10 tech breakthroughs of the year for a cutting edge future
Technology is growing in leaps and bounds and even as you're reading this, somewhere, someone is in the middle of a technological breakthrough that could change our lives radically. We've compiled a list of top technological breakthroughs which will influence our future in more ways than one. Take it away.
GE Lab's Holographic Storage Technology
Even as more and more Blu-Ray DVDs are being churned out by the truckloads, DVD technology is about to see a fundamental change if researchers at General Electric's Labs manage to commercialize their technology. The new technology uses Holography for storage and looks very promising as standard DVD capacities could increase many fold while the cost per GB could fall to precipitous lows. Thus, Holographic Storage technology is seen as the low cost-high capacity storage technology of the future. GE's Labs have developed DVDs that can hold 500GB of data using this technology. Essentially, you could replace 100 of your DVDs with a single DVD using GE's Holographic Storage technology. How cool is that?
Gesture sensing on LCD Touchscreens
Time to say bye bye to notchy keypads, and no we aren't just talking touchscreens here. Soon, your mobile devices will respond to your gestures as well. Students at MIT have now figured out a way to shoehorn gesture sensing into the conventional LCD touch screens thus making gesture sensing a technology that could soon find it's way into mobile devices. To do all this and more, the students have simulated an LCD Screen behind which an array of optical sensors sit. These optical sensors are key to sensing gestures that makes this hot new technology tick. The best part about this technology is that it can be condensed to fit the ultra thin LCD displays thus making it a very viable technology suitable for small mobile devices as well.
Inexhaustible Radioactive Batteries
Nuclear technology will hit mainstream and this time around, you can hold it in your hands. The nuclear technology we're referring to sits in a tiny battery that will fit your cellphone, your digital camera or even your iPod. All this has been made possible by researchers at the University of Missouri who have developed a way to harness nuclear power to electricity in a tiny battery and all this technology works safely. To achieve this, the researchers have used Sulphur 35, an element that undergoes radioactive fission. The Sulphur 35 is packed into a liquid semiconductor called Selenium which will prevent radiations from escaping and will channel them into a source of electricity. Voila, you now have a radioactive battery that will last you a lifetime, well almost.
Microbe Powered Fuel Cells
Sub Saharan Africa has seen many an epidemic due to disease causing microbes. Now, microbes can do something other than causing epidemics and killing millions. A student team at Harvard called Lebônê have successfully managed to design an inexpensive battery for use in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 500 million people live without power. The battery consists of a graphite-cloth anode, a chicken-wire cathode, manure-rich mud for fuel, a layer of sand to act as an ion barrier and salt water as an electrolyte—all attached to an electronic power-management board. To generate electricity, a canvas bag filled with dirt will be buried into microbe rich soil after which the microbes will do the electricity generation. The microbial fuel cell can produce enough current to keep appliances like the LED lights and cellphone batteries juiced up.
Energy Efficient OLED Lighting
For quite sometime now, OLED technology has been slowly making it's way into displays thus reducing energy consumption while delivering better brightness and clarity. Now, lighting too will get the OLED treatment to end up being 75% more energy efficient. This breakthrough is courtesy the researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, who have developed a way to reduce the ultra thin lights' energy consumption drastically. The researchers thermally deposited silver nano-particles on a cathode under a high vacuum, resulting in a strong oscillator decay channel that increases photoluminescence emission rates by 1.75 times and increases light intensity twofold. With this technology, you can now keep the lights on while still being nice to Mother Earth. That said, don't forget to turn off the lights when you don't need them.
Microsoft Natal Game Controlling Technology
Convergence at it's purest form yet storms into the gaming arena with Microsoft's Natal game controlling technology. This technology developed by Microsoft will let gamers use their body as the controller by means of gesture sensing. To achieve this seemingly complicated task, gamers will have to hook up a web camera, an infrared sensor and a couple of microphones and they're good to go. This technology will hit stores sometime in 2010. So, why do you need that pesky little wireless controller when you can frag your way around with your very own body making all the moves for you?
Revolutionary Hydrogen Storage Technology
Hydrogen has been a fuel of the future, an energy elixir widely touted to solve all the carbon emission problems plaguing our cars. But the crux of the matter as always been that of devising a safe way of storing the extremely incendiary hydrogen on automobiles. Many firms like BMW have invested millions of dollars to find a solution to this daunting problem and finally, an entrepreneur-scientist duo have spotted a few rays of luminescence at the end of the tunnel. Yes, that's right, Israeli entrepreneur Moshe Stern and Russian scientist Evgeny Velikhov have successfully obtained a safety certificate for their hydrogen storage technology developed by Stern's Switzerland based start up, C.En. This Hydrogen Storage Technology which involves the storage of compressed hydrogen inside bundles of thin, strong tubes of glass, known as capillary arrays was certified safe to use by Germany's venerated Federal Institute for Materials Research & Testing. In light of this breakthrough, the future looks very bright and very green not just for hydrogen propelled cars, but for a host of other energy dependent industries as well.
Dream Viewing Technology
In the future, even your dreams won't be secret with gadgets now making it possible for your dreams to be visualized and projected onto a screen. Researchers at Japan's ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have managed to reconstruct single images from the brain. This is the first ever visual demonstration of what people see directly from brain activity. Eventually the technology will be refined to display images directly from the human brain onto a screen. While this technology might look intrusive, look the other way and think of it as a way to capture the rich visuals and vivid imagery that you dream of. No more dirty dreaming ;-)
Universal Programmable Quantum Processor
Quantum Computing has been the definitive next big step for high performance computing and here's is a damn good reason that could make the quantum computer a very distinct reality in the near future. In a major breakthrough for quantum computing technology, physicists at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated the first universal programmable quantum processor. The processor stores binary information, ones in two beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms) held together in an electromagnetic trap and influenced by the UV lasers. For processing, the programmable quantum processor uses two Qubits for the very first time in computing history and this significant breakthrough has made Multi-Qubit processing a distinct reality. Watch out for a multi Quibit quantum processor in the near future.
Cloud Computing of the Future
So far, cloud Computing has been restricted to firms wanting to reduce their IT infrastructure outlay. Now, consumers like you and me can utilize the full benefits of cloud computing. As early as 2010, consumers would be able to access services like services that stream movies, TV shows, music, video games, newspapers, magazines and books on demand from a distant computer server( the cloud) to internet-connected portables or home computing devices. Tech companies like Apple and Comcast have already jumped onto the consumer cloud computing bandwagon and Comcast is already testing a beta version of it's Fancast Xfinity, the no-additional cost TV service. So, your iTunes downloads in 2010 could be very well be with the means of cloud computing. Get ready for the future, one that is inextricably linked to the new wave of cloud computing.
