by Grania

Writers at io9 have collected some of the big breakthroughs in science this year.

Among their picks were Enceladus’ hidden ocean, the artificially expanded genetic alphabet, new burial mounds found at Stonehenge, a really big dinosaur named Dreadnoughtus Schrani,  womb transplants (oh, thank goodness!) and the supercluster Laniakea, although you should also read Ethan Siegel’s article about this story over at Starts With A Bang.

This is the one that made me snicker the most, if only because of the caption:

Very impressive and full of potential, these are tiny robots that self-assemble 2-D shapes in slow-moving swarms. Ed Yong wrote a great piece on how it works here.

Not a bad year for science. What science stories caught your eye this year?