Three Breakthroughs You (Probably) Missed
Nemertes Advisory #75
While most of the world wasn’t looking, over the past few months mathematicians, engineers, and scientists scored a trio of world-changing breakthroughs. Taken individually, each one is of major significance. Together, they paint a picture of a world that looks very different in 10 years.
Buckle up, it’ll be an exciting ride.
Breakthrough #1: Fusion Energy. Like quantum computing, fusion has been perennially 30 years away—until it arrived. A few months back, the Chinese-built fusion reactor “Artificial Sun” sustained a fusion reaction for over 30 minutes. This is a huge deal, because sustainable fusion reaction has been measured, until recently, in seconds. The Chinese say they’re planning to have a fusion reactor operational by 2035.
Ok, you say, the Chinese say a lot of things. Fine. Be skeptical, but pay attention: The Germans also had a reactor with an unprecedented run—in this case, six minutes.
This is an even bigger deal than it looks, because the Chinese and Germans took radically different approaches to their fusion reactors—which doubles the likelihood of something panning out, and soon.
Moreover, while 6 minutes, or even 30 minutes, doesn’t sound like a really long time, the fundamental challenge, scientifically, has been to get a sustainable reaction—a barrier that’s now been conclusively breached. Now it’s just a matter of engineering.
Hopefully I don’t need to explain why unlimited cheap, safe power would change pretty much everything, from geopolitics to technology.
Breakthrough #2: Qubit Error Reduction. Speaking of technology, quantum computing has made several notable advances earlier this year. I’m bundling them all together, but Microsoft, IBM, and Japanese researchers have individually advanced the technology of dramatically reducing qubit error rates. Click the links to read up; the main point here is that the most significant barrier to practical quantum computing appears to have been breached.
There are still naysayers when it comes to quantum computing (”That thing’ll never fly, Orville!”). And it’s WAAAAY too early to be picking winners and losers in quantum computing stocks, so please, don't be an idiot here!
But, like fusion, while people were paying attention elsewhere, quantum computing quietly edged from "someday" to "soon".
Breakthrough #3: Mathematical Proof That Time Can Never Reverse. Okay, I’ll admit this one probably has very few practical implications. But I’ll never forget the time a professor in grad school offhandedly commented that, unlike virtually everything else in quantum physics*, temporal unidirectionality was an observable fact with no mathematical antecedent.
In other words, time only goes one way, and we can’t say why.
Well, now we can. In a really jaw-dropping new proof, mathematicians showed that, loosely speaking, time is not reversible because of the wave nature of particles and the qualities of gas dispersion. You’ll have to read the article to put all the pieces together, but this is a really big deal--even if it simply confirms an observable fact.
(*”Unlike virtually everything else in quantum physics”—-I’ll never forget the deep joy of learning that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle results from the fact that position and momentum are Fourier transforms of one another. In other words, a basic and unobjectionable mathematical truth gives rise to one of the most mind-twisting observable results.)
The bottom line: While we were all paying attention to transient stuff, the world just got bigger, stranger, and way weirder—in a good way! Can’t wait to see what the next 10 years holds.
A final note: As some of you are aware, Internet engineer Fred Baker died this past week. Fred was a great engineer and an even greater leader of engineers.
For many years, his .sig was the phrase, “There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” And that, as much as anything, exemplified who he was. Fred did his level best to help everyone around him do their best—and he didn’t care who got the credit.
He was a dear friend, a personal hero, and a great leader. He will be sorely missed.