October 27 - Remains of a previously unknown species of human is discovered in Indonesia. Named Homo floresiensis, the hominid is a dwarfed version that lived 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores. The results were announced in Nature (http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038%2Fnature02999).
March 15 - Astronomers announce the discovery of 90377 Sedna, a Pluto-like planetoid which is the most distant individual object known to orbit the Sun.
May 18 - Scientists using the Chandra X-ray Observatory announced their findings (http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2004/darkenergy/) that supports the notion that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.
September 28 - A long awaited earthquake strikes Parkfield, California, the most closely monitored earthquake zone in the world. The earthquake, which had been expected to have occurred by the late 1980's, strikes as a magnitude 6.0. The network of instruments that had been installed in the region make this the most well-recorded earthquake in history.
January - A team from the JILA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado announce the creation of a fermionic condensate, the first such condensate made from atoms rather than molecules.
February 3 - Russian and American physicists produce results that indicate the discovery of elements 113 and 115 Phys. Rev. C 69 021601 (http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRC/v69/e021601)
March 22 - A team from Russia and Greece announce a new material, made from a nano-foam of carbon that has the lowest density ever reported for a solid. [1] (http://physicsweb.org/article/news/8/3/13)
May 19 - A team of European scientists produces the first Tonks-Girardeau gas Nature (http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature02530)
September 24 - Physicists from the Université Joseph Fourier and the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France announce the discovery of a solution (a-cyclodextrine, water, and 4-methylpyridine) that changes from liquid to solid when heated, and melts again when cooled down. Journal of Chemical Physics (http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/JCPSA6-ft/vol_121/iss_11/5031_1.html)
Technology
March 27 - NASA succeeds in a second attempt to fly its X-43A experimental airplane from the Hyper-X project, attaining speeds in excess of Mach 7, the fastest free flying air-breathing hypersonic flight.
April 30 - Scientists from the University of California at Irvine announce the first high-speed transistor made from a carbon nanotube, operating at microwave frequencies.
March 2 - NASA report that the area where their Mars probe Opportunity touched down shows unmistakeable signs of contact with water in the geological past.
March 2 - ESA's Rosetta mission launches, aiming to land on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.
March 4- NASA's Spirit finds evidence of past contact with water in volcanic rocks on Mars.
April 1 - The Genesis probe closes and seals its particle collection instrument, and begins to return to Earth.
June 11 - Cassini-Huygens, the NASA/ESA mission to Saturn, makes a flyby of one of Saturn's small outer moons, Phoebe.
September 8 - The Genesis spacecraft returns to Earth with captured solar wind particles, but crash-lands because of a failure to deploy any parachute.
October 4 - SpaceShipOne wins the Ansari X Prize after reaching an altitude of over 100 km (62.5 mi) for the second time in less than five days.
The year 2004 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.
December 27 - A flare of radiation from an explosion on the super-magnetic neutron star (Magnetar) SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth - astronomers later calculate that it is the largest explosion observed in the Milky Way galaxy for 400 years.
July 30 - Marine biologists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute announce in the journal Science the discovery of the genus Osedax, deep sea worms that feed on lipids in decaying whale carcusses.
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