A look back at the groundbreaking discoveries and events that shaped our world and beyond in 2014.
The year 2014 delivered an extraordinary series of scientific triumphs and challenges that captivated the global audience. It was a year that demonstrated both the audacity of human curiosity and the sobering realities of exploration.
We landed a robot on a comet for the first time, watched in horror as a private spaceship crashed, and discovered that the roots of human art are far older than we ever imagined. From the depths of our DNA to the icy plains of Antarctica, and from the origins of our universe to the future of our planet, science in 2014 provided pivotal moments that redefined our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it 4 6 9 .
Historic comet landing and setbacks in commercial spaceflight marked a pivotal year for space exploration.
Evidence of irreversible ice sheet decline and record temperatures highlighted urgent climate concerns.
Discoveries about ancient human cognition and animal intelligence reshaped our understanding of life.
The iconic space story of 2014 was the Rosetta mission's rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. On November 12, the little Philae probe detached from its mothership and began a seven-hour descent to the comet's surface 6 .
The world watched with bated breath as Philae touched down, achieving the first-ever soft landing on a comet 1 6 .
Philae separates and begins 7-hour descent to comet surface
Initial landing but harpoons fail to fire
Probe bounces 1km back into space due to failed anchoring
Lands in shaded crevice with limited sunlight for solar panels
60 hours of intensive data collection before battery depletion
The burgeoning commercial space industry, or "New Space," suffered two heavy blows just days apart in late October 9 .
Amid these setbacks, NASA provided a beacon of hope for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.
In December, the agency successfully conducted the first test flight of its Orion capsule, a vehicle designed to one day carry astronauts to the Moon, asteroids, and eventually Mars 4 6 .
In 2014, climate science delivered one of its most sobering warnings. Studies published in January and May provided evidence that the West Antarctic ice sheet had entered a state of irreversible decline 4 .
The research focused on huge glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea, whose collapse could lead to a considerable rise in sea levels over the coming centuries 4 .
Source: NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
In March 2014, a team of cosmologists working on the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole made an announcement that sent shockwaves through the scientific community 4 6 9 .
The BICEP2 team used highly sensitive telescopes at the South Pole to detect weak microwave radiation from space. Their goal was to find a specific pattern within the CMB, a "twist" known as B-mode polarization, which is considered a smoking gun for gravitational waves 6 9 .
These ripples in spacetime were theorized to have been generated during a brief period of exponential expansion just after the Big Bang, known as cosmic inflation 9 .
The initial announcement was met with immense excitement, hailed as "one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science" 4 9 .
However, the triumph was short-lived. A critical piece of their analysis relied on preliminary data to account for the confounding effects of interstellar dust within our own galaxy 4 9 .
| Tool/Component | Function |
|---|---|
| BICEP2 Telescope | A highly sensitive refracting telescope located at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, designed specifically to observe the CMB at a particular frequency. |
| Superconducting Detectors | Advanced detectors cooled to near absolute zero, capable of measuring the faint temperature and polarization variations of the CMB with extraordinary precision. |
| South Pole Location | The Earth's atmosphere at the South Pole is exceptionally thin and dry, providing one of the clearest and most stable views of the cosmos from the ground. |
| Galactic Dust Models | Preliminary data and models used to estimate and subtract the polarization signal caused by magnetically aligned dust grains within our Milky Way galaxy. |
The breadth of scientific progress in 2014 was remarkable, extending to many other fields.
| Field/Area | Key Advance |
|---|---|
| Neuroscience | The Nobel Prize was awarded to John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard Moser for discovering the brain's "inner GPS"—the navigation system in the hippocampus 4 . |
| Synthetic Biology | Scientists created the first synthetic chromosome for yeast, a major step toward custom-building complex cellular life 6 9 . |
| Medicine & Public Health | Antibiotic resistance was chosen as the focus for the £10m Longitude Prize, aiming to spur innovation in rapid diagnostic tests 4 . |
| Paleontology | Two giant sauropod dinosaurs, Dreadnoughtus and a new Argentinian titanosaur, were discovered, contenders for the largest land animals ever 6 . |
| Conservation | The death of Angalifu, a northern white rhino, highlighted the poaching crisis, leaving only five of the subspecies left in the world 6 . |
Based on media coverage, citations, and public engagement metrics, these fields saw the most significant advances in 2014.
The science of 2014 was a powerful blend of staggering achievement and humbling reality checks.
We reached for a comet and touched the heavens with Orion, but were grounded by the tragic failures of commercial spaceflight. We rewrote the history of human cognition with an ancient shell and celebrated the neural machinery that helps us navigate the world. We received critical warnings about our planet's future and launched a satellite to monitor its vital signs.