(American Association for the Advancement of Science) The journal Science and its publisher, AAAS, the nonprofit science society, have lauded an eye-opening HIV study, known as HPTN 052, as the most important scientific breakthrough of 2011. Additionally, Science has identified nine other groundbreaking scientific accomplishments from the past year and compiled them into a top 10 list.

(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Cryogenic testing is complete for the final six primary mirror segments and a secondary mirror that will fly on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The milestone represents the successful culmination of a process that took years and broke new ground in manufacturing and testing large mirrors.

(University of California – Riverside) Astronomers, including the University of California, Riverside’s Bahram Mobasher and his graduate student Hooshang Nayyeri, have discovered that one of the most distant galaxies known is churning out stars at a shockingly high rate. The researchers made the discovery using NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes. The blob-shaped galaxy, called GN-108036, is the brightest galaxy found to date at such great distances and is 12.9 billion light-years away.

(University of Rochester) New research from the University of Rochester concludes that the stars of Upper Scorpius are twice as old as previously thought.

(Arizona State University) “Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science,” ASU Foundation Professor and Director of the Origins Project Lawrence M. Krauss’ recent book about a legendary and sometimes very public modern physicist, has been chosen as the 2011 Book of the Year by Physics World magazine in the UK.

(Iowa State University) NASA’s Kepler Mission has helped astronomers discover two Earth-sized planets that survived their star’s red-giant expansion. The discovery is published in the Dec. 22 edition of the journal Nature.

(University of Montreal) University of Toulouse and University of Montreal researchers have detected two planets of sizes comparable to Earth orbiting around an old star that has just passed the red giant stage. This planetary system is located near Lyra and Cygnus constellations at a distance of 3900 light years. This discovery, to be published by in Nature on Dec. 22 2011, may shed new light on the destiny of stellar and planetary systems.

(University of Arizona) Two Earth-sized planets have been discovered around a dying star that has passed the red giant stage. The discovery, published in Nature, marks the first known case of planets surviving being engulfed by their parent star and may shed new light on the destiny of stellar and planetary systems, including our solar system.

(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite was providing forecasters with the rate in which rainfall was occurring in Tropical Storm Washi over the last week, and now TRMM data has been compiled to show rainfall totals over the devastated Philippines.

(Southwest Research Institute) The new and highly sensitive Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a strong ultraviolet-wavelength absorber on Pluto’s surface, providing new evidence that points to the possibility of complex hydrocarbon and/or nitrile molecules lying on the surface, according to a paper recently published in the Astronomical Journal by researchers from Southwest Research Institute and Nebraska Wesleyan University.