Technology Update November 14, 2015

When we said we were going to go back to the moon a few years ago the Russian scientists and space people got very excited, they thought we would partner up with them as we have done many times in space, but we told them they couldn’t be part of the push to the moon with us. Well, they may have the last laugh since now they have joined forces with the European Space Agency and guess what the stated purpose is? It is to land a robot on the moon in 5 years. Perhaps this is a precursor to a manned mission? There is also a chance the Chinese might beat them to it. The Russians have a lot to offer in space and I think it is a big mistake not to let them share some of the cost and for that matter why not let other nations who have the capability to contribute to this mission join? Is it because it makes it hard for us to paint Russia as our deadly enemy if we allow them to cooperate on our space missions.

In 2010 the National Science Foundation gave funding out which was earmarked to study different and unusual hologram technologies. A hologram may look simple, but there is something about it that fascinates most of us. I have a Star Trek hologram on my wall and it never ceases to amaze me. Because of this funding a new type of holograph technology was born. According to a scientist, DWLS which is a direct write laser scanner was born. He went on to say, "They look like flat, semi-translucent plates, but they give us unprecedented control over the behavior of light. We can use them to make more efficient displays for mobile devices, sensors with greater resolution, and, frankly, we're still discovering all of the potential applications for this technology." It will be very interesting to see what comes from this technology, because at the pace technology is moving we may see this technology used in a couple of years on devices we use such as cell phones, PC and tablets.

Who would have ever thought? We all know how strong steel is and most of us believe steel will corrode eventually and there is nothing we can do about it. It turns out this is not the case, a new type of coating has been invented which prevents this from happening. Scientists and engineers have begun to concentrate on the surface of steel rather than its composition. Scientists at Harvard have developed a coating which prevents steel from corroding. It is called SLIPS for Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surfaces. The coating is applied in small dots over the surface. Another use for this coating is to put it on the wings of planes, doing away with the need for deicing liquid.

Every year more and more transistors are being packed into computer chips and engineers know this has to reach a point where no more will fit using our current technology. This almost happened a few years ago, but was overcome by an advancement in technology at the time which allowed for the creating of finer etching. Well this has happened again just when we thought we were reaching the end of the line. IBM has developed a technique for creating transistors not out of silicon, but out of carbon nanotubes and that they believe this technology will be ready before the silicon limit is reached. A carbon nanotube is a tube shaped material which is made of carbon and its diameter is measured on the nanometer scale. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter or about one ten-thousandth the thickness of a human hair.

Sometimes incredible predictions about technology are made. Ray Kurzwseil is a computer scientist who was associated with Bill Gates. He has been called a genius and is known for his insights into technology. He is also an author and has written many books on the subject. I am telling you this because Mr. Kurzweil has said that in the 2030s nanobots in our brains will make us Godlike. This is quite a statement, but I am afraid as smart as Mr. Kurzwseil is, he seems to be naive. I would think if this were possible it would not be made available to the masses. You don’t see the ultra-rich sharing their toys with us do you? While the rich and powerful might get these advances, the poor guy or gal working at Burger King will not be offered the same opportunity. I can almost guarantee by looking at prior history, any step forward of this magnitude will be kept out of our hands. There is also another problem, nanobots which are tiny robots, could become defective or some outside source could effect them and at that point they might do more harm than good. They would require many years of human testing before they could be declared safe so I think the 2030s might be too soon for this to happen safely and they would also have to be hack proof, which may not be possible.

It’s coming and will be here soon. It is computing using light instead of electricity. An optical chip was created which can now store data permanently. You may wonder why we would care about this technology when our current technology seems to work quite well. The reason is electronic chips have their speed limited by heat and the resistance generated by the colliding electrons. These problems do not exist when using light. The scientists studied how DVDs work and decided to try using the material which is coated on them called GST. The chip is not ready yet for production and there are still some problems to be solved. The chip has to be much smaller to compete, but it is only a matter of time before this happens.

Another new computer technology is being studied and it is a technology which would use 3D stacked computer chips. Engineers are saying it could make our computers run 1,000 times faster. Memory and processing would be moved to the same chip. This would cut down the time the electrons take to travel through conventional circuits. You have to think why not. Instead of a wafer type CPU (Central Processing Unit) it would be thicker, but would put circuits much closer together. There would probably be other advantages such as being able to use much lower powered chips than we use today and still have the computer working faster. It is important to mention the design being worked on also uses carbon nanotubes. It seems this will be in our future.