Events, Discoveries and Inventions
- 9 January – Apple Inc.'s first iPhone smartphone is announced by Steve Jobs at Macworld in San Francisco.
- 12 January – Comet McNaught reaches perihelion and becomes visible from Earth during daylight.
- 14 January – Scientists at the Roslin Institute announce they have genetically engineered chickens to lay eggs containing cancer-fighting proteins.
- 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.
- 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.
- 27 April – US researchers simulate half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer.
- 5 June – NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its second flyby of Venus en route to Mercury.
- 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 Vesta and Ceres.
- 24 October – Comet 17P/Holmes suddenly brightens from 17 to 2.8 magnitude.
Read more about this topic: 2007 In Science
Famous quotes containing the words discoveries and inventions, discoveries and/or inventions:
“It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your “emancipation.” You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields—discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West—superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“In America, the geography is sublime, but the men are not: the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)