1992 in science

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The year 1992 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.

Anthropology

June – British anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposes Dunbar's number (approximately 150) as a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom an interpersonal relationship can be maintained in human communities.^[1]

January 5 – Asteroid 5751 Zao is discovered by Masahiro Koishikawa.
January 9 – First confirmed detection of exoplanets with announcement of the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 by radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail working in the United States.^[2]
August 30 – Discovery of 15760 Albion, the first trans-Neptunian object to be found after Pluto and Charon.
October 31 – Pope John Paul II issues an apology and lifts the 1633 edict of the Inquisition against Galileo Galilei.

May 21 – Saola first identified in the Vũ Quang rainforest reserve of northern Vietnam. This member of the bovini tribe is the first large mammal new to science anywhere in the world for more than fifty years and it will take another two decades before live specimens are recorded.^[3]
British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins delivers the 1992 Voltaire Lecture, "Viruses of the Mind", describing religion and the belief in god as a parasitic memetic virus that infects human minds^[4]

March 9 – ViolaWWW, the first popular Web browser, created by Pei-Yuan Wei in the United States, is publicly released for Unix.
September – The SOCKS Internet protocol is made public.^[5]

September 2 – The 1992 Nicaragua earthquake registering 7.7 M_w becomes the first tsunami earthquake to be captured on modern broadband seismic networks.

October – First Cochrane Centre opens (in the UK) and the first Cochrane Review Groups (Pregnancy & Childbirth and Subfertility) are registered.
October 29 – The Food and Drug Administration approves Depo Provera for use as a contraceptive in the United States.
Brugada syndrome first recognised.^[7]

November 23 – The IBM Simon, a touchscreen mobile phone and personal digital assistant considered the first smartphone, is introduced.
December 3 – The first text message is sent. The message reads "Merry Christmas".^[8]

^ Dunbar, R. I. M. (June 1992). "Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates". Journal of Human Evolution. 22 (6): 469–493. doi:10.1016/0047-2484(92)90081-J.
^ Wolszczan, A.; Frail, D. A. (1992). "A planetary system around the millisecond pulsar PSR1257+12". Nature. 355 (6356): 145–7. Bibcode:1992Natur.355..145W. doi:10.1038/355145a0. S2CID 4260368.
^ Dung, Vu Van; Giao, Pham Mong; Chinh, Nguyen Ngoc; Tuoc, Do; Arctander, Peter; MacKinnon, John (1993). "A new species of living bovid from Vietnam". Nature. 363 (6428): 443. Bibcode:1993Natur.363..443V. doi:10.1038/363443a0. S2CID 4243603.
^ Dawkins, Richard (1992). Viruses of the Mind. 1992 Voltaire Lecture. London: British Humanist Association. Republished in 1993 in the book, Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind.
^ Koblas, David (September 1992), "SOCKS", Proceedings of the Third USENIX UNIX Security Symposium, Baltimore, MD: USENIX Association
^ Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-84724-008-8.
^ Brugada, P.; Brugada, J. (November 1992). "Right bundle branch block, persistent ST segment elevation and sudden cardiac death: a distinct clinical and electrocardiographic syndrome. A multicenter report". Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 20 (6): 1391–6. doi:10.1016/0735-1097(92)90253-J. PMID 1309182.
^ "It's been 25 years since the first-ever text message and the kids are alright". ABC News. 2017-12-02.