Every year, Science's reporters and editors choose nine runners-up and one Breakthrough of the Year.
But before we get to the Breakthrough, here are a few of the runners-up.
Fast radio bursts—short, powerful flashes of radio waves from distant galaxies— have tantalized astronomers for 13 years.
Now, cosmic detectives have figured out where they come from: magnetars, neutron stars that fizzle and pop with powerful magnetic fields.
In April, an FRB went off in the Milky Way.
Researchers quickly narrowed the source to a small area of sky, and using powerful telescopes, they quickly linked it to a single magnetar.
Stay tuned for a sequel, as researchers try to understand exactly how the magnetars produce these radio bursts.
Since the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR burst onto the scene in 2012, it's given researchers new power to engineer crops and animals, stirred ethical debates, and earned a Nobel prize.
Now, it's scored its first victory in a clinical trial.
It helped patients with two inherited blood diseases—beta-thalassemia, where low levels of an oxygen-carrying protein called hemoglobin lead to weakness and exhaustion, and sickle cell disease, caused by a defective form of the same protein.
