Incredible Advances in Technology Advances in technology just keep coming. Sometimes some of them boggle the mind, other times they are so simple you have to wonder why they weren’t thought of before. Take the problem of falling asleep at the wheel. It turns out this is a bigger problem for accidents than drugs, alcohol and any other reason for being impaired while driving. There was something discovered by Dr. Heimlich the man who discovered the Heimlich maneuver. He said biting a lemon if you feel tired will wake you up. There is even a lemon spray named Alert Drops which is said to do the same thing. How come this was not popularized? You would think this would be mentioned in many different places and especially on car sites, but it doesn’t seem to be spoken about much. I hope my mentioning this will help some drivers out there. On a more complicated note, a new form of light was created. Scientists have discovered how they could get three photons to interact and produce this new light. A photon is a basic particle which among other things has electromagnetic radiation which in this case is light. Scientists are extremely excited about the discovery, because they claim it will advance quantum computing, the system of computing which if perfected will make our current system look like a toy. Usually photons never interact with each other. The speed of light was slowed down to almost a standstill. When this was accomplished the atoms came out of a cloud of rubidium atoms in pairs and triplets. It does make one wonder what a light powered quantum computer will be able to accomplish. Will we finally figure out how to travel faster than the speed of light? Will we learn more about how the universe was created or will we be told an answer to a problem we don’t understand like the characters in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when a computer worked on the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything for 7.5 million years and finally came back with an answer which was “42?” Something is happening in medicine which a few years back would have been totally unexpected. Implants are being developed which are inserted into the brain and reverse paralysis. Brain implants are also called neural implants and they usually are attached to the surface of the brain. Scientists are learning how to circumvent areas of the brain which were damaged using these implants. These also include helping the blind to see and helping people get other sensory input. Brain-computer interfaces are also being developed where a computer will do the heavy work without having to be installed into the person, or on the person. This brings me to a scary thought. Can you imagine some poor person who has an implant getting hacked and some screwball either turning off their implant or even worse making them move around uncontrollably? China has developed a new technology which allows people to pay their bills using their face. Faces are not only used for bill payment however, but for access to facilities and in the pursuit of criminals. This does have a dark side, it allows the Chinese government to track the movements of their entire population. There is no doubt it is probably being used by other countries and the population is not aware of this. There have been incredible advances in facial recognition. More than 120 million people in China use a mobile app called Alipay to make mobile payments with their face. There is another app called Didi which allows passengers of a sort of Uber company to verify their driver is who he is supposed to be. Let’s face it, sorry for the pun, but this technology is here to stay. By now we all know what solar cells are. They convert light to electricity, but there is a new system in the works called Hot Solar Cells. Solar cells have efficiency problems and only convert a small percentage of the light they receive. The new system will convert sunlight into heat and then back to light. MIT has stated this will be far more efficient and make power much cheaper. It is said the top efficiency for a solar cell is 32 percent from sunlight and can never go higher. It is believed the new system can be twice as efficient. This system would be used in conjunction with solar cells, because it will radiate far more light for the solar cells to absorb. Here is one of my favorite new technologies. I think we know what hard wood is, but in the future, it will be something different. Researchers have figured out a way to make wood as strong as steel. They are using a special boil and crush method to make the wood super-dense. This wood is so strong it can be used to build bridges, cars and even skyscrapers. There are bonuses to using this wood. First of all, even though it is as strong as steel it is much lighter. Another bonus is it is easier to use. Here is the formula being used to create this wood. It is soaked in hydroxide (lye) and sodium sulfite, this makes the wood pliable. Next it is pressed with a lot of pressure closing the gaps between the cells. The wood is crushed down to about 20 percent of its original thickness and become about 3 times as dense. It was found this wood can stand 11.5 times the stress of the wood before treatment. There is no stopping technological advances and they are happening so fast one might not recognize much in the world fifty years from now. People at that time may not be dealing with humans when they go to stores or restaurants. If they call for a ride there may be no driver in their cab. They may never go out of their homes to work if there is still work or they may receive credits to a bank card from the government every month without ever working. Things are changing so fast many of our current systems for doing things may not exist much longer. |
