2057: the world
We already signaled you the BBC documentary Visions of the future. Now, physicist and futurologist Michio Kaku takes us on another voyage into the fascinating world of possible tomorrows. This time, in a coproduction between Gruppe 5 ZDF and Discovery Channel (visual effects by 422 South), three stories are told set in the year 2057, each addressing a different scale level: the world, the city, the body. The videos combine a tech-inspired, integrated view of the future by means of a storyline, with documentary style lab-visits with scientists & engineers and their inventions.
It is probably because the series is aimed at a broad audience, that the storyline appears to serve as a binding element between the flashes about technological developments, rather than as a deeper, more integrated rendering of a future scenario. Storyline and acting clearly take a secondary position compared to the technological developments themselves.
We saw the episode, filtered out and put together the links to most of the science and tech projects mentioned (and added some of our own). Stay tuned for more news from 2057.
In 2057 – the world, fossil fuels are running out and political conflict looms. 250 miles above the ocean, in an international research station orbiting our planet, an American chemist and his Chinese colleague are the world’s final hope, as they try to come up with a formula for highly efficient solar panels.
The episode takes us to TUV Rheinland in Cologne, Germany, home to the world’s largest photovoltaic test centre. 70% of the world’s photovoltaic panels are tested there for efficiency and durability (see also here). Current pv panels have a 14-18% efficiency, with a few prototypes doubling that, yet for them to become competitive to fossil fuel energy sources efficiency levels need to be 50% or more. For solar technology to become more efficient, we need to be able to tap into more than merely the infrared end of the sun’s light spectrum. This means going beyond silicon, which is exactly what Prof. Daniël Vanmaekelbergh at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands is doing. His nanocrystals, of which approximately 3million fit on a fingernail, allow composite substances that absorb nearly the sun’s whole spectrum and promise efficiency levels up to 5 times that of today’s products. One problem remains to be overcome: arranging the crystals in a flawless regular patterns (perhaps some kind of DNA-assistance might help).
The voyage into the future continues with the concept of the space elevator. Imagine a vehicle travelling along a 62000 miles long ribbon extending from an oil rig in the Pacific (cf. stable weather) all the way up into space, where it is attached to a counterweight to keep things in place. Black Line Ascension‘s Bradley Edwards, is figuring out the nuts and bolts to make cheap and safe space travel happen. The 250 mile trip along the ribbon would take about 30min, as a ground high-energy laser would power solar panels on the elevator car and push it into space. One challenge remains: finding or rather creating a high strength material for the ribbon. Steel, kevlar, none of today’s materials is strong enough. The promise: carbon nanotubes. Los Alamos’ researcher Yuntian Zhu develops carbon nanotube fibres 10 times lighter and 100times stronger than steel.
The United States Strategic Oil Reserve (see here) allows the country to keep running for 60 days in case of an emergency. Yet with oil’s end in sight, people all around the world are on the lookout for alternatives. One such alternative: nuclear fusion. When two hydrogen atoms collide a huge burst of energy is released. At the Max Planck Institute for PlasmaPhysics, Frank Jenko uses a test reactor to make atoms collide to generate a 100million degrees superheated gas, held in place by a magnetic field. 1 gram of the gas equals the energetic power of 11 tons of coal. The problem: the plasma cools down too quickly, allowing only 33% of input energy to be recovered. Nevertheless scientists have high hopes to make nuclear fusion happen (cf. ITER project).
Other alternative energy sources include superefficient windmills, windfarms at sea, intelligent boeys capturing wave energy, underwater turbines tapping into the power hiding in local rivers, farmgrown biodiesel or ethanol etc. Beyond oil and gas, there is however one fossil fuel remaining: gas hydrates from the bottom of our oceans, which burns just like coal. As organic particles decay at the bottom of oceans, methane gas is produced, captured in ice due to high pressure and low temperature at such depth. Although the amount of gas hydrates present on earth is large than that of oil gas and coal combined, the problem with gas hydrates is twofold: extracting it and bringing it to the surface without it falling apart + burning methane produces carbon dioxide worsening global warming.
At current conditions and growth levels, China will need 4 midlevel powerplants per week for the next 50 years to merely keep up with its energy demand. Energy needs and scarcity of resources will increase tension between have’s and have-not’s, which might lead to more conflicts.
Consider smart armour. At the MIT’s Soldier Systems Center, Stephen Samouhos works on a soft, comfortable, lightweight material usable in armour, which becomes impenetrable the instant it is struck by a bullet. The material he is currently experimenting with are ferrofluids. A black-grey goo stiffens into a spikey material as it is placed near a magnetic field, shapeshifting back into dark liquid as it leaves the field. Future soldiers will still get hurt, yet new technologies for intelligent armour such as artificial muscles, cpr suits, vital signs & location monitoring clothing etc. Cloaking technologies will allow them to become nearly invisible (e.g. photosensitive uniform, see here and here).
Last but not least … with communication lines and data pipes already clogging up (e.g. multimedia content, spam pollution, next generation simulation and data processing tools, ) crunching under the weight of today’s information needs, new technologies need to be developed. Laser beams are expected to allow us to send the contents of the Library of Congress around the world or into space in seconds. Tests have been run at the German Aerospace Center, capturing a data laser beam from a Japanese satellite, 370miles overhead, using a modified telescope, perfectly synched up within margins of thousands of a degree. Problems with air turbulence & clouds are expected to be overcome, who knows maybe by a fleet of zeppelins up in our planet’s stratosphere (see also here).
Check out the video and … stay tuned for our link-coverage of 2057 the city and 2057 the body.
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