The top science stories of 2020 from Science Magazine, WatchMojo, SciShow, and 'Nova' on PBS

After yesterday's The top TV shows of 2020 according to IGN, WatchMojo, and IMDB, I'm back to recycling ideas for retrospectives of 2020. Today, it's The top ten science stories of the year, itself a retread of 2018's Breakthrough of the year for 2018 from Science Magazine. As I have both years, I begin with Science Magazine's top ten list, 2020 Breakthrough of the Year.

Each year, editors and writers choose a top research achievement as Science’s Breakthrough of the Year. This year, that honor goes to the multiple COVID-19 vaccines that have succeeded in large human trials—and are now being deployed around the world. But there are a lot of other advances to talk about, from figuring out the origin of Fast Radio Bursts to the discovery of the earliest known figurative art. Check out a few of the runners-up candidates—and this year’s Breakthrough of the Year—in this video rundown.

Like everything else about 2020, something related to the COVID-19 pandemic was the top story. At least it was good news, not more horror and disaster.

Follow over the jump for the other videos showing the top science stories of the year about to end.

WatchMojo came out with their own Top 10 Biggest Scientific Discoveries of 2020 that deliberately did not include the COVID-19 vaccines.

2020 hasn't been all bad! For this list, we’re looking at amazing discoveries announced in 2020 that added something new to our scientific understanding of the world. Our countdown includes Ghost Particles in Antarctica, The Origin of Carbon, Brain Cancer Vaccine, and more!

As much as I'm aware that WatchMojo and its sister channel MsMojo are premiere clickbait factories, at least they produce high-quality, well-researched clickbait, so I'm going to keep using their videos. Besides, this was a good list.

SciShow came out with their own list of scientific discoveries not related to the pandemic, 3 Discoveries You Missed Because of COVID.

There have been a lot of scientific discoveries around COVID, but other science stories did happen in 2020 — including amazing discoveries about everything from dinosaurs to parasites.

As a biologist and paleontologist, I'm glad SciShow recognized these as science stories worth celebrating.

Not to be outdone, its sister channel SciShow Space presented its Space Superlatives of 2020!

2020 wasn't ALL bad news. This year scientists found ludicrously fast stars, ancient galaxy clusters, and developed a camera that could change how we study the night sky.

That fastest star story ties directly into the Nobel Prize for Physics, which recognized the discovery of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, itself a major science story of the year.

Finally, Nova PBS Official came out with a list that overlaps with the achievements in 2020 in space from NASA and the European Space Agency, The Biggest Space News Stories of 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic may have been the biggest science news story of 2020, but it wasn't the only story. Discover three of the greatest space developments of the year and what 2021 may bring.

The collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope is the kind of story I need to examine in detail, as it exemplifies societal and technological collapse and decline, the original focus of this blog. Maybe in the new year. In the meantime, stay tuned for at least two more retrospectives of 2020.