UPDATE - The World in 50 Years - E3 - Global Community
Δημοσιεύτηκε στις 18 Δεκ 2015
Episode III “The Global Community”
Episode
3 looks at geopolitical developments 50 years from now. Climate
concerns, energy issues, peace and the race for weapons technology will
dominate international headlines. We’ll take a scientific look at these
topics and add a close-up examine the future of nanotechnology and solar
energy, all of which will provide the basis of the dramatic scenes.
Two
researchers just starting out on their career paths (the protagonists)
are both working together in a cramped space station to revolutionize
the efficiency of solar cells. Their laboratory is reachable from Earth
via a sort of “space elevator”. The elevator’s cables receive their
enormous strength and necessary lightness from tiny carbon, tube-like
nano-particles. It may sound like science fiction, but researchers at
the Los Alamos National Laboratory are already busy at work on it. The
technical challenges of the project were laid out during a large
conference in 1999, and it was deemed to be realizable. Since then
physicists have been working intensely on this new material. The
so-called “nano tubes” are intended to make the elevator cable 1000
times stronger than steel. Specialists in space travel have already
produced working models and 3-D simulations to test the behavior of this
type of capsule in space.
An accident of sorts in their
laboratory leads the two researchers to the discovery of a substance,
which turns out to be unusually effective in turning sunlight into
electricity. At the same time, a serious conflict ignites between China
and the USA in the face of dwindling energy reserves. Both powers are
placing dibs on a sizable load of oil from Central Asia, which is at sea
on a tanker. While these two giants set their military machinery in
motion, the two scientists, one Chinese and one American and both of
them friends, place their own safety at risk to crack the chemical code
of their coincidental discovery. They are aware that this formula could
lead the way out of the energy crisis and prevent the world war brewing
below them.
The dramatic sequences are built upon very promising
research inroads into solar technology. Since the silicon panels that
have been used up until now are too expensive to provide an effective
energy supply, scientists have been working on a new, revolutionary
method. A fluid made of nano-particles could provide the key. This fluid
costs only a fraction of what the silicon cells cost and could be
sprayed onto any surface. But at the present, it is still not very
productive. Only 15 percent of the sunlight striking such coated
surfaces is transformed into usable energy.
According to
scientific and economic predictions, the Earth’s final oil reserves will
be nearly exhausted in the year 2057, and must by then be replaced by
alternative energy sources. On a political level, leading experts
predict that both China and the USA will gain more might. Episode III
puts these variables up for debate while setting them in ecological and
demographic projections for the mid 21st century.
Episode
3 looks at geopolitical developments 50 years from now. Climate
concerns, energy issues, peace and the race for weapons technology will
dominate international headlines. We’ll take a scientific look at these
topics and add a close-up examine the future of nanotechnology and solar
energy, all of which will provide the basis of the dramatic scenes.
Two
researchers just starting out on their career paths (the protagonists)
are both working together in a cramped space station to revolutionize
the efficiency of solar cells. Their laboratory is reachable from Earth
via a sort of “space elevator”. The elevator’s cables receive their
enormous strength and necessary lightness from tiny carbon, tube-like
nano-particles. It may sound like science fiction, but researchers at
the Los Alamos National Laboratory are already busy at work on it. The
technical challenges of the project were laid out during a large
conference in 1999, and it was deemed to be realizable. Since then
physicists have been working intensely on this new material. The
so-called “nano tubes” are intended to make the elevator cable 1000
times stronger than steel. Specialists in space travel have already
produced working models and 3-D simulations to test the behavior of this
type of capsule in space.
An accident of sorts in their
laboratory leads the two researchers to the discovery of a substance,
which turns out to be unusually effective in turning sunlight into
electricity. At the same time, a serious conflict ignites between China
and the USA in the face of dwindling energy reserves. Both powers are
placing dibs on a sizable load of oil from Central Asia, which is at sea
on a tanker. While these two giants set their military machinery in
motion, the two scientists, one Chinese and one American and both of
them friends, place their own safety at risk to crack the chemical code
of their coincidental discovery. They are aware that this formula could
lead the way out of the energy crisis and prevent the world war brewing
below them.
The dramatic sequences are built upon very promising
research inroads into solar technology. Since the silicon panels that
have been used up until now are too expensive to provide an effective
energy supply, scientists have been working on a new, revolutionary
method. A fluid made of nano-particles could provide the key. This fluid
costs only a fraction of what the silicon cells cost and could be
sprayed onto any surface. But at the present, it is still not very
productive. Only 15 percent of the sunlight striking such coated
surfaces is transformed into usable energy.
According to
scientific and economic predictions, the Earth’s final oil reserves will
be nearly exhausted in the year 2057, and must by then be replaced by
alternative energy sources. On a political level, leading experts
predict that both China and the USA will gain more might. Episode III
puts these variables up for debate while setting them in ecological and
demographic projections for the mid 21st century.
Κατηγορία
Άδεια
- Τυπική άδεια YouTube
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου