The State of Technology We hear about some technological miracles happening much more frequently lately. These things would have been science fiction just a few years ago. Let me give you an example of what I just read about. Scientists and engineers at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invented a procedure for reducing the size of non-animate objects to at least 1/1000 of their original size. What is equally incredible is they don’t need fancy equipment or chemicals to do it. All they need is a laser and absorbent gel, the type used in baby diapers. We think electronics are small now, but this procedure called “implosion fabrication” will make our current electronics seem gigantic next to them. Currently chip makers are hungry for new ways to make chips smaller, but instead of having to redesign chips and create smaller dies to do the job, they could build the chip the way they are now and maybe shrink them down to size, if it doesn’t cause other problems. It isn’t only computer chips we are talking about. Think of big bulky medical equipment which might be able to be reduced in size enough to put them in a pocket and travel with them. If the could reduce things drastically like automobiles and then restore them to their normal size we could take our cars with us when we visit and not have to worry about parking, they could fit comfortably into a pocket, assuming they didn’t weigh the same. No matter how I think about this, it is hard to believe this would ever work on anything but biological objects. There are engineers who believe in order to improve hybrid cars we need more than just a battery. Most of us think hybrid cars are just an interim step and will disappear as electric cars get more efficient and there are enough charging stations. The engineers would like to see a supercapacitor installed on these cars. A supercapacitor is a device which can rapidly charge a hybrid vehicle’s battery. This would increase a vehicles power and range. It also has been hoped a true electric vehicle could use a supercapacitor to speed charging and I have even heard some claiming in the future, batteries may not be needed if supercapacitors can be redesigned in some way to not only store electricity, but let it out much more slowly. Over time more industries have been taken over by robots. Places like auto factories which used to have maybe a thousand workers on a floor now have only two or three and their jobs are to keep the robots performing. One of the last places to attain complete robot control is a farm. Yes, they have been getting more computer control on their machines and such, but mostly farmers still tend to the crops. This is all about to change. A company named Iron Ox wants to open a farm in California, and this farm will have no human workers. Instead the operation will be reminiscent of the movie “Silent Running”, where robots tended the crops but, they were in space. The robot has a special arm for this job and is capable of removing a diseased plant so the rest do not get infected. This could be the end of traditional farming as we know it. Everything keeps changing. When we think of a pilot, what do we think he does? You think he flies a plane, but in the future, you might be wrong with this assumption. DARPA which is the military’s research division has discussed a project which it has developed and it is the ability of a pilot to control three planes or drones using nothing more than his or her mind. One problem with this is a neural implant is required. A volunteer had an interface installed and was put on a simulator and he was able to pilot his plane and keep two others in formation. The interface is called a BCI which is a brain-computer interface. In a later simulation another person was to receive feedback from the plane he was flying if it was off course. The catch is those volunteers were people who were paralyzed, because they already had electrodes installed in their brains, thus not needing to undergo surgery for the test. It is expensive to go into space, and because of this there has been a dream of building an elevator which would take us there. The Japanese government was to test this using a small model. The idea of a space elevator has been around before most of us were born. Their elevator is a box only 2.4 inches long, 1.5 inches high, and 1.5 inches wide, but it could lead to the development of the world’s first space elevator. Wireless electricity has been stymied ever since it was demonstrated by Nikola Tesla and worked perfectly. You have to wonder why it was put on the back burner. Usually when things like this happen money is somehow involved. Perhaps the idea was viewed as a threat somehow to some big companies. Anyway, the idea is taking hold again and scientists at Stanford University believe they have solved the problem of broadcasting electrical energy through the air. This will change everything. Think of how this would solve the recharging problem for electric cars and eventually eliminate all those bothersome electrical wires everywhere. One scientist had stated the amount of electricity needs to be increased but the distance is almost where they want it to be. I have to wonder what effect all this electricity will have on us as it whizzes around us. This is exactly how I thought things would work however. These scientists are talking about sending electricity not to the cars but to coils embedded into the road, but others want to send it directly to the automobile. The Greeks have built a working replica of the world’s first canon. It is so old it was invented before the invention of gun powder. The canon was built by Archimedes of Syracuse somewhere around 213-211 BC as a weapon against the invading Romans. It was powered by steam. It is a tube like most modern cannons with an open end and a capped one. A projectile is put into the cannon. The tube is heated and when it is hot enough a small amount of water is injected behind the projectile. The water turns into high pressure steam firing the projectile. This was a small version of the original which could fire a projectile about 1,000 meters. It was able to fire the projectile about 30 meters. One of the problems might have been the test was conducted by people who were not familiar with the ideal temperature and the exact amount of water to inject. I am just guessing about that.
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