Looking back on the year in science and what’s next

Most significant: The growing tyranny of heat. For the second year in a row, our planet experienced the hottest year on record, a fact that threatened lives worldwide. In some places, the heat sparked drought, which lowered city water supplies and fueled wildfires. In other places such as Europe, it brought intense rainfall and disastrous flooding. Higher ocean temperatures bulked up hurricanes, and cases of mosquito-borne diseases soared.

The links between extreme heat and climate change are increasingly clear. A surprising new wrinkle this year is the soaring use of generative AI. Chatbots are energy hungry, with a single ChatGPT query slurping up way more energy than a Google search. Experts we spoke with are weighing the potential benefits of the technology, from enhanced productivity to improved health care, against the resulting carbon emissions.

And there was much news on medications like Ozempic and Wegovy. Their popularity has soared for diabetes treatment and weight loss, but they may also help treat heart, kidney and liver disease, and maybe even rein in addiction. These drugs work by mimicking a gut hormone, and more like them are in the works, potentially leading to a widening range of health benefits. Scientists are keeping an eye out for results from a number of clinical trials, including some testing whether the drugs help combat Alzheimer’s disease.

There was a lot going on in space, too, with government agencies and private companies landing multiple craft on the moon. That effort included China’s Chang’e 6 mission, which collected the first samples from the far side of the moon. Human space missions had mixed success. SpaceX carried four civilians to the International Space Station and tackled the first all-civilian spacewalk. But Boeing’s Starliner craft had less luck. Its two astronauts took off for an eight-day mission in June, but problems with the craft will keep them on the space station until March.

And no year-end issue is complete without our favorite books of 2024, a perennial hit. This year’s faves include Then I Am Myself the World, in which a neuroscientist argues that consciousness is all about being able to integrate information — implying that computers might become sentient, too, at least to some degree. Other tomes explore why humans need art; offer a first-person account of what it’s like to have face blindness; and investigate why some societies in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East thrived while others descended into chaos at the end of the Late Bronze Age around 1200 B.C.

We also invested time this year in surveying readers and other efforts to enhance your print magazine experience. We’re putting the final touches on exciting improvements in our January issue. I can’t wait for you to see them and, as always, I welcome your feedback. Write to us at editors@sciencenews.org.