20 ms·
Historically, many things were "never" - until we do otherwise. The opposite is also true. Many things we thought would be possible are either economically or
by papaf 5y ago
Historically, many things were "never" - until we do otherwise.
The opposite is also true. Many things we thought would be possible are either economically or technologically out of our grasp:
- Nitrogen fixation in wheat.
- A computer simulation of the catalyst that fixes Nitrogen in plants.
- Fusion power stations.
- Room temperature super-conductors
Maybe its possible to point to research that is almost there in most of these areas -- just like the 1950s.
- oblio 5y ago- Financially sustainable recycling of all plastics
- adrianN 5y ago> Fusion power stations We've made slow but steady progress on this pretty much since we figured out that man made fusion is possible.
- papaf 5y agoSo we will be there in 30 years or so?
- adrianN 5y agoFusion is mostly a certain amount of funding away. We're quite sure that ITER and DEMO will work if we put enough money in. If we had more funding we could simultaneously also pursue other approaches, like Stellarators, to increase success changes more.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y agoWith all those problems we are very near solution, and goes same as for Mars: - nitrogen fixation, I think we are doing it wrong, we are trying to pluck rose with a jack hammer, we simply do not have enough knowledge, plants in general have more genes than humans. - Fusion is around the corner, (and this time it is not yet again 30 years) it is just shifting more money into research, I read that globally only 50 bn is invested in fusion, jApple on its own has value of 2250 bn. ...
- Gravityloss 5y agoI have heard that "fusion is around the corner" thing was apparently because of some early assumptions about the core physics of fusion that turned out to be spectacularly wrong. It turned out to be orders of magnitude harder. So that was one clear scientific reason. But people got the impression that the teams working on it are somehow unreliable, unorganized or keep moving the goal posts and are a butt of jokes. I think the messaging around it doesn't help. It's the same with batteries or renewable energy as well though.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y agoRegarding nitrogen fixation I recommend watching "Kiss the Ground Film Trailer (2020)" documentary ...