What’s New and What’s Old New materials are coming out all the time and they are getting more advanced. There is a new material that was just developed by the University of Waterloo. It just might be able to replace many of the other everyday things we wear and find uses all over the manufacturing sector. The material is said to be programable using electricity and temperature. If it were to be put into clothing it might be able to keep us warm without the need for bulky jackets and overcoats. Scientists are talking about using it with artificial intelligence to control it in different situations. One of the things which was talked about was if it was used on automobiles and the car was dented, it could return to the correct shape on its own. I am not so sure it would even be used for this, because car parts are a big part of the profits made by the car companies. Imagine you are a man or woman wearing indoor clothes and never having to put on outdoor ones. Not only that, but you might even be able to program those clothes to cool you off in hot climates. One great advantage is, it is being said the material is inexpensive to manufacture. It is made from inexpensive nano-composite fibers. I have often thought we needed something much better for space suits which would not be bulky and not so incredibly expensive. Perhaps spacesuits made of this material would fill the bill. I am sure when future people look back at what we paid for the space suits we use now; they will find it incredible. We have already seen progress in some new materials that are being used such as new building materials that can repair themselves by filling in holes. I hate to say this, but it seems one of the stimuli for creating new materials is the military, which is always looking for better, stronger, and lighter materials both for its machines and for its soldiers. An example is a new type of body armor which is much lighter and yet much tougher than Kevlar and metal plates. We are heading for self-healing materials in many different areas. With this may come longer lasting structures. I think many of us have noticed that some of the bridges are not that safe anymore in some places. This is because they need periodic maintenance and this costs money and time, which might not be available to a particular municipality. If we had bridges built out of self-healing material these inspections could become less frequent. One of the dreams of science, which seems to be on the verge of becoming a reality is smart clothing. I am talking about clothing which has a computer made of material which is part of the clothing and can even go into the washing machine. This clothing might be able to monitor your health one day. How would you like to wear clothes that replace your need for a cell phone and all the apps on it? Maybe it could have a connection for glasses which would become the replacement for a screen or even a small laser display. This may be a ways off right now, but we certainly are headed in that direction. Scientific advancements are just being made so much faster lately. Look how fast smart phones came onto the scene. They now have dominated the computer market, which itself has made significant progress. The phones became so capable, many people use them for everything they do online. It seems they will become even more dominant in the future if they aren’t replaced with something even better which could be that smart clothing I have talked about. One area which the machines have gotten better, but which still remains fundamentally the same is in automobiles. Sure, they have gotten far more dependable and now have all sorts of safety controls built into them, but they are still basically cars which drive you from point A to point B whether they are gasoline or electric. We are talking about a basic technology which is credited with the first modern type car being invented in 1886 by Karl Benz. What will the next technology which replaces them be? It seems flying cars never made it. I don’t have an answer to that question, but rest assured someday cars will be replaced as will just about everything else that is around today. If it wasn’t for the fact economy keeps the shipping industry going, planes would have replaced ships a while back. Another reason ships are still being used to haul products is the fact they have the ability to hold much more on a single trip. All this could change in the future if huge craft of some kind were developed. You know what they say, time is money, and if some kind of future aircraft could do the job of a ship, that would change the industry. There have been people saying for years the answer are giant blimps but I am still waiting to see that come to pass. It is only a matter of time before our rockets are replaced with something better. This is a technology which is much older, by hundreds of years, than the car. There is a story which claims a Chinese official named Wan Hu decided he could make it to space and it is said he attached over 45 rockets to a chair and launched himself in the 16th century. No one knows for sure if the story is true, but it has persisted throughout the centuries. Basically, this is what we do with every rocket launch. In a way we are still using ancient technology. The difference is we have brought it up to modern standards. I have said this many times, and everyone knows it, rockets are no longer good enough, even if they get the job done for going to the moon and maybe Mars. If we look around us, we see obsolete technology everywhere. We may not even realize it is obsolete. It would be so easy to rattle off a list, but I don’t think that is necessary. I believe you get the point. There is going to be great change in the future as long as we can stay out of a war, but if we can’t it is possible, we might have to start all over. The one place we have made great progress in, is in nuclear weapons. The Russians had even developed a nuclear bomb called the Czar Bomb which was 100 megatons and after they tested the 50 megaton version got so scared, they decided it would be foolhardy to test the bigger one.
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