Science & Technology
Physicists confirmed the Higgs boson and Curiosity reached Mars in a year that also brought the iPhone 5, Windows 8, record Arctic ice loss, and the SOPA/PIPA internet revolt.
Every Science & Technology article in the 2012 knowledge base. Use the topic filters to narrow by sub-topic.
YouTube and Streaming Video Adoption (2012)
YouTube reaches 1 billion monthly unique users; Netflix and Hulu drive mainstream adoption of sub...
Global Internet Adoption and the Digital Divide (2012)
UN reports 2.3 billion internet users globally; mobile broadband surpasses fixed-line subscriptio...
Windows 8 Release
Microsoft released Windows 8 on October 26, 2012, at 12:01 AM local time in each market. The offi...
Felix Baumgartner Red Bull Stratos (October 2012)
Red Bull Stratos was a high-altitude freefall project executed on October 14, 2012, by Austrian s...
Apple iPhone 5 Launch
Apple announced the iPhone 5 on September 12, 2012, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San...
2012 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum
On September 16, 2012, Arctic sea ice reached its lowest seasonal extent ever recorded by satelli...
2012 Global Health Developments and Disease Surveillance
September 2012 marked the emergence of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), while the year sa...
Voyager 1 Leaves the Heliosphere
Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause on August 25 to become humanity's first spacecraft in interstell...
Curiosity Rover Mars Landing
On **August 6, 2012**, NASA's Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars after an eight-month jo...
The 2012 India Blackouts (July 2012)
On 30 and 31 July 2012, cascading failures brought down northern India's power grid and then the ...
2012 London Olympics Technology & Broadcasting
The London 2012 Olympics (July 27–August 12) pioneered full-Games HD broadcast coverage, real-tim...
Higgs Boson Discovery
The existence of the Higgs boson was independently predicted in **1964** by six physicists workin...
Venus Transit of June 2012
On **5–6 June 2012** (beginning 22:09 UTC on 5 June, ending 04:49 UTC on 6 June), Venus passed di...
SpaceX Dragon Berths with the ISS — First Commercial Spac...
On 25 May 2012, SpaceX's uncrewed Dragon capsule — flown on the COTS Demo Flight 2 (Dragon C2+) m...
Instagram Facebook Acquisition 2012
On April 9, 2012, Facebook announced its acquisition of Instagram for approximately $1 billion—at...
The Raspberry Pi Launch (February 2012)
On 29 February 2012, the UK-based Raspberry Pi Foundation released the $35 Raspberry Pi Model B, ...
SOPA/PIPA 2012 internet activism and legislative defeat
In 2011–12, two complementary pieces of proposed US legislation were drafted to combat online cop...
Quantum Computing Advances 2012
In 2012, quantum computing crossed a threshold from academic curiosity into early industrial inve...
GoPro and the Action Camera Rise (2012)
2012 marked the breakthrough year for action cameras, with GoPro's Hero 3 establishing a mainstre...