2020 in science

Events

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February

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September

October

• 1 October
• * Researchers report the discovery of a novel overlapping gene , named ORF3d, in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, that may be a factor in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. They found the gene has been identified before, but only in a variant of coronavirus that infects pangolins.
• *Astronomers announce spectroscopic confirmation of a web-like structure containing galaxies and dark matter around, and likely fueling, a quasar at an age of the Universe of 0.9 bn years, which contributes to an explanation of how such supermassive black holes could have grown rapidly so early.
• 2 October - A rippling graphene-based Brownian ratchet-related energy-harvesting circuit with the potential to deliver "clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices" if adequately incorporated into a chip is demonstrated.
• 5 October
• *The 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice for their work on the hepatitis C virus.
• *Scientists announce the first global estimate of sea-floor microplastics: 14 million tonnes of microplastic on the ocean floor in terms of overall weight. Their estimate was created by averaging the microplastic mass per cm³, is about double their estimate using earlier data and 1-1.7 times the amount of plastic thought to annually enter the oceans as of 2015.
• 6 October
• *The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their work on black holes.
• *Scientists report the direct visualization of neuronal tissue of extraordinarily well-preserved ≈2,000 years-old human neuronal tissue – whose discovery was reported in January – of a victim of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy, vitrified by hot ash.
• 7 October
• *The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their work on genome editing.
• *Researchers reveal a new high-temperature superconducting cable, named VIPER, capable of sustaining higher levels of electric current and magnetic fields than previously possible.
• *Researchers demonstrate the first passive radiative device that absorbs heat from the hotter inside of an enclosure and emits it on the outside. The system has potential to cool vehicle and building interiors, and solar cells, without using electricity.
• *Medical researchers conclude the SARS-CoV-2 can remain on common surfaces for up to 28 days in laboratory conditions that include darkness.
• *Scientists present a comprehensive quantification of global sources and sinks of the greenhouse gas N₂O and report that human-induced emissions increased by 30% over the past four decades and is the main cause of the increase in atmospheric concentrations, with recent growth exceeding some of the highest projected IPCC emission scenarios.
• 8 October
• *In an unprecedented move, all 34 editors of top medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine, condemn President Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• *Scientists release the largest and most detailed 3D maps of the Universe, called "PS1-STRM". The data of the MAST was created using neural networks and combines data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and others. Users can query the dataset online or download it in its entirety of ≈300GB.
• 12 October - Medical scientists report, for the first time in the U.S. and fifth worldwide, confirming evidence of reinfection with the SARS-CoV-2.
• 13 October
• *The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is shown to be 530 light years away, about 25% closer than previously thought. Additionally, its estimated size is revised downwards, from the semi-major axis of Jupiter to around two-thirds of this diameter.
• *Scientists report in a preprint the possible detection of glycine in the atmosphere of Venus with the ALMA radio telescope. The amino acid may be relevant to the origin of life and was found on meteorites earlier.
• *On 15 October BepiColombo conducts a fly-by of Venus, having instruments possibly sensitive enough to detect the gas, without a detection or non-detection being declared by 10 November.
• *A data analysis released as a preprint on 19 October shows no statistical evidence for an apparent detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus reported in September and that "at least a handful of spurious features" which can be obtained with the data processing method that was used in the study.
• *On 27 October scientists release a preprint according to which the detection via JCMT can be explained by the presence of other gases and the ALMA interferometric data is invalid due to calibration issues of the used data processing scripts. Independent processing of the ALMA data by several teams varied from the original study's authors'. They also claim to have found an inconsistency between the proposed photochemical model and data about the altitude of the gas in the original study.
• *On the same day, other researchers publish a paper according to which no phosphine was discovered between 2012 and 2015 at the cloud tops and the lower mesosphere above, putting an upper limit of PH₃ abundance there.
• *On 28 October science journalists reported that ESO ALMA scientists found separate, unspecified issues – later reported to be a calibration error that was found as a result of the study "No phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus" – with the data that was used by authors of the study that claimed an apparent detection of phosphine in September, and took those data off the observatory's public archive so that the European ALMA Regional Centre Network, who originally calibrated the data, scrutinises it in detail and reprocesses it.

• 14 October
• *A multicriteria optimization shows restoration of degraded terrestrial ecosystems to be up to 13 times more cost-effective when applied in prioritized locations, with major improvements in terms of biodiversity and climate goals, at low cost. Their estimated cost-benefit ratio is based on contemporary assignments of value for labor, material input, and yield losses – such as of beef – on the costs-side and biodiversity conservation, local nature benefits, poverty-reduction, and climate-stabilization on the benefits-side. They note that gains are highest when restoration is combined with protection of remaining ecosystems.
• *Report that a high pressure room-temperature superconductor able to work at 15 °C is demonstrated by the University of Rochester. Although requiring 260 GPa, this new compound of hydrogen, carbon and sulfur is a 35 °C improvement on the previous record. In 2022 the article was retracted by Nature journal editorial board due to a non standard, user-defined data analysis calling into question the scientific validity of the claim.
• *A study reports major shifts in the colony size structure – the demographics – of the Great Barrier Reef's coral populations compared to 1995/1996. The reef is known to have lost more than half of its overall coral cover since then.
• *Researchers report that antibiotic resistance genes can spread into bacterial populations without the respective selection pressure via horizontal gene transfer.
• *Scientists report, based on near-real-time activity data, an 'unprecedented' abrupt 8.8% decrease in global CO₂ emissions in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, larger than during previous economic downturns and World War II. Authors note that such decreases of human activities "cannot be the answer" and that structural and transformational changes in human economic management and behaviour systems are needed.

• 15 October
• *A preliminary report by the WHO's Solidarity trial concludes that its four tested, repurposed, treatments "appeared to have little or no effect on hospitalized COVID-19, as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation and duration of hospital stay".
• * NASA scientists announce the discovery of small amounts of unprotonated cyclopropenylidene – a possible precursor to more complex astrobiological compounds – in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan via ALMA.
• * Researchers report that two Homo species lost more than half of their climate niche space just before extinction and that climate change played a substantial role in extinctions of past Homo species.
• 16 October - The shortest timespan ever is measured via photoionization: ≈247 zeptoseconds, during which a particle interaction occurs – a photon traveling through a hydrogen molecule.
• 19 October
• *Scientists reconstruct the mechanisms, integrating them in a biogeochemical model, that led to the largest known extinction event, the Permian–Triassic extinction event 252 Mya, and report that it can be traced back to volcanic CO₂ emissions.
• *Researchers report that polypropylene infant feeding bottles with contemporary preparation procedures were found to cause microplastics exposure to infants ranging from 14,600 to 4,550,000 particles per capita per day in 48 regions. Microplastics release is higher with warmer liquids and similar with other polypropylene products such as lunchboxes.

• 20 October - NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly touches down on Bennu, becoming the agency's first probe to retrieve samples from an asteroid, with its cargo due for return to Earth in 2023.
• 21 October - Scientists analyze the all-cause mortality effect of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic for 21 industrialized countries – including its timing, demographics and excess deaths per capita – and assess determinants for substantial death rate variations such as the countries' pandemic preparedness and management.
• 23 October - Scientists illustrate that and how quantum clocks could experience a possibly experimentally testable superposition of proper times via time dilation of Einstein's theory of relativity by which time passes slower for one object in relation to another object when the former moves at a higher velocity. In "quantum time dilation" one of the two clocks moves in a superposition of two localized momentum wave packets, resulting in a change to the classical time dilation.
• 26 October
• *Astronomers report detecting molecular water on the sunlit surface of the Moon outside of the lunar south pole by data from three independent spacecraft and the SOFIA.
• *Astronomers confirm, based on new observations, Yarkovsky acceleration of asteroid Apophis, which is relevant to asteroid impact avoidance as the asteroid is currently thought to have a very small chance of Earth impact in 2068.
• 27 October - The largest clinical trial – aiming to recruit over 5,000 participants – to investigate effects of Vitamin D supplementation – including with a dosage regime near the RDI – on risk and/or severity of COVID-19 and other acute respiratory infections, CORONAVIT, is launched. Another such trial's proposal was published in a journal on 10 October and is reported aiming to recruit 2,700 people across the United States.
• 28 October
• *Scientists report finding a coral reef measuring 500 m in height, located at the northern tip of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the first discovery of its kind in 120 years.
• *Scientists publish estimates of the occurrence rates of rocky habitable zone planets around Sun-like stars with updated data and criteria for habitable zones – including ≈4 such exoplanets around G and K dwarf stars within 10 pc of the Sun and ≈300 million in the Milky Way.
• *Scientists report in a preprint that a variant of SARS-CoV-2, 20A.EU1, was first observed in Spain in early summer and has become the most frequent variant in multiple European countries. They also illustrate the emergence and spread of other frequent clusters of sequences using Nextstrain.
• *A systematic, and possibly first large-scale, cross-sectoral analysis of water, energy and land in security in 189 countries that links national and sector consumption to sources shows that countries and sectors are highly exposed to over-exploited, insecure, and degraded such resources with economic globalization having decreased security of global supply chains. The study finds that most countries exhibit greater exposure to resource risks via international trade – mainly from remote production sources – and that diversifying trading partners is unlikely to help countries and sectors to reduce these or to improve their resource self-sufficiency.
• 29 October - Scientists assess four preparation procedures of rice for their capacity to reduce arsenic content and preserve nutrients, recommending a procedure involving parboiling and water-absorption.
• 31 October - Slovakia starts implementation of a short-period mass-testing programme to test two-thirds of its citizens for COVID-19.