NASA’s unmanned Artemis mission to the moon was a small step toward the ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars and beyond.
The second goal was to figure out how to settle and exploit the resources of the moon for research teams by the middle of the following decade.
The year 2023 is set to be revolutionary for technology, with many disruptive trends expected to reshape how businesses function and how people interact with each other. From metaverse-based virtual workspaces, advancements in quantum computing and green energy sources to innovations in robots and satellite connectivity – here’s a look at the technological trends that could define the coming year.
According to BCG’s “Mind the Tech Gap” survey, a majority of businesses across 13 countries plan to increase their spending on digital transformation in 2023 vs. 2022. The top two areas for future investments are business model transformation and sustainability, with respondents expressing concern over the uncertain return on investment from digital transformation initiatives. Furthermore, Sylvain Duranton, a Senior Partner & Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group, Global Leader of BCG X states that “Despite economic headwinds, 60% of BCG’s recently surveyed companies plan to increase their investments in digital and AI in 2023. But many of those surveyed simultaneously expressed concern over the uncertainty of the ROI from digital transformation. During covid, we saw companies that used advanced digital technologies and AI outperform their counterparts.
In November 2021, while the municipal utility in Marburg, Germany, was performing scheduled maintenance on a hot water storage facility, engineers glued 18 solar panels to the outside of the main 10-meter-high cylindrical tank. It’s not the typical home for solar panels, most of which are flat, rigid silicon and glass rectangles arrayed on rooftops or in solar parks. The Marburg facility’s panels, by contrast, are ultrathin organic films made by Heliatek, a German solar company. In the past few years, Heliatek has mounted its flexible panels on the sides of office towers, the curved roofs of bus stops, and even the cylindrical shaft of an 80-meter-tall windmill. The goal: expanding solar power’s reach beyond flat land. “There is a huge market where classical photovoltaics do not work,” says Jan Birnstock, Heliatek’s chief technical officer.
Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) such as Heliatek’s are more than 10 times lighter than silicon panels and in some cases cost just half as much to produce. Some are even transparent, which has architects envisioning solar panels not just on rooftops, but incorporated into building facades, windows, and even indoor spaces. “We want to change every building into an electricity-generating building,” Birnstock says.
Heliatek’s panels are among the few OPVs in practical use, and they convert about 9% of the energy in sunlight to electricity. But in recent years, researchers around the globe have come up with new materials and designs that, in small, labmade prototypes, have reached efficiencies of nearly 20%, approaching silicon and alternative inorganic thin-film solar cells, such as those made from a mix of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS). Unlike silicon crystals and CIGS, where researchers are mostly limited to the few chemical options nature gives them, OPVs allow them to tweak bonds, rearrange atoms, and mix in elements from across the periodic table. Those changes represent knobs chemists can adjust to improve their materials’ ability to absorb sunlight, conduct charges, and resist degradation. OPVs still fall short on those measures. But, “There is an enormous white space for exploration,” says Stephen Forrest, an OPV chemist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Most of us underestimate how quickly electric vehicles (EVs) will take over the car market. It’s mostly down to the plummeting cost of batteries. They have only become cost-competitive in the last few years and have fallen in price 98% since the 1990s. (99% if you include inflation.)
This gave me a combined series of the unit cost of lithium-ion batteries from 1991 to 2022 in $2022. I’ve plotted it as a chart here. And here is the logarithmic version.
Calculating the cost of EV batteries
Year 2021 face_with_colon_three
Illinois Institute of Technology Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering Mohammad Asadi has developed solutions to two major problems facing lithium-air batteries. Lithium-air batteries hold more energy in a smaller battery size than their more common counterpart, the lithium-ion battery, but until now, lithium-air batteries have been overlooked in commercial applications because lithium-air batteries tended to die after fewer recharges and require a lot more energy to charge than can be generated by the battery later.
After almost a decade working in the oil and gas industry, Asadi turned his focus to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, particularly caused by the transportation industry, which consumes around 38 to 40 percent of the world’s energy. “With more widespread use of electric vehicles, you can drastically reduce transportation-based carbon emissions,” says Asadi. “But to put more electric vehicles on the road, we’ll need batteries—lots of them.”
Vertical farming grows more food in less space — with no pesticides. As Dubai opens the ‘world’s biggest’ vertical farm, is this the future of agriculture?
Claiming 3rd place, we look at how a zero-electricity cooling system could meet the world’s growing AC needs.
The fact that as the Earth warms, the technology needed by humans to stay cool will only make the environment hotter is one of the great ironies of climate change.
Here’s where a novel device unveiled by MIT researchers in October comes in.
Continental has won the innovation award at CES 2023 for the seventh consecutive year.
Continental AG, the German developer of pioneering technologies in mobility, has been picked to receive the Innovation Award for its Scenic View Heads-Up Display (HUD) at CES 2023, the company said in a press release. The CES is a technology trade show held in Las Vegas in January every year.
Continue reading “A new head-up display could change how we drive in the future” »
This is a historic milestone in the quest for a clean nuclear energy source.
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have made a major breakthrough in the field of nuclear fusion, sparking hope for a new carbon-free power source.
How did they do it?
Continue reading “World’s largest laser used to initiate groundbreaking fusion reaction” »
