**：nature portfolio
Original article by Miryam Naddaf
Advanced AI tools, lunar missions, and E-class supercomputers will shape the course of science in the new year.
AI progress
This year, the emergence of ChatGPT has shocked the scientific community. OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, is located in San Francisco, CaliforniaGPT-5, the next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) model that powers ChatGPT, is expected to be launched late next year。GPT-5 or GPT-4 has more advanced features than its predecessor, GPT-4. The scientific community is still looking forward to Google's GPT-4 rival, Gemini。The large language model can process all types of input, including text, computer, audio, and more.
AlphaFold, an AI tool launched by Google's Deepmind, is being used by researchers to pinpoint the 3D structure of proteinsThe latest version of AlphaFold will also be available next year。This AI tool will be able to simulate the interactions of proteins, amino acids, and other molecules with atomic precision, creating new opportunities for drug design and discovery.
Regulatory issues are looming. The UN's high-level AI advisory body will publish its final report in mid-2024 to develop international guidelines for AI regulation.
Hearts for the stars
The Vera Rubin Observatory will conduct a decade-long observation of the southern hemisphere sky.
The Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile will operate part of its facilities by the end of 2024, bringing an early 10-year program of observations of the entire Southern Hemisphere sky. The observatory has an 8With a 4-meter telescope and a giant camera measuring 3,200 megapixels, scientists hope to discover a large number of transient phenomena and near-Earth asteroids.
Or in Chile,The Simons Observatory in the Atacama Desert will be completed by mid-2024。Next-generation cosmology experiments will look for the characteristics of primordial gravitational waves (large afterglow) in the cosmic microwave background. The Simons Observatory's telescope has up to 50,000 light-collectors, ten times more than similar projects currently in operation.
Astronomers are still concerned that light pollution from the night sky will render new ground-based telescope data unusable due to the increase in the number of bright satellite constellations.
Mosquitoes**
The World Mosquito Program factory produces mosquitoes infected with bacteria, which prevents them from transmitting viruses such as dengue.
The World Mosquito Program will begin producing disease-resistant mosquitoes at a plant in Brazil next year. The mosquitoes are infected with a strain that prevents them from transmitting the virus that causes them, which is expected to protect up to 70 million people from diseases such as dengue fever and Zika. Over the next 10 years, the nonprofit will produce up to 5 billion mosquitoes infected with strains each year.
After the pandemic
As the world gradually recovers from the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemicThe U.S.** is funding clinical trials for three next-generation vaccines, two of which are intranasal vaccines that induce immunity by airway tissues;The other is an mRNA vaccine that enhances antibody and T-cell responses, which is expected to provide broad-spectrum and long-term immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants.
At the same time,WHO will release the final draft of the Pandemic Treaty during the 77th World Health Assembly in May next year。The treaty aims to help countries** better prepare for and respond to future pandemics. The 194 UN member states will negotiate specific terms, including whether they are binding. At the heart of this discussion is to ensure equal access to the resources necessary to prevent the pandemic, including vaccines, data and expertise.
Lunar exploration mission
NASA engineers are refining the Clipper probe, which will travel to Europa, Jupiter's moon, next year.
It was NASA's first manned mission to the moon since the 1970s. Artemis II could launch as early as next November, and the Orion spacecraft will fly across the moon for 10 days with four astronauts, three men and one woman. Artemis 2 will lay the groundwork for the subsequent Artemis 3 mission, which is scheduled to land the first woman and the second man on the moon. China also plans to launch the Chang'e-6 lunar sample return mission in 2024. If successful, the mission would be the first to complete sampling on the far side of the Moon.
Missions to explore the outer solar system include NASA's Clipper probe, which plans to travel to Jupiter's moon Europa next October. The goal of the mission was to determine if life existed in Europa's subterranean ocean. Japan's Martian Moons Exploration program in 2024 will visit Deimos and Deimos. The probe will land on Phobos and take samples from the surface, leaving samples to return to Earth in 2029.
Elucidating dark matter
Results of an experiment to detect the dark matter particle Axion will be published in 2024. Researchers believe that axions are released by the sun and converted into light, but such particles have never been observed in experiments because they require sensitive detection tools and extremely strong magnetic fields. The Babyiaxo experiment at the German electron synchrotron uses a solar telescope consisting of a 10-meter-long magnet and an ultra-sensitive, zero-noise X-ray detector to track the sun's core for 12 hours a day to record the transformation of axons into photons.
2024 could also be the year scientists determine the mass of neutrinos, the most mysterious particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. The Karlsruhe tritium neutrino experiment in 2022 showed that the maximum mass of neutrinos is 08 electron volts. The researchers will complete the data acquisition in 2024 and determine the measurements of this extremely small particle.
Consciousness Debate Competition: Round 2
Further elucinations on the neural basis of consciousness are expected next year. A large-scale project is testing the rights and wrongs of two theories of consciousness through a series of adversarial experiments, and the project is expected to release the results of a second round of experiments by the end of 2024. In the first round of experiments, neither theory was identical with the observed brain imaging data – putting a 25-year-old gamble to an end and ultimately philosophy triumphing over neuroscience. The second round of experiments or unraveling the secrets of this subjective experience from a neuroscientific point of view.
Save the planet
The United Nations Plastics Treaty aims to create a global agreement to eliminate plastic pollution.
In the second half of 2024, the International Court of Justice in The Hague may evaluate the legal obligations of countries to combat climate change and demand the legal consequences of countries deemed to have damaged the climate. While such rulings are not legally binding, the tribunal's influence can make countries more serious about their climate goals and be cited in their own lawsuits.
The United Nations Plastics Treaty, which aims to establish an international agreement to eliminate plastic pollution, will conclude next year. Since the 1950s, the world has produced 10 billion tonnes of plastic, 7 billion of which have become garbage – much of it polluting the oceans and harming wildlife. But a growing number of researchers believe that the UN negotiations, which began last year, are moving too slowly and may not be able to accomplish their original goals.
Ultra-fast supercomputer
Early next year, researchers will launch Europe's first E-class (Exascale) supercomputer, Jupiter. This supermachine can run exascale operations per second. Researchers will use the supercomputer to create "digital twin" models of the human heart and brain for medical research and high-resolution simulations of the Earth's climate.
U.S. researchers will install two Class-E supercomputers in 2024: Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory and El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Aurora will be used to create a map of the brain's neural circuits, and El Capitan will be used to simulate the effects of the nucleus***.