Year in Review Life

Here are 8 remarkable scientific firsts of 2024

Digital reconstructions of blue, pink and purple cells make up a fruit fly brain, which is on a white background.

The first full map of fruit fly’s brain charted 139,255 nerve cells and their millions of connections.

Tyler Sloan for FlyWire, Princeton University, (Dorkenwald et al/Nature, 2024)

By Sophie Hartley

Each year, scientists break new ground in their quest to understand life and the mysteries of the cosmos. Here are eight milestones in 2024 that caught our attention.

Reading a fruit fly’s mind

The first complete map of a fruit fly’s brain details all 139,255 nerve cells and the 54.5