User:Metawade/sandbox

The year 2006 in science and technology involved some significant events.

January

 * January 15
 * NASA's Stardust mission successfully ends, the first to return dust from a comet. (Astronomy)
 * The Stardust spacecraft successfully completes its primary mission of returning samples of cometary and interstellar dust to Earth. Its sample return capsule touches down safely inside its intended landing area in Utah, close to the Army Dugway Proving Ground. (Space exploration)
 * January 19
 * Australian researchers at the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research centre in Hobart, Tasmania, publish experimental data that matches models of increasing sea level rising. (Environment)
 * The NASA spacecraft New Horizons launches successfully from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and leaves Earth's orbit shortly afterwards on its journey to Pluto (Space exploration)
 * January 25 – The discovery of the planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb through gravitational microlensing is announced by PLANET/RoboNet, OGLE and MOA (Astronomy)
 * January 27 – Scientific misconduct: The University of Tokyo announces that Kazunari Taira's experimental results in RNA research are irreproducible.

February

 * February 1 – Eris (dwarf planet) is found to be larger than Pluto. (Astronomy)
 * February 2 – NASA's public affairs office is accused of censoring the comments by James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. (Space exploration)
 * February 13 – The recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi erupts. The last outburst occurred in 1985. (Astronomy)

March

 * March 9 – NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft discovers geysers of a liquid substance shooting from Saturn's moon Enceladus, signaling a possible presence of water. (Astronomy)
 * March 24 – The maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket ends in failure. (Space exploration)
 * March 29 – Total solar eclipse (Brazil, Greece, Mid Atlantic ocean, Sahara, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia). (Astronomy)

April

 * April 15 – Anthony Atala and team at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in the United States publish their success in transplanting the first laboratory-grown organs, bladders, into human patients. (Biology)

May

 * May 15 – The sequence of the last chromosome in the Human Genome Project is published in the journal Nature. (Biology)

June

 * June 30 – The discovery of nine additional natural satellites of Saturn published. (Astronomy)

July

 * July 12 – The launch of the first private experimental space habitat, Genesis I. (Space exploration)
 * July 15 – Social networking service Twitter launched publicly. (Computer science)

August

 * August 24 – Pluto is redesignated as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union, joining Eris (dwarf planet) and 1 Ceres. (Astronomy)

September

 * The Western Balsam Poplar (Populus trichocarpa) is the first tree whose full DNA code has been determined by DNA sequencing. (Biology)
 * September 12 – The construction of the International Space Station is continued for the first time after a hiatus of almost four years. (Space exploration)
 * September 13 – is assigned the name Eris. (Astronomy)
 * September 22 – Annular solar eclipse in South America, West Africa, and Antarctica. (Astronomy)

November

 * November 1 – Sony PRS500 e-book reader launched in the United States. (Computer science)

December

 * December 19 – Baiji declared "functionally extinct". (Biology)

Date Unknown

 * Last sightings of the Western black rhinoceros and of the natural-born Northern white rhinoceros. (Biology)
 * The great prime search project finds the 44th Mersenne prime. (Mathematics)

Awards

 * Nobel Prize
 * Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Andrew Fire and Craig Mello
 * Nobel Prize in Physics: John C. Mather and George Smoot
 * Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Roger Kornberg
 * Abel Prize in Mathematics: Lennart Carleson
 * Fields Prize in Mathematics: Andrei Okounkov, Grigori Perelman (declined), Terence Tao, and Wendelin Werner

Deaths

 * January 24 – Sir Nicholas Shackleton (b. 1937), English Quaternary geologist and paleoclimatologist, recipient of the Vetlesen Prize (2004).
 * February 28 – Owen Chamberlain (b. 1920), American Nobel laureate in physics (1959).
 * May 1 – Kikuo Takano (b. 1927), Japanese poet and mathematician.
 * May 14 – Bruce Merrifield (b. 1921), American Nobel laureate in chemistry (1984) for developing a rapid, automated system for making peptides.
 * May 31 – Raymond Davis, Jr. (b. 1914), American Nobel laureate in physics (2002) for pioneering the detection of cosmic neutrinos.
 * August 9 – James Van Allen (b. 1914), American space scientist.