Exponentials & IR4.0

Space As The New Frontier

Solar Sail?

• A solar sail, simply put, is a spacecraft propelled by sunlight. Whereas a conventional rocket is propelled by the thrust produced by its internal engine burn, a solar sail is pushed forward simply by light from the Sun. This is possible because light is made up of packets of energy known as “photons,” that act like atomic particles, but with more energy. When a...

• People think that the world is getting worse, but perhaps that’s not the case. Perhaps instead of the distortions brought to us, what’s really going on perhaps is the tremendous progress we made over the last century by a series of forces that are in fact accelerating to a point that we have the potential in the next three decades to create a world of abundance.
• Now that does not mean we don’t have...

• In 1905, a team of construction workers in the small village of Shoreham, New York labored to erect a truly extraordinary structure. Over a period of several years the men had managed to assemble the framework and wiring for the 187-foot-tall Wardenclyffe Tower, in spite of severe budget shortfalls and a few engineering snags. The project was overseen by its designer, the eccentric-yet-ingenious...

• Quantum computing is the area of study focused on developing computer technology based on the principles of quantum theory, which explains the nature and behavior of energy and matter on the quantum(atomic and subatomic) level. Development of a quantum computer, if practical, would mark a leap forward in computing capability far greater than that from the abacus to a modern day supercomputer, with...

• Most polymers are insulators and therefore don’t conduct electricity. However an upsurge in this field of polymer research emerged in 2000 after the award of a Nobel Prize to Alan MacDiarmid, Alan Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa for work on discovering that a polymer named polyacetylene became conductive when impurities were introduced through a process known as doping.
• Not only does the same process...

“Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent, they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.”

• Radio-based space communications have been the convention since the days of NASA’s Mercury and Geminiprograms, but even with dramatic improvements to the technology in the last half-century, radio communications are...

• NASA has just announced funding for eight ambitious new space projects, which include the development of new habitats far away from planet Earth, a magnetic force field system, a deep sleep chamber for astronauts travelling to Mars, and self-assembling outposts to act as stop-off points on the way to the Red Planet.
• If these all sound a little ‘out there’, it’s because they’re entries in NASA’s...