It's Friday, December 28, 2018, and you're listening to Up to Date, Inquiring Mind's

weekly recap of science in the news. I'm Kishora Hari. This week, 2018 comes to an end,

which means it's time to recap our favorite science stories of the year. And the Indre is out this

week, but I've compiled a top 10 science stories of the year. And Andre is out this week, but I've compiled a top

10 science stories, according to me, from around the spectrum of science, from discoveries

to amazing feats of engineering, to even places where science got a little bit political.

And so without further ado, here's my top 10 science stories of the

year in no particular order. Let's start with a discovery. Four billion years ago in a galaxy

far, far away, a jet of ionized stuff got ejected from this special galaxy called a blazar.

This is where it's a huge galaxy with a black hole

at the center like most galaxies. And perpendicular to the access of turning, we see a jet of ionized

stuff get sent out in both directions. Well, some of that ionized stuff came straight towards Earth. And when it

reached us, it hit a series of 86 detectors buried deep beneath the ice in Antarctica. At this

ice cube detector, as it's called, they are able to tell telltale signs of neutrinos, which is a feat in and of

itself because neutrinos are incredibly difficult to detect. There's billions of neutrinos

that pass through us every day, and they typically just don't interact with anything.

So the ability to have a sensitive instrument to detect the neutrinos was one thing. Two, to be able to track

those neutrinos back to their source because neutrinos travel in a straight line was another

amazing feat. So now we know that these galaxies, blazers as they're called, can be a source of

neutrinos. And more importantly, they're a source of

cosmic rays that are infiltrating the entire universe, which is an exciting discovery. And I still

think it's sort of amazing that we track the source of a single neutrino back four billion

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