Science fiction things that are real today.
Даниил Вишневский
Даниил Вишневский
School#5. 10-th Form. Pavlograd. Ukraine.
Project of Investigation
Project of Investigation
https://plus.google.com/103704749827640506101/posts
All of us read science fiction books in childhood and dreamt about flying cars, robots walking across the street and computer with AI.
So, today I want to present you three science fiction things that are real today.
1. A flight to Mars
NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s – goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010.
Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and robotic and human exploration as we expand our presence into the solar system. Its formation and evolution are comparable to Earth, helping us learn more about our own planet’s history and future. Mars had conditions suitable for life in its past. Future exploration could uncover evidence of life, answering one of the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos: Does life exist beyond Earth?
While robotic explorers have studied Mars for more than 40 years, NASA’s path for the human exploration of Mars begins in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. Our next step is deep space, where NASA will send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will explore the asteroid in the 2020s, returning to Earth with samples. This experience in human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit will help NASA test new systems and capabilities, such as Solar Electric Propulsion, which we’ll need to send cargo as part of human missions to Mars.
2. Car-to-car communication
The technology that warned of the impending collision will start appearing in cars in just a couple of years. Called car-to-car or vehicle-to-vehicle communication, it lets cars broadcast their position, speed, steering-wheel position, brake status, and other data to other vehicles within a few hundred meters. The other cars can use such information to build a detailed picture of what’s unfolding around them, revealing trouble that even the most careful and alert driver, or the best sensor system, would miss or fail to anticipate.
Already many cars have instruments that use radar or ultrasound to detect obstacles or vehicles. But the range of these sensors is limited to a few car lengths, and they cannot see past the nearest obstruction.
Car-to-car communication should also have a bigger impact than the advanced vehicle automation technologies that have been more widely heralded. Though self-driving cars could eventually improve safety, they remain imperfect and unproven, with sensors and software too easily bamboozled by poor weather, unexpected obstacles or circumstances, or complex city driving. Simply networking cars together wirelessly is likely to have a far bigger and more immediate effect on road safety.
3. Photonic processor
While optical computing is hardly a new concept, researchers at University of Colorado-Boulder, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of California, Berkeley claim to have made it work on a more practical level. The photonic transmissions are built onto a single chip that also integrates traditional electronics, so it could in theory work with other standard electronic components and integrate into current manufacturing processes.
The big benefit of light-based computing is that it’s faster at transferring data within the space it’s given, with the new chip touting a density of 300 gigabits per second per square millimeter. That’s 10 to 50 times better than traditional electrical microprocessors. Light-based processors also promise to be more energy efficient, as they can transfer data over longer distances without using more power.
So, today I want to present you three science fiction things that are real today.
1. A flight to Mars
NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s – goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010.
While robotic explorers have studied Mars for more than 40 years, NASA’s path for the human exploration of Mars begins in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. Our next step is deep space, where NASA will send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will explore the asteroid in the 2020s, returning to Earth with samples. This experience in human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit will help NASA test new systems and capabilities, such as Solar Electric Propulsion, which we’ll need to send cargo as part of human missions to Mars.
2. Car-to-car communication
The technology that warned of the impending collision will start appearing in cars in just a couple of years. Called car-to-car or vehicle-to-vehicle communication, it lets cars broadcast their position, speed, steering-wheel position, brake status, and other data to other vehicles within a few hundred meters. The other cars can use such information to build a detailed picture of what’s unfolding around them, revealing trouble that even the most careful and alert driver, or the best sensor system, would miss or fail to anticipate.
Car-to-car communication should also have a bigger impact than the advanced vehicle automation technologies that have been more widely heralded. Though self-driving cars could eventually improve safety, they remain imperfect and unproven, with sensors and software too easily bamboozled by poor weather, unexpected obstacles or circumstances, or complex city driving. Simply networking cars together wirelessly is likely to have a far bigger and more immediate effect on road safety.
3. Photonic processor
While optical computing is hardly a new concept, researchers at University of Colorado-Boulder, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of California, Berkeley claim to have made it work on a more practical level. The photonic transmissions are built onto a single chip that also integrates traditional electronics, so it could in theory work with other standard electronic components and integrate into current manufacturing processes.
Resources
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3018382/hardware/revolutionary-light-based-photonic-processor-could-lead-to-ultra-fast-data-transfers.html - Groundbreaking light-based photonic processor
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3018382/hardware/revolutionary-light-based-photonic-processor-could-lead-to-ultra-fast-data-transfers.html - Groundbreaking light-based photonic processor
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/multimedia/progress-continues-on-test-version-of-sls-connection-hardware.html Test Version of SLS Connection Hardware
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534981/car-to-car-communication/ Car-to-Car Communication
