Buzz
Some scientific breakthroughs and inventions feel like they've always been with us. But sometimes, these "old" innovations are actually so recent that they can be compared to the lifespan of famous personalities. Here are a few examples.
1. Sliced Bread // 1928
For some context, Betty White, Dick Van Dyke, Mel Brooks, and Sidney Poitier are all older than sliced bread (Mr. Rogers is the same age). Sliced bread, which was created in 1928 by Otto F. Rohwedder, was marketed as 'the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.' (The invention would have come to market earlier, but a bread-slicing machine prototype Rohwedder built in 1917 was destroyed by fire.)
2. Our Understanding of the Earth’s Age // 1956
By the late 1940s, radiometric dating methods suggested the Earth’s age to be 3.3 billion years, but the scientific community was uncertain. It wasn't until the mid-1950s, when Clair Patterson refined a new technique for calculating the age of ancient rocks, that the true age of Earth, 4.5 billion years, was confirmed [PDF]. Patterson's methods, which involved creating an 'ultra-clean' lab to eliminate all contaminants, also uncovered a second major discovery: the devastating environmental impact of leaded gasoline. Remarkably, both of these revelations are as recent as Tom Hanks.
3. The Discovery of Pluto // 1930
Pluto, our favorite dwarf planet, was first identified in 1930 by a telescope enthusiast with no formal college education. Working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Clyde Tombaugh discovered 'Planet X' using an astrograph—essentially a rudimentary space camera—and made a groundbreaking find that's as recent as Clint Eastwood. (In comparison, the first exoplanet wouldn’t be confirmed until 1992
4. The Scientific Acceptance of Plate Tectonics // 1961
In 1926, German scientist Alfred Wegener attended a conference where he shared his theory that Earth's continents had once been joined together. The director of the Geological Survey of France dismissed Wegener's idea as 'the dream of a great poet.' For the next thirty years, the theory of continental drift was seen as a fringe concept that could ruin a scientist's career. But when geologist Marie Tharp discovered the 10,000-mile Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the Atlantic Ocean—the longest mountain range on Earth, providing evidence that Earth's plates were indeed shifting—scientists began to reconsider. The theory didn't gain wide acceptance until 1961, the same year Barack Obama was born.
5. The Modern Can Opener // 1870
The modern can opener, featuring a spinning wheel, was invented in 1870, the same year Vladimir Lenin was born. This may seem late, considering that metal food cans had been in use for decades by then. Prior to this invention, people had to open food cans by literally 'taking a stab at it.' One product advised customers to 'cut around the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer.' Earlier versions of can openers existed but were not widely used—Ezra Warner's 1858 design, resembling a bayonet, was so dangerous that it was mostly employed by grocery store owners.
6. Acceptance of the Big Bang Theory // 1965
In 1929, Edwin Hubble confirmed a theory proposed by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest and scientist, that the universe was expanding. Two years later, Lemaître tried to explain the phenomenon with his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom,' which would later be known as the 'Big Bang.' For the next thirty years, scientists debated whether to adopt the 'Big Bang' model (which suggests the universe had a beginning) or the 'Steady State' model (which suggests the universe had no beginning). The Big Bang theory wasn’t widely accepted until 1965, the same year JK Rowling was born.
7. Hib Vaccines // 1985
Hib disease is caused by a bacterium (Haemophilus influenzae type b) and can lead to serious conditions like meningitis, pneumonia, and other severe infections. At one point, it affected 20,000 young children each year in the United States, killing up to 5% of them and leaving a third with permanent neurological damage. In 1975, a trial of the vaccine failed to convince pharmaceutical companies to produce it, prompting its developer, David H. Smith, to create his own company to bring the vaccine to market. Released in 1985, the same year as Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot, the vaccine has since reduced Hib disease by 99%.
8. Double Helix Structure of DNA // 1953
DNA was first discovered by a Swiss chemist in 1869, and the nucleobases—adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, and uracil—were isolated shortly afterward. However, it wasn’t until Rosalind Franklin, an expert in X-ray crystallography, and graduate student Raymond Gosling captured images of it, revealing its two twisting strands, that the physical structure of DNA became clear. Using Franklin’s photographs (without her permission), James Watson and Francis Crick unveiled the DNA double helix in 1953, the same year as Pierce Brosnan's birth.
9. Classification of Lucy // 1978
In November 1974, scientists uncovered a fragment of a human-like elbow bone while excavating in Ethiopia. Along with it, they found an exceptionally well-preserved skeleton that was 3.2 million years old. Named Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis remains were identified as an early human ancestor. Lucy was officially classified as a new species in 1978, upending previous ideas about the timeline of human evolution, the same year Rachel McAdams was born.
10. Discovery of the Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of the Galaxy // 2002
A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape its grasp. While the term ‘black hole’ wasn’t coined until the 1960s, solid evidence of their existence wasn’t found until 1971. The discovery of a black hole at the heart of the Milky Way came in 2002, the same year Stranger Things actor Gaten Matarazzo was born. Astronomers studying stars orbiting the galaxy's Sagittarius A* region discovered a black hole with a mass 4 million times that of our Sun.
