TOP 10 discoveries of Decade

10. Pluto-Sized Eris Rocks Solar System
Discovery of Eris in 2005 by Mike Brown, a minor body that is 27 percent bigger than Pluto. Eris had trumped Pluto and become the 9th largest body known to orbit the sun.
The finding became the trigger that changed the face of our solar system, defining the planets and adding Pluto to a growing family of dwarf planets in 2006 by International Astronomical Union (IAU)
9. T. rex Tissue Dug from Bone the discovery of what appeared to be soft tissues - blood vessels, bone matrix and other cells - inside the fossilized femur of a small T. rex in 2005. (Tyrannosaurus)
Since then, the bones have revealed amino acids that resemble those of modern chickens, firming the link between dinosaurs and birds
8. Dark Matter's Existence Confirmed Directly is the direct confirmation of the mysterious dark matter in the summer of 2006
Until then, the existence of dark matter was inferred by the fact that galaxies have only one-fifth of the visible matter needed to create the gravity that keeps them intact.
So, the rest must be invisible to telescopes: That unseen matter is "dark."
7. New Human Ancestors Emerge is the emergence of new human ancestors, first, in the form of a 6- to 7-million-year-old skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis - known as Toumai, in northern Chad in 2002.
Then, in 2009, the nearly complete skeleton of "Ardi," in northeastern Ethiopia bumped the famous "Lucy" as the earliest, most complete skeleton of a human ancestor ever found

6. Alien Planets Seen Directly is an astronomer seeing alien planets, or "exoplanets", directly in 2008, using the Hubble Space Telescope and the infrared Keck and Gemini observatories in Hawaii
5. Humans Meld with Machines is the concept of cyborgs that is, half-machine, half-humans, becoming a reality in the last decade, as much progress has been made with people controlling robotic limbs and computers with their minds

4. Stem Cells Found in New Sources is finding of stem cells in new sources in 2007, when scientists from Kyoto University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, essentially turned back the clock for adult skin cells, allowing these mature cells, which were preprogrammed to become skin, to act like embryonic stem cells
3. Mars Surface Gives up Signs of Water is the discovery of water ice on the surface of Mars in 2008 by NASA's Mars Phoenix lander
2. Human Genome Mapped is the development of the rough draft of the entire human genome in the year 2000, followed by a completed version in 2003. Since decoding the human genome, dozens of other species have had their genomes sequenced, including pigs, dogs, bees, mosquitoes, puffer fish, chimpanzees, yeast, corn, and rice. With these maps in hand, scientists can and will discover new ways to heal diseases or improve crop yields
1. Glaciers Melting Fast
When the 21st century began, scientists studying Earth’s climate thought the gigantic ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica would melt slowly around the edges and lag behind the overall global warming of climate.
But this past decade, the warmest on record, proved the climate modelers wrong
Glaciers have been melting much faster than ever expected and researchers have been trying to understand why