page_title: 2019 in science
section_title: May
hierarchical_section_title: 2019 in science / Events / May
caption_attribution_description: English: Passenger Pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, male, chromolithograph after painting.Français&#160;: Pigeon migrateur, Ectopistes migratorius, male, chromolithographie d'après peinture.
context_page_description: A number of significant scientific events occurred in 2019.
context_section_description: 1 May –  A study by U.S. researchers finds that deleting the ATDC gene can prevent the growth of pancreatic cancer in mice.
  2 May
  Astronomers, from the Hubble Space Telescope, release the Hubble Legacy Field Zoom Out (video; 00:50), a 16-year effort, which provides a zoom out view from the Ultra Deep Field of galaxies to the Legacy Field of galaxies.
  A study of nearly 1,000 gay male couples who took antiretroviral therapy, published in The Lancet, finds no cases of HIV transmission over eight years.
  3 May –  The UK's National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) and University of Leicester report the first generation of usable electricity from americium, which could lead to the development of "space batteries" that power missions for up to 400 years.
  6 May
  In its first report since 2005, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warns that biodiversity loss is "accelerating", with over a million species now threatened with extinction; the decline of the natural living world is "unprecedented" and largely a result of human actions.
  Researchers at Columbia University report a new desalination method for hypersaline brines, known as "temperature swing solvent extraction (TSSE)", which is low-cost and efficient.
  8 May –  A British teenager, Isabelle Holdaway, 17, is reported to be the first patient to receive a genetically modified phage therapy to treat a drug-resistant infection.
  11 May –  Atmospheric CO2, as measured by the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, reaches 415 parts per million (ppm), the highest level for 2.5 million years. During the late Pliocene, sea levels were up to 20 m higher, and the global climate was 3 °C hotter.
  14 May
  Computer security researchers at Graz University of Technology and Catholic University of Leuven, in a coordinated disclosure with Intel, announce the discovery of a group of Microarchitectural Data Sampling vulnerabilities, affecting millions of Intel microprocessors, which they named Fallout, RIDL (Rogue In-Flight Data Load) and ZombieLoad.
  Researchers at Microsoft reported the BlueKeep security vulnerability (CVE-2019-0708) (noted as "critical" by Microsoft) that may affect nearly one million computers using older versions (Windows 8 and Windows 10 are not affected) of the Windows operating systems with a "wormable"  Remote Desktop Services (RDS) Remote Code Execution (RCE) Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) vulnerability. Microsoft recommends installing available update patches as soon as possible, and also recommends turning off Remote Desktop Services if they are not required.
  Researchers at Macquarie University report that plastic pollution is harming the growth, photosynthesis and oxygen production of Prochlorococcus, the ocean's most abundant photosynthetic bacteria, responsible for 10% of oxygen breathed by humans.
  15 May
  Researchers, in a milestone effort, report the creation of a new synthetic (possibly artificial) form of viable life, a variant of the bacteria Escherichia coli, by reducing the natural number of 64 codons in the bacterial genome to 59 codons instead, in order to encode 20 amino acids.
  Researchers at University of Nebraska Medical Center describe the role of TGF-beta type II signaling receptor (TGFBR2) in osteoarthritis, which plays a key role in the progression of the disease by regulating joint development. They also identify a potential new drug that could treat it.
  16 May
  Astronomers report their first results about 486958 Arrokoth, the Kuiper Belt object in the outer Solar System that the New Horizons space probe flew by in January 2019.
  Researchers from the University of Leeds report that nearly a quarter of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is now unstable, with melting of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers now five times faster than 25 years previously.
  19 May
  Researchers at the University of Melbourne report an unusual slowdown in the growth of life expectancy in Australia, following 20 years of rapid increases.
  Physicists report that decay processes of quasiparticles in certain strongly interacting medium systems may be 
caption: 6 May: The IPBES warns that extinction of the natural living world is accelerating, largely a result of human activity –  passenger pigeons are now extinct.[162][163][164]
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