China's top ten scientific and technological breakthroughs
Chinese scientists are persevering in the pursuit of scientific truth, constantly breaking new heights that human beings can reach.
1. Retrieving the "ancestral" gene of rice
Rapidly domesticate allotetraploid wild rice from scratch, take advantage of polyploidy, retrieve some excellent genes that have been lost in current cultivated rice, and cultivate new rice crops with higher yield and stronger environmental adaptability——The breakthrough made by Li Jiayang's team and collaborators from the Institute of Seed Innovation and the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, was published in the internationally renowned academic journal "Cell" on February 4.
2. Achieving quantum superiority in two physical systems
On May 7, 2021, "Science" magazine published the research results of Pan Jianwei's team from the University of Science and Technology of China, which successfully developed a quantum computing prototype "Zu Chongzhi", which manipulated 62 superconducting qubits. A programmable two-dimensional quantum walk is realized. At the end of October, Pan Jianwei's team further developed a 66-bit programmable superconducting quantum computing prototype "Zu Chongzhi 2.0". The superiority of quantum computing is achieved on the random line sampling task, and the difficulty of the completed task is 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than that of Google's "Plane Tree" in 2019. At the same time, the upgraded version of "Nine Chapters 2.0" by Pan Jianwei's team has also greatly improved its quantum advantage. For the Gaussian Bose sampling problem, the "Nine Chapters" a year ago can complete the task in one minute, the world's most powerful A supercomputer will take hundreds of millions of years; and the task of "Nine Chapters 2.0" completed in one minute, the supercomputer will take ten billion times more time. And "Nine Chapters 2.0" also has the ability to be partially programmable.
3. "China Sky Eye" welcomes global scientists
In line with the principle of opening the sky, the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), known as "China's Sky Eye", will be invited to astronomers all over the world from 0:00 on March 31, 2021, Beijing time. Observation application, all foreign application projects will participate in the review uniformly. The observation period began in August this year. China Sky Eye is located in Dawodang, Pingtang County, Qiannan Prefecture, Guizhou Province. It was completed in 2016. It is the world's largest single-aperture and most sensitive radio telescope with independent intellectual property rights.
5. Light storage time up to 1 hour
In April 2021, Li Chuanfeng and Zhou Zongquan’s research group from Guo Guangcan’s team at the University of Science and Technology of China increased the optical storage time to 1 hour, greatly breaking the world record of 1 minute optical storage created by the German team in 2013. An important step towards the realization of quantum U disk. The results were published in the authoritative academic journal Nature Communications in late April.
6. 'Artificial sun' breaks world record
On May 28, 2021, good news came from the Hefei Institute of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The All-Superconducting Tokamak Fusion Experimental Device (EAST), known as the "artificial sun", has made a new breakthrough and successfully achieved a repeatable 120 million The plasma operation of 101 seconds at 160 million degrees Celsius and 20 seconds at 160 million degrees Celsius created a new world record for the operation of the tokamak experimental device and took an important step towards the application of nuclear fusion energy.
7. Earth Simulator enabled
On June 23, 2021, the National Major Science and Technology Infrastructure "Earth System Numerical Simulation Device" was inaugurated in Huairou Science City, Beijing. This is the first large-scale scientific device for earth system simulation with independent intellectual property rights successfully developed in my country. The Earth System Simulation Device, also known as the Earth Simulation Laboratory, is a numerical simulation of the Earth system, that is, based on the observation data of the Earth system, using the laws describing the physical, chemical and life processes of the Earth system and their evolution on a supercomputer. Large-scale scientific computing. This allows scientists to reconstruct the earth's past, simulate the earth's present, and predict the earth's future.
8. "Ice Fiber" comes out
On July 9, 2021, the results published in the authoritative academic journal "Science" showed that the team of Professor Tong Limin from the School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering of Zhejiang University, in conjunction with researchers from the Interdisciplinary Mechanics Center of Zhejiang University and the University of California, Berkeley, worked in a -50°C environment. , high-quality ice single-crystal micro-nano fibers were prepared. It can bend flexibly and transmit light with low loss, similar in performance to glass fiber.
9. "Throw away" photosynthetic synthetic starch
On September 23, 2021, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced blockbuster results. Researchers from the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of the Academy have proposed a subversive starch preparation method, which does not rely on plant photosynthesis, and uses carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced by electrolysis as raw materials to successfully produce starch. It is the first time in the world that carbon dioxide to The de novo synthesis of starch makes it possible to transform starch production from a traditional agricultural planting model to an industrial workshop production model. Relevant research results were published online in the journal Science on September 24.
10. Prove the Keller Geometry Core Conjecture
At the beginning of November 2021, Professor Chen Xiuxiong, the founding director of the Center for Geometric Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, and his collaborator Cheng Jingrui achieved milestone results in the field of partial differential equations and complex geometry. They solved a fourth-order completely nonlinear elliptic equation and successfully proved the mandatory The sex conjecture and the geodesic stability conjecture, two core conjectures that have been unresolved in the international mathematics community for more than 60 years, have solved some well-known problems about the constant scalar curvature metric and the Calabi extremum metric on Keller manifolds. Two papers were published in the internationally renowned journal "Journal of the American Mathematical Society".
4. Create a -271°C world with liquid helium
On April 15th, the National Major Scientific Research Equipment Development Project "Development of Large-scale Low-Temperature Refrigeration System from Liquid Helium to Superfluid Helium Temperature Zone" undertaken by the Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences) passed the acceptance and achievement appraisal, and the project achievement appraisal The expert group believes that the overall technology of the project has reached the international advanced level. This indicates that China has the ability to develop large-scale cryogenic refrigeration equipment with liquid helium temperature (-269°C) kilowatt-level and superfluid helium temperature (-271°C) 100-watt-level.