Einstein and artificial intelligence have shaped science in 100 years
Artificial Intelligence at the Next Wave: The Rise of GPT, Gemini, AlphaFold, and AlphaMaPloFold
The rise of ChatGPT had a profound effect on science this year. The next generation of the artificial intelligence model that underpins the chatbot will be released late next year. GPT-5 is likely to have more advanced capabilities than GPT-4. Scientists are also watching the rollout of Gemini, Google’s GPT-4 competitor. The large language model can process several types of input, including text, computer code, images, audio and video.
A new version of Google DeepMind’s AI tool AlphaFold, which researchers have used to predict the 3D shapes of proteins with high accuracy, is also due to be released next year. New possibilities for drug design and discovery may be opened by the artificial intelligence that can modelling interactions between various particles with precision.
There are big questions on the regulatory front. The United Nations High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence will share its final report in mid-2024, laying down guidelines for the international regulation of AI.
The World Mosquito Program, World Health Organization, and the VeraC. Rubin Observatory: Science events to watch for in 2024
The VeraC. Rubin Observatory is planning to begin operating some instruments at the end of the 21st century, a decade before it will begin its 10-year survey of the Southern Hemisphere sky. With the observatory’s 8.4-meter telescope and giant 3,200-megapixel camera, scientists are hoping to discover many new transient phenomena and near-Earth asteroids.
Astronomers continue to worry that new ground-based telescope data could be rendered unusable because of an increasing number of bright satellite constellations polluting the night sky with light.
The World Mosquito Program will start producing disease-fighting mosquitoes at a factory in Brazil next year. The mosquitos are infected by a bacterial strain that prevents them from transmitting pathogenic viruses, and could protect up to 70 million people from diseases such as dengue and zika. The non-profit organization will produce up to five billion bacteria-infected mosquitoes per year over the next decade.
The US government will be funding trials of two next- generation vaccines that aim to prevent Infections byGenerating immunity in airway tissues as the world moves past the emergency phase. The third vaccine is promising to provide long- lasting immunity against a wide range of variants of the common cold.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization is due to unveil final draft of its pandemic treaty during the 77th World Health Assembly in May. The accord seeks to better equip governments worldwide to prevent and manage future pandemics. The 194 WHO member states will decide on the terms of the accord, including whether any of its provisions will be legally binding. At the centre of negotiations is ensuring equitable access to the tools, including vaccines, data and expertise, that are needed to prevent pandemics.
Source: The science events to watch for in 2024
The science events to watch for in 2024: Detection of the neutrino mass using a super-strong magnetic field on the Moon
NASA is launching a lunar mission for the first time since the 1970s. Artemis II could launch as soon as next November, and will carry four astronauts — three men and one woman — aboard the Orion spacecraft for a ten-day flyby around the Moon. Artemis II will lay the groundwork for the subsequent Artemis III mission, which will land the first woman and next man on the Moon. China is also preparing to launch its Chang’e-6 lunar sample-return mission in 2024. If successful, the mission will be the first to collect samples from the far side of the Moon.
Next October, NASA will send the Clipper craft to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa in the outer Solar System. The goal was to determine whether the ocean on the moon could harbour life. Japan is planning to go to Mars’s moons, Phobos and Deimos. It will land on Phobos to collect samples for return to Earth in 2029.
Results of an experiment to detect dark-matter particles known as axions will see light in 2024. Axions are thought to be emitted by the Sun and converted into light, but the tiny particles have not yet been observed experimentally because they require sensitive detection tools and an extremely strong magnetic field. The experiment BabyIAXO at the German Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg is using a solar telescope made of a 10-metre-long magnet and ultra-sensitive noise-free X-ray detectors to track the centre of the Sun for 12 hours per day, to capture the conversion of axions into photons.
The mass of the neutrino is one of the most well known particles in the standard model of particle physics. Results of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment in 2022 showed that neutrinos had a maximum mass of 0.8 electron volts. Researchers will finish collecting data in 2024 and are expected to make a definite measurement of the tiny particles.
Source: The science events to watch for in 2024
The 2024 Brain Symposium: Brain Brain and Neural Intelligence and the 2024 UN/Climate Correspondence Working Group (SECOND 2018)
Next year could bring new insights into the neural basis of consciousness. A large project that is testing two theories of consciousness through a series of adversarial experiments is expected to release the results of its second experiment by the end of 2024. In the first round, both theories failed to completely align with observed brain-imaging data, settling a 25-year bet in favour of philosophy over neuroscience. The second round could help neuroscience understand the subjective experience.
In the second half of 2024, the International Court of Justice in the Hague could give an opinion on nations’ legal obligations to combat climate change, and rule on legal consequences for those deemed to be damaging the climate. The court can push countries to strengthen their climate goals, despite the ruling not being legally binding.
The UN plastics treaty will wrap up next year in the hopes of creating a binding international agreement to eliminate plastic pollution. More than 7 billion tonnes of waste has been produced by the world since the 1950s, of which more than ten billion are plastic, which is harmful to the environment. Many researchers believe that the UN negotiations are not progressing quickly enough and will not accomplish the intended goals.
Researchers will switch on Jupiter early next year. The gigantic machine can perform one quintillion (a billion billion) computations each second. Researchers will use the machine to create ‘digital twin’ models of the human heart and brain for medical purposes, and to run high-resolution simulations of Earth’s climate.
Two exascale machines will be installed by researchers in the United States. El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is located in Lemont, Illinois. Scientists will use Aurora to create maps of the brain’s neural circuits, and El Capitan to simulate the effects of nuclear-weapon explosions.
From Einstein to AI: how 100 years have shaped science? A review of recent advances in plastics, vaccines and artificial fertilizers
Baekeland’s life-changing plastics are now the subject of talks to limit their pollution. The process for producing ammonia is controlled by at least two international conventions. The first plans to reduce the risk of greenhouse-gas emissions from production of this chemical. The invention that Haber helped to create was used to destroy the chemical weapons in the First World War.
Society has changed in other ways as well. The past century has taught researchers a lot about the risks of innovations such as plastics and artificial fertilizers. The aim of the United Nations is to limit the harms of scientific and technological innovations.
50 years after its prediction, physicists discovered the “God particle” that is the named after it. And in 2015, gravitational waves were first detected directly11, almost 100 years to the day after general relativity provided a theoretical basis for their existence.
It is hard to argue that some discoveries of the first twenty years of the 21st century haven’t provided new directions for science. In 2001 scientists produced the first draft of the whole human genome with help from international partnerships and in 2012 they found a way to edit genes efficiently. Researchers were able to quickly develop a vaccine for the COVID 19 Pandemic.
Earlier this year, Nature published a paper that concluded that science is getting less disruptive1. Looking back a century might seem to support that idea. The twentieth century began with a revolution in physics. In 1900, Max Planck laid the foundation for quantum theory. This was followed by Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis: in 1905, he published four groundbreaking papers on the photoelectric effect2, Brownian motion3, the special theory of relativity4 and the mass–energy relationship5 described by his famous formula, E = mc2. Subsequent decades saw the establishment of the general theory of relativity and that of the field of quantum mechanics.
Source: From Einstein to AI: how 100 years have shaped science
Haber, Bosch, Baekeland, Hunt Morgan, Marie Curie, Darwin, and Australopithecus africanus
And in 1909, German chemist Fritz Haber discovered a method for producing ammonia, which he and fellow chemist Carl Bosch commercialized at the German chemical company BASF in 1913. Their process of manufacturing ammonia by fixing nitrogen from the air has become the basis of the fertilizers that are crucial to food security today.
People would be shaped in more practical ways by other scientific discoveries. In 1907, Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland commercialized an invention that he called bakelite — the forerunner of today’s plastics. The material had long, unbreakable chains of the same molecule. It didn’t conduct electricity, was mouldable, heat resistant and rather easy on the eye when dyed.
Rapid developments were seen in other scientific areas. Thomas Hunt Morgan used fruit flies to show the genetics of genes on chromosomes, a step towards modern genetics. That same year, Marie Curie successfully isolated pure radium (element 88 in the periodic table). And, in 1925, Australian anthropologist Raymond Dart’s description of an Australopithecus africanus skull provided the first evidence that Africa is the cradle of humankind6.
