The biggest scientific discoveries in all 50 states

The Saturn V rocket that sent the first Americans to the moon in 1969 was primarily designed and built at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The rocket was used to ferry astronauts on all 13 Apollo missions between 1967 and 1973.

A new T Rex subspecies was discovered in 2014 on the Pine Creek Formation by paleontologists Anthony Fiorillo and Ronald Tykoski of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. They named it Nanuqsaurus hoglundi.

In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, a young astronomer at Flagstaff's Lowell Observatory discovered Pluto, which was our solar system's ninth planet before it was demoted to a "dwarf planet." And in 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto for the first time, snapping this stunning image.

The "Uncle Sam Diamond" is the largest diamond ever discovered in North America, and it was found in Crater of Diamonds State Park in 1924. According to legend, the 12.42-carat gem was named after W.O. Basham, who went by the nickname "Uncle Sam."

In the 1920s, while working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe consists of more than just our galaxy and that the universe is expanding, which provided the basis for the Big Bang Theory. The Hubble Telescope, which was named after him, took this beautiful image of the Eagle Nebula in 1995.

In 2009, two teenagers — Jake Carstensen and Tyler Kellett — discovered the fossilized mandible and tusk of a rare mastodon. The mastodon, which is a distant relative of the elephant, could be 50,000 to 150,000 years old.

The mathematical physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs discovered chemical potential (the energy that fuels chemical reactions) during his tenure at Yale University. He also introduced the concept of free energy, the tendency of a physical or chemical system to lower its energy and increase its disorder. Einstein called him "the greatest mind in American history," and his contributions are regarded as building blocks of the fields of thermodynamics and vector analysis.

The American chemical company DuPont was founded in July 1802 as a gunpowder mill in Wilmington, Delaware. In the 20th century, DuPont developed many polymers such as neoprene (the rubber used in wetsuits), nylon (a material found in everything from clothing to car parts), and Teflon (the coating on nonstick pans like this one).

In 1889, Albertus Vogt discovered phosphate in Dunnellon, Florida, while he was digging a well. Phosphate was mainly used as a fertilizer, so once discovered, prospectors flocked to the area.

Crawford Long used ether as an anesthetic for the first time on March 30, 1842 to remove a tumor from the neck of a patient in Jefferson, Georgia. Long subsequently removed a second tumor from the patient and used ether as an anesthetic in amputations and childbirth. It was later used in dental surgery, as depicted in this painting by Ernest Board.

Three scientists won a Nobel Prize in 2011 for the discovery that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate. The discovery relied in large part on spectroscopy using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii from 1995 to 1997. The Keck telescopes have also been instrumental in the discovery of exoplanets, and confirming the existence of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Philo T. Farnsworth first invented what's considered the direct ancestor to the modern television. He first had the idea for a vacuum tube for the first all-electric television in his high school chemistry class in Rigby, Idaho, and he later debuted it in a demonstration in San Francisco in 1927.

Physicist Albert A. Michelson conducted highly precise optical experiments to measure the speed of light at the University of Chicago, providing support for Einstein’s theory of relativity. Michelson became the first scientist from the United States to win the Nobel Prize in 1907.

Robert F. Borkenstein, a member of the Indiana State Police, invented the breathalyzer. The device measures alcohol levels in the blood, which makes it easier to enforce drunk driving laws. Before it was invented, police officers had to rely on vague symptoms, such as a flushed face, slurred speech, and bloodshot eyes.

Dan Shechtman, an Iowa State professor of materials science and engineering, won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his 1982 discovery of quasicrystals — structures that are ordered, but never repeat themselves. These materials were considered impossible, and forced scientists to change the way they saw matter.

In May 1903, residents of Dexter, Kansas stumbled across a geyser of gas that didn't burn. The gas was later found to contain a small percentage of helium, a colorless, inert gas that was considered rare on Earth but plentiful on the Sun. The gas, which was unexpectedly found to be plentiful in the American Great Plains, is now used in everything from hot air balloons to coolant for scientific equipment.

Nathan Stubblefield was one of the first people to discover the power of wireless. The inventor, who lived his life in Kentucky, developed a wireless phone at the turn of the 20th century that used magnetic induction.

In 1850, while he was a professor of chemistry at the University of Louisiana (known today as Tulane University), J. Lawrence Smith invented the inverted microscope. Inverted microscopes let in light from the top, which makes it easier to check out living cells.

The first transatlantic television signal, called Telstar, was launched by NASA on July 10, 1962, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was the first privately sponsored space-faring mission.

Two days later, it relayed the world's first transatlantic television signal all the way from Maine, to Brittany, France. The picture was of an American flag.

Nobel Prize winner of medicine and Johns Hopkins professor Carol Greider discovered that the ends of chromosomes, or telomeres, are repeating blocks of DNA that are found in all organisms. Telomeres are a key part of chromosomes because they keep chromosomes from being recognized as damaged, which in turn keeps the chromosomes stable.

Although Massachusetts has seen more than its fair share of major scientific discoveries, none would revolutionize the way the world connects more than the way the invention of the telephone did. On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell documented the first successful experiment using the telephone in Boston and later received the first patent for the phone.

Using the Hubble telescope, University of Michigan researchers discovered massive dark objects — most likely supermassive black holes — in the Andromeda galaxy, which is the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way. The observation has been followed by the detection of more than 40 black holes.

The first bone marrow transplant in the United States was done at the University of Minnesota in 1968 on a patient with severe combined immunodeficiency, more commonly known as "bubble boy disease" because it puts patients at such severe risk for infection. Bone marrow transplants are now frequently used to treat certain kinds of cancers, particularly those of the blood, as well as conditions that affect bone marrow cells, such as sickle cell anemia.

In 1963, Dr. James D. Hardy performed the world’s first human lung transplant at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Only one year later, in 1964, Hardy also performed the world’s first heart transplant surgery, using a chimpanzee's heart, which paved the way for human-to-human heart transplantation.

The largest prime number (numbers that are only divisible by themselves) was discovered in Missouri. The number, which was discovered in January 2016, is 22 million digits long, a full 5 million digits more than the last discovered prime number.

In 1902, Barnum Brown found the first ever Tyrannosaurus rex. Brown found the partial skeleton in Montana's Hell Creek Formation. A few years later, he discovered an even more complete version, which would become the basis for recreations of the dinosaur, like the one pictured.

Nebraska is full of archaeological sites. One in particular is home to two prehistoric cats, called Nimravids, that were found locked in battle by paleontologist Loren Eiseley. Pictured here in an artist's rendering, the cats were considered "false sabertooths" and were common in North America.

Nevada is home to a complete skeleton of an ichthyosaur – an extinct marine reptile from the Mesozoic era about 65 million to 248 million years ago. You can check it out at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park.

America's first mechanical alarm clock was invented in New Hampshire by Levi Hutchens in 1787. The clock was a pine box with mechanical gears that, when wound up, hit a bell at a precise time.

W. Jason Morgan, a professor of geoscience at Princeton University, redefined the way we look at plate tectonics, or the theory that the Earth's surface is made out of plates that shift around. In 2002, Morgan was awarded The President's National Medal of Science for his work, which "revolutionized our understanding of the geological forces that control the earth’s crust and deep interior and consequently influence the evolution of the earth’s life and climate."

The first atomic bomb went off as a test in Los Alamos, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The successful test would propel the world into the nuclear age, and the atomic bomb would then go on to end World War II with the detonation of two atomic bombs in Japan.

In 1910, Columbia University researcher Thomas Hunt Morgan confirmed the chromosomal theory of inheritance, which links specific traits to chromosomes. One of his students was the first to make a genetic map from the research, which revolutionized the study of genetics. Morgan earned the Nobel Prize for his work in 1933.

The first flight took off from the Outer Banks of North Carolina on December 17, 1903, lasting a whole 12 seconds. Orville and Wilbur Wright had been working on building a flight concept since 1899. By the end of the day, the plane went a total of 852 feet in almost a minute of air time.

The Anzu wylieli, nicknamed the 'Chicken from Hell,' was one of the largest feathered dinosaurs found in North America. They were found in both North and South Dakota, and they likely would have lived in the swampy coast of an inland sea, based on the rocks found nearby the fossils.

Akron, Ohio is known as the rubber capital of the world because synthetic rubber was invented here. Charles Goodyear then used that synthetic rubber to make car tires starting in the 1940s. The invention shifted pressure off from the natural rubber industry, which at that point in time was facing shortages.

In 1934, pilot Wiley Post and engineer R.S. Colley teamed up to invent a pressurized suit designed for high altitude flight. The suit allowed Post (pictured here) to explore up to 49,000 feet. The invention led to further high-altitude flight exploration, and was the precursor to the pressure suits worn by astronauts in outer space.

Cave explorers stumbled upon a new family of spiders in the Pacific Northwest. The Trogloraptor marchingtoni comes equipped with hooks that could be used to catch insects out of the air.

Salk invented the polio vaccine while working at the University of Pittsburgh. The vaccine is now used worldwide, and the World Health Organization thinks the disease can be eradicated by April 2017. The number of cases is down from 22,000 cases in 1952 in the US alone to just 96 cases worldwide in 2015.

Interestingly, Salk never patented the vaccine in the hopes that it could gain widespread use.

Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island is home to many discoveries, but by far one of the coolest in recent history was the discovery of glass in impact craters on the surface of Mars in 2015. Scientists think the glass was formed through the immense heat of something slamming into the red planet. But, more interestingly, the researchers discovered that signs of life could be preserved in that glass.

Neutrinos, one of the most common particles in the universe that are almost impossible to detect, were first picked up at Savannah River Plant in South Carolina in 1956. These particles have almost no mass and travel almost at the speed of light, which is why they are sometimes nicknamed "ghost particles." These particles might hold the answer to why the universe contains matter.

South Dakota is a state filled with major pre-historic findings. It is home to the most-complete T. Rex skeleton ever uncovered, and more recently in 2015, scientists found a new raptor that they named after the state: Dakotaraptor steini. The raptor, which would have roamed South Dakota about 66 million years ago, is one of the largest that's ever been found.

Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory discovered Promethium in 1945. The element, number 61 on the periodic table, was the final piece completing the table at the time. Over the past 70 years, the lab has been home to a number of scientific advances in nuclear energy and supercomputing.

NASA's Johnson Center has seen its fair share of achievements as the mission control center and lead on a number of space programs, including the Gemini and Apollo missions. It's where Neil Armstrong radioed back, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed," confirming a lunar landing on July 20, 1969.

Utah is home to major pre-historic findings. One of those led to the discovery of an unusually big-nosed, horned dinosaur called Nasutoceratops titusi. The plant-eater was a relative of the triceratops, and likely roamed around the area that's now southern Utah about 66 million years ago.

In the early 1900s, Wilson "Snowflake" Bently became one of the first photographers to catch images of snowflakes before they melted away. Using microscopes and a type of macrophotography camera, he was able to capture some sharply focused images of flakes that were so good, nobody bothered to take any other close-ups of snowflakes for another 100 years.

University of Virginia researcher Antoine Louveau was the first to find that the lymphatic system (the part of the circulatory system that carries immune cells around and empties the body of toxins) is actually connected to the brain. That flew in the face of the idea that the brain was the only organ not connected to the lymphatic system. This finding could change the way we approach diseases like Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis.

In 1974, Dr. Henry Heimlich documented a maneuver to clear up the airways of a choking person. About a week after he published his findings, the Heimlich maneuver was first used on a patient at a restaurant in Washington state.

The first steamboat launched in the Potomac River on December 3, 1787, thanks to the machinery of James Rumsey. It was the first time a steam-engine propelled the ship down the river. Over the next century, steam boats would be heavily used to ferry people and cargo along rivers.

In 1998, a lab at the University of Wisconsin, led by James Thomson, isolated and grew stem cells derived from human embryos for the first time, setting off one of the biggest ethical discussions of modern science. In 2007, the same lab then developed a technique to turn regular human cells into stem cells without ever using a human embryo.

Wyoming's Como Bluff has been the site of many dinosaur discoveries, including plant-eaters like Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, and Apatosaurus. The fossils were at one point so plentiful that they were used as a roadside attraction to build a "Fossil Cabin," dubbed the "World's Oldest Building" thanks to its pre-historic exterior of more than 5,000 bones.