It’s not all doom and gloom. There are some real solutions to some of the seemingly impossible and overwhelming problems of our day. Chris Hicke has a look.
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Let’s take a break from the doom and gloom we’re bombarded with by nearly every major information outlet. It’s no secret that horror stories, be they about Iraq, Russia, climate change, anything happening in Florida, or Republicans trying to form a coherent argument, do wonders for clicks, views, ratings, or whatever medium we use to count a story’s popularity. One could argue that it’s easier for us to focus on tragedy, and lose sight of all the amazing things taking place that can, will, and are counteracting the dismal events we can’t seem to take our eyes off. With that in mind, let’s take a moment to realize that there are still good and amazing things going on in the world, some of which might end up saving us in the long run.
1. Cleaning the Oceans
With the amount of time our species has been crossing and exploring the oceans, it’s no surprise that the seas have gradually been filling with our trash. Whether it is tossed over the side of ships or floats out from rivers and coastlines, this refuse is wreaking havoc on their respective ecosystems. Marine life of all kinds often mistake this garbage for food. This garbage will either kill the animals that eat them, or end up inside predators that eat the first set of animals. Over time, this will corrupt the entire food chain.
Enter Boyan Slat, an engineering student who has devised a way to clean the oceans of all the garbage we have dumped in to his. His proposed method relies on innovative, self-sufficient vessels and mesh nets that will capture our waste without also catching marine life, and it will do so at a net profit. In 2012, he gave a wonderful TEDx talk describing this technology. It is certainly a must watch, as he explains the problem and solution in great detail, and finishes with a poignant ending that more people need to hear:
2. Self-Healing Materials
It is an unavoidable consequence of usage that things will eventually fail. Regardless of if they are organic or artificial, parts inevitably wear out and fail. While there may not be a way to completely prevent this from happening, there are several technologies in the works that will help greatly extend the life spans of the tools and equipment we have come to depend on in our day-to-day lives.
Among them are self-healing plastics and polymers. The plastics heal with the use of small capsules filled with polymerizers and healing agents that rupture when cracks form in the plastic. When released, these chemicals work to reseal the crack; tests have shown damage exceeding a 35mm radius healing within 20 minutes, and mechanical functions being viable within a matter of hours. While these initial tests have only restored about 62% of the plastic’s original strength, the results are incredibly promising, as even a stopgap measure such as this can prevent catastrophic failure long enough for proper repairs to be made.
The polymers, by comparison, are made of materials that are held together with hydrogen bonds. This is important because hydrogen bonds are known to self heal if broken, which is easily demonstrated with water molecules. This allows the polymer heal itself with 97% efficiency within a matter of hours at room temperature, meaning the bonds can restore themselves without outside help in most cases. If you’re curious as to what this process looks like, researchers compare the repairs to the T-1000 in Terminator 2, which was able to reform itself after sustaining heavy damage. And while this material can be made conductive by adding nickel microparticles, it’s unlikely that they will gain sentience and attempt to wipe out humanity.
Realistically, self-repairing polymers are seen as a potential synthetic skin. It’s ability to quickly self-heal would help to ward off disease in the event it is torn, and the material’s electrical resistance changes based on pressure and tension, meaning it can potentially be wired into a patients’ nervous system to restore their sense of touch.
3. Carbon Capture Technology
Let’s start this section off with some technologies being developed to control the CO2 emissions that are heating the planet and acidifying the oceans. Even if you for some, completely unfathomable reason, disagree with the fact that humans are causing climate change, it is impossible to deny that our dependence on fossil fuels covers our cities in smog, reducing air quality and making for some really dismal skyline views. If nothing else, see these technologies as a way to clean up our cities and improve air quality.
First up on the list is a titanium dioxide coating developed by students at University of California, Riverside. When exposed to ultraviolet radiation, such as sunlight, TiO2 breaks down 88-97% of the chemical compounds that make up smog, neutralizing the equivalent of driving 18,000km. What’s more, TiO2 can be applied to residential roofs for as little as $5, and is essentially applied like a coat of paint. While still in the testing phases, this technology shows promise as a cheap, effective way to clean the air in and around cities and suburbs.
In an effort to keep CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere altogether, researchers in Australia and New South Wales are working on experimental power plants that will not only sequester their carbon emissions instead of releasing them into the air, will turn the gas into bricks for use in construction. The process mimics the Earth’s natural carbon sink mechanism while speeding it up substantially, and has the bonus of permanently trapping CO2 in a form that can be reused, instead of siphoning it underground indefinitely.
Finally, there is a new field of science, synthetic biology, which is looking to convert CO2 into limestone through the use of protocells. Protocells are “life-like matter” that could be applied to building exteriors as a means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. These cells will create a limestone coating over structures which, in addition to helping to reduce our carbon footprint, will help repair micro fractures that naturally occur over time, helping to reduce maintenance costs and wear and tear. Over long enough time spans, the limestone buildup will even improve the building’s insulation, which will cut down on heating and cooling costs. While producing the protocells is proving to be a bit of a challenge, there have already been orders placed for the material once it has been manufactured.
4. Energy
The first item on the list for energy use & efficiency may not sound very impressive on the surface, but its implications are huge. Sandia National Laboratories is developing a new kind of heat sink for computer processors and lighting that uses an impellor instead of fan blades. What makes this so impressive is that, by pushing air away from the heat source, the impellor is up to 30 times more effective than traditional cooling fans, which have a tendency to collect dust and fail if not regularly cleaned. Additionally, the new heat sinks are virtually silent and nearly ten times smaller than traditional cooling systems. Their improved efficiency even has the potential to break the 4GHz/150W TDP thermal wall, which could allow for the production of faster and more efficient processors.
While currently being developed primarily to cool computer processors, these devices have the potential to be scaled up for use in other systems as well. In fact, if these impellors were installed on all the refrigeration and air conditioning units in the United States, they would cut the nation’s power usage by up to 7%. While this particular use may not be implemented for several years, the implications of such a huge energy savings and efficiency increase are immense, especially as global energy consumption continues to rise.
In the realm of new, experimental, and completely exciting new sources of energy is thorium. Like uranium and plutonium, thorium is a radioactive material with great potential for use as a power source. In its natural state, thorium is not a fissile material, meaning it cannot be easily converted into a nuclear weapon. Useable thorium is also much more naturally abundant (most uranium needs to be refined to be a viable fuel source), and is not naturally fissile, meaning it cannot be easily converted into nuclear weapons.
Thorium reactors themselves have several benefits over traditional nuclear reactors as well. While they will require a small amount of uranium or plutonium to initiate the reaction, thorium reactors do not need to be shut down for refueling as traditional nuclear reactors do. Thorium reactions can also take place in normal atmospheric pressure, meaning they don’t need to be buried within massive forts of steel and concrete in case of cooling systems failures. Even the waste, light water, is comparatively safe. It is less than 1/100th as radioactive as uranium wastewater, and returns to safe levels of radioactivity within centuries, compared to millennia for uranium/plutonium waste products.
Currently, India and China are leading the way in thorium research. Their growing economies demand ever larger amounts of energy, which will simply not be sustainable with sole reliance on fossil fuels. Additional research is being done in Norway, where thorium was discovered and named (yes, it is named for their thunder god), to test for commercial viability and a replacement in traditional nuclear reactors. Research is even underway to use thorium to power vehicles, with the expectation that these power plants could function for a century, likely outlasting the rest of the car, and certainly its owner. As with much of the other technology listed here, thorium power is still in the experimental stages, but if the potential behind this technology doesn’t send chills up your spine, I don’t know what will.
Of course, no discussion about energy usage is complete without bringing up Tesla Motors. The company behind the world’s first commercially viable electric car, Tesla is the company everyone should be basing their business models off of. They have created a product with immensely high demand that, compared to its archaic gasoline-powered ancestors requires almost no maintenance and leaves a much smaller impact on the planet. Additionally, Tesla Motors has made their patents open source, with the hope that others will implement and innovate this technology to make it more accessible to the average person.
Matthew Inman, creator of web comic The Oatmeal, has created some high informative and entertaining reviews of the Tesla Model S, of which he is a proud owner (read Part 1 and Part 2 here). In Part 2, Inman asks Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk, to help save Nicolai Tesla’s old laboratory, the namesake of Musk’s automobile company. Due to a previous social media campaign, Oatmeal fans managed to save the lab from demolition and raise enough money to turn it into a museum to honor Nicolai Tesla, whose genius was well ahead of its time. In what came as a complete surprise to everyone, Musk replied to Inman’s request to help preserve Tesla’s legacy; this is no small response, given the request comes with an $8 million dollar price tag.
This kind of PR, coupled with record setting safety ratings, makes it little wonder that Tesla Motors has become so popular in recent years. Elon Musk is certainly the type of person we need more of in the world, especially since he appears to embody Nicolai Tesla’s legacy. With his genius, drive, and altruism driving the advancement of new, clean technologies humanity desperately needs, it’s hard not to think we’re simply on a bumpy stretch of road into a brighter future.
Conclusion
While, yes, a lot of these technologies are still in the testing and experimentation phases, they show incredible promise within their respective fields, and have the potential to change and enhance our lives in ways we haven’t foreseen yet. It is important to remember that, for as much as news sources like to say the sky is falling (and in many respects, they appear to be right), there are still many people out there working to improve our lives and keep us moving forward, in spite of the doom and gloom constantly placed before us. On my less cynical days, I almost think these ideas and innovations will win out in the end, as well.
Photo credit: wonderlane / flickr