From a 40,000-year-old wolf head preserved in Siberian ice to the first black hole ever fully visualized, this year's best science pictures left us astounded.
A likely ancestor of the modern-day comb jellies and several other seemingly unconnected species, the discovery suggests that corals, comb jellies, sea anemones, and jellyfish are more closely related than previously understood.Yang Zhao
After a precise facial reconstruction of the woman revealed the presence of a gnarly wound on her face — though not necessarily enough to have been fatal — archeologists are more convinced than ever that the woman was one of a growing number of viking warrior women buried with the same honors given to their male counterparts. National Geographic
In just a single day, Greenland lost 10 billion tons of ice to surface melt, with the total ice loss for the month of July 2019 — the hottest month ever recorded, according to NASA — reaching a staggering 197 billion tons. According to the Danish Meteorological Institute, one billion tons of ice is the equivalent of about 400,000 olympic sized swimming pools. Steffen Olsen/Twitter
Google's published results indicate that their quantum system carried out a task in 200 seconds that would take the fastest computer in the world more than 10,000 years to perform. Google's quantum computing rival, IBM, disputes Google's results and the rivalry between the two is bound to intensify as we transition into the quantum computing era.Google/IBM
In November 2019 the World Health Organization pre-qualified the first-ever vaccine for the Ebola virus for use in at-risk countries struggling with outbreaks of the virulent disease.U.S. Department of Defense
A graduate of Virginia Tech with degrees in biochemistry and systems biology, Schrier's science experiments appear to have impressed both the audience and the judges as she took home the title of Miss Virginia this year.John Herzog/Miss Virginia
Believed to be over 100 years old, the tortoise was brought to a sanctuary and breeding center for giant tortoises of the Galápagos Islands. How the tortoise escaped notice for more than a century isn't clear, but park officials are on the lookout for more Fernandina giant tortoises on the island.GNPD/W. Tapia
In some cases, the corpses of fallen climbers — like the body of Tsewang Paljor, also known as “Green Boots” — are used as markers for sherpas and climbers making their ascent to the summit.Nirmal Purja MBE:"Project Possible 14/7"/Instagram
Turned into charred lumps of carbon by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D., there is no way to unravel the ancient scrolls without destroying them. But with the help of an AI algorithm and high-energy X-rays, researchers hope to digitally unravel the scrolls in order to read them.Diamond Light Source/Digital Restoration Initiative/University of Kentucky
Such was the case in January of this year when astronomers observed a supermassive black hole in the Volans constellation — approximately 375 million light-years from us — tearing apart a star about the size of our sun. NASA even produced an animation to demonstrate the black hole's awesome power. NASA/Goddard Pace Flight Center
For instance, one village in Russia was overrun earlier this year by more than fifty tired and hungry polar bears who dug through the towns trash and even entered into people's homes, desperate for sustenance. muah_irinaelis/Instagram
Working off of the Escherichia coli genome since E. coli is capable of full functionality with a very limited number of genetic instructions, the researchers spent the better part of two years reading and redesigning the E. coli genome before moving on to creating an entirely synthetic version of its DNA.University of Cambridge
The bird managed to re-evolve itself from its predecessor species in a rare phenomenon known as "iterative evolution," which allows a species to go extinct and evolve back into existence multiple times.Wikimedia Commons
While the Siberian permafrost continues to melt as a consequence of climate change, the tundra increasingly exposes the millennia-old remains of animals and humans alike.Albert Protopopov
After months of attempting to recover the robot, NASA officially declared "Oppy" dead on Feb. 13 of this year. The last panorama taken by the rover shows its final resting place in the aptly- named Perseverance Valley.NASA/JPL-Caltech
The new year wasn't even a day old when NASA scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland began celebrating the successful flyby of the farthest object ever visited by a human spacecraft at 12:33 a.m. As far as science pictures were concerned, 2019 was off to a heck of a start.
That object was Arrokoth — formerly known as Ultima Thule — and it gave scientists crucial information about the formation of planets and the rest of us some amazing photographs.
Now as we come to the year's end, we take a look back at the most inspirational, intriguing, and alarming science pictures from our latest orbit around the sun.
Were These Images From SpaceX Some Of The Best Science Pictures Of The Year?
People with money to burn are going to burn it, and what better way than with rockets?
Disappointed in NASA's decision to indefinitely delay a manned mission to Mars, Elon Musk took matters into his own hands. It would be several years before his then-radical idea of reusable rockets would become a reality, but in 2019, it finally did.
SpaceX is also a pioneer in promotional media. They livestream all of their launches on YouTube, post photos to Flickr and Instagram, and capture absolutely stunning photographs from low-Earth orbit. Their media program without a doubt is intended to inspire the kind of thrill and awe for space exploration that has been sadly lacking in NASA for the past couple of decades.
Thus, SpaceX's diligent photo documentation makes them a no-brainer for our 2019 science pictures list.
Not to be left out, other private companies such as United Launch Alliance, Blue Origins, and Virgin Galactic all made progress towards making human space travel a more routine endeavor, though they all still have a ways to go.
The Best Science Pictures In Paleontology
Centre for Palaeogenetics/TwitterScientists have named this 18,000-year-old mummified mutt Dogor, which means "friend" in Yakutian.
Several archeological and paleontological discoveries have also made our list of the best science pictures of the year.
From the forensic reconstruction of the face of a female Viking warrior — complete with a major laceration on her face that may or may not have killed her — to the recovery of an extremely well-preserved ancient puppy, scientists have been able to fill in critical gaps in our understanding of historic peoples and species.
Deepsea divers recorded an unprecedented video of a giant squid's floating egg sac, scientists in North Carolina discovered a tree in a swamp that is older than Christianity, and a couple of species previously believed to be extinct made their return, including the Fernandina Giant Tortoise of the Galápagos Islands.
Not all the science pictures of the animal world were cause for celebration, however.
Emaciated grizzly bears in British Columbia broke our hearts as climate change continues to disrupt ecosystems across the globe and it seemed we couldn't go more than a week or two without new photos of dead whales or other marine animals washing ashore with their stomachs full of tens of pounds of plastic.
Documenting The Accelerating Climate Crisis
PLANET LABS/Twitter; StretfordTalks/TwitterSmoke from fires set deliberately in Brazil's Amazon rain forest grew so thick that it blotted out the sun and turned the afternoon into night in São Paulo.
Some of the most stunning science pictures of the year were those that illuminated the climate crisis. July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded according to NASA and NOAA, and the increase in temperature was felt most dramatically in the Arctic.
The annual summer glacier melt was exacerbated this year by a heatwave in northern Europe in July and the beginning of August. Video of raging torrents of meltwater cutting trenches through glacial ice in Greenland left many speechless.
Meanwhile, typical stretches of white ice from horizon to horizon on the Greenland ice sheet were broken up by lakes and rivers of blue-green meltwater on the surface of the second-largest ice sheet in the world.
All of that meltwater eventually made its way to the ocean where it will add to the rise in sea level, most noticeably demonstrated by the incredible pictures in Venice last month as the Alta Acqua high tides of the Venetian lagoon resulted in the worst flooding the city had seen in half a century.
And The Best Science Picture Of The Year
In April, humanity was given its first-ever image of a black hole thanks to the painstaking work of the Event Horizon Telescope project and a Post-Graduate computer scientist at Caltech by the name of Katie Bouman. The picture on the right was taken just after her algorithm successfully rendered the unmistakable image of a supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy M87.
While the climate crisis is unquestionably alarming, 2019 also showed that human ingenuity is capable of overcoming extraordinary obstacles.
One of the most important science pictures of the year is probably that taken by the Event Horizon Telescope of the supermassive black hole (SBH) in the heart of galaxy M87.
Though the M87's SBH is a monster by any measure — it has a mass seven billion times that of our sun — it is relatively small in dimension. The event horizon, the boundary around the object beyond which light is unable to escape, is only about five times the diameter of our solar system. What's more, M87 is 55 million light-years away from us, making M87's SBH all but impossible to see under any circumstances.
With such a narrow visual target to pinpoint and the relative absence of detectable radiation from a black hole in general, it would take a telescope the size of the Earth itself to reach the resolution necessary to be able to take a picture of M87's SBH.
The apparent impossibility of building such a telescope didn't discourage the hundreds of scientists who collaborated for several years to do exactly that. By using a network of radio telescopes, computer algorithms, and a precisely-coordinated effort, the Event Horizon Telescope project produced the first-ever image of the shadow of a supermassive black hole's event horizon.
An achievement in its own right, the scale of the challenge and humanity's ability to overcome it makes that one image not just the most significant science picture of 2019, but also proof that no matter the challenge, we can rise to the occasion when we work together for the common good.
Now that you've checked out some of the most intriguing science pictures of 2019, you can read more about the stories behind many of the photos in our gallery in this year's science news roundup. If your appetite for science pictures hasn't been satisfied yet, definitely head over to our gallery of photos from the Hubble Telescope to see the awe-inspiring beauty of our universe.
