In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have been transforming the landscape of scientific research. Out of which, the chatbot technology has experienced tremendous advancements in recent years, especially with ChatGPT emerging as a notable AI language model. This comprehensive review delves into the background, applications, key challenges, and future directions of ChatGPT. We begin by exploring its origins, development, and underlying technology, before examining its wide-ranging applications across industries such as customer service, healthcare, and education. We also highlight the critical challenges that ChatGPT faces, including ethical concerns, data biases, and safety issues, while discussing potential mitigation strategies. Finally, we envision the future of ChatGPT by exploring areas of further research and development, focusing on its integration with other technologies, improved human-AI interaction, and addressing the digital divide. This review offers valuable insights for researchers, developers, and stakeholders interested in the ever-evolving landscape of AI-driven conversational agents. This study explores the various ways ChatGPT has been revolutionizing scientific research, spanning from data processing and hypothesis generation to collaboration and public outreach. Furthermore, the paper examines the potential challenges and ethical concerns surrounding the use of ChatGPT in research, while highlighting the importance of striking a balance between AI-assisted innovation and human expertise. The paper presents several ethical issues in existing computing domain and how ChatGPT can invoke challenges to such notion. This work also includes some biases and limitations of ChatGPT. It is worth to note that despite of several controversies and ethical concerns, ChatGPT has attracted remarkable attentions from academia, research, and industries in a very short span of time.