timelinescience - 2000 to present

2000 to present

Setting the scene

At the beginning of the 21st century science continues to develop at an ever faster rate. Developments in computer technology power advances in almost every field of science. On the largest scale the exploration of space continues, with more and more countries reaching out to Mars, while at the other end of the range nanotechnology holds out the promise of medical treatments ad industrial solutions which would have been unimaginable only a few years ago.

Across the world, Islamic terrorists fly planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on 11th September 2001, Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Golden Jubilee in 2002, an alliance between the USA, the UK and Spain invades Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, and in 2004 the Centennial Olympic Games are held in Greece. The work of scientists continues against the background of a troubled world where allegiances change rapidly and the problems of hunger, disease and pollution never go away.

The science

2001	Craig Ventner and his colleagues publish the complete genetic code of the laboratory mouse. Roger Cayrel of the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, France and his colleagues report the age of the Universe as at least 12.5 billion years old, ±3 billion years. On 23rd March the Russian space station Mir is decommissioned after 15 years in space playing host to visiting cosmonauts and astronauts. It is sent out of orbit to burn up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Phaedon Avouris and co-workers at IBM in New York report the very first logic circuits based on nanotube technology.

2002	Manindra Agrawal of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur develops an algorithm which makes it possible to show with complete certainty whether or not any number is a prime number. The one drawback with the algorithm is that it would take a desktop computer about two weeks to run it. Robotic surgery continues developing fast – aspects of heart surgery benefit from robotic surgery for the first time.

2003	The US space shuttle Colombia disintegrates on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on 1st February, killing all seven crew members. China sends an astronaut into space for the first time. Yang Liwei orbits the Earth 14 times before returning safely at 6am local time on 16th October. Two spacecraft from the USA land on Mars. The European probe Beagle 2 will be officially declared missing early in 2004, presumed to have undergone a "hard landing" on the surface of the planet on 25 December. Stem cells extracted from the bone marrow are used to treat patients with heart failure for the first time in Brazil by Emerson C Perin and Hans F. R. Dohmann. Dolly the sheep, the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell, dies aged 6 years.

2004	The first ever double pulsar is discovered by astronomers working in the UK, Australia, Italy and the US. It will enable scientists to make new tests on the theory of general relativity. In a breakthrough for nanotechnology in medicine, Ehud Shapiro and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel make a molecular DNA computer which can detect the presence of diagnostic markers for cancer – and then release treatment molecules in the right place. Although this has only been tested in test-tubes, body trials are expected soon. The first solar sail, Cosmos I, is launched. Christopher Nosrat of the University of Michigan School of Dentistry uses dental pulp cells to help support the nerve cells lost in Parkinson’s disease. Scientists at the Stanford University Medical Center show that fat cells can be used to regrow skull defects which will not heal under normal conditions. Hwang Woo Suk of Seoul National University leads a team which develops the first mature cloned human embryos, growing and harvesting embryonic stem cells from them. In 1998 a controversial study of twelve children linked autism and bowel disease to the MMR vaccine; six years later, ten out of the thirteen authors of the study withdraw their support for the research.