attempting to cure microvasculature damage caused by repeat COVID leads to a bigger-dick pill
Honestly? A major breakthrough in fusion, or to a lesser extent, any other clean energy. We’ve decarbonised a decent chunk of the world’s energy profile, but there’s a strong financial incentive that politicians are vulnerable to protecting oil and gas, slowing down further decarbonisation. Batteries and supercapacitors also could do the trick.
I don't think it's gonna get cheaper than renewables, they're literally using free energy without needing any human intervention aside from inspection and repairs. The issue is the oil and gas companies paying the politicians. Also right-wing parties that do everything they can to keep emissions up just cause. No new technology can fix those issues.
The large storage batteries that use sodium ion. They should be able to get like 5,000 full cycles before they degrade and can be buried or stored outside. That and a solar array on a roof should let most anyone be completely off grid. Full solar house that should last for 15 years before the system needs replaced. The batteries will last longer and be cheaper than lithium. Solar panel prices are consistently getting cheaper.
I think in 5 years time there will be a lot of the electrical grid system (for most who will be still attached to the grid) just getting power almost completely from solar, and storing enough in these batteries for the nights and cloudy days.
I second the lemmy saying there is a considerable gap between discovery and implementation.
But to answer your question, I believe we are due some major breakthrough regarding psilocybin and other psychedelic substances which have been banned since the 60s. Research is well underway and with our current technology + knowledge in neuroscience we're due to catch up quickly, unless everything gets tangled in too much red tape.
Improvement in mental health has a pretty immediately impact in our lives after all.
Room temperature superconductors would represent the greatest leap forward since electricity itself. Ultra-cheap, ultra-high resolution MRIs, lossless power transmission across vast distances, massive gains in computing power, much lower cost supercolliders for advanced physics, low-cost magnetic confinement for fusion power experiments, and so on.
Just a note: Superconductivity is not only destroyed by temperature, but also by magnetic fields or a too high current. We might find a room temperature superconductor that is basically useless for energy transportation or high magnetic field applications.
Another problem: almost all known high-temperature superconductors are ceramics and thus very brittle and hard to work with.
What we want is a cheap, metallic, high temperature superconductor with a high maximum critical magnetic field and high critical max current density...
But of course any improvement could give big improvements in some applications. Having a nitrogen cooled MRI wound be awesome.
An6 form if room temp super conductor would be awesome. Like electronics will stop emitting heat and in case of ICs and microprocessors, difficulty to work with won't he an issue as you fab them.
Also school level science experiments will get more exciting
Yeah... I'm not going to tell intelligent sea mammals where pollution comes from.
If you don't tell your sea life who's doing the polluting, then transgender communists will.
Please. Talk to your local sea life about pollution.
(Brought to you by the Committee for Orca Attacks)
Specifically, I think the abilty to make hydrogren from renewable resources at large-scale will change everything. Hydrogen fuel cells are more space efficient, and require less toxic manufacturing, when compared to current renewable energy generation and storage methods. If hydrogen is seen as cheaper or more green than other power sources, it will change the market completely.
Hydrogen generation is also an active research area, and just this year they've have some promising results for renewable hydrogen.
