The 2000s: the human genome and the smartphone

In April 2003, the Human Genome Project announced it had sequenced nearly all of the roughly three billion letters of human DNA. The map is now used to understand diseases and develop treatments.

The internet became social. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005 and Twitter in 2006. On 9 January 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, and in 2008 Google's Android followed. Within a decade, smartphones became the main way most people used the internet.

In 2005, King Abdullah began his reign. The same year, Saudi Arabia joined the World Trade Organization. In 2009, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KAUST, opened on the Red Sea coast as a graduate research university. The King Abdullah Scholarship Program sent tens of thousands of Saudi students to study abroad.

On 26 December 2004, an earthquake off Indonesia caused an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in 14 countries, leading to new warning systems.

In 2008, the collapse of the US housing market and the failure of major banks, including Lehman Brothers, caused a global financial crisis and recession. In September 2008, the Large Hadron Collider began operating at CERN.