Our take on this year’s big science newsmakers
Readers often tell us that they prize the magazine for keeping them up to speed on science in the broadest sense. We work hard to meet that expectation, with reporters reading scientific journals, traveling to scope out presentations and poster sessions at key research meetings, and talking with many, many scientists to find out what’s new and what’s next. In the daily swirl of news, it’s easy to lose sight of what we build in a year — a body of work including almost 1,000 original articles, plus columns, reviews, data visualizations, original photography and illustrations, all created to explain the scientific enterprise and provide context on its impact. So it’s a pleasure to be able to pause, look back and consider the signal achievements and events of 2019 for this special issue. This time around, we quickly agreed that the Event Horizon Telescope team’s first-ever image of a black hole was the most significant...