- The U.S. could have beaten the U.S.S.R. into space.
https://www.popsci.com/interservice-rivalry-that-delayed-americas-first-satellite-launch?ePZmFpuivxk1tpDE.01 - Eisenhower bears part of the blame, since newly released documents show that U.S. intelligence had given him good estimates of when Sputnik would be launched, but he grossly underestimated its propaganda value. Could he have done more to speed up the launch of America’s first satellite?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/science/sputnik-launch-cia.html - Reading this makes me think that humans will never leave Earth in large numbers unless we have Star Trek levels of technology (if such a thing is even possible).
https://qz.com/1105031/should-humans-colonize-mars-or-the-moon-a-scientific-investigation/ - However, there’s nothing stopping us from getting off this berg in token numbers for, say, a Mars mission. But we’ll probably need to simulate gravity during the trip or else the astronauts will develop all kinds of health problems. (Would a mere 25% of Earth gravity do the trick?)
http://www.theage.com.au/good-weekend/astronaut-scott-kelly-on-the-devastating-effects-of-a-year-in-space-20170922-gyn9iw.html - Earth has five LaGrange Points, two of which would be useful parking places for satellites.
https://www.space.com/30302-lagrange-points.html#sthash.rNZf8a0K.gbpl - The LaGrange Points might also be good places to search for alien spy probes. That and other creative suggestions about how to find intelligent aliens are in the article.
http://nautil.us/blog/why-well-have-evidence-of-aliensif-they-existby-2035 - What would a planet that was MORE hospitable to organic life than Earth be like?
https://youtu.be/xrYjXOX9NLg - The War of 1812 dispelled the notion that citizen militias and civilian insta-generals were adequate for American self-defense (idealism was very strong in the early days). A professional, standing military was necessary. Had more pragmatic men been in charge in the years before 1812, Canada might be part of the U.S. today.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/5-times-the-us-navy-was-sunk-battle-22582 - Several countries are developing “Guided bullets” that have some ability to steer themselves to home in on targets. For now, the emphasis is on using them to destroy enemy land vehicles and drones at long ranges, but they’ll eventually find anti-personnel uses.
http://www.janes.com/article/75087/orbital-atk-progresses-new-medium-calibre-munition-development - Would Americans be willing to sacrifice Facebook access to save Taiwan?
http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2017/10/18/the-next-war-at-sea-will-actually-be-entirely-under-the-sea/ - While the U.S. military has practically become a byword for waste and bureaucracy, and the Ford-class aircraft carrier project has been singled out for cost and timeline overruns, one analysis claims the ships actually represent an optimal balance of size, capability, survivability, and cost.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/study-bigger-aircraft-carriers-are-better-22756 - The U.S. Army has finally bought Israel’s battle-proven “TROPHY” active protection system for installation on its tanks. This should have been done years ago, but was held up by the Pentagon’s insistence on developing an American-made system that has gotten stuck in the classic rut of spiraling costs and overly ambitious capabilities requirements.
http://www.janes.com/article/74744/ausa-2017-us-army-buys-trophy-active-protection-system-for-abrams-tank-brigade - The Humvee might be more survivable than its (Bentley-priced) replacement because it has fewer electronic components, making it less vulnerable to EMP weapons.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/10/humvee-has-no-electronics-for-emp-to-damage.html - An improved typhoid vaccine has been created
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41724996 - An improved shingles vaccine has received a CDC recommendation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/health/cdc-shingles-vaccine.html - The FDA approved two gene therapies, one to treat blindness (http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/10/12/557183740/fda-panel-endorses-gene-therapy-for-a-form-of-childhood-blindness) and the other to treat blood cancer. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/health/immunotherapy-cancer-kite.html)
- Contaminated cell lines might have corrupted data in tens of thousands of medical studies. Most futurists like to speculate about AI scientists discovering new things, but I think there would be tremendous value to having them re-examine and in many cases redo experiments their human counterparts did long ago.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/10/20/bad-cells-so-many-bad-cells - Chinese scientists have used CRISPR to make genetically engineered pigs that have less fat. This could actually reduce animal suffering and save farmers money since pigs that have less fat are, ironically, less likely to freeze to death in cold weather. FDA approval for sale in the U.S. is unlikely because Americans watch too many horror movies about mutant animals.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/23/559060166/crispr-bacon-chinese-scientists-create-genetically-modified-low-fat-pigs - Organic farming has very few, if any, environmental advantages over conventional farming.
https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for-the-environment - The Placebo Effect and the related Nocebo Effect are both stronger when test subjects are made to believe the sham substances they’re being exposed to cost a lot of money.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/10/06/expensive-shams-are-the-way-to-go-apparently - California leads the nation! Flame retardant chemicals that the California state government effectively made mandatory for the whole U.S. in 1975 cause a slew of health problems.
https://qz.com/1098161/the-us-government-is-finally-acknowledging-the-flame-retardants-in-your-furniture-and-baby-products-are-not-just-ineffective-but-also-dangerous/ - To stop accidental hot car deaths, Congress might require carmakers to build features into their vehicles that warn drivers if they’ve left their kids inside. This blog post and its links describe three possible engineering solutions, the simplest of which is an algorithm that monitors door opening and closing sequence.
http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2017/10/26/congress-considering-ordering-cars-to-add-about-1-iq-point-my-2003-idea/ - 350 kw charging stations that can recharge electric cars in 10-15 minutes are coming.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/automobiles/wheels/electric-cars-charging.html - Cars windshields and roofs might also someday be made of single pieces of Gorilla Glass, giving people in the front seats completely unobstructed views. More generally speaking, all kinds of objects in the future will look unchanged from today, but will have seemingly magic properties thanks to advanced materials and to sensors and computers being embedded in them.
https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21730128-soon-gorilla-glass-and-its-descendants-will-be-everywhere-one-worlds - A small hint of the coming advances in materials science.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/10/11/darn-near-flatland - Engineering improvements are in the cards as well. A supercomputer tasked with optimizing the designs of airplane wings created wings with organic-looking arrangements of beams and supports. What kinds of redesigns will machines make to everyday objects, and what kinds of obvious opportunities for improved design efficiency have we missed so far?
http://www.nature.com/news/supercomputer-redesign-of-aeroplane-wing-mirrors-bird-anatomy-1.22759 - Truck tailgating improves the fuel efficiency of the following vehicle AND the lead vehicle. When autonomous trucks become common, I’m sure they’ll use “platooning” all the time.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/are-those-80000-pound-trucks-tailgating-each-other-soon-it-may-be-perfectly-normal–and-safe/2017/10/22/fbbbb0fa-a2de-11e7-b14f-f41773cd5a14_story.html - ‘At very small scales, fixed-wing and multirotor designs become less efficient, and insect-like drones with flapping wings may make more sense. Tiny drones could be used for virtual tourism, letting remote users “fly” around with the aid of virtual-reality goggles. In short, today’s drone designs barely scratch the surface.’
https://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21723004-pioneer-evolutionary-robotics-borrows-drone-designs-nature-dario-floreano - The “Wave Glider” unmanned drone ship harnesses solar energy and wave power to generate electricity for itself, and could stay at sea indefinitely. (I’m sure mechanical breakdowns impose a limit on endurance.) http://warisboring.com/this-weird-drone-feeds-on-hurricanes/
- If everyone will have a robot butler in the future, and if the butlers will be able to download any knowledge or skill, then does that mean they’ll be able to fix anything you own? Wouldn’t they also know how to do preventative maintenance and inspections on all your stuff? Are we headed for a future where things almost never break?
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-fixit-20171021-story.html - A new AI “was able to solve reCAPTCHAs at an accuracy rate of 66.6% …, BotDetect at 64.4%, Yahoo at 57.4% and PayPal at 57.1%.” That’s not as good as the 81%+ pass rate typical of humans, but it’s still high enough to render CAPTCHAs obsolete as a means of differentiating between humans and machines. I bet the AIs have entered the “human range” of skill in this narrow task, and can solve CAPTCHAs as well as human children, humans with poor eyesight, and humans with low intelligence.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/26/560082659/ai-model-fundamentally-cracks-captchas-scientists-say - …And here’s a domain where AIs have achieved super-superhuman levels of performance: AlphaGo defeated all the world’s best human Go players last year, and AlphaGo Zero just defeated AlphaGo in a 100-game tournament, with no losses.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609141/alphago-zero-shows-machines-can-become-superhuman-without-any-help/ - Stephen Wolfram gives an impressive talk about the future of AI (you can just feel the genius oozing out of him). It gets really interesting towards the end when he talks about how most “work” we do in rich countries today would seem like the equivalent of playing video games to people from antiquity. Will “work” in the future look like video gaming today?
https://www.level9news.com/wolfram-discussing-ai-singularity/ - A great roundup of quotes from very smart people (including Thomas Edison!) who didn’t think airplanes would work. Makes you wonder about today’s experts who “confidently” predict that machines will never achieve human intelligence, or will only do so hundreds of years from now.
https://www.xaprb.com/blog/flight-is-impossible/ - More on that.
https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ - And a good counterpoint that throws cold water on the AI hype.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609048/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-ai-predictions/ - I never thought of this, but yes, magic tricks won’t impress robots since they’ll be able to use their advanced visioning sensors to see what’s actually happening.
http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2017/10/04/beat-three-card-monte-with-google-glass-and-remotely-located-human-or-artificial-expert/ - The Quantified Earth
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/news/a28708/earthquakes-fiber-optic-cables/ - Long gone are the days when a brilliant person could make a profound scientific discovery working alone in his lab. Science isn’t “over,” but we’ve certainly picked all the low-hanging fruits, and new discoveries can only be made through massive investments of human talent and money. Makes you wonder whether how well Einstein could distinguish himself today.
https://qz.com/1106745/were-running-out-of-big-ideas/ - Blade Runner 2049‘s CGI Rachael looked vastly better than Rogue One‘s CGI Tarkin and Leia, possibly because the special effects team spent a whole year working on Rachael.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-secrets-behind-blade-runner-2049s-most-surprising-s-1819675592 - Fascinating questions to ponder: How many stable chemicals are possible, how many of those can useful things for us, and what percentage of the useful chemicals have we already discovered?
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/10/10/how-many-natural-products-are-being-found-and-how-many-are-there - Japan’s population has been shrinking since 2010, and the trend won’t stop for the foreseeable future. The good news? More space per person.
https://qz.com/1112368/abandoned-land-in-japan-will-be-the-size-of-austria-by-2040/
A blog about futurism, science, technology, and military affairs.