have made any important break throughs in science?

Question: have made any important break throughs in science?
- Keywords:
  career,
  discovery,
  work
Asked by to Nat, Nate, Roberto, Sam, Sarah on 13 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
- Natasha Stephen answered on 13 Jun 2014:
  
  Nothing ground-breaking but it’s not all about the headlines. Sometimes the smallest changes to the way we understand things can lead to further discoveries!
  
  During my PhD we discovered that the libraries being used to interpret the data coming back from Mars weren’t quite right, which was leading to some misinterpretations! Using my data we have been able to start generating a new database of Mars-specific mineral spectra, which will be used to look at the remote data instead and hopefully improve future interpretations.
- Nate Bastian answered on 13 Jun 2014:
  
  Science works on a variety of levels. Most of our work, even the great scientists, really only impacts a very specific field, and maybe a handful of other people working on that subject. It is through a number of such works that we build an understanding of a particular phenomenon. Some discoveries have a bit more impact, influencing multiple fields in astrophysics, and then some others affect all astronomy. Finally, you have the big discoveries which affect all of science and end up in the headlines.
  
  So, I’ve made many of the first type, and a few of the second and third types. I guess that I’m most known within astronomy for my work on the distribution of stellar masses (i.e., how big stars are, i.e. for every star like the sun out there, how many stars are 100 times larger, or 100 times smaller). It turns out that the distribution is remarkably constant, i.e. wherever you look the stars follow the same distribution. Why this is the case is one of the largest open questions in the field of star-formation.
- Roberto Trotta answered on 13 Jun 2014:
  
  I’ve invented a new way of looking for dark matter — it’s a bit difficult to explain, but it involves looking for dark matter by putting together lots and lots of data from different experiments, on earth, in space, underground, and under the ice in the South Pole. But we haven’t found it yet! (not for sure, anyhow)
- Sarah Casewell answered on 14 Jun 2014:
  
  I’ve not made any massive discoveries, but lots of small ones. As Natasha said, we all make discoveries in our fields, and that changes our understanding. It may be discovering a new object that is unusual, or explaining how a known process works, or building a camera that lets us look at space in a new way. All are very important discoveries, but not ground breaking in a nobel prize winning way.
- Sam Connolly answered on 15 Jun 2014:
  
  I’ve only been doing research for a few years, so haven’t had much of a chance to make any big breakthroughs! I’ve found out some new things though, which might contribute to a bigger breakthrough eventually, but even if they don’t the new information is useful. Most progress in science is made by small discoveries which add up to big changes in our understanding of how things work. It would be great to have a really exciting break through at some point though!

Question: have made any important break throughs in science?

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