Despite some success in moon landing and AI, apprehension looms

Although the famous Japanese novel The Three-Body Problem is fiction, science is presented perfectly here rather than fantasy. In this story, an alien civilization has discovered the Earth. Their rogue king wants to attack and wipe out the people and take over the fertile land of the Earth. They are ahead of humans in knowledge and science, but their planet is not as stable as ours. Natural disasters are a daily occurrence there. So, after discovering the Earth, the king felt that if their civilization could be relocated to Earth, their future generations could live in peace for a long time without significant disasters. Since the Earth's civilization was not so advanced, it should not have been difficult to defeat the people and occupy this territory quickly. Still, the royal scientist warnes them - he calculated that it would take four hundred years for their spaceship to reach the Earth.

The world may be far behind in science and technology; their scientific progress is remarkably high. Scientists reason that it is difficult to estimate how much the world's people will improve since four hundred years is a long time for the civilization that invented the Internet within three decades of using nuclear energy. Through the flow of science fiction, the author sends a message to the readers. The message of progress in science: as the message can lull you into a blissful dream, it can show you pointing fingers to the eyes, how we are shooting ourselves in the foot with the progress of science! In the greed of development, we are making the world uninhabitable daily; we have accompanied ourselves with various types of pollution. To get rid of it, we must turn to science.

Pollution and environmental disasters are not our topics today; we want to look back to 2023. Let's look at essential discoveries or events in various fields of science and technology. Technology was more victorious than science this year, particularly artificial intelligence. The history of this branch of technology is much older. Still, if it had continued at a snail's pace until 2000, after the advent of Google, it increased its speed gradually - from 2015 to 2020 at the speed of express trains, but now it is running at supersonic speed.

On the one hand, researchers and thinkers are seeing the light of hope, but there is a message of darkness behind the curtain! In 2022, ChatGPT emerged in the world of artificial intelligence. It took the world by storm, one record-breaking feat after another, surpassing all previous AIs. Before ChatGPT, Midjourney AI created some storms. It gained worldwide fame primarily for its painting and graphic design excellence, but ChatGPT comes with all in one. What cannot be done with artificial intelligence?

It hit the shelves earlier this year by writing a research paper. There aren't any tasks like writing, drawing, digitizing, computer programming, or video making that ChatGPT can't do. ChatGPT inspired us, too. We have also started using artificial intelligence in a big way. The Bangladeshi private TV channel 24 broadcasted technology news about AI presenter Aparajita. It is undoubtedly a milestone for Bangladesh. However, the world has also seen the dark side of technology this year. Thousands of AIs have mushroomed in the alleys of the virtual world. Not everyone's intentions are honest anymore. Fake photos of famous people using these AIs are spreading on the Internet - from Joe Biden to Narendra Modi, and not even the Prime Minister of Bangladesh has been spared from the fakers. By now, the biggest concern has been Deepfake videos.

Fake videos of famous and ordinary people are being spread online using Deepfake technology. Just as there are political ulterior motives behind all this, profit-seeking rogue businesspeople are making and selling Deepfake porn videos - to serve personal revenge and interests. They are degrading another person by making deepfake videos in the eyes of the society. And its most significant victims are teenagers. Tech giants like Google and Microsoft have their AI for a long time, but to beat ChatGPT, Google launched an AI called Zenimi, an AI, last December 13.

This year is also significant in physics. But primarily for aerospace and technological issues, this primary branch of science was discussed throughout the years. James Webb, the world's largest NoVo telescope, was launched in 2021 to explore the universe and unravel the mysteries of cosmology. This telescope revolving around the Sun was not slow to repay scientists' confidence. Like last year, 2023 also saw James Webb take some remarkable pictures of the unknown part of space. The telescope captured a close-up view of the universe's birth, photographing some of the radiation bubbles that were born very close to the birth of the universe. Photographs have also been taken of the universe's oldest known black hole.

Every particle in the universe has an antiparticle. The particles have the same mass as ordinary particles but different charges. European Nuclear Research Center CERN scientists wanted to run an experiment to see if the antiparticles interact with the force of gravity. That experiment was successful; scientists have found that antimatter responds to gravity. However, their gravitational activity is one-fourth less than that of ordinary particles. Researchers think that the experiment will play a significant role in particle physics and the cosmology of the universe. We often see pictures of atoms made through coloring or graphic design. This year, a group of researchers from Argonne National Laboratory in the United States was able to photograph a particular atom with the help of X-rays. Undoubtedly, this is a significant event in particle physics. Apart from this, this year, the universe's expansion, fusion energy, and double-slit experiments in time are also some of the most significant breakthroughs in physics.

Several significant developments have also occurred in other branches of science - especially in biology, which may revolutionize medicine. Researchers from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and Caltech in the United States have jointly created artificial human embryos. For this, they did not use sperm but stem cells from the human body. Although illegal in most countries, the researchers said that artificial humans were not intended to be created. They claim that they have done it to find out the cause of normal development of the human body, genetic diseases, and repeated abortions. Kidney complications have become prominent around the world. About 80,000 people die of kidney failure every year in Bangladesh alone. This number is even worse globally! Although costly, kidney transplantation can save many patients. But the problem is about 20 percent of kidneys die before they can be transplanted. These kidneys are useless within hours of being removed from the donor's body, leaving insufficient time for transplantation. But this year, there is a study that has made researchers optimistic. A group of researchers from the University of Minnesota in the United States has been able to preserve kidneys from mice's bodies for about ten days after surgery.
Now, they hope to preserve human kidneys for longer; before that, they want to study the kidneys of some other large animals.

Despite so much positivity, some adverse events have also happened in science. The greatest threat to humanity now is environmental degradation. But this year, the rate of ice melting in Antarctica was the highest in history. That is, environmentalists are constantly talking about the fact that the temperature of the Earth is gradually increasing, but what the globalists do not care about has started to have negative consequences. Even 2023 was the hottest year in the history of civilization. The world has set a record in average temperature, breaking 2017's. If we are not aware immediately, the sixth mass extinction may occur on Earth due to environmental disasters. Whether or not the human species will ultimately survive that extinction cannot be said.

Several sad events have also happened in the world of science and technology. Some legendary scientists and technologists have left the world. Moore's Law is very popular in the computer world. Gordon Moore, the father of this formula, passed away on March 24. Frank Borman, the head of the astronaut team that conducted the first mission to orbit the Moon, left the Earth on November 7. John Goodenough, inventor of lithium battery (June 25), Paul Berg, pioneer of genetic engineering (February 15), and John Warnock, father of PDF files (August 19), have left us this year. Death is undoubtedly sad, but for those who leave their footprints on the Earth with their work, their death remains glorious.

We can now conclude that 2023 has passed with a mix of good and evil in science. But tell me what the most significant scientific event of this year was. We did not discuss that, for I left it to conclude. The Guardian, one of the most influential newspapers, says that this year's most significant scientific event was India's conquering the Moon. I think so, too—for many reasons. India is a developing country with limited capabilities and only the fourth nation to land on the Moon; this is one big reason, but the more significant reason is the cost. No developed country could even imagine landing on the Moon with only 800 crores of Bangladeshi taka. India has become a trailblazer for developing countries for moon landings or space missions. Not only this, but India also beats all the other three lunar conquering countries, the USA, Russia, and China, in one place - India is the first and, so far, the only country to conquer the Moon's South Pole. We can take lessons from this example of India, but first, education and research institutions should be organized. If we don't do that, we must bask in the success of others. The new year will just come and go!

Author: Science Writer