Photo via Flickr/Rosetta by Stefan Schindler
Photo via Flickr/Rosetta by Stefan Schindler

It’s that time of year when countdowns and articles looking back flood your feeds. Here, Scientific American‘s editors pick the 10 top science stories from this past year.

The list reads like a who’s who of scientific developments and global emergencies we can’t ignore any longer. For example, this year hopefully marks the near-end of the magnetic credit card, relegating it to “to the dustbin of obsolete technologies” to make way for smarter payment systems via your gadgets. A group of undergrad students at Johns Hopkins successfully synthesized a yeast’s chromosome, the first time this has ever been done by humans, which will help us better understand how DNA works.

And, my personal fave, humans landed a probe on a freaking comet.

It’s a nice mix of the good and the bad, including the Ebola outbreak, but well worth a look.

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