The year 1998 in science and technology had many significant events, including those listed below. // What is science? There are different theories of what science is. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Astronomy and space exploration

• January 6 - The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon and later found evidence for frozen water on the moon's surface.
• January 8 - Cosmologists announce that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.
• March 2 - Data sent from the Galileo spaceprobe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
• March 5 - NASA announced that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon had found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket fueling station.
• May 23 - Explorer I ceases transmission.
• July 5 - Japan launches a probe to Mars, and thus joins the United States and Russia as a space exploring nation.
• October 29 - Space Shuttle Discovery blasts-off with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space. He became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.
• The first of four 8.4 m reflecting telescopes opens in the Very Large Telescope program of the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal in Chile.

January 6 is the 6th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... NASAs Lunar Prospector The Lunar Prospector mission was the third selected by NASA for full development and construction as part of the Discovery Program. ... Ariane 5 lifts off with the Rosetta space probe on March 2, 2004. ... In physics, an orbit is the path that an object makes, around another object, whilst under the influence of a source of centripetal force, such as gravity. ... Crust composition Oxygen 43% Silicon 21% Aluminium 10% Calcium 9% Iron 9% Magnesium 5% Titanium 2% Nickel 0. ... // Headline text Bold textBold textBold text:This article focuses on water as it is experienced in everyday life. ... January 8 is the 8th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Cosmology is the study of the large-scale structure and history of the universe. ... The deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. ... March 2 is the 61st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (62nd in leap years). ... Galileo being deployed after being launched by the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission Galileo was an unmanned spacecraft sent by NASA to study the planet Jupiter and its moons. ... Atmospheric characteristics Atmospheric pressure 70 kPa Hydrogen ~86% Helium ~14% Methane 0. ... Moons of solar system scaled to Earths Moon The common noun moon (not capitalized) is used to mean any natural satellite of the other planets. ... Atmospheric characteristics Atmospheric pressure 1 µPa Oxygen 100% Europa (ew-roe-pa, /juro:pa/   listen[?], Greek Ευρώπη) is a moon of the planet Jupiter, smallest of the four Galilean moons. ... Ocean (from Okeanos, a Greek god of sea and water; Greek ωκεανός) covers almost three quarters (71%) of the surface of the Earth, and nearly half of the worlds marine waters are over 3000 m deep. ... ICE can refer to: InterCity Express, a German high-speed train Internal combustion engine, a fuel engine In-car entertainment In-circuit emulator, a computer hardware device In case of emergency, emergency number in mobile phones Institution of Civil Engineers, British civil engineer guild Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, U.S... March 5 is the 64th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (65th in leap years). ... NASA Logo Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-09-01, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Clementine was a joint space project between the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO, previously the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or SDIO) and NASA. The objective of the mission was to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment and to make scientific observations of the Moon... Crust composition Oxygen 43% Silicon 21% Aluminium 10% Calcium 9% Iron 9% Magnesium 5% Titanium 2% Nickel 0. ... // Headline text Bold textBold textBold text:This article focuses on water as it is experienced in everyday life. ... Binomial name Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758 Subspecies Homo sapiens idaltu (extinct) Homo sapiens sapiens For other uses, see Human (disambiguation). ... In politics and in history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a geographically-distant state (or city, in ancient times). ... A Redstone rocket, part of the Mercury program A rocket is a vehicle, missile or aircraft which obtains thrust by the reaction to the ejection of fast moving exhaust gas from within a rocket engine. ... May 23 is the 143rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (144th in leap years). ... Explorer-I, officially known as Satellite 1958 Alpha, was the first United States Earth satellite and was sent aloft as part of the United States program for the International Geophysical Year 1957-1958. ... July 5 is the 186th day of the year (187th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 179 days remaining. ... Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the solar system, named after the Roman god of war (the counterpart of the Greek Ares), on account of its blood red color as viewed in the night sky. ... Outer space (also called just space) as a name for a region, refers to the relatively empty parts of the Universe, outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies. ... October 29 is the 302nd day of the year (303rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 63 days remaining. ... Shuttle Orbiter Discovery (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-103) is a NASA Space Shuttle. ... This article is about the astronaut. ... February 20 is the 51st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Ritchey 24 reflecting telescope A reflecting telescope (reflector) is an optical telescope which uses mirrors, rather than lenses, to reflect light. ... One of the four telescopes that make up the VLT, named Kueyen. ... The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is an international astronomical organisation, composed and supported by ten countries from the European Union plus Switzerland and was created in 1962. ... Cerro Paranal, a 2,635 m high mountain in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, famous for hosting the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). ...

Biology

• July 17 - Biologists report in the journal Science how they sequenced the genome of the bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum.

July 17 is the 198th day (199th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 167 days remaining. ... A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of organisms. ... Science is the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). ... In biology the genome of an organism is the whole hereditary information of an organism that is encoded in the DNA (or, for some viruses, RNA). ... Phyla/Divisions Actinobacteria Aquificae Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi Chlamydiae/Verrucomicrobia Chloroflexi Chrysiogenetes Cyanobacteria Deferribacteres Deinococcus-Thermus Dictyoglomi Fibrobacteres/Acidobacteria Firmicutes Fusobacteria Gemmatimonadetes Nitrospirae Omnibacteria Planctomycetes Proteobacteria Spirochaetes Thermodesulfobacteria Thermomicrobia Thermotogae Bacteria (singular, bacterium) are a major group of living organisms. ... Depression-era U.S. poster advocating early syphilis treatment sorry for vandalising ur web page i really am i will stop vandalising it from now on. ... Binomial name Treponema pallidum Schaudinn & Hoffmann, 1905 Treponema pallidum is a spirochaete bacterium. ...

Computer science

• February 10 - XML is published as a recommendation of the W3C.
• June 2 - The CIH virus is discovered in Taiwan.
• The first working 2-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance computer is demonstrated at the University of California, Berkeley.

February 10 is the 41st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language for creating special-purpose markup languages. ... The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a consortium that produces standards—recommendations, as they call them—for the World Wide Web. ... 2 June is the 153rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (154th in leap years), with 212 days remaining. ... CIH, also known as Chernobyl or Spacefiller, is a computer virus written by Chen Ing Hau of Taiwan. ... Pacific Northwest National Laboratorys high magnetic field (800 MHz) NMR spectrometer being loaded with sample. ... A computer is a device or machine for processing information from data according to a program — a compiled list of instructions. ... University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal, UC Berkeley, The University of California, or simply Berkeley) is a public coeducational university situated east of the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, California, overlooking the Golden Gate. ...

Geology

• February 4 - An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter Scale in northeast Afghanistan kills more than 5,000.
• March 14 - An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hits southeastern Iran.
• May 30 - A 6.6 magnitude earthquake hits northern Afghanistan killing up to 5,000.
• July 17 - A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 1,500, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.

February 4 is the 35th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Global earthquake epicenters, 1963–1998 An earthquake is a sudden and sometimes catastrophic movement of a part of the Earths surface. ... The Richter magnitude test scale (or more correctly local magnitude ML scale) assigns a single number to quantify the size of an earthquake. ... March 14 is the 73rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (74th in Leap years) with 292 days remaining in the year. ... May 30 is the 150th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (151st in leap years). ... July 17 is the 198th day (199th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 167 days remaining. ... The tsunami that struck Malé in the Maldives on December 26, 2004. ...

Mathematics

• Luca Cardelli and Andrew D. Gordon develop ambient calculus.
• Thomas Hales (almost certainly) proves the Kepler conjecture.

Andrew D. Gordon is Co-designer of Spi Calculus (with M. Abadi), Ambient calculus (Luca Cardelli), and other various programming languages. ... Ambient calculus is a form of notation devised by Luca Cardelli and Andrew D. Gordon in 1998 and used to describe and theorise about mobile systems. ... Thomas Callister Hales is an American mathematician who provided computer-aided proof of the Kepler Conjecture. ... In mathematics, the Kepler conjecture is a conjecture about sphere packing in three dimensional Euclidean space. ...

Medicine

• January 14 - Researchers in Dallas, Texas present findings about an enzyme that slows aging and cell death (apoptosis).

January 14 is the 14th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Downtown Dallas City nickname: Big D Location Location in the state of Texas Government Counties Dallas County Collin County Denton County Kaufman County Rockwall County Mayor Laura Miller Physical characteristics Area      Land      Water 385. ... Ribbon diagram of the catalytically perfect enzyme TIM. Factor D enzyme crystal prevents the immune system from inappropriately running out of control. ... In biology, apoptosis (from the Greek words apo = from and ptosis = falling, pronounced ap-a-tow-sis[1]) is one of the main types of programmed cell death (PCD). ...

Technology

• April 5 - In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with Honshu, at a cost of about US$3.8 billion, opens to traffic, becoming the largest suspension bridge in the world.

April 5 is the 95th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (96th in leap years). ... Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge on April 27, 2003. ... Shikoku (四国, four provinces) is the smallest and least populous of the four main islands of Japan. ... todo mal de [ [ Shikoku ] ] a través del [ [ mar interior ] ], y noreste de [ [ Kyushu ] ] a través del [ [ estrecho de Kanmon ] ]. Es la séptima isla más grande, y la segunda isla populosa en el mundo después de [ [ Java (isla)|Java ] ] (véase [ [ lista de las islas de la población ] ]). < style=float del div... A suspension bridge is a type of bridge that has been made since ancient times. ...

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics - Robert B. Laughlin, Horst L. Störmer, Daniel C. Tsui
  • Chemistry - Walter Kohn, John Pople
  • Medicine - Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro, Ferid Murad
• Turing Award: James Gray
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Karl Karekin Turekian

Sir Edward Appletons medal Photographs of Nobel Prize Medals. ... List of Nobel Prize laureates in Physics from 1901 to the present day. ... Robert Betts Laughlin (born November 1, 1950) is an American theoretical physicist who, with Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui, was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for his explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect. ... Horst Ludwig Störmer (born April 6, 1949) is a Bell Labs physicist who shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics with Daniel Tsui and Robert Laughlin. ... Daniel Chee Tsui 崔琦 (pinyin: Cuī Qí)(born February 28, 1939, Henan Province, China) is a Chinese American physicist whose areas of research included electrical properties of thin films and microstructures of semiconductors and solid-state physics. ... List of Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry from 1901 to the present day. ... Walter Kohn (born March 9, 1923 in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian-born American physicist who was awarded, with John A. Pople, the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1998. ... Sir John Anthony Pople (October 31, 1925 - March 15, 2004) was a theoretical chemist. ... List of Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine from 1901 to the present day. ... Robert F. Furchgott (born June 4, 1916 in Charleston, South Carolina) is a Nobel Prize-winning American chemist. ... Dr. Louis J. Ignaro (b. ... Ferid Murad (born September 14, 1936) is an American physician and pharmacologist, and a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. ... The A.M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. ... Jim (James) N. Gray is a distinguished computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1998 for seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation. Gray studied at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving his Ph. ... The Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London. ...

Births

Deaths

• March 15 - Benjamin Spock (b. 1903), pediatrician, writer.
• July 3 - Danielle Bunten Berry (b. 1949), a.k.a. Dan Bunten, software developer.
• July 21 - Alan Shepard (b. 1923), astronaut.
• August 4 - Yuri Artyukhin (b. 1930), cosmonaut.
• August 26 - Frederick Reines (b. 1918), physicist, Nobel laureate.
• December 17 - Claudia Benton, Child Psychologist.
• December 18 - Lev Demin (b. 1926), cosmonaut.