2016's best bits: breakthroughs in science

From the discovery of gravitational waves to a promising male contraceptive, it was a groundbreaking year for science

It came from beyond the Large Magellanic Cloud. The signal, a mere 20 milliseconds long, captured the moment when two black holes slammed together - a cataclysm that sent ripples through spacetime and onwards to Earth, where they made instruments chirp and scientists cheer. "We have detected gravitational waves," said David Reitze of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo). "We did it."

The announcement ranked as the physics discovery of the year, confirming Einstein's century-old theory of gravity and putting the Ligo team on course for a Nobel. But the real excitement is yet to come. For the first quarter of a million years, the cosmos was hidden from astronomers. Now scientists can build gravitational wave observatories and, with them, look back to the birth of the universe. We can study the moment of creation.