{"id":328,"date":"2023-11-12T10:53:33","date_gmt":"2023-11-12T15:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/?p=328"},"modified":"2023-11-12T10:53:33","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T15:53:33","slug":"2023-most-important-year-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/2023\/11\/12\/2023-most-important-year-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"2023: Most Important Year Ever?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seen from a scientist\u2019s perspective, the last year was one of the most important years since the Big Bang.<\/p>\n

During that year science made at least three major advancements that will change \u2013 are changing, have changed <\/em>\u2013 our lives faster and more drastically than at any time in history.\u00a0 In addition, astronomers came up with a mind-bending headscratcher that could change everything we think we know about the universe.<\/p>\n

The three major advancements are quantum computing,<\/strong> which has been called the most important discovery since fire; artificial intelligence, <\/strong>which already had been declared the most important discovery since flight; and nuclear fusion, <\/strong>which has been a holy grail for scientists around the world since its possibility was first suggested in 1920.<\/p>\n

The headscratcher<\/strong> is the recent discovery of six massive galaxies in deep space that well-established science says simply cannot exist.<\/p>\n

Put all those together and we appear to be in for some tumultuous days, which, if we handle it right, can be a good thing.\u00a0 An exciting thrill ride, but a good thing.<\/p>\n

There may not be much if anything in this post that you do not know already, but it\u2019s good to leave wars and politics behind for a few moments and ponder where we are in other important worlds.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with the headscratcher<\/strong>.\u00a0 Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope was peering deeper into space than it ever had when it spied the six well-developed galaxies.\u00a0 All of them contained billions of stars, and at least one of them contained more than 100 billion stars, about the same as our\u00a0 Milky Way.\u00a0 The galaxies were more than 13 billion light years away from Earth, which means scientists were looking at the galaxies as they existed 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the problem.\u00a0 It took our Milky Way the entire life of the universe to develop to where it is.\u00a0 For those six deep-space galaxies to develop from the Big Bang as rapidly as they did,\u00a0 they would have had to have developed 20 times faster than the Milky Way did, and science says that simply could not happen.<\/p>\n

Ivo Labbe, one of the scientists involved in the project, was quoted in the journal Nature as summing it up in just\u00a0 two words: \u201cIt\u2019s nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Webb\u2019s discoveries still need to be confirmed by other methods, but most astronomers and astrophysicists seem to agree the sightings are real and the effort to confirm them by other means is mostly routine science.\u00a0 They agree on that, but they disagree vehemently about how it could have happened.<\/p>\n

If the sightings are confirmed and they can\u2019t be explained by established science, does that mean we have to rethink the Big Bang theory?<\/p>\n

Labbe: \u201cIf even one of them turns out to be true, then it means we have to change our theories.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t need to say much about artificial intelligence<\/strong> because the news media pounds us with it every day \u2013 as it should, really, because it is an incredible invention that is rapidly changing our everyday lives.\u00a0 But just as a reminder:<\/p>\n

Businesses use AI to provide customer support and answer frequently asked questions.\u00a0\u00a0 Law enforcement agencies and others can use it to identify objects and people in images and videos.\u00a0 AI algorithms are used to recommend products, movies and music based on user preferences. It is used to enable self-driving cars. It can write, it can compose, it can research, it can converse with people, it can, well, you know.<\/p>\n

In other words, AI has the potential to\u00a0 revolutionize many industries and improve our lives in countless ways.\u00a0 But it also raises ethical questions about privacy, security and the impact on jobs, and especially its power.\u00a0 We\u2019ll just have to hope it never decides to eliminate the source of air and water pollution and has the power to do it.<\/p>\n

Nuclear Fusion<\/strong>\u2019s remarkable breakthrough (by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory\u2019s National Ignition Facility) is that for the first time ever we have a process that produces more energy than is needed to produce it.\u00a0 Scientists say that when mixed with tritium, one metric ton of deuterium can produce the same amount of energy as approximately 29 billion tons of coal.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s clean.\u00a0 Nuclear fusion, the process that fuels the sun, produces no greenhouse gases, and fusion reactors would produce significantly less radioactive waste than fission ones\u00a0 do.<\/p>\n

But although nuclear fusion is a remarkable scientific breakthrough, we\u2019re only at a Kitty Hawk moment.\u00a0 There are tremendous obstacles to overcome before nuclear fusion can enter the world in any commercial way.<\/p>\n

But the important thing, the good thing, is that the science is done.\u00a0 Now all that\u2019s left is for the, in effect, the engineers to take over and begin overcoming those obstacles.\u00a0 They say they know what needs to be done and they can do it, so it\u2019s no longer a matter of whether<\/em> it can be done.\u00a0 It can be.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s a question of when it can be done, of when nuclear fusion can become commercial.<\/p>\n

The answer to that depends on money.\u00a0 Great gobs of money.\u00a0 Scientists say only money is holding them back but give us the money and you\u2019ll have your safe, clean and inexpensive energy in just a few years.\u00a0 Otherwise, not for a long time.<\/p>\n

Finally, although quantum computing <\/strong>has been called\u00a0 \u201cthe most important scientific discovery since fire,\u201d it is the least-discussed advancement of them all. It\u2019s also the weirdest of them all.\u00a0 It\u2019s based on quantum mechanics, a subatomic world where waves have properties of particles, particles behave like waves, and particles can exist in multiple places at the same time until they are observed, at such time they can only exist in that one place.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll let Wikipedia explain the importance of that.\u00a0 It says that quantum computers \u201care expected to perform certain computational tasks exponentially faster than classical computers. Instead of using classical bits, quantum computers use qubits (basic units of quantum information), which can be in superpositions of states.\u00a0 Quantum\u00a0 programmers are able to manipulate the superposition of qubits in order to solve problems\u00a0 that classical computing cannot do effectively, such as searching unsorted databases or integer factorization.\u201d<\/p>\n

IBM says it much more simply.\u00a0 Quantum computing makes monumental and rapid progress possible in the fields of medicine, logistics, financial services, cloud security, and, yes, even artificial intelligence itself.<\/p>\n

Whether we use all these incredible advances to their highest or lowest purposes is yet to be seen.\u00a0 But either way, tomorrow\u2019s world will differ from today\u2019s in ways we cannot begin to imagine.<\/p>\n

And it won\u2019t be long before we arrive there.\u00a0 We\u2019re already well on the way.<\/p>\n

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Correction:\u00a0 <\/em>Because of a typographical error, last week\u2019s posting said our forebears wrote the Constitution in the 1800s.\u00a0 The Constitution was written in the 1700s.<\/p>\n

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