Overview of the events of 2007 in science
3 March 2007: A total lunar eclipse occurs (time lapse shown).
The year 2007 involved many significant scientific events and discoveries, some of which are listed below.
Events, discoveries and inventions[ edit ]
9 January – Apple Inc. 's first iPhone smartphone is announced by Steve Jobs at Macworld in San Francisco ;[ 1] it is released in the United States on 29 June.
12 January – Comet McNaught reaches perihelion and becomes visible from Earth during daylight.[ 2]
14 January – Scientists at the Roslin Institute announce they have genetically engineered chickens to lay eggs containing cancer -fighting proteins .[ 3]
7 February – The second "Berlin Patient ", Timothy Ray Brown , is given a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying the CCR5-Δ32 allele, which cures his HIV/AIDS .[ 4]
28 February – The New Horizons space probe makes a gravitational slingshot around Jupiter to change its trajectory towards Pluto .
3–4 March – A total lunar eclipse occurs, visible in some parts of the Americas and Asia, and in all of Europe and Africa.[ 5]
19 March – A partial solar eclipse occurs, visible in Asia.
10 April – Spectroscopic analysis of HD 209458 b , an extrasolar planet , provides the first evidence of atmospheric water vapor beyond the Solar System .
24 April – The potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 581 c is discovered in the constellation Libra .[ 6]
27 April – US researchers simulate half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer.[ 7]
May – High Resolution Fly's Eye Observatory (HiRes) and Pierre Auger Observatory present their results suggesting a confirmation for the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin limit , the theoretical limit for ultra-high-energy cosmic rays interacting with the Cosmic Microwave Background .
5 June – NASA 's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its second flyby of Venus en route to Mercury , which it reaches in 2011.
2 July – Venus and Saturn are in conjunction , with a separation of 46 arcseconds .
23 August – Chris Messina proposes use of the hashtag on Twitter .[ 8] [ 9] [ 10] [ 11]
28 August – A total lunar eclipse occurs, visible in some parts of the Americas and Asia, and all of Australasia and the Pacific Ocean.
11 September – A partial solar eclipse occurs, visible in southern areas of South America.
27 September – NASA's Dawn spacecraft is launched, beginning its journey to the asteroid belt objects Vesta and Ceres . It reached Vesta in 2011, and Ceres in 2015.[ 12]
24 October
5 November – The Open Handset Alliance launches the Android mobile operating system .
26 October 2007: Arthur Kornberg , Nobel Prize -winning American biochemist , dies aged 89.
20 February – F. Albert Cotton (b. 1930 ), American chemist known for research on transition metal chemistry
22 February – Lucille Farrier Stickel (b. 1915 ), American wildlife toxicologist
23 March – Paul Cohen (b. 1934 ), American mathematician, winner of the 1966 Fields Medal
27 March – Paul Lauterbur (b. 1929 ), American chemist, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in developing magnetic resonance imaging
4 April – Karen Spärck Jones (b. 1935 ), English computer scientist
7 July – Dame Anne McLaren (b. 1927 ), English developmental biologist and her ex-husband Donald Michie (b. 1923 ), British AI researcher (automobile accident
23 July – Ernst Otto Fischer (b. 1918 ), German winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering work in the area of organometallic chemistry
12 August – Ralph Asher Alpher (b. 1921 ), American cosmologist
29 September – Katsuko Saruhashi (b. 1920 ), Japanese geochemist
26 October – Arthur Kornberg (b. 1918 ), American biochemist , winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of DNA
^ Honan, Mathew (9 January 2007), Apple unveils iPhone , Macworld , archived from the original on 15 April 2008, retrieved 25 September 2012
^ Rao, Joe (2007). "New Comet is Brightest in 30 Years" . Space.com. Retrieved 25 September 2012 .
^ "Anti-cancer chicken eggs produced" . BBC News . 14 January 2007. Retrieved 18 June 2013 .
^ Holt, Nathalia (2015) [2014]. Cured: The People Who Defeated HIV . Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-218184-3 . OCLC 937872774
^ "Total Lunar Eclipse March 2007" . ESA . 4 March 2007. Retrieved 25 September 2012 .
^ Than, Ker (24 April 2007). "Major Discovery: New Planet Could Harbor Water and Life" . Space.com. Retrieved 25 September 2012 .
^ "Mouse brain simulated on computer" . BBC News. 27 April 2007. Retrieved 18 June 2013 .
^ Messina, Chris [@chrismessina] (2007-08-23). "how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?" (Tweet ). Retrieved 2019-09-30 – via Twitter .
^ Parker, Ashley (2011-06-10). "Twitter's Secret Handshake" . The New York Times . Retrieved 2011-07-26 .
^ "Hashtag inventor: It was an 'accidental trip over a simple idea' " . BBC News . 2014-12-05. Retrieved 2014-12-05 .
^ "The Inventor of the Twitter Hashtag Explains Why He Didn't Patent It" . Business Insider . Retrieved 2016-03-19 .
^ "Dawn departs Vesta to become first asteroid hopper" . New Scientist . 6 September 2012. Archived from the original on 7 September 2012. Retrieved 24 August 2017 .