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<div class="rich-text">Take a look back with us at the biggest science stories of 2017—from mysteries in the Great Pyramid to a transcontinental solar eclipse.
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Take a look back with us at the biggest science stories of 2017.

NOVA’s Big Ideas of 2017

<div class="rich-text">Take a look back with us at the biggest science stories of 2017.</div>

Space & Flight

<div class="rich-text"><h3>
 NOVA’s Big Ideas of 2017
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 Published January 3, 2018



 Onscreen
 
 : NOVA’s Big Ideas of 2017. 1: Goodbye, Cassini. The spacecraft that lapped Saturn and its moons came to a stunning end.



 Julie Webster
 
 : Truly perfect, it did everything we asked it to do.



 Onscreen
 
 : It sampled Saturn’s atmosphere until its final moment, vaporizing in a shower of light. 2: Hello, Hackers. The Internet was increasingly under siege from misinformation, bots, cyber-attacks like the Equifax data breach, and WannaCry ransomware, which the US now says was carried out by North Korea.



 Vincenzo Iozzo
 
 : Once one person clicked on the ransomware, then everyone else in your internal network would automatically be compromised.



 Onscreen
 
 : 3: Particle physics meets the Pyramid. Physicists and archeologists used subatomic particles called muons like a cosmic X-ray to reveal a giant void inside Egypt’s Great Pyramid.



 Mehdi Tayoubi
 
 : We felt very, very excited because no one was expecting such a massive thing inside the pyramid, which was not in any kind of theory.



 Onscreen
 
 : 4: Cosmic Song &amp; Dance. For the first time, scientists both saw and “heard” two neutron stars colliding when the explosion’s light and gravitational waves reached Earth.



 Ryan Chornock
 
 : This is the birth of what we call multi-messenger astrophysics.



 Onscreen
 
 : 5: DNA as a Drug. The FDA approved 3 gene therapies for treating blindness and some blood cancers, renewing hopes that we can use the code of life to treat some diseases.



 David A. Williams
 
 : The future of genetic therapies is actually here.



 Onscreen
 
 : 6: Wind, Rain and Fire. Natural disasters pummeled communities from California to the Caribbean. Wildfires scorched the west coast and the Atlantic produced one of the strongest hurricane seasons on record.



 Gavin Dillingham
 
 : We have about half a dozen family friends that have had to evacuate. These are two-story houses that they’ve just kind of walked out of.



 Onscreen
 
 : 7: Earth, Moon, and Sun.  On August 21, from Oregon to South Carolina, the moon’s shadow plunged a 70-mile-wide ribbon of the U.S. into darkness.



 Wendy
 
 : I think time will stop.  It will be extraordinary — that’s what I imagine it to be.



 Onscreen
 
 : An estimated 154 million Americans witnessed the eclipse directly.



 Tina
 
 : I got goosebumps all over when the total eclipse started.



 Christopher
 
 : Like getting presents on the first day of Christmas.



 Sandra
 
 : I started crying, and then I grabbed my friend’s hand, which I’ve never done before.  And I just clung because it was so beautiful.  What’s out there, and what’s here, and what has been, and what’s coming—it’s this crystallization of a moment.  Beyond touched—deeply, deeply moved.



 Wally
 
 : I’m 83 years old, and I’ll probably never see another one.  This’ll be the last eclipse that I’ll get a chance to see.
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United States

Northern Mariana Islands

Puerto Rico

American Samoa

Guam

U.S. Virgin Islands

U.S. Minor Outlying Islands

US & Territories

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The top half of Jupiter in blue and green against a night sky

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Four bright orange loops brand off of a dark blue blob

A transmission electron micrograph of HIV-1 virus particles (orange) replicating from the plasma membrane of an infected H9 T cell. Credit: NIAID, Flickr

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