The memristor was first hypothesized in 1971 by Leon Chu, who was then an electrical engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
This confirmed the existence of the quarks that were first hypothesized (independently) in 1964 by Murray Gell-Mann at the California Institute of Technology and by George Zweig.
The oldest and smallest can be as cool as about 300 K. Brown dwarfs were first hypothesized in 1963 by American astronomer Shiv Kumar, who called them "black" dwarfs.
A kind of cosmic repulsive force was first hypothesized by Albert Einstein in 1917 and was represented by a term, the "cosmological constant," that Einstein reluctantly introduced into his theory of general relativity in order to counteract the attractive force of gravity and account for a universe that was assumed to be static (neither expanding nor contracting).
The importance of epigenetic factors in gene regulation was first hypothesized decades ago when biologists posited that methylation of DNA could heritably alter gene expression [Holliday and Pugh, 1975. Science187(4173), 226 232; Riggs, 1975. Cytogenet. and Cell Genet.14(1), 9 25; Scarano et al., 1967. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA57 5), 1394 1400)].
The faint radio emission of the resulting hydrogen "bridge," the red material stretching from Andromeda in the direction of Triangulum, was first hypothesized based on observations from a Dutch radio telescope in 2004 and has now been mapped in detail by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.
Dark matter was first hypothesized in 1933 by Fritz Zwicky, a Swiss astronomer working at Caltech.
In fact, the existence of Jupiter's rings was first hypothesized on the basis of data from the Pioneer 11 spacecraft, which detected a sharp drop in the number of high-energy ions close to the planet.
Vertical depth migrations into shallower waters at night by the chambered cephalopod Nautilus were first hypothesized early in the early 20th Century.
The waggle dances of honeybees communicate the information of direction and distance from the hive to a new food source was first hypothesized by von Frisch [1].
