When science broke new frontiers: Major scientific breakthroughs of the last decade

"Eureka," yelled Archimedes, Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer, as he stepped into a bath and the water level rose, for he realised that the volume of water displaced ought to equal the volume of the part of his body that was submerged.

Every year, in various parts of the globe, scientists individually or collectively do dream of yelling 'Eureka'; some actually go along and do it too. The last decade (2000-2009) has been no different in this regard.

Here is a list of the most important scientific breakthroughs that the last ten years of this decade have borne witness to.

Text by Rajesh Vishwakarma

Image: A layer of the world's largest superconducting solenoid magnet (CMS), one of the experiments to take data from the Large Hadron Collider.