Clarity in cosmos
Solar mystery solved; space radiation discovered; water found on Mars, Moon
The ’00s witnessed giant leaps in space science. In 2001, scientific sleuths cracked the case of missing solar neutrinos (electrically neutral, almost massless elementary particles) showing that some escape detection by assuming the physics world’s equivalent of aliases. The next year, the cosmic microwave radiation was observed — the experimental proof of Big Bang, till then mere theory. The year after, the precise age of the Universe was revealed — 13.7 billion years — and it was shown that only 4% of the Universe is normal matter, the rest being strange, unknown stuff — dark matter and dark energy. An exciting find was water on Mars in 2004 and three years later on the Moon, giving rise to the possibility that life might exist outside Earth. Also, last year, astronomers got direct views of exoplanets (planets outside the solar system) — first detected through indirect methods in 1995, ending hundreds of years of speculation about their existence.