Question

Can you provide a list of the most important discoveries/breakthroughs in physics recently? By recent, I mean the past decade or so. All branches of physics are welcome.

Basically, I am interested in major physics breakthroughs/discoveries which haven't become well-known yet outside their narrow specialties. Most breakthroughs in the 90s like string dualities and the accelerating universe have already become common knowledge.

Answer 1

Iron-based high-Tc superconductors

The cuprate high-Tc superconductors completely revolutionised the field of superconductivity in the late 80's but proved very difficult to understand and over 20 years later the problem still stands. A new class of high-Tc materials, the iron-pnictides, were discovered in 2008 which have provided a whole new set of system to study.

Iron-pnictides are generally much simpler in structure than the cuprates meaning the crystal growers can generally make larger, better crystals and the theorists have an easier time of it as well.