Published rating of the major scientific breakthroughs in 2012

Journal Science traditionally presented his version of the major scientific breakthroughs in 2012. In this list includes the discovery of the Higgs boson, genome denisovtsev, new data on the properties of neutrinos, landing the rover Curiosity, as well as progress in the development of prostheses that are controlled by brain signals.
 
Of course, the first place in the ranking went to a particle whose existence was predicted theoretically more than 40 years ago. The Higgs boson is the main key to understanding where it came from the mass of all other elementary particles.

In order to detect it, was built the world's largest Hadron Collider, whose length is 27 kilometers, and the cost of the project exceeded $ 5 billion.

The second place ranking - denisovtsev genome. This kind of people was previously unknown to science and coexisted with Neanderthals and modern humans forerunners. According to scientists, they lived about 50,000 years ago in southern Siberia and Central Asia. This year, scientists were able to read the DNA denisovtsev with the same precision with which they decode the genome of modern humans.

Also the number of breakthroughs, the authors Science put the result that was obtained by scientists in the experiments with neutrino detectors "Daya Bay." Researchers studied the transformation of electron neutrinos to tau and muon neutrinos and measure key parameters of these transformations that, according to experts, will in the future to understand why the universe is dominated by matter and antimatter is almost absent.

Another takes place ranking Science landing rover NASA Curiosity, for which experts specially developed a new technology "heavenly crane", whereby they were able to put the rover at a distance of only 2, 4 kilometers from the target point.

Another scientific breakthrough of the year was the mechanical arm, developed by scientists from Pennsylvania. This prosthesis is controlled by signals from the brain and is able to take different items and perform a variety of complex actions.