In 2023, Science Magazine picked GLP-1 therapies
as the Breakthrough of the Year.
Well known as an effective treatment for diabetes and obesity,
clinical trials this year revealed that the drugs
offered additional health benefits.
But scientists were making waves in countless ways this year,
across disciplines and all over the world.
Here are the other notable advances from 2023.
A new class of supercomputers is here.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier computer is capable
of performing 1 quintillion mathematical operations per second–
that’s a 1 followed by 18 zeros, placing it in the exascale range.
Researchers have already used Frontier to predict
electron behavior in new materials,
and incorporate the physics of clouds into climate models.
More supercomputers with exascale capabilities are in the works.
In 2021, the discovery of human footprints in White Sands National Park
pushed the arrival of people in the Americas
to between 21,000 to 23,000 years ago.
But not everyone was convinced of this new date–
some researchers thought the seeds used to date the footprints
made them seem older than they actually were.
This year, researchers found that two different approaches
to dating the footprints also supported these earlier dates,
changing so me skeptics' minds.
This may mean people made the journey into the Americas
at the peak of the last ice age.
The potential for natural hydrogen as a surprising source
of clean energy got new attention this year.
Despite conventional thinking that hydrogen was too reactive
to exist in large quantities in the earth’s crust,
the United States Geological Survey now estimates that
there may in fact be enough to satisfy
the world’s energy needs for thousands of years.
The agency, along with energy companies and venture capital firms,
are putting millions of research dollars toward investigating
how to best harness energy from natural hydrogen deposits.
A large-scale evaluation of the first malaria vaccine
reveals it’s safe and effective enough for greater use,
and a second vaccine was recently approved
by the World Health Organization.
While not a panacea against the disease
that affects millions worldwide,
the vaccines do have the potential to reduce severe cases
and deaths of children, who are often most vulnerable.
Circulation of water throughout the world’s oceans
is connected in many ways to the
sinking, salty waters in the Southern Ocean.
These hypersaline Antarctic waters pull
heat, oxygen, and carbon dioxide down to the ocean’s depths.
Using robotic probes, temperature logs, and ocean circulation models,
several studies this year revealed that this fundamental process
known as global overturning circulation is slowing down
faster than anyone had expected.
Researchers expect this slowdown to continue.
Collective action is on the rise by early career scientists demanding
higher pay and better working conditions.
After the largest academic strike in U.S. history
at the University of California led to pay increases
for grad students and postdocs in late 2022, thousands more
academic workers have unionized and spoken out around the world.
Faculty and administrators, in turn, face the challenge
of finding short-term ways to cover increased personnel costs,
while long-term funding strategies are still unclear.
By monitoring dying stars called pulsars,
physicists detected the strongest evidence yet
of two supermassive black holes merging.
Pulsars are known for the regularity of the
the radiation pulses they emit.
Astronomers monitored these pulses using radio telescopes
to detect tiny changes in their rhythm that could indicate
a gravitational wave passing through.
While hesitant to call it a discovery until it’s further confirmed,
pulsar timing arrays offer a promising way
to observe some of the most massive objects in the universe.
U.S. regulators have approved the first drug that could
slow down the cognitive decline from Alzheimer's disease
The new treatment, Lecanemab, targets the tangled protein clumps
found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.
But treatments like these do come with risks,
like swelling and hemorrhaging in the brain.
Researchers are still dialing in on whether this slowing
of cognitive decline increases as people take the drugs for longer,
and whether it can delay the start of symptoms
for people likely to develop the disease.
For decades, forecasting the weather meant crunching numbers
and equations to predict changes in the atmosphere.
This year, multiple technology companies have succeeded
in using a different approach: AI modeling.
Instead of solving equations, the AI models find patterns
in past data to predict weather up to ten days in advance.
These new models are faster at forecasting,
require less computing power, and sometimes are
even more accurate than traditional models.
Researchers expect AI models will improve even more
once they start to learn from direct weather observations,
not just past data.
That wraps up our list of notable achievements from last year,
and we’re already looking at what’s coming in 2024.
A new planetary mission, an ongoing El Niño, and
a mosquito bacterium could make the next year
another interesting one for science.