In light of all the warfare out there, it’s nice to know that there are positive things going on in the world as well. Researchers and scientists are working hard to help people and make lives better.
CalTech recently announced that it has wirelessly transmitted power through space. Without, nighttime or atmosphere and weather getting in the way, solar panels can be 8x more efficient in space than on the earth. Now that SpaceX and others are rewriting the economics of space launch, development projects in space may actually become profitable.
A recent breakthrough uses machine learning to interpret brain patterns and turn them into speech! The current focus is on enabling paralyzed people to be able to speak again. However, there are far reaching implications. Eventually, this could enable virtual telepathy (your thoughts get transmitted to an earbud in your wife’s ear halfway across the world) or telekenisis (your thoughts turn on the coffee machine and open the door).
Remember that Friends episode where Phoebe and her boyfriend (played by Charlie Sheen) had oven mitts duct taped to their hands to keep them from scratching? Soon there may be a better solutions. Scientists have found a protein that creates the itch response. Read about it here.
When I hear the familiar buzz of a quadcopter drone, I automatically assume it’s taking video because lifting anything heavier than a camera is hard. But an Italian company just release a drone capable of lifting 100kg! That’s enough to carry a person around. Let’s leap frog self driving cars…
Finally, there’s progress being made on high-energy-density storage (that’s no gasoline). Pretty much every amazing tiny gadget portrayed in science fiction (especially ray guns) require a portable power source many orders of magnitude beyond what we have today. That ever-present selfie-drone isn’t so helpful when it has to recharge every five minutes. Enter NUCLEAR (yep, you heard me right) batteries. Read more here.