Advances in biology and cosmology have dominated the science year

Growing a “brain in a dish”, the prospect of creating designer babies, and the possibility of detecting the first signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence – these are just some of the most important scientific news stories of 2015, according to some of the world’s leading scholars celebrating the year’s achievements.

The question posed to the top thinkers was this: what do you consider the most interesting recent scientific news and what makes it important? Back came a smorgasbord of essay-length answers from more than 100 contributors to Edge.org [5], the online salon for scientists, philosophers and followers of the “third culture” merging science and the humanities. ...

Read highlighted contributions from: Mark Pagel [6], George Church [7], Simon Baron-Cohen [8], Alison Gopnik [9], Mario Livio [10], Martin Rees [11].