Happy New Year! Tomorrow is the first day of 2009. So what an appropriate time to look back and see what we have accomplished in science over the past years on this day.

On New Years Day, 1801, the dwarf planet Ceres was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi. This dwarf planet is actually located inside our solar system, it is part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Astronomer Johann Elert Bode had suggested nearly forty years earlier that their might be large planets or land masses between Mars and Jupiter based off a theory (that is no longer used) proposed in 1766 by Johann Daniel Titus. It was this same theory that led to the discovery of Uranus in 1781. Because of the theory and the unknown location of a planet between Mars and Jupiter, 24 astronomers combined their efforts and began a methodical search for the planet. 

photo credit: Venom82

On New Years day, 1925, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble announced the discovery of galaxies outside of our own milky way. Hubble also later showed that the universe is still expanding.

On New Years Day, 1985, the Internet domain name system was created. The domain name system translates human names for sites into the numerical or binary identifiers associated with network equipment. A simple explanation is that the Internet domain name system acts as a “phone book” for the Internet by translating a human-friendly host name into an IP address.

photo credit: mackenzienicole

On New Year’s Day, 1995 the existence of freak waves was proven. The Draupner oil platform in the north sea was usually hit by large waves measuring about 39 feet in height. However, on Jan 1st of that year a freak wave that was 89 ft tall crashed down on the platform. Freak waves had been thought to exist before based off of stories of sailors, but it had never previously been recorded.