Top 5 Science Stories of 2023

Dec 28, 2023, 10:49 IST

Mukul Sharma

1. India's Chandrayaan glory

The Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission became the first to reach the lunar south pole, an unexplored region where reservoirs of frozen water are believed to exist.

2. ChatGPT kicked off AI era

ChatGPT went viral in 2023. The jostling to take the lead in the new "generative AI" dominated the news cycle.

3. Hottest year on record

The year 2023 is set to be the hottest year on record, just seven years after the previous hottest year in human history. Warmer seas and a warmer atmosphere pushed the world into a never-before-seen era of Climate Change events.

4. Gene editing treatment for beta Thalassaemia

In a world-first, a gene editing tool, Casgevy, was approved for the treatment of disease. The therapy has been shown to relieve episodes of pain in sickle cell disease by removing the need for red-blood-cell transfusions in thalassaemia for at least a year.

5. Potential stem cell-based embryos

In June, a number of papers described the possibility of lab cultures of stem cells with structures that resemble early post-implantation human embryos. While it raised many ethical questions, notably, the best of the models are not the same as normal human embryos — just as yet.

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