The turbulent future of the planet - Will humanity survive?

How Earthquakes and Volcanoes Reveal the Beating Heart Smithsonian Magazine

America is the most powerful country on the planet, but also the most dangerous in terms of geological risks.

The time when the great Californian earthquake could start is unknown and unpredictable, but it is expected that the state of California will be devastated by an earthquake caused by the San Andreas fault. Cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco could be buried or sunk.

Recent Earthquakes Map that uses Google Maps

Over the next 100 years, due to rising ocean levels caused by melting glaciers at the North Pole, the east coast of the United States could be flooded, including coastal cities such as New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Miami could be submerged. so building a dam around a city like New York would be as high a priority as the wall with Mexico. It is also expected that following climate change, tornadoes, and hurricanes will become more frequent, even constant, as whole regions. in America, including coastal areas, could become uninhabitable.

Protecting coastal cities from rising sea levels could cost the US Daily Mail 

The Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming could erupt in the next thousand years, with the last eruption taking place 630,000 years ago. The eruption of this supervolcano could be fatal to America because the eruption is the equivalent of thousands of nuclear bombs, so hundreds of thousands of Americans in the vicinity of the volcano could be killed instantly. Volcanic ash will cover 500 miles in the first phase, then spread around the globe, resulting in a volcanic winter that will last several years.

Experts Raised 'Increased Warning' Over Active Volcanos Amid "High Tech Time 

Tens of millions of Americans will die, plus tens of millions more people worldwide due to the collapse of the global economy and compromised crops. Recovery could take decades.

Desertification is another major threat that could affect Mexico and South American states like Texas, with the risk of a drinking water crisis, which will aggravate uncontrollable immigration, while Canada and North American states are increasingly threatened by winters. cold and snowy, covered by a small local ice age.

The Yellowstone supervolcano is a disaster waiting to happen Washington Post

Europe is not doing well either, given that the climate tends to become tropical, with summers becoming increasingly dry and hot, which would mean an increase in cases of malaria and other epidemics, as well as the disappearance of plant and animal species adapted to the temperate environment.

Rising ocean and sea levels could lead to the fragmentation of coastal states such as Italy, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, which could be completely covered by water.

List of largest volcanic eruptions - Wikipedia

In Asian countries such as India and Iraq, but also in Africa, desertification will wreak havoc and the drinking water crisis, so uncontrollable mass immigration, escalating terrorism and local resource wars will become serious threats to the existence of the European Union that will not be able to cope.

In Italy, the imminent eruption of Vesuvius could lead to the destruction of the city of Naples, and half of Europe could be covered by a cloud of volcanic ash so that crops will be destroyed and the air transport system will be grounded. Indeed, Europe will be paralyzed for many years.

The future is now: 10 ideas from past SF applied in present

SF writers have often succeeded in imagining the technology we use today.

Over the years, SFs, whether we're talking about books, comics, serials or movies here, have managed to show us what the technology we will use in the future might look like. This genre has given birth to many important names in literature, among them, Jules Verne managing to combine an easy-to-read style of writing with a boundless imagination; he managed to foresee even aselenization in his book "From the Earth to the Moon".

The development of radio and television has given many writers and writers the opportunity to share their ideas with the general public and even give us a clear picture of how the technology we use will look. Space has created a list of 10 ideas from SF that, in the meantime, have become reality.


1. Star Trek Mobile Phone: The Original Series

The first mobile phone was invented by Motorola in 1973 and weighed 1.1 kilograms; Over time, scientists have been able to consistently reduce the weight of these devices and, more importantly, increase their number of functions.

H&I | The Star Trek prop that predicted the flip phone is back

If the first mobile phone, Motorola DynaTAC, only gave you 35 minutes for calls, the preset phones can work even for a few days without being charged, and some of them can even download in a few seconds a lot of information that initially mobile telephony would have seemed astronomical.


2. Universal Translator, Star Trek: The Original Series

The characters in Star Trek used a device to communicate with the various alien species. Currently, the idea of a device has been replaced by an algorithm, such as the one offered by Skype that allows the translation of the voice from one language to another. Obviously, the current technology does not meet SF standards, but it alone represents solid steps in the right direction.

Star Trek's Universal Translator Version 1.0 Shelly Palmer

Fans of Star Trek (The Original Series) will fondly remember the “Universal Translator.” While Gene Roddenberry’s epic saga was both inspirational and aspirational for some, it set goals for others. How much wireless bandwidth would you need on the Starship Enterprise? How would a medical tricorder work? What kind of storage would you need on Memory Alpha? How did the noise-cancelling for communicators work? Every engineer I know can tell you a story about how he or she was inspired by this amazing 1960s television show.


3. Teleportation, Star Trek: The Original Series

Quantum teleportation moves into the third dimension – Physics World Physics World

The idea behind the teleportation in this series is that a person could be "decomposed" into energy and "recomposed" once they reach their destination. Unfortunately, our scientists have not been able to teleport people, but they have been able to teleport photons, the smallest forms of matter, on the boundary between energy and matter.

Physicists in China and Austria have shown for the first time they can teleport multi-dimensional states of photons. Carrying out experiments using photons encoded via three spatial states, they say their scheme can be extended to arbitrarily high numbers of dimensions and is a vital step in teleporting the entire quantum state of a particle. The work could also improve technology used in quantum communications and quantum computing.

Quantum mechanics forbids the quantum state of one particle from being copied precisely to another particle. But teleportation – the instantaneous transfer of a state between particles separated by a long distance – offers an alternative. The process involves no physical transfer of matter and erases the state of the particle to be copied.


4. 3D Holograms, Star Wars

In the Star Wars universe, some of the communication is done with the help of three-dimensional holograms, such a transmission being the one that removes Obi-Wan Kenobi from his isolation on the desert planet Tatooine.

In real life, in 2018, researchers at Brigham Young University, United States of America managed to create such a hologram, their technology uses fast particles.


5. Bionic members, Star Wars

Star Wars fans know over the course of the nine films many people lose their limbs; however, the confrontation between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader of Cloud City gave us the first picture of how an artificial hand could look and function.

Cybernetics Wookieepedia - Fandom

This scenario seems to be closer to reality now than it was in the 1970s when the series was launched; researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, have managed to produce an arm that can be controlled with the help of sensors by people whose arms have been amputated.


6. Digital panels, Blade Runner

In this movie, viewers can see a possible version of a Los Angees from the not too distant future; on some of the buildings of this city are a series of giant billboards that would be digital. In 2013, the company Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) was created which develops a similar technology.

7. Artificial intelligence

Currently, artificial intelligence has a variety of applications, starting from art and even to medicine and pharmacology; we can say that researchers in most people do their best to adapt the algorithms to help them in their work, and this is due to their almost unlimited potential.

In the movie Blade Runner, we are presented with the idea of synthetic people who need artificial intelligence to function; the existence of these algorithms tends to play an important role in the unfolding of the film.


8. Space Stations, 2001: A Space Odyssey

In the 1968 film, we are presented with the idea of ​​a space station, located on the Earth's low orbit, where astronauts experience microgravity. Starting with 1998, this idea began to take shape and in reality, with the construction of the International Space Station, a laboratory dedicated to microgravity studies.

Washington, DC, April 2, 1968.  The Uptown Theater.  Opening night.  The world eagerly awaits the premiere of Stanley Kubrick’s latest epic film.  Four years in the making with noted science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, the film has been delayed and is over budget.  Two days later, 2001: A Space Odyssey opens in New York and Los Angeles, and in other US cities the following week.  Anticipation runs high, given the talent involved and the near total secrecy surrounding the film during production and editing, which Kubrick was still finishing just a few days before opening day.  Even Clarke didn’t see the finished product until the premiere.


9. Tablets, 2001: A Space Odyssey

The tablets we use today appeared in 2010, however in 1964, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the creators introduced the concept of "newspads". These devices were used by the scientists in the movie and, like Samsung, these were the first true tablets and not the iPads.


10. Cars without driver, Total Recall

This 1984 film presents a concept that scientists from a multitude of research institutions and private companies are actively working on: creating an algorithm that allows cars to travel safely, without the need for a driver at steering wheel. NASA seems to be interested in this property, and that would allow it to build more efficient robots that explore space.

The futuristic cars of Total Recall, behind the scenes hemmings.com

A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away? No, wrong movie), reader Greg Allen caught our post on the Boonie Bug and sent in some screengrabs from the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall guessing that the Johnnycab was based on a Boonie Bug. It wasn’t, but that post did inspire James Belohovek to get in touch with us. James did some work on the Johnny in the Johnnycab and had a chance to take plenty of pictures on set during the filming of the movie.

You may also like : Star Wars Day: May The Force Be With You. "Isolation does not stop fans of the series around the world from celebrating Star Wars Day"

The future is now: Engineers have released plans for a 5-km-high skyscraper that absorb smog

Credit: Arconic

2017 only just arrived, but one manufacturing company is already looking 45 years into the future.

Arconic, a materials science company, has envisioned a 3-mile-high (4.8-km) skyscraper built from materials that are either in-development or have already been brought to market, including smog-eating surfaces and retractable balconies.

The tower was concocted as part of the company’s larger campaign known as The Jetsons, an homage to the 1962 cartoon set in 2062. Arconic’s engineers worked alongside futurists to imagine the technologies that will be most useful several decades from now.

Sherri McCleary, one of Arconic’s chief materials scientists, says one of the most exciting and immediate projects is EcoClean, a special coating that helps buildings self-clean and purify the surrounding air.

It was first released in 2011 and offers a number of benefits over traditional pane glass windows, McCleary says.

"The functional coating provides aesthetics, it provides maintenance benefits, and it also provides a benefit to the surrounding environment by reducing the content of pollutants around it," she tells Business Insider.

EcoClean works with help from light and water vapour, which mix with the chemicals in the coating to produce atoms known as free radicals.

These free radicals pull in pollutants from the air and break them down to get sloughed off the side of the building along with dirt and grime - almost like dead skin.

The end result is a cleaner building surrounded by cleaner air.

Arconic’s Bloomframe design for windows of the future. Image: Arconic

Another innovation is in the windows themselves. The new design is called Bloomframe. Essentially, it’s a motorised window that converts into an all-glass balcony in under a minute.

Arconic has been showcasing the technology at trade shows around the world and will hit the market in the "near future", a company spokesperson says.

Rather than spend twice the money on materials to build separate windows and ledges, Arconic wants to invest in flexible components that can make buildings more than just static giants.

Skyscrapers built from 3D-printed materials could stretch more than 3 miles in the sky, Arconic says.

Some of Arconic’s other futuristic designs include flying cars, ultra-lightweight car bodies, and aerodynamic aeroplane wings.

In the meantime, it continues working to push the limits of what modern-day skyscrapers can look like and do. Thanks to 3D printing, McCleary says many structures that aren’t currently feasible could withstand high winds and unique climates.

"We’re looking at optimising the materials that can be 3D-printed to give more and more options to designers and architects," she says.

Other articles on the same theme:

• (Elves Modern Tower) The Incredible Vertical Forest Residential Towers in Milan
• The highest monument in the world will be built on an artificial island in India
• The Future Is Now : First Flying Car Is Finally Here AEROMOBIL 3.0
• THE FUTURE IS NOW ! ADVANCED PROSTHETIC ARM WILL GO ON SALE THIS YEAR

Story source: 

 

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Science Alert. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Jules Verne, the writer who saw the future. two centuries ago including ( electric submarines, trains, news broadcasts, Solar Sails, Lunar Module, Helicopter and much more )

Jules Verne photo: pinterest

Many authors of science fiction novels have provided some invention or how time will change our society. Few, however, were visionaries such as Jules Verne, the writer who has brightened our childhood with his novels of adventure, but we can now reread with new eyes, to see how he foresaw the evolution of technology and science.

In the nineteenth century, a French writer still unknown to the true value described in detail astronaut moon landing, which was to take place over nearly a century.

Similarly, in the novel "2000 Leagues Under the Sea", the young Jules Verne, passionate about science and an exuberant imagination, he wrote about submarines and about technology (now still in experiment) through which water was transformed into fuel enigmatic Captain Nemo outcast scientist.

Carefully observing the world around, Jules Verne foresaw in an incredible cities of the future will look like.

"Paris in the twentieth century" book written in 1863, describes in detail the beautiful capital of France, full of skyscrapers, and its inhabitants, that go with trains similar to those now called Maglev and use computers connected to the Internet .

Born in 1828, Jules Verne career followed his father, taking his doctorate in law in 1851, but also the frequency with pleasure Parisian literary salons.

Thus, in 1849 he was known here on the famous Alexandre Dumas and was friends with his son, who in turn would become a writer.

Poster promoting novel series "extraordinary journeys", published by Hetzel photo: pinterest

I showed his new friend the manuscript of a comedy, "Straw Ripped," which succeeded then a mount on the stage of a theater in Paris, it can be considered his literary debut. For 20 years, he continued to work in theater experience which has helped a lot in narrative construction of his novels, which are particularly captivating.

Success would come later, because the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, whom he met in 1862 and which presented the manuscript of the novel originally entitled "Journey bubble".

Hetzel, who had already published famous authors such as Honoré de Balzac, George Sand and Victor Hugo, was delighted by the style of Jules Verne's novel because he wanted to launch a magazine that combines entertainment with science.

Under his coordination would appear the series' extraordinary journeys ", which will include 44 science fiction novels and adventure signed by Jules Verne.

These will include: "Five Weeks in a Balloon" (1863), "2,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1869), "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1864), "From the Earth to the Moon" (1865), "Children captain Grant "(1867)," around the Moon "(1870)," around the World in 80 days "(1873)," Mysterious Island "(1874).

Jules Verne died in 1905 from complications arising from diabetes, leaving behind a prolific literary work and a vision that would change the world.


From this point of view, it is difficult to say whether he foresaw what would be in the future, which would become technological progress, or if his imagination is that which he has influenced other inventors and made this development possible.

Free to speculate in this regard, we should mention that Edwin Hubble scientists like Jacques Cousteau and Hermann Oberth were fascinated by Jules Verne's novels and acknowledged that these writings were full of fantasy for them a source of inspiration.

Inventions came to life as imagined by Jules Verne?



1. electric submarines. One of the most famous novels, "2,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1869) presents Captain Nemo crossing oceans aboard a giant electric submarine, Nautilus.

Electric submarine Alvin photo: pinterest

Submarine have luxurious rooms and was supplied with electricity. In 1964 it was built the submarine Alvin, which, although much smaller and can only accommodate 3 people, works on a similar principle, being battery powered.

2. News broadcasts. In 1889, Jules Verne wrote an article entitled "In 2889", which described the media future. Instead of the classic newspaper subscribers watching a program in which reporters talk to scientists and politicians about the major events of the day.

The first TV news program was broadcast only in 1920, so after 30 years from the time that the author described this form of mass communication.

3. Solar Sails. In 1865, the novel "From the Earth to the Moon" Jules Verne wrote about a spaceship powered light. Today there is something similar - solar sails.


On May 21, 2010, the Ikaros mission, Japan successfully launched a sail like this, to investigate the planets in our approach. Vela, a width of 14 meters, powered by solar energy

The project was first proposed in 1920 and aimed sails propel the space shuttle using solar radiation, without the need for additional fuel.

4. Lunar Module. Jules Verne described throughout the novel "From the Earth to the Moon" "projectiles" that were used to transport passengers to the moon.


They were attached to the "huge cannons" that they were drawn helped "projectile" to overcome the force of gravity, using the writer usually quite detailed descriptions of the technology imagined in his books.

Lunar module used in Apollo 11 mission photo: wikipedia.org

Now there are monthly modules, which NASA managed to reach the moon. These capsules are the crew members are attached to rockets that propel them and transporting them to the destination, exactly as he had imagined Writers French almost 200 years ago.

5. The ads written in the sky. Keen observer of the world around him, Verne foresaw and promising future of advertising, and the article "In the year 2889", he described a new method of advertising like writing in the sky.

"All these announcements have noticed huge clouds reflected, were so large they could be seen by the population of entire cities or even an entire country," wrote Jules Verne.

These insights are all the more impressive amazing as the writer does not have a background in engineering or physics. It is true that he had friends passion for science and invention, and it is likely that many ideas to come out of these discussions.

Sky writing was first used in 1930 by Skywriting Corporation in the United States, and among the first customers were counted Pepsi-Cola.

For such a project requires five planes flying in formation and each issue a special smoke over 3 km altitude, so the message is visible from a great distance.

6. Videoconferencing. Also in the article "In 2889" Jules Verne described "fonotelefotul", a precursor to technology that now allows the organization videoconferencing system makes it possible to connect to people at large distance from each other.

Here's how the writer imagined this technology, which has become a reality much sooner than he imagined: "Fonotelefotul transmit sensitive images through mirrors connected with wires".

7. Helicopter. It is true that the French novelist's passion for technology is not limited to discussions with friends. He always read magazines he found in clubs frequented and even take notes of these publications in their

In 1862, he became secretary of the Society of Aviation, which aimed "to encourage air transport machines heavier than air" as enouncing its founders.

The company soon attracted other members of the French intellectual elite, including George Sand, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne good friends.

The writer was one of the most ardent supporters of a project designed by Felix Tournachon, a journalist and avid photographer inventions, known under the pseudonym of Nadar, founder member of the Society of Aviation.


Nadar invented the helicopter. At least on paper. He imagined a device virtually fly using wings that rotate.

Cover novel "Robur the Conqueror" with drawing Albatros aircraft

Excited about the project that worked, Jules Verne wrote about in his books Aviation Society and Nadar's name even appears in the novel "From the Earth to the Moon" where amateur inventor is listed under the name Ardan.

The huge flying machine imagined by Jules Verne and his friends came to life in the novel "Robur the Conqueror" (1886), called Albatros, as the brilliant invention Robur.


The novel was illustrated by Leon Bennett after Jules Verne's clear instructions so that today we can see how he imagined this first aircraft.

"Flying crane" invented by Igor Sikorsky, after the appliance model Albatros described by Jules Verne

In 1939, he managed to get off the ground in one device, VS-300, which flew only a few centimeters, but can be considered the forerunner of today's huge Sikorsky helicopters.


Perhaps among writers of science fiction today is hiding another Jules Verne, and over tens or hundreds of years, his ideas, now considered pure fantasy, will become part of the lives of everyday people then living on Earth or on other planets.


Other articles on the same theme:

• Funerals for writer Edgar Allan Poe, 160 years after his death
• Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, great writer killed by a terrible disease
• 16 November 1849 a Russian court sentenced Fyodor Dostoevsky to death. At the last moment the execution was postponed.
• Vlad Dracula Biography (1431-1476)

Story source: 

 

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by National Geographic . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.