Science racked up some big wins in 2012, not least the Higgs
boson, Mars Curiosity rover and successfully calling the non-
ending of the world due to ancient Maya inscriptions. We look at
a busy year. Archaeologists sure must be feeling grateful that
the Maya doomsday didn't arrive on Friday after all. Man,
wouldn't they have felt silly if the world had ended? I guess it
is just as well. Archaeologists aren't the only scientists with
reasons to be grateful as 2012 comes to a close. The year has
brought a bevy of advances, from a sterling success of a brand-
new Mars rover roaming the Red Planet to detection of something
that looks a lot like the long-awaited Higgs boson, better known
as the "God particle," at CERN's Swiss high-energy physics lab.
The Higgs boson, says Science magazine editor Robert Coontz, is
like "the keystone of the arch" in physics, in an interview his
magazine released to celebrate its top 10 list of science
discoveries this week. Science named the detection, announced on
July 4 at CERN, as