CNN is wrapping up 2010 by taking a look at the most obvious scientific discoveries of the past year. You know the sort: research-based “findings” that are emailed your way by certain relatives, along with a .gif of Mickey Mouse giving a thumbs up… or that are used as time-fillers by news networks and blogs on particularly slow news days.

Over the course of 2010, we covered an array of politicians, authors, entertainers, media mavens, and others as they discussed their crafts and their industries. We enjoyed most of the panels, lectures, and debates we took in, while some of them fell short. Here, a rundown of our 5 favorites, followed by the 10 quotes that defined the year in New York City media panels:

Now that the wave of 2009/end of the decade retrospectives are over, it’s time for predictions for the year to come. Wired co-founding editor and current Federated Media CEO John Battelle has a particularly thought-provoking set. Among the most intriguing: that in 2010, web search won’t quite die off, but it will deteriorate such that people “question search’s validity as a service.”

2010 will be the year when we begin to consume media in a whole new way. The so-called iTablet may revolutionize how we experience magazines, and Boxee stands to do the same for web-to-TV convergence. You know how the iPod changed how we consumed and paid for music? Right. Like that.

Woo! Happy New Year — and Happy New Decade! Even if you’re not in New York — or in the same time zone, for that matter — it’s a tradition to watch the ball drop live in Times Square, especially if you’re somewhere warm and the weather there is crap, as it was tonight. No matter. It’s a sacred tradition and one that, for the few minutes or so before Midnight EST, is shared by millions of peopel around the world, who all count down in unison as the ball drops and we ring in another New Year. It’s nice. Watch it here.

What do we call this next decade? We’ve got to think ahead on this — because so far, there’s been no consensus. The example set by the media in the next few days will be a critical one. Whether it’s Ryan Seacrest and Dick Clark on “Rockin’ New Year’s Eve” or Anderson Cooper on CNN, anybody who’s on the air this week will have to figure out how to react to the number 2010.

I say, let’s call it “Twenty-Ten.”

When looking ahead at the next year, pundits turn into prognosticators. Bloggers covering all sorts of topics and industries are now giving their predictions for what’s to come in 2010. Conventional wisdom says to go the conservative route with these choices in order to avoid looking foolish when none of your projections pan out. At the same time, there’s a key difference between picking things that are realistically possible and those that are already on the road to happening. I’ve assembled my favorite predictions covering a variety of fields and what’s supposedly in store for the near future:

Season’s greetings? Speaking on This Week With George Stephanopoulos this weekend, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned that there is still a “reasonably high chance” of a sharp economic contraction in 2010. As optimistic as the financial markets have been, Krugman said that he doesn’t see “where it’s supposed to come from,” and is especially worried about the second half of the year. Video after the jump:

As the decade’s close drew nearer it seemed prudent to actually call it something, and the Oh-Ohs, Double-Os and Two-Thousands frankly sound dumb. “The Aughts” is nice, clean, short, simple and definitive, and also sounds vaguely British which means it’s classy. That is why, here at Mediaite, our end-of-decade retrospective series is called…The Aughts. This new decade has snuck up on us, but we’re not letting the old one go just yet.