How will technology change the world in 2050?

The world population will increase from 7.3 billion people to 9.7 billion by 2050 according to the United Nations forecast. That means that the pressure on our planet will get bigger, the more global warming will be, the faster the resources will run out and the challenge of energy will be more difficult. Also included are social issues such as poverty, violence, evils and food needs. What challenges can be addressed by some potential technologies? Please follow us.

The comprehensive change of the world until 2050

Nuclear synthesis

If the user can make two extremely hot atoms collide and then combine into one, along with the ability to control the energy released after the collision, we won't need to worry about the electricity shortage. However, according to Professor, physicist Brian Cox from the University of Manchester, we are currently lacking investment funding for this. He even pointed out that the money people use to buy ringtones is far more than for nuclear research.

However, many people think that such nuclear synthesis will not get satisfactory results thanks to big projects such as ITER in France or the Lawrence Livermore Project of America. Instead, breakthroughs will come from smaller projects. One of them is General Fusion's effort, the Canadian company invested a lot of money and backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

General Fusion is currently developing a nuclear synthesis furnace based on magnetic principles. At the maximum compression level, synthesis will take place and energy is released in the form of fast neutrons. The surrounding liquid metal solution will slow these neutrons and produce heat. A heat exchanger mounted in the furnace will use that heat to heat water and spin electric turbines in a standard fashion, from which electricity will be generated. As of 2015 they have developed child components in the form of prototypes, which will then continue to combine them into a larger prototype.

Mining meteors

In the context of depleting resources, especially important metals, and extracting them from ore is becoming less and less economical, one of those solutions is to go to space. Planetary Resources intends to do that, and the first step of the project will be to deploy a series of missions called "ARKYD" to discover which of the most exploitable meteorites are near Earth. The first two ARKYD missions will bring telescopes into space for research and education purposes, then satellites and other robots for discovery missions.

Going to the sea

Seasteading is a concept that refers to the creation of a long-term residential community in a sea not owned by any country. Most of the seasteading projects used were used by a large ship or yacht to make a place for people to live, while others built massive structures on the sea. In the context of the development of maritime technology, this is more and more feasible, as well as the way the elevator has helped us get the skyscrapers.

Seafaring is in fact a very reasonable initiative when sea levels will be between 20 and 30cm by 2050, at which time many major cities, from New York, Bangkok to Mumbai or Guangzhou will be severe flooding. Some islands are even submerged or overcrowded so there is not enough room for others.

Seasteading Institute, a non-profit research institute, is currently implementing the Floating City project to realize the dream above. First of all, they want to build cities on the sea for testing and are now approaching the governments of coastal countries to establish communities that can feed themselves offshore.

Smart grid

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global energy consumption is projected to increase by 2% per year. Combined with rapid population growth, by 2050, energy demand will be twice as high as it is now. And in order to contribute to saving electricity, there are some countries that have implemented a new electric grid project, which has electric meters that can self-regulate electricity and reduce waste. The vision of these projects is to create a grid capable of providing the right amount of electricity in real time, for both peak and low hours. The cost per watt will also vary depending on the time of day and the recording and charging will become easier.

Tram

Electric vehicle technology is now developing very aggressively, and this is said to be the future of the road transport industry. Electric cars are also closely related to smart grid projects as mentioned above because if all cars need to charge every day every night, the pressure on the grid will be huge. Therefore, the biggest challenge with electric cars now revolves around a word: battery. The battery in the car needs to last longer, use electricity more efficiently, charge faster, so it will motivate many people to buy electric cars. Along with that, the charging station network must also be more dense to dispel worries in users.

Food in the future

Now the middle class wants to eat more, and by 2050 the demand for meat and protein will increase by 80% the most. Therefore, people need to change their eating habits if they do not want to have a protein deficiency someday. And to help solve this problem, many companies have thought about making artificial meat. This piece of meat appeared for the first time a few years ago, it was made from the muscle cells of the cow soaked in a nourishing solution, thereby forming larger pieces of meat. The cost to create that piece of meat is about $ 385,000, but with future research the price will definitely drop. Some other companies print food with 3D printers from organic materials to create artificial food. Meanwhile, animal husbandry technologies in the city will need to be developed to help increase the amount of supply provided to the people.

Graphene

Graphene has long been considered a magic material. It was discovered and created by Konstantin Novoselow and Andre Geim at the University of Manchester in 2004. Structurally, graphene is in fact a form of hatred of carbon elements. In graphene crystals, carbon atoms bind together in covalent rules to form hexagonal cells. However, unlike another carbon form of graphite, this lattice has only a two-dimensional structure, ie its thickness refers to the size of an atom. Due to such a special structure, graphene has good electrical conductivity, good thermal conductivity, and transparency to light and the most important thing for industrial deployment is the cost of creating material networks at a very reasonable level. .

The use of Graphene has many things: creating high-speed microprocessor for computers, super-thin and super-durable materials, used in batteries to increase the time up to 10 times. It can even be used to make solar panels integrated in any surface or make sensors and tag tracking.

Magnetic spacer

Japanese JR Central Company is currently building a very fast speed train system to reduce half the time between Tokyo city and Nagoya city. They do this by using magnetic levitation (maglev) technology. In this technology, powerful electromagnet rods located on the underside of the ship and on the track will create thrust to lift the ship suspended above the air (about 10cm) and push the entire vehicle forward. Because the friction force is very small compared to the traditional railway train, maglev trains have higher speed and more fuel efficient.

Going back to the Japanese train, it is now called the L0 Series and is capable of running at nearly 500 km / h. Therefore, it takes only 40 minutes to travel between Tokyo and Nagoya and 90 minutes from the current Shinkansen. By 2017, the L0 Series will be operational, and Japan is planning to expand it to many other places in its territory.

Urban forests, overhead gardens

Buildings with lots of greenery will be the new trend of architecture, and among them people have thought that high-rise buildings will be covered with trees both inside, outside and on the roof. The Bosco Verticale Twin Towers in Milan is a real example of how people are developing forests right in the heart of cities with over 11,000 small trees, 5,000 low-rise trees and 700 tall trees. Thanks to that, the atmosphere in the building as well as the surrounding area will be healthier and cooler without the need for a large area to be a traditional park. And yet, the Bosco Verticale building also uses recycled water for watering plants, and its exterior is integrated with solar panels to power its internal use.

Electric propulsion

In 2007, NASA launched a satellite called Dawn thanks to an electrically powered ion propulsion engine, different from conventional chemical engines.This "Xenon Ion Drive" engine makes better use of fuel by accelerating 10 times faster than normal, but it can also use solar energy to create thrust. In the future, if electric propulsion engines like this are better developed, the space exploration missions will become more popular, go further. However, xenon gas is so rare that people are working on switching to other materials.