Can You Get 20/20 On The Big Science Quiz Of 2017?

The 2017 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne for work that led to the discovery of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. All three are members of the LIGO-Virgo collaboration, a team of over a thousand scientists who in February last year announced they had seen gravitational waves for the first time.

Somebody must have liked Haumea because earlier this year scientists announced that there was a ring around the potato-shaped dwarf planet.

In October this year, physicists announced they'd seen gravitational waves and a blast of light from colliding neutron stars for the first time. It confirms a long-suspected theory about where elements heavier than iron come from. Dr Kate Maguire, an astrophysicist at Queen's University Belfast, told journalists at a briefing: "Heavier elements, such as gold and platinum, are definitively formed in a neutron star merger. We can now say that conclusively."

The Cassini-Huygens mission came to an end when Cassini threw itself towards Saturn to avoid contaminating any of the planet's potentially habitable moons with earthly microbes. In its lifetime Cassini produced some breathtaking images of Saturn.

TRAPPIST-1 is an ultra-cool dwarf star 39.5 light years away from Earth. In February, scientists published a paper in the journal Nature announcing that they'd found seven planets "with sizes and masses similar to those of Earth" orbiting the star, and everyone got very excited.

Of that, most – over 6,300 million tonnes – has ended up in landfill or the natural environment.

Scientists first noticed a growing crack in Antarctica’s fourth-largest ice shelf in 2011, and it finally broke off in July.

It was confirmed in August this year. A weather event called El Niño ended in early 2016, so 2017 is expected to be slightly cooler. However, climate scientists firmly expect the trend towards warmer temperatures to continue.

Around 450,000 years ago a vast flood separated Kent from northern France. This year scientists found huge holes at the bottom of the Dover Strait that they think were carved by a waterfall.

There's a lot more moving water on Antarctica than scientists previously thought.

Research published this year, using data from 65 previous studies, and came up with an estimate that there were 25 million tons of spiders in the world, and that together they eat rather a lot. Most of the spiders live in forests and grasslands.

In research published this September scientists revealed that pumpkin toadlets appear to have lost the ability to hear their own mating calls, but not (yet) lost the ability to make the calls themselves.

Also known as upside-down jellyfish. They may not have brains, but according to a study of 23 individuals published this month, these jellyfish do go dormant for a period at night, and when deprived of this sleep-like state, they struggle – just like sleep-deprived humans do.

Humpback whale calves talk really quietly to their mums so other nearby whales (and predators) can't hear them, according to research published in April this year.

A study out in the journal Science in July found that ravens have the ability to plan ahead and exert self-control by forgoing an immediate reward in favour of a bigger reward later on.

A meta-analysis published in July this year concludes that the concentration of sperm in the ejaculate of men in Western countries has fallen by over 50% between 1973 and 2011. The reason for the drop is not clear.

In a report published in July, the World Health Organisation warned that the infection is becoming resistant to the main treatment we currently have for it – two antibiotics taken at the same time: azithromycin pills, along with a shot of ceftriaxone.

An international stem cell research team announced in January the creation of the first human–pig embryos. Human-animal chimeras have been created before, but these experiments were unique because they put human stem cells – which can grow to become any of the different types of cells in the human body – into animal embryos at their earliest stages of life.

Turns out Jurassic Park was wrong. Researchers at the University of Manchester created a detailed anatomical computer model of the 7-ton dinosaur to calculate the load on its skeleton at various speeds and gaits. They found that its skeleton was perfectly capable of moving in a run – defined as having both feet off the ground at the same time – but if it had ever actually done so, its bones would have shattered.

CRISPR-Cas9 is a new and much-heralded technique, using a chemical process borrowed from bacteria, that allows scientists to remove specific lengths of DNA from cells. In September this year, a team of scientists announced they had edited the genes of human embryos for the first time in Britain using the technique, to help understand the role of genes in early human development.