.
1998
Astronomy and space exploration
January–September – Cosmologists from the Supernova Cosmology Project led by Saul Perlmutter and the High-z Supernova Search Team led by Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt publish evidence that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.[1][2][3]
January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon and later finds evidence for frozen water on the moon's surface.
February 26 – Total solar eclipse
March 2 – Data sent from the Galileo spaceprobe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
March 5 – NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket-fuelling station.
March 13 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
July 5 – Japan launches a probe to Mars, and thus joins the United States and Russia as a space-exploring nation.
August 8 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
August 22 – Annular solar eclipse
September 6 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
October 29 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts-off with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space. He became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.
November 20 – Zarya, the first module of the International Space Station, is launched.
The first of four 8.4 m reflecting telescopes opens in the Very Large Telescope program of the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal in Chile.
Computer science
February 10 – XML is published as a recommendation of the W3C.
June 2 – The CIH virus is discovered in Taiwan.
The first working 2-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance computer is demonstrated at the University of California, Berkeley.
Geology
February 4 – An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter Scale in northeast Afghanistan kills more than 5,000.
March 14 – An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hits southeastern Iran.
May 30 – A 6.6 magnitude earthquake hits northern Afghanistan killing up to 5,000.
July 17 – A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 1,500, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.
[edit] Mathematics
Luca Cardelli and Andrew D. Gordon develop ambient calculus.
Thomas Callister Hales (almost certainly) proves the Kepler conjecture.
Physics
May 11 & 13 – Nuclear testing: The Pokhran-II: India detonates the five nuclear devices in Pokhran Test Range, an Indian Army base.
May 28 – Nuclear testing: The Chagai-I: In response to India, Pakistan conducts five underground and simultaneous nuclear weapon-testing experiments in the Chagai Hills, thus becoming the first nuclear weapon state in the Muslim world and the seventh in the world.
May 30 – Nuclear testing: The Chagai-II: As part of a tit-for-tat policy, a final plutonium implosion test is carried out in the Kharan Desert.
Physiology and medicine
January 14 – Researchers in Dallas, Texas, present findings about an enzyme that slows aging and cell death (apoptosis).
February 19 – RNA interference first elucidated in C. elegans.
February 28 – Andrew Wakefield publishes a case series (subsequently partially retracted) in The Lancet of twelve children with gastroenterological and autistic spectrum disorders believed to have first presented soon after receipt of the MMR vaccine.[4][5]
July 17 – Biologists report in the journal Science how they sequenced the genome of the bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum.
December 11 – Bruce Beutler and colleague publish their discovery that Toll-like receptor 4 functions as a lipopolysaccharide sensing receptor.[6]
Technology
April 5 – In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with Honshū, at a cost of about US$3.8 billion, opens to traffic, becoming the longest-span suspension bridge in the world.
Publications
Jacques Heyman – Structural Analysis: A Historical Approach (Cambridge University Press)[7]
Appointments
Susan Greenfield appointed Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.[8]
Deaths
March 15 – Benjamin Spock (b. 1903), pediatrician, writer.
May 31 – Michio Suzuki (b. 1926), mathematician.
July 3 – Danielle Bunten Berry (b. 1949), also known as Dan Bunten, software developer.
July 21 – Alan Shepard (b. 1923), astronaut.
August 4 – Yuri Artyukhin (b. 1930), cosmonaut.
August 26 – Frederick Reines (b. 1918), physicist, Nobel laureate.
December 17 – Claudia Benton (b. c.1959), pediatric neurologist.
December 18 – Lev Demin (b. 1926), cosmonaut.
References
^ Perlmutter, S. et al. (1998-01-01). "Discovery of a supernova explosion at half the age of the Universe". Nature 391: 51–4. Retrieved 2011-10-06.
^ Riess, Adam G. et al. (September 1998). "Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant". The Astronomical Journal 116 (3): 1009–38. Retrieved 2011-10-06.
^ Palmer, Jason (2011-10-04). "Nobel physics prize honours accelerating Universe find". BBC News. BBC. Retrieved 2011-10-06.
^ Wakefield, A.J. et al. (February 28, 1998). "Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children". Lancet 351 (9103): 637–41. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0. PMID 9500320.
^ Goldacre, Ben (2009). "The Media's MMR Hoax". Bad Science. London: Harper Perennial. pp. 290–331. ISBN 978-0-00-728487-0.
^ Poltorak, Alexander et al. (December 1998). "Defective LPS signaling in C3H/HeJ and C57BL/10ScCr mice: mutations in Tlr4 gene". Science 282 (5396): 2085–8. Bibcode 1998Sci...282.2085P. doi:10.1126/science.282.5396.2085. PMID 9851930. Retrieved 2011-10-06.
^ ISBN 0521622492.
^ "Baroness Susan Greenfield". Royal Institution. Retrieved 2011-08-04.
27 August 1998 burst of X rays from SGR 1900+14 magnetar
1998 — Controversial evidence for the fine structure constant varying over the lifetime of the universe is first published.
1998 — Adam Riess, Saul Perlmutter and others discover the cosmic acceleration in observations of Type Ia supernovae providing the first evidence for a non-zero cosmological constant.
According to results of experiments of Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt the universe's expansion is speeding up
Super Kamiokande , neutrino oscillations
The first genome sequence for a multicellular eukaryote, Caenorhabditis elegans, is released
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20 February 1998 discovery of 31240 Katrianne
27 April 1998 discovery of 31324 Jirımrazek
4 August 1998 discovery of 44216 Olivercabasa
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7 January 1998 Death of Vladimir Prelog
9 January 1998 Death of Kenichi Fukui
26 August 1998 Death of Frederick Reines
1998 Death of Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin
1998 Death of Edward L. Ginzton
Nobel Prize
Physics to Robert B. Laughlin, Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations"
Chemistry: to Walter Kohn "for his development of the density-functional theory" and to John Anthony Pople "for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry"
Physiology or Medicine to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad "for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system"
Source: Wikipedia, Wikispecies: All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
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