2022 was an exciting year for science. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced two major breakthroughs: new infrared images of the universe and the first evidence of carbon dioxide outside the solar system. The ongoing pandemic has spurred innovative development of a nasal vaccine for the latest coronavirus variants and renewed urgency to find a universal flu vaccine.
Moreover, many advances that are not entirely new to the past year have either received confirmation from the scientific community, such as the first FDA approval of lab-grown or “cultured” meat, or represent important advances in a particular field, as seen in of the historic procedure that provided a human with a heart transplant from a pig, marking a new level of possibility in xenotransplantation. And as for enriching the collective knowledge of the development of the human race, human footprints from the Ice Age were found in Utah.
To outline some of the most impressive scientific achievements of the past year, Stacker consulted scientific journals and the latest news reports to compile a list of 22 major scientific discoveries and innovations that occurred in 2022. The areas outlined here range from biology to geology, engineering to paleontology, and genetics to artificial intelligence, among others.
Read on to learn more about some of this year’s most significant discoveries and what they mean for the future of health care, technology, climate and more.
You may also like: What 60 Years of Data Tell Us About Our Littering Habits
Add Comment