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.
Nuclear is going through a breakthrough and it’s coming along at a neat net zero.
In a breakthrough experiment, nuclear fusion finally makes more energy than it uses
Sort of. It made more energy than the lasers that actually caused the reaction. It still used vastly more energy than that to actually power those lasers. We are still far off but it was a major stepping point.
Everybody is going to groan, but solid state batteries. That would be a huge sea change, not just for cars, but also air travel.
I have good news for you, then. We’re now past the “discovery” phase and we’re at the implementation phase with solid state batteries, as you can actually buy production models: https://yoshinopower.com/
Yeah but they’re not there yet in terms of mass deployment and that’s still going to take some more technical breakthroughs. They’ll get there eventually but there might be some new discovery any day that would greatly speed up the process.
Yes, it’s brand new, but the mass manufacturing difficulties have been resolved. We might not have whatever future iteration of the technology you’re looking for, but it is unquestionably here and future developments are likely to be incremental rather than revolutionary.
Scalable, lab grown meat operations.
I came here for this one.
I don’t follow news on alt-meat super closely, but I thought the scalability thing was not much of a concern, and I thought we were mainly at the steps of raising demand and meating or beating price parity with the real thing.
Something like an alt-meat only fast food spot or something trendy that can only be done with lab created protein could be all it takes to cement its place in society, so I feel we’re just waiting for that tipping point due to product that mainly already exists.
meating
Nice one
I knew you guys would pick up on that one!
The spell checker really did not want me to make that little joke, but I knew it would be appreciated.
deleted by creator
I thought it was a good gag, but I didn’t want it to sound like meat beating. 😜
MRNA vaccines for cancer, HIV and others. Moderna clinical trials have been real good.
Imagine getting a cancer diagnosis, then 30 days later getting a tailored treatment that eliminated the cancer.
Also vote. Because one party system has decided to side with anti vaxxers. The other has not. Cancer numbers have been steadily rising, second only to heart disease as a cause of death. There is a solid chance you’re going to get cancer.
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.
More efficient or even lossless, sustainable energy storage.
A room-temperature superconductor.
Shit there’s like 3 other people saying that hours ago.
It’s gonna be something we slap our foreheads over. Like if you twist the hell out of bronze, or put a microprocessor in a vice.
Seconded, because that would likely make fusion practical which would lead to effectively unlimited clean energy.
A big difficulty is that between the scientific discover, and the application years or even decades can occur. Look at how supra conductor have been known for 100 years and still have very few real life usage.
My thoughts tough
- Life on Mars. I don’t talk about Martian, but if we find remain of bacteria it would be a major breakthrough in biology
-physics beyond the standard model at LHC, no impacts for commoner, but would really help physics to understand our universe
More on technology/applied science
-
Next generation cures against cancer with high efficiency/specificity. I think about targeted alpha therapy and immunotherapy. If these get real, a cancer isn’t 6-12 month of painful treatment for followed by a year of recovery, but something a single injection can cure.
-
Male birth control, would give men a better control of their own fertility and give one more option to couple where the woman can’t use birth control
-
high temperature supra conductors, by high temperature I mean anything above 100K in normal pressure, high current, high magnetic field. Would allow to use way more super conducting magnet than today. Imagine a world where quenching a MRI doesn’t turn off the machine for 3 months.
deleted by creator
Room temperature superconductors. Those things are insane, but by now, as far as I know , the only way to create them is with extremely low temperatures.
Considering this one makes several of the other ones listed here more viable, I think it would have the most impact.
For everyone? Nuclear Fusion is on the cusp of reaching net zero emissions. Meaning we can create massive amounts of clean energy. Right now, we use nuclear energy off of Nuclear Fission creating hazardous waste and resulting in excess heat/waste
Nuclear Fusion would allows us to create clean energy with the goal of being net zero
APM (Atomically Precise Manufacturing)
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.
Star Trek-style matter replicator/recycler. Just imagine being able to empty a garbage dumpster into a bin, shut the lid, press a button, and an hour later you get stacks of industrially useful metals & materials, bolts of cloth, and sacks of fertilizer.
… in the next 5 years?
In my defense, I’m half asleep, and due to lack of caffeine, didn’t notice the bit about “which could actually happen in the next 5 years.”
So with that in mind, I’ll say something about environmentally friendly raw materials for super efficient battery storage.
The cool part about molecular assemblers is that you only have to build one the hard way.
Mind-reading technology
