Post some examples of what you think are awesome / spectacular breakthroughs in science nowadays.
Since I study Biology, these are some interesting things I've heard of / encountered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spray-on_skinSpray on skin is a concept where skin cells are harvested and cultivated to be multiplied to a large amount. That way, a small 2x2mm patch of skin can become as much as your forearms worth in skin in 5 days. This way, surgeons can replace burned skin, or missing skin in a matter of days. The skin is literally loaded into a spraygun, and sprayed onto the parts of flesh where the skin is missing.
http://www.ijcsmr.org/vol2issue2/paper256.pdfThe use of nanotechnology (they're still working on this) against cancer. They litterally inject nanobots into the bloodstream carrying specific chemicals. These nanobots are directed to the cancerous growth through recognition parts, and once there are activated by pointing a laser on the cancerous growth from the outside. The laser heats the nanobots which causes them to release the chemicals and voila, the hazardous chemicals now used in chemo therapy are released only in the tumor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_FieldThough not an invention, this is a discovery that left me in awe. The Hubble Ultra-deep-field is a region in space where previously, astronomers didn't see any star. They decided to point the hubble telescope to that gap and kept it there a month. They saw a ****load of galaxies, and decided to focus on another black patch inside of that image. They left the hubble focused on that specific part for 13 months. They found that in that tiny patch of blackness countless galaxies were situated. They estimate a number around the 10.000 galaxies..
For the dummies: A galaxy is typically about 30.000 lightyears in diameter. That is 30.000 x 365 x 300.000 KM = 3.285.000.000.000.000km.
A galaxy is typically about 2.5-3.5 million lightyears away from the next galaxy. Meaning that if there's 10k galaxies in that ultra deep field, the size is ridiculously immense.
What have you guys found? Or what do you think/like about this sorta stuff / above-mentioned things?