it fixed by June. This thing was supposed to recreate the Big Bang somehow, apparently it proved harder than they thought, and so does this mean the Big Bang never happened? I personally don’t believe in the Big Bang Theory, would rather believe in God than a freak explosion.
2. The North Pole — of Mars – NASA’s Phoenix lander found the North Pole on Mars – and Mars is so cold there, it killed the little lander.
3. New Bacterium – J. Craig Venter — one of the two men credited with mapping the human genome — managed to do. Venter wove together the 582,000 base pairs required to invent the genetic code for a brand new bacterium.
4. China Soars into Space – China have put astronauts into space before, first in 2003 (single man flight) and 2005 (two man crew), but in 2008 they manned their first three man crew and managed their first spacewalk. Very impressive for just 5 years, keep up the good work! China has come a long way has it not?
5. Western Lowland Gorilla – New surveys this summer by the Wildlife Conservation Society put the species’ numbers far higher than scientists had thought.
6. New Planets Discovered - In June, Swiss astronomer Michel Mayor found 45 much smaller worlds, one only 4.2 times as big as Earth. Too bad they are too hot to live on; however, Mayor believes some of them might not be as hot as the others, so there may be a new planet to live on in the future. I vote we send Congress on the first ship. Hands?
7. The Power of Invisibility – Berkeley invented an invisibility cloak. Someone needs to tell them to quit reading Harry Potter books.
8. Wooly Mammoth DNA – Penn State biochemistry professor Stephan Schuster announced that he had reconstructed 80% of the genome of the long extinct woolly mammoth, using clumps of hair from the remains of several of the giant critters.
9. American’s became scientifically smarter – Currently, 25% of the population of the U.S. qualify as “civic scientifically literate.”
10. First Family – Researchers in Germany excavated 4,600-year-old graves of what appears to be a family that was killed together in a raid.