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A high-resolution color-enhanced image of Pluto.(Photo: NASA)
In 2015, scientists made high-profile discoveries in caverns deep below the Earth’s surface and on chilly worlds far from the sun. Some advances raised ethical dilemmas or provoked scientific controversy. Others, however, were pure triumphs of the human craving to question and explore.
Pluto’s first close-up
Downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2006, Pluto was judged unworthy of serious interest. In July, the New Horizons spacecraft proved the doubters wrong after becoming the first Earthly caller to drop by the tiny, icy body at the fringe of the solar system.
In a fleeting but productive visit, the craft captured photos showing that Pluto is a far more lively and complex world than scientists ever dreamed, boasting cracked plains, tall mountains, and what look like ice volcanoes. No one imagined “this good of a toy store,” said New Horizons leader Alan Stern.
USA TODAY
New photos from Pluto 'astonish' NASA scientists
A new type of human
A scientist’s physique<span style="color: Red;">*</span>is generally irrelevant to the process of discovery. But it took six small-boned researchers to excavate the fossils of a new human-like species dubbed Homo naledi, whose remains were found in a cramped cave in South Africa and revealed in September.
The trove of fossilized bone recovered from the cave suggests naledi was a strange hybrid, adept at climbing trees like an ape but also at walking, like today’s humans. The bodies may have been carefully interred in the cave, which would be surprising behavior for a species far more primitive than our own.
A composite skeleton of H. naledi is surrounded by some of the hundreds of other fossil elements recovered from the Dinaledi Chamber in the Rising Star cave in South Africa. The expedition team was led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Robert Clark, National Geographic)
USA TODAY
Ancient fossils in African cave are tantalizing glimpse of early man
Water on Mars
Mars was once awash with water in the form of rivers, lakes, even huge deltas. Now those aquatic features survive only as geologic landmarks carved by the once-abundant moisture.
But scientists reported in September that long lines that appear and vanish on the Martian surface with the seasons show hints of the wet stuff. The lines are more like tracks of moist soil than flowing streams and are too salty to host life, but they’re the first liquid water known on the Red Planet.
A NASA spacecraft circling Mars has found evidence of flowing water on the Red Planet’s surface — and in our time, not in some dim and more verdant past.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: NASA via AP)
USA TODAY
NASA finds evidence of recent flowing water on Mars
Gene editing of embryos
After scientists announced a few years ago that they had<span style="color: Red;">*</span>devised a cheap, fast method for editing genes, the new technique, known as CRISPR, took science by storm. So, too, did worries about the safety and ethics of the method.
Making clear that such worries were well founded, in April scientists reported that they’d used CRISPR to tinker with the genome of human embryos, a historical first that prompted a global uproar. This month an international scientific panel urged researchers not to allow gene-edited human cells to be used to establish a pregnancy.
USA TODAY
Fears arise as Chinese modify human embryo genes
Earliest stone tools
Today’s humans and our immediate relatives belong to a family group called Homo whose earliest members date to 2.8 million years ago. But in May, scientists announced that they’d found stone tools dating back an extra 500,000 years –<span style="color: Red;">*</span>well before our nearest ancestors walked the Earth.
The simple stone cutting implements were found close to a Kenyan site where a separate team has found fossils of an apelike human relative. Perhaps that relative crafted the tools, which, at 3.3 million years old, are some 700,000 years older than the previous record holders.
Study author Sonia Harmand examines one of the stone tools.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: MPK-WTAP)
USA TODAY
World's oldest tools - from 3.3 million years ago - discovered in Africa
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