Sidebar
Futurology
phys.org
HEAR ME OUT BEFORE YOU DOWNVOTE. Disclaimer: The hyperloop is an absolutely shit idea right now. I do not support building in any form right now. Now to the shower thought: Theoretically, a hyperloop can get you from place A to place B on the planet in less than 40 min (back of the napkin calculations assuming constant acceleration and deceleration of around 1G). Being completely underground (more on that below), it would also be a really good piece of infrastructure safe from arial/orbital bombardment. Now to the obvious problems: We need the tube to be very very straight to achieve high speeds without killing our passengers. We would want the hyperloop to enter city centers. Building such a straight thing in city centers would require a lot of demolition. Therefore, we would have to get it underground. Bringing it on the ground again outside cities doesn’t make sense because we would be introducing steep upward curves, thus reducing its maximum speed. Therefore, it makes sense to build this thing completely underground. Building underground also gives us many more benefits like not having to do much land acquisition, safety from violent attacks and so on. Our tube would have to be incredibly airtight. It absolutely cannot have any leaks anywhere. Also, we need to be able to achieve incredibly low chamber pressures and maintain them. If we are building this underground, we would need a shit load of energy to dig and transport the material outside the tunnel. We would also need a shit load of steel and other resources for these incredibly long tunnels. Where do we get this energy? Where do we mine these resources without destroying the planet? Now this is where the “future” part comes in. We would need energy to be incredibly cheap. The only viable long term method (by “long term”, I mean it from the civilization time scale) would be via nuclear fusion. When is nuclear fusion happening? Well, it’s only 30 years away! /s Jokes aside, the energy source might be when nuclear fusion not only becomes possible, but also incredibly cheap (the nuclear reactor shouldn’t cost billions lol). About the resources? Well, we probably need to mine them on the moon, no? The moon has A LOT of them right on the surface. If we can mine them and send them back home, we solve our resources problem! Well, you might ask- doesn’t it make more sense to just have spaceships with engines propelled by nuclear fusion that exit the atmosphere, go at hypersonic speeds and then drop in? Why build expensive underground continent spanning tunnels? Well, what if we are attacked by aliens? They could easily blockade our airspace. Hell, just dropping a few million stealthy pebbles in our lower orbits would be enough to stop all hypersonic travel (the risk of ships exploding on contact with these pebbles would be too high for air travel to continue). Hypersonic spaceships would also face the problem of traditional aircrafts- you would need to build spaceports far from city centers. These spaceports would require a lot of space and cause a tremendous amount of noise pollution (constant sonic booms for every launch and landing). Therefore, I think I have made my mind. I think I would be voting for a hyperloop proposal that possibly would be tabled in our direct democratic government a 100-150 years from now!
www.technologyreview.com
jaettu ristiin yhteisöstä: https://lemmy.world/post/7524653 > Some deaf children in China can hear after gene treatment::She can hear her mother and dance to the music. But why is it so noisy at night?
The weekly Throwback Thursday thread! A place to discuss past predictions of the future and their outcomes.
m.imdb.com
Let’s start a new thing! Throwback Thursday, a pinned weekly post where we can discuss past predictions and how accurate they were now that we are living in the future! What happened to the Moller Sky Car? Are our Jetsons video watches available sooner than we thought they’d be? Where’s my domestic household nuclear reactor?
phys.org
Cobot: Coworker Robot. How do you think we will fare when the ‘new guy’ at work is a machine? As these machines become increasingly intelligent and closer to sentience, how will we share the spoils of our labour? Will we have the same rights in the workplace?
ia.acs.org.au
As the field of implantable brain devices moves in leaps and bounds, there will come a time in the future when we will need to consider obsolescence of these devices, and as the implants grow in complexity and scope, will we eventually have to redefine our idea of what it is to be human?
This article proffers a fascinating matrix by which we can categorise and stratify the risk of suffering as a community in the future. Could this be the root of a new real-life Asimovian Psychohistory?
www.sciencealert.com
phys.org
An interesting article describing the first very real steps towards a linguistic exchange of ideas with an animal; perhaps the non-human intelligence we have been seeking was right beside us the whole time
www.theverge.com
In the future it may be commonplace to genetically test an embryo for the likelihood of certain diseases, but the technology can do so much more; where do we draw the line?
newsroom.unsw.edu.au
Should insect protein become the dietary norm of the future, how will our descendants feel about our reactions to the first insect aisle in the local supermarket? Could we perhaps be the last generation to be seen as true meat eaters?
Lithium extraction from batteries has so far proven to be notoriously difficult; this recently published paper outlines a novel method of extraction which may have a great impacts on how we manage lithium resources as the demand for power storage continues to surge.
www.wired.com
While we are locked once again in a heated debate about the future of our professions in the wake of ChatGPT, this article digs deep in to our past to reveal similar discussions surrounding of advancements in computer programming throughout history
english.elpais.com
phys.org
