China News Service, Beijing, January 20 (Reporter Sun Zifa) Selected by the academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the top ten scientific and technological progress news in China and the world in 2020 was announced on the 20th. Chang'e 5 realized China’s first extraterrestrial celestial body sampling return. To date, 20 major scientific and technological achievements including the most comprehensive cancer genome analysis were selected.
The top ten scientific and technological progress news in China in 2020 are:
——The Chang'e-5 probe completed China's first return trip for sampling of extraterrestrial objects, and scientific research started.
On November 24, China successfully launched the lunar exploration project Chang'e-5 probe, and successfully landed in the pre-selected landing area on the evening of December 1.
After completing the lunar soil sampling, the Chang'e-5 ascender took off from the lunar surface on December 3, and the Chang'e-5 returner successfully landed in the scheduled area of Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia on December 17, marking the successful return of China’s first extraterrestrial celestial body sampling mission carry out.
Subsequently, the 1,731 grams of samples collected from the Moon on Chang'e 5 were handed over to the Chinese Academy of Sciences for storage, processing and analysis in the Lunar Sample Laboratory of the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, officially opening the application and research of lunar samples and scientific data.
As China’s most complex aerospace system project so far, the Chang’e-5 mission is a milestone for China to improve its aerospace technology, improve its lunar exploration engineering system, carry out lunar scientific research, and organize subsequent lunar and interstellar exploration missions. Significance.
——Beidou-3's last global networking satellite was successfully launched, and the deployment of the Beidou global system constellation was completed.
On June 23, China used the Long March-3B carrier rocket at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center to successfully launch the 55th Beidou navigation satellite and the last Beidou-3 global networking satellite.
With the strong support of systems such as measurement and control, ground operation and control, inter-satellite link operation and management, and application verification, all previously launched satellites in orbit have been connected to the network.
So far, the deployment of the Beidou-3 global satellite navigation system constellation has been fully completed six months earlier than the original plan.
A month later, Chinese officials announced that "Beidou-3 global satellite navigation system officially opened."
—— Both China's unmanned submersibles and manned submersibles have made new breakthroughs.
On June 8, the "Haidou No. 1" fully-sea-deep autonomous remote-controlled submersible developed by the Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences returned from the sea trial on the “Exploration No. 1” scientific research ship. During this voyage, “Haidou No. 1” In the Mariana Trench, it has realized the near seabed autonomous navigation detection and bottom operation, with a maximum diving depth of 10,907 meters, filling the gap of China's 10,000-meter-level unmanned submersible.
On November 28, the "Struggle" all-sea deep manned submersible jointly developed by a number of scientific research institutions in China returned with the "Explorer One" scientific research ship.
This time, the Struggle successfully sat on the bottom of the Mariana Trench, setting a new record for China's manned deep diving of 10,909 meters, marking that China has reached the world's leading level in the field of deep manned deep diving.
—— China takes the lead in realizing horizontal well drilling and production of deep-sea combustible ice.
On March 26, the Ministry of Natural Resources held a video conference on the results of the second round of test production of natural gas hydrates in China's seas, and revealed that this round of tests was successful and exceeded the target task.
Natural gas hydrate is usually called combustible ice. China's trial mining in the Shenhu waters of the South China Sea at a depth of 1,225 meters has created two new world records of "total gas production of 861,400 cubic meters and average daily gas production of 28,700 cubic meters."
In this trial mining, the researchers also independently developed a set of key technology and equipment systems to realize the industrialization of natural gas hydrate exploration and mining, created a unique environmental protection and monitoring system, and independently innovated to form an environmental risk prevention and control technology system.
This trial production has overcome the core technology of horizontal well drilling and production in deep sea shallow soft formations, realizing a major leap from exploratory trial production to experimental trial production, and has achieved landmark results in the process of industrialization.
China has also become the first country in the world to adopt horizontal well drilling and production technology to test natural gas hydrates in sea areas.
——Chinese scientists have found wheat "cancer" nemesis.
Wheat head blight is a very devastating fungal disease that is difficult to control worldwide, and is known as the "cancer" of wheat.
Professor Kong Lingrang of the Agricultural College of Shandong Agricultural University and the chief expert of the wheat innovation team of the modern agricultural industrial technology system of Shandong Province and his team cloned the main gene Fhb7 for scab resistance for the first time from the wheat relative plant Elytrigia longiflora, and successfully It was transferred to wheat varieties, and for the first time it was clear and verified that it not only has stable scab resistance in wheat disease-resistant breeding, but also has a broad-spectrum detoxification function.
At present, more than 30 units have used germplasm materials resistant to head blight to carry out genetic improvement of wheat head blight resistance, and conducted extensive tests in Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu, Anhui and other places. The results have performed well. This worldwide problem has found the "golden key".
——Chinese scientists have reached the milestone of "superiority of quantum computing".
Professors Pan Jianwei and Lu Chaoyang of the University of Science and Technology of China cooperated with researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology to construct the "Nine Chapters" of a 76-photon quantum computing prototype. The rapid solution of the prospective "Gaussian Bose sampling" task has enabled China to successfully reach the first milestone in quantum computing research-the superiority of quantum computing, laying a technical foundation for the realization of a large-scale quantum simulator that can solve problems of great practical value.
——Chinese scientists reproduce the 300 million-year history of biodiversity changes on the earth.
The origin and evolution of life is one of the ten scientific mysteries in the world.
More than 99% of the creatures that have lived on the earth have been extinct. The reconstruction of the history of the earth's biodiversity through fossil records is an important way to understand the current status and development trend of the earth's biodiversity.
Professor Fan Junxuan of Nanjing University, Academician Shen Shuzhong and others built large-scale databases independently, independently developed artificial intelligence algorithms, and made breakthroughs using "Tianhe-2" supercomputing, and obtained the world's first high-precision Paleozoic ocean biodiversity change curve for more than 300 million years Its resolution is 400 times higher than similar international research.
The new curve accurately depicts many major biological extinctions and radiation events in geological history and their relationship with environmental changes.
——China's highest parameter "artificial sun" was completed.
On December 4, China’s new generation of controllable nuclear fusion research equipment "China Circulator No. 2M" (HL-2M) was officially completed and discharged in Chengdu, marking China’s entry into the forefront of global controllable nuclear fusion research. HL-2M will Further accelerate the pace of human exploration of future energy.
This device is currently the largest advanced tokamak device with the highest parameters in China. It is a new generation of advanced magnetic confinement nuclear fusion experimental research device in China. It adopts more advanced structure and control methods, and its plasma current capacity is increased to more than 2.5 megaamps. The plasma ion temperature can reach 150 million degrees Celsius, and it can achieve high density, high specific pressure, and high bootstrap current operation. It is an important support device for realizing the leapfrog development of China's nuclear fusion energy development.
——Chinese scientists have overcome geometric problems that have been pending for more than 20 years.
The papers published by Professors Chen Xiuxiong and Wang Bing of the University of Science and Technology of China on the convergence of the high-dimensional Kellerridge flow took the lead in conquering the Hamilton-Tian conjecture and the zero-order estimation conjecture-these are the core of the geometric analysis field that has been pending for more than 20 years guess.
Related results were published in the Journal of Differential Geometry. The paper is more than 120 pages long, and it took 6 years from submission to official publication.
This thesis introduces many new ideas and new methods, which have a profound impact on geometric analysis, especially the research of Ritchie flow.
This research result is a major progress in the field of geometric analysis, or will advance many related works.
——Machine learning to simulate hundreds of millions of atoms: The Chinese and American teams won the 2020 Gordon Bell Prize, the highest award in the field of high-performance computing applications.
On November 19, the application results jointly completed by Associate Researcher Jia Weile of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Academician E Weinan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Researcher Zhang Linfeng of the Beijing Institute of Big Data and their collaborators won the highest award in the international high-performance computing application field-Ge Debel Prize.
This work is the first in the world to use the combination of intelligent supercomputing and physical models, leading scientific computing to move from the traditional computing model to the direction of intelligent supercomputing.
It is reported that first-principles molecular dynamics is known for its high precision and complex algorithms. For a long time, the spatial scale and time scale of its calculations are limited by algorithms and computing power. Even with the fastest supercomputer in the world, it can only calculate Thousands of atomic systems scale.
This achievement has raised the limit of molecular dynamics by several orders of magnitude through high-performance computing and machine learning, reaching the system scale of hundreds of millions of atoms, while still ensuring the high accuracy of "ab initio" and the simulation time scale Compared with the traditional method, it is at least 1000 times higher.
Molecular dynamics simulation based on deep learning brings accurate physical modeling into larger-scale material simulation through the organic combination of high-performance computing and machine learning, which is expected to be solved in the fields of mechanics, chemistry, materials, biology and even engineering in the future Practical issues play a bigger role.
The top ten scientific and technological progress news in the world in 2020 are:
——The scientific community has completed the most comprehensive cancer genome analysis to date.
On February 5, the Sanger Institute of the Wellcome Foundation in the United Kingdom announced that an international team has completed the most extensive cancer genome-wide analysis to date, which will help deepen researchers’ understanding of cancer and develop more efficient Treatment plan pave the way.
This project, known as the "Pan Cancer Project", is carried out by more than 1,300 scientists from 37 countries. It aims to study the variant genes that can cause cancer and draw a full map of these genes. The team analyzed 38 different types of tumors. Of 2,658 whole genomes, which have obtained abundant genetic data for cancer research.
——The artificial chloroplast was successfully developed.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Germany and the University of Bordeaux in France published an article on Science on May 8. They combined spinach’s "light trap" with enzymes from nine different organisms to create Artificial chloroplast.
This chloroplast can work outside the cell, collect sunlight, and use the energy generated from it to convert carbon dioxide into energy-rich molecules.
The researchers hope that the enhanced photosynthesis system they created can eventually convert carbon dioxide directly into useful chemicals, or make genetically modified plants absorb up to 10 times the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than ordinary plants.
This new photosynthesis will open new doors to genetically modified crops, creating new varieties that grow faster than existing ones.
In the context of the world’s rapid population growth, this is a boon to agricultural development.
——Artificial intelligence successfully analyzed protein structure for the first time.
One of the biggest challenges in biology, the analysis of the three-dimensional structure of proteins is now expected to be cracked. The deep learning program AlphaFold developed by Google's artificial intelligence company DeepMind can accurately predict its three-dimensional shape.
For a long time, people need to use experiments to determine the complete protein structure, and these methods often take months or even years.
Now, artificial intelligence also has the ability to give accurate prediction calculation methods, which may only take a few days or even half an hour.
AlphaFold combines deep learning with tension control algorithms and applies them to structural and genetic data. The deep learning network is trained using 170,000 known proteins that have been resolved.
DeepMind's related R&D team said that it will continue to train AlphaFold to better analyze more complex protein structures.
——The new catalyst turns carbon dioxide into methane.
Researchers have been trying to imitate photosynthesis and use the energy of the sun to make chemical fuels. American scientists have developed a new type of copper-iron-based catalyst that can use light to convert carbon dioxide into methane, the main component of natural gas. This method is the closest to artificial photosynthesis so far. Method of action.
Researchers say that if the new catalyst is further improved, it will reduce human dependence on fossil fuels.
The January issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States reported that this new catalyst, as a light-driven catalyst for converting carbon dioxide into methane, has the highest efficiency and output in history.
——Brain-computer interface technology helps paralyzed men regain the sense of touch.
On April 23, the research team from the American Bartel Research Center and the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center published an article on Cell. They successfully used the brain-computer interface (BCI) system to help a paralyzed patient recover Department of touch.
This technology can capture weak nerve signals that humans cannot perceive, and enhance these signals through artificial sensory feedback sent back to the subject's brain, thereby greatly optimizing the subject's motor function.
After improvement, the BCI system became the first system to restore motion and tactile functions at the same time. It not only allows subjects to perceive objects only by touch, but also the pressure required to hold or pick up objects.
——Researchers have drawn the largest three-dimensional structure of the universe to date.
According to a report by the physicist organization network on July 20, after analyzing more than 4 million galaxies and superbright quasars with huge energy, the International Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) project released the largest three-dimensional universe to date ( 3D) Structure diagram.
The figure is drawn by the "Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectral Survey (eBOSS)" project composed of researchers from many countries, which is part of the world's largest galaxy survey project "Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)".
The latest results are based on the cooperation of hundreds of scientific researchers from dozens of institutions around the world for more than 20 years, and the eBOSS project took several years to complete.
The current theory is that the universe was created in the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago.
Through theoretical analysis and astronomical observations, researchers have had a good understanding of the ancient history of the universe and the recent expansion history, but there is a gap of about 11 billion years of knowledge in between. New results fill this gap. It is cosmology. Significant progress in the field.
-American researchers achieve room temperature superconductivity under ultra-high pressure.
On October 16, a scientific research team in the United States published research results in the journal Nature, saying that the team observed room temperature superconductivity in a hydride material under ultra-high pressure. This new breakthrough allowed researchers to create It is a step forward to produce a power system with excellent efficiency.
The progress of superconductivity research in recent years has shown that hydrogen-rich materials can increase the superconducting temperature to about minus 23 degrees Celsius under high pressure.
Researchers at the University of Rochester in the United States increased the temperature at which zero resistance can be achieved to 15 degrees Celsius in the laboratory. This effect was observed in a photochemically synthesized ternary carbon-containing hydrogen sulfide system under a pressure of 267 billion Pascals. This pressure is approximately typical The tire pressure is 1 million times and reaches the highest pressure value achieved in the experiment.
——"Genetic Magic Scissors" were directly used in human trials for the first time.
A patient with genetic blindness became the first person to receive a direct human trial of CRISPR-Cas9 gene therapy.
According to a report on the British "Nature" website in early March, scientists conducted the first clinical trial to directly apply CRISPR-Cas9 gene therapy to humans to treat hereditary eye disease-Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA10).
LCA10 is the main cause of blindness in children, and there is currently no treatment.
CRISPR-Cas9 is known as the "genetic cut". In the latest experiment, the components of this gene editing system will be encoded in the viral genome and then directly injected into the near photoreceptor cells of the patient's eye.
The latest experiment is called "Brightness" (BRILLIANCE), which was carried out jointly by Mark Penrus, an expert on genetic retinal diseases at Oregon Health and Science University in the United States, and EditasMedicine, Inc. of the United States. They said that this experiment aims to test the gene editing technology. The ability to remove the genetic mutation that causes LCA10 is a landmark.
-The gravitational wave detector discovered the strongest black hole merger event to date.
On September 2nd, "Physics Review Letters" and "Astrophysical Journal Letters" respectively launched articles introducing that gravitational wave detectors detected amazing discoveries that astronomers had never thought of-the largest black hole merger event we know so far .
The black hole merger was first discovered on May 21, 2019. The gravitational waves produced by the merger were detected by the American Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Italian Virgo Interferometer (Virgo). The merger event was named GW190521.
This is the second time this year that the aforementioned gravitational wave detector has detected an unconventional black hole merger event.
In this merger event, the masses of the two black holes were 85 and 66 times that of the sun, respectively, and the mass of the new black hole formed after the merger was close to 150 suns.
-Cryo-electron microscopy technology breaks through the barrier of atomic resolution.
If you want to map the tiniest part of a protein, scientists usually need to arrange millions of individual protein molecules into crystals and then analyze them with X-ray crystallography; or quickly freeze copies of proteins and bombard them with electrons. This low-resolution method is called cryo-electron microscopy.
With the further help of electron beam technology, detectors and software, two groups of researchers from the UK and Germany reduced the resolution to 1.25 angstroms or less, which is enough to calculate the position of a single atom.
Enhanced resolution may make more structural biologists choose to use cryo-electron microscopy.
Currently, this technology is only suitable for unusually hard proteins.
In the next step, researchers will strive to achieve a resolution of similar clarity in less rigid and larger protein complexes (such as spliceosomes).
It is understood that the annual selection of the top ten scientific and technological progress news in China and the world by the academicians of the two academies is sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and undertaken by the Academic Department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the General Office of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the Chinese Science Newspaper. The selection activities have been held 27 times so far. Understand the development trends of science and technology at home and abroad, and popularize science and technology knowledge to have a wide range of influence and play an active role.
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