This week, I discuss something rarely talked about, how human beings have an advantage over AI and automation and the great opportunities that this technology revolution will bring.
The good news is, this is a time of great opportunity, but it’s also a time of massive change and disruption for many people and a lot of companies.
Circa 2018
Lockheed Martin quietly obtained a patent for what could be a game-changing nuclear fusion reactor, one that could potentially fit into a fighter jet.
If the latest patent from defence manufacturing giant Lockheed Martin is anything to go by, nuclear fusion technology could revolutionise the future of travel.
For those not in the know, a nuclear fusion reactor is one of the holy grails of science, promising to replicate the inner workings of the sun in a confined reactor, capable of generating huge, near-limitless amounts of energy cheaply with no environmental impact.
Circa 2013
A team from MIT are developing thrusters powered by ionic wind as an efficient alternative to current conventional atmospheric propulsion technologies.
The health benefits of raw, unprocessed honey are well known, but in Australia, scientists recently made a startling discovery – that one particular, obscure type of honey is capable of killing just about everything scientists throw at it, including some of the worst bacteria known to man.
The findings were published in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (June 2009 edition), and could hold special significance at a time when many of the world’s top antibiotics are failing, especially against resistant “superbugs”.
The honey in question is known as manuka honey, which is produced in New Zealand and also goes by the name of jelly bush honey.
Solid-state sodium-ion batteries are far safer than conventional lithium-ion batteries, which pose a risk of fire and explosions, but their performance has been too weak to offset the safety advantages. Researchers Friday reported developing an organic cathode that dramatically improves both stability and energy density.
The improved performance, reported in the journal Joule, is related to two key findings:
Physicists at the University of Zurich have developed an amazingly simple device that allows heat to flow temporarily from a cold to a warm object without an external power supply. Intriguingly, the process initially appears to contradict the fundamental laws of physics.
If you put a teapot of boiling water on the kitchen table, it will gradually cool down. However, its temperature is not expected to fall below that of the table. It is precisely this everyday experience that illustrates one of the fundamental laws of physics—the second law of thermodynamics—which states that the entropy of a closed natural system must increase over time. Or, more simply put: Heat can flow by itself only from a warmer to a colder object, and not the other way round.
