A wealth tax. With that we could fully fund all the research people mention and have the means to roll out the advancement in a way that doesn't cause massive externalities.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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Asklemmy
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Nobody's talking about this one, but if NASA is able to confirm even the slightest degree of lab-scale spatial warping we'd be in for a huge sea change in potential futures.
High temperature superconductors.
Specifically anything above commercial / household freezer (-18C); but if we could get to ~105C (above water boiling) it would change literally everything.
Electric motors become more efficient over a much greater RPM range.
Superconducting magnets become much easier to construct and run, this gives us a much better chance at fusion.
Transmission lines themselves are pretty efficient as it is, but all of the associated switchgear at the conversion points all gets really warm, this could be virtually eliminated.
The conductors on circuit boards, and potentially inside microchips. This reduces heat loading and thus makes all computing devices more efficient.
The conductors in batteries; enabling these to be smaller and thus increasing battery energy density.
Finally making super-capacitors actually viable as longer term energy storage.
There are so many aspects of life that would be impacted by this one breakthrough, that it is probably the most important thing that will happen this century (scientifically speaking). It would be almost as revolutionary as when electricity itself became widespread.
Specifically, I think the abilty to make hydrogren from renewable resources at large-scale will change everything. Hydrogen fuel cells are more space efficient, and require less toxic manufacturing, when compared to current renewable energy generation and storage methods. If hydrogen is seen as cheaper or more green than other power sources, it will change the market completely.
Hydrogen generation is also an active research area, and just this year they've have some promising results for renewable hydrogen.
For everyone? Nuclear Fusion is on the cusp of reaching net zero emissions. Meaning we can create massive amounts of clean energy. Right now, we use nuclear energy off of Nuclear Fission creating hazardous waste and resulting in excess heat/waste
Nuclear Fusion would allows us to create clean energy with the goal of being net zero
Nuclear Fusion and "net zero emissions" doesn't really make sense.
What I think you are trying to say is that fusion is nearing the point where net energy is possible (that is getting more energy out then the amount of energy put in to create the reactions in the first place). Fusion is not practically close yet, but there are tantalizing hints that we are close.
See this from 2022; the national ignition facility produced more energy that was impacted on the target (2MJ in 3MJ out), but this doesn't take into account the huge inefficiencies in the laser generators to produce that 2MJ laser pulse.
There are a bunch of fusion experiments that are hitting massive temperatures (120 - 150MK) which is starting to get into the range where practical fusion could occur, the center of the sun is approx 15MK but also has massive gravity to encourage fusion.
So fusion is still a decade away at least, but we understand the science much more completely now. We know the problems (well a bunch of them) and it is mostly now a very difficult engineering problem rather a problem of understanding the science.
Yes. You are correct. Thank you.
APM (Atomically Precise Manufacturing)
Fusion in my house. Matter/energy converter in my house.
the most likely thing to cause a large impact to me is the continued advancement of crispr for gene therapy but it will not be a discovery at this point as much as just it becoming common and cheaper.
A room-temperature superconductor.
Seconded, because that would likely make fusion practical which would lead to effectively unlimited clean energy.
It's gonna be something we slap our foreheads over. Like if you twist the hell out of bronze, or put a microprocessor in a vice.
Shit there's like 3 other people saying that hours ago.
Mind-reading technology
MRNA vaccines for cancer, HIV and others. Moderna clinical trials have been real good.
Imagine getting a cancer diagnosis, then 30 days later getting a tailored treatment that eliminated the cancer.
Also vote. Because one party system has decided to side with anti vaxxers. The other has not. Cancer numbers have been steadily rising, second only to heart disease as a cause of death. There is a solid chance you're going to get cancer.
Do you know about preferential voting? It makes the 2 party system not so bad.
Voting is mandatory here. So no need to tell me to vote.
And I'm not sure which party is anti Vax.
Solid state batteries are just starting to hit the market but are still fairly comparable to lithium. In theory the mature tech is more energy dense, more thermally stable, charges faster and may be less environmentally damaging.
Pretty much anything that substantially improves batteries will be huge. R & D money is pouring in and that likely means progress. Improvements could be felt in factors like environmental impact, weight, energy density, safety, and charge time.
Star Trek-style matter replicator/recycler. Just imagine being able to empty a garbage dumpster into a bin, shut the lid, press a button, and an hour later you get stacks of industrially useful metals & materials, bolts of cloth, and sacks of fertilizer.
... in the next 5 years?
The cool part about molecular assemblers is that you only have to build one the hard way.
In my defense, Iβm half asleep, and due to lack of caffeine, didnβt notice the bit about βwhich could actually happen in the next 5 years.β
So with that in mind, Iβll say something about environmentally friendly raw materials for super efficient battery storage.
Scalable, lab grown meat operations.
I came here for this one.
I don't follow news on alt-meat super closely, but I thought the scalability thing was not much of a concern, and I thought we were mainly at the steps of raising demand and meating or beating price parity with the real thing.
Something like an alt-meat only fast food spot or something trendy that can only be done with lab created protein could be all it takes to cement its place in society, so I feel we're just waiting for that tipping point due to product that mainly already exists.
meating
Nice one
I knew you guys would pick up on that one!
The spell checker really did not want me to make that little joke, but I knew it would be appreciated.
Came here to say this. The implications for food security would be massive, but it would also have an enormous impact on climate change, cutting GHG emissions by one-third.
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