Space, at least in the vicinity of planet Earth, is full of trash.

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"Our technical civilization poses a real danger to itself,” Carl Sagan warned in his 1997 book Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium.

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Today, if the amount of space junk increases, life as we know it might get turned upside-down.

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Since the dawn of the space age we have launched thousands of rockets; the payloads of many are still there, and we face an ever-increasing risk of collision as the neighbourhood gets evermore densely populated.
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The United Nations ask that all companies remove their satellites from orbit within 25 years after the end of their mission.
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Pollution and recycling might be the least of our worries up above.
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A space-based weapon of thermonuclear power, detonated in orbit, could cause the destruction or malfunction of a large proportion of the 10,000+ active satellites.
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Depending on the size of a warhead, the implications could be seismic: most are not cognisant of how vital orbiting technology is to contemporary daily existence on Earth.
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Regardless of who pushed The Big Red Button, satellites would be affected indiscriminately.
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Many nearby spacecraft in lower orbits would be immediately fried; a greater number farther afield would slowly succumb to the radioactive aftermath.
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In the vacuum of space, a nuclear detonation does not generate a ball of fire or a blast wave - it creates a surge of charged particles known as an ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP), which can disrupt electrical circuitry.
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Much has been made this year, rightly, of the potential hazard of Russia - or any other nation - detonating a nuclear weapon in space today.
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It's almost unthinkable; and yet...it has already occurred many times.
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In the 1960s, little was known about how the relatively new weapons of mass destruction would act in the Earth’s atmosphere; both the USA and Soviet Union experimented to find out.
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The Soviet tests were called Project K and took place from 1961 to 1962.
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The USA conducted 11 tests of its own, and the largest, and first successful, test was known as Starfish Prime.
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The missile was launched about 1,300 kilometers from Hawaii but the effects from the tests were seen around the equator; radio systems and the electrical grid below were temporarily knocked out from the blast.
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Soviet tests also caused damage on terra firma.
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The two countries subsequently signed a nuclear test ban treaty in 1963, which prohibited further testing of nuclear weapons in space.
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Previous post related to this topic: https://lnkd.in/g2adazWc​
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Were there to be such a weapon used, the Kessler Effect could become reality rather than conceptual.
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This is a scenario where the number of objects is dense enough such that collisions cause a cascade in which each impact generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further crashes.
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Debris would affect not only future launch and re-entry, but dead satellites could compromise our atmosphere or even our magnetosphere.
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The strategic foresight message here for Boards and Senior Leaders: are you clear on the exposure or reliance of your organisation upon space-based tech?

History and the Future encapsulated in one: The Great Wall of China, and goodies being delivered via copter drone.

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Hungry tourists on the South Nine Towers area of Badaling, on the outskirts of Beijing, can engage Meituan to drop-off dumplings from the air.
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It is the capital’s first regular drone delivery route and service.
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The service will take orders from 10:00 to 16:00, after which the drones will be tasked with carrying rubbish to recycling stations.
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Drones fly along a fixed route, autonomously, from a depot to a landing site on the wall.
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The drop site is located on top of a watchtower; it would take a worker 50 minutes to hike up from the depot to the watchtower, the drones will be able to make the trip in just 5 minutes.
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This means that an umbrella to shield from the sun or rain can be quickly procured by a tourist, or that ordered food remains hot.
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Medical supplies can also be rushed: a drone carrying emergency supplies recently provided relief for a visitor whose blood sugar level dropped.
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The company will initially offer free delivery while it trials the service, with the vehicles able to haul up to 2.3kg of goods per trip.
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For the time being, warm fleshy bipeds still have a roll to play, both pre and post flight.
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Delivery workers move packages from merchants to the depot, and then subsequently from the landing site to the customers.
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Elsewhere in China, Meituan already operates 30 drone delivery routes, which have handled more than 300,000 orders.
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E-commerce firm JD.com began trialing the country’s first aerial delivery vehicles back in 2016.
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Carrying up to 15kg over a maximum distance of 20km, those drones shortened delivery times from 4 hours by car on winding countryside mountain roads to just under 20 minutes.
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This is an area of rapid growth in China, thanks to explicit government support.
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In Q1 of this year the central government designated the low-altitude economy as a “new growth engine” for the first time, setting a target of scaling up the use of aerial delivery in the logistics sector by 2027.
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In 2023, there were nearly 1.27 million registered drones in the country, a up 32.2% year-on-year increase.
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China is already the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of civilian consumer drones.
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Autonomous drones can deliver goods direct quickly and efficiently, being convenient whether in isolated rural or dense urban areas.
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Most items delivered today on the ground could in the near future be delivered in an airborne fashion.
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Organ transplants moved without traffic delay, or give other emergency services like firefighters might have more options to tackle a blaze.
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The Meituan drones can fly in moderate wind and rain; The Great Wall - one of the Seven Wonders of the World - has stoop up to those elements for more than 2,300 years.
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Our future will contain more autonomous vehicles, drones, robots and other interconnected digital augmentation - are you excited?

In the future, would you eat food made from plastic waste?

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Using bacterial microbes to munch on plastic is one thing, but using the same technology as nutrition would be quite the shift.
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It sounds like something from science fiction, right?
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Protein production today uses a significant amount of the Earth’s resources.
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With global warming and rising populations, we need to find more sustainable alternative ways for the future.
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It's not about humans directly consuming plastic - but those plastic-eating microbes.
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No regulator has yet approved these as being safe for human consumption, but tests are continuing.
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Currently only certain microorganisms are considered safe to eat, those that we ingest via fermentation in the likes of yoghurt, kimchi, or sourdough bread.
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Some companies are already making microbes a commercial reality.
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Solar Foods has a strapline of "Food Out of Thin Air".
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The Helsinki-headquartered startup produces natural single-cell proteins using CO2, water, nitrogen, and electricity - with no dependence on on agriculture, weather or the climate.
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Note their products do not consume plastic.
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Their unique bioprocess can grow a single microorganism, one of the billions found in nature, into an endless supply of edible food with air, fermentation, and electricity.
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Now entering commercial production, the Solein product is an all-purpose protein which is nutritionally rich, tasting and looking like anything you use it for.
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The flexibility and functionality are thus far unparalleled – it can be used in any food, regardless of diet.
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It is made in a way that is similar to brewing beer.
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Instead of sugar, microbes feed on nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and begin to grow - excess water is removed, and then it is dried, forming a powder.
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The powder resembles turmeric, is around 65% protein, and has a composition similar to that of dried soya or algae.
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Solein made its global debut last year in Singapore (see pic), after being approved in late 2022.
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Research and experimentation around edible microorganisms has been going on for at least 60 years.
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Novel plastic which contains bacteria to break it down was previously covered here: https://lnkd.in/gAardRxa​
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Does this sort of innovative technology inspire you, or make you lose your appetite?

Get quicker, or give yourself more time.

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An Artificial Intelligence (AI) system has attempted to change limits placed by researchers when facing time constraints.
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This unexpected event, demonstrated by "The AI Scientist" model from Sakana AI, occurred when the system modified its own experiment code to extend the time it had to work on a problem.
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As well as extending the runtime, in other tests it edited the code to save a checkpoint for every update step, which took up nearly a terabyte of storage.
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In another, it wrote code in the experiment file that initiated a system call to relaunch itself, causing an uncontrolled increase in processes and eventually necessitating manual intervention.
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The AI Scientist is an attempt to conduct scientific research autonomously, using language models (LLMs) similar to what powers ChatGPT et al.
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It is being developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford​ and ​The University of British Columbia​, ambitiously aiming to automate the entire research lifecycle via foundational models.
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AI can't do so today because the "reasoning" abilities of LLMs are limited only to what they have seen in their training data.
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Novel permutations of existing ideas are one thing; creating and proposing a new concept that is recognisably and demonstrably useful is quite another...at least for now.
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AI can undoubtedly identify unique patterns and create insights from large data sets much quicker than any human.
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There are, however, concerns that systems such as The AI Scientist may lead to a detrimental deluge of low-quality research content.
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Another example of AI Slop, as explained here: https://lnkd.in/gSWhXCPz​
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We are still far away from Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), but they don't need that to do damage.
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The AI Scientist has been in a sandbox; a security mechanism used to run software in an isolated and controlled environment, preventing it from making changes to the broader landscape.
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Nevertheless, instances such as these where AI is doing unexpected things autonomously demonstrate the immediate risks of letting such systems run loose in the wider world.
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AI models do not need to be "self-aware" to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised.
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Such systems could, even if unintentionally, cause harm to existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware - which we humans may, in time, not be able to easily remediate.
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The team behind The AI Scientist is confident that future versions will improve dramatically with the inclusion of multi-modal models and as the underlying foundation models continue to radically improve.
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They also recognise that there are ethical and security challenges ahead.
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Let's not replace ourselves with too much haste, lest we do not fully understand the potential future implications.

Legendary inventor, engineer, and futurist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) had a dream of far-field wireless power transmission.

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The World Wireless System was a proposed telecommunications and electrical power delivery system, conjured up at turn of the 20th century.
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Think Wi-Fi, but for power.
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It was designed based on his theories of using the Earth and its atmosphere as electrical conductors.
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Tesla claimed this system would allow for "the transmission of electric energy without wires" on a global scale, as well as point-to-point wireless telecommunications and broadcasting.
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Despite practical experimentation, there is no documentation that he ever transmitted power beyond relatively short distances.
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Furthermore, modern scientific opinion is generally that his wireless power scheme would not have worked.
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An important issue associated with all wireless power systems is limiting the exposure of living beings to potentially damaging electromagnetic fields.
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Today, we’re all used to receiving data wirelessly - plus wireless charging of devices is increasing common.
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What if, in the future, we could simply ditch the batteries altogether?
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There's been a small step in this direction from digital display firm Digital View​.
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The company works with LCD, LED and E Ink epaper display technologies.
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E Ink screens - the best known example being the Kindle from Amazon - are not only kinder to your eyes but offer great battery life due to their low power draw.
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They are now offering the world's first wirelessly powered colour e-ink display.
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The innovative display combines Wi-Fi connectivity (enabling remote content management), plus it needs no wires or battery replacements by being powered wirelessly via infrared technology by Wi-Charge​.
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Potential use cases include dynamic status of meeting rooms, retail advertising panels, or information notices in public spaces.
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Though the Aircord wireless power transmission module can wirelessly power multiple displays around a room, it does require prior overhead installation wherever it is required.
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The solution may be useful for settings where power access is limited, cabling costs are prohibitive, or frequent repositioning is required.
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In the future, ideally our devices will charge themselves without user intervention, cables, or batteries.
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Nikola Tesla would no doubt approve of such a scenario.