The Fusion Solution

Why is it that the sun seems to never stop shining? It seems like its energy is limitless. But what if there was a way to build a power plant that used the same energy production method that the sun uses? We wouldn't have to worry about turning the lights off ever again.

The ever-bright burning sun -- Image Credit: people.bath.ac.uk 

The sun uses a process called nuclear fusion. This is much different than the nuclear fission that our regular nuclear power plants use today. The problem with fission is that you have to take a very rare element (uranium), and break it down in a very controlled manner to release its energy. Not only does it substantially cost us to process the uranium, but it also leaves behind landfills of radioactive material.

Nuclear fusion on the other hand is the opposite. It starts with special types of hydrogen (called tritium and deuterium) and fuses them together to make heavier elements while producing energy. The good news is that it produces far less radioactive material. And the better news? We have oceans filled with the hydrogen needed for fusion! 

Process of Nuclear Fusion -- Image Credit: Universetoday.com

So why haven't we done this already? The difficulty is balance. The sun has an immense amount of gravity that causes its inside to be uniformly compressed at very high temperatures. To recreate this on Earth, we instead use magnetic fields to compress the hydrogen. The problem is uniformity. 

While gravity only attracts in one direction, magnetic fields have two, the north and south pole. This means that we have to completely redesign our reactor here to get the same fusion that goes on in the sun. One of the most popular designs is the tokamak.

ITER diagram mapping out how the fusion power plant will be developed -- Image credit: www.acsu.buffalo.edu 

We are making substantial progress towards realizing this goal. With coupled projects like DEMO and ITER, we could see commercially viable fusion plants by 2050. Imagine an fossil fuel-free world that relies on our own oceans for electricity!

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I want to thank you for your comments and feedback for this blog. Unfortunately, I am discontinuing writing new posts on it. There is a small chance I may return to it in the future. Nevertheless, I have thoroughly enjoyed your engaging responses and I thank you for your time! 

© Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living, 2013. Please note that the material included this was not written by a licensed medical professional. Therefore, please consult your physician before trying anything suggested in this article. Please note that there were several images in this article. The first as from people.bath.ac.uk. The second was from universetoday.com. The third was from www.acsu.buffalo.edu. This blog does not claim ownership of these images. Nicholas Shah does not claim ownership to the ideas put forth here. However, he does claim ownership to the writing  and authorship of the learningmorethanliving blog. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank You. 

The Retro Supply and Demand: Asteroid Mining

What makes gold and silver so valuable? Yes they're gorgeous, but more importantly, there is a very little amount of them compared to other elements. This low supply drives up the price, and as a result, the most prized jewelry is made out of them. But what if we found thousands of pounds of gold and silver overnight? Let's talk asteroids.

A concept drawing for mining asteroids. Image Credit: Futuretimeline.net and DSI

Lets be clear. There's not much gold or silver on asteroids, but there is something much more valuable instead: Platinum Metals. These elements have very unique properties that would allow computers to compute faster, hydrogen fuel cells to work, and enhance sensor capabilities. However, their substantial cost prevents them from being used in everyday applications worldwide.

In fact, there are billions of dollars worth of metals in a single asteroid. Already, two companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, are up for the challenge of harvesting hundreds of asteroids only using robots. This human-free approach vastly reduces costs and makes this a modern Gold Rush.

Asteroid Mining Inforgraphic -- Image Credit: Planetary Resources & Mining.com

One of the most surprising benefits that come from this robot retrieval is another chemical you can harvest in these asteroids: Water. Yes, H2O is hard to come by in space, but it can be used as fuel for more robots to retrieve yet even more platinum.

The best part? This is happening now. Planetary Resources have already built their first satellites to map out the primary asteroids in 2014. Ultimately they plan to use swarms of satellite robots to harvest asteroids in the 2020's. This algorithm driven technology will allow us to bring much, much more supply than demand, and as a result, open up thousands of new technologies.


© Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living, 2013. Please note that the material included this was not written by a licensed medical professional. Therefore, please consult your physician before trying anything suggested in this article. Please note that there were several images in this article. The first as from Planetary Resources and futuretimeline.net. The second was from Planetary Resources and Mining.com. This blog does not claim ownership of these images. Nicholas Shah does not claim ownership to the ideas put forth here. However, he does claim ownership to the writing  and authorship of the learningmorethanliving blog. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank You. 

The Driverless Car is Merging onto Reality Lane

Get up, drive to work, and then comes the dreaded parking. You finish by 5, and get on the highway just in time to meet the next traffic jam. What is one solution that would solve all of this and much more? The Self-Driving Car.

Beginning Stages of Self Driving Car -- Image Credit: nydailynews.com

The biggest question is not if but when. Computer driven cars can already park themselves, drive on the highway, and even street drive. This is why GM, Volvo, Nissan, and BMW all expect driverless cars by 2020. Here are the effects on you:

Saving Lives: In 2009, there were ~5.5 million accidents leading to ~34,000 killed and ~2.2 million injured. With the driverless car, these numbers evaporate because the computers on the car are thousands of times quicker than human reflexes and are far more accurate at distinguishing objects. This amounts to saving (drum role) $450 billion each year!

Image Diagram of Car Accidents -- Image Credit: driveorigo.com

More Human Hours: What if you were free to work or relax while traveling? The average US commute time is 25 min. Multiply that by 100 million workers x 2 for both ways and you get 5 billion human hours wasted per day. That represents $50 billion per day in work force power.

Transportation Costs: Right now, there are ~1.6 million US trucker jobs with a median salary of ~$37,500. Imagine 99% of those jobs replaced by safer, more efficient, and faster autonomous cars. That would save our economy a mind-numbing $50 billion per year. That is the equivalent of 16 Human genome projects each year.

Faster Transportation: Forget the word traffic jams because it won't exist. With wirelessly communicating cars, travel can happen in sync so that traffic jams are eliminated. Furthermore, because automated cars have far more superior reflexes compared to humans, they can travel at faster highway speeds of almost 100mph.

More Efficient Energy Usage: We keep a safe distance from the car ahead of us. But with automated cars, they actually travel in tight formations that severely lessons air-drag. Furthermore, we can be dropped off straight at our destination while the driverless car goes park itself. This saves massive city parking costs.


© Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living, 2013. Please note that the material included this was not written by a licensed medical professional. Therefore, please consult your physician before trying anything suggested in this article. Please note that there were several images in this article. The first as from nydailynews.com. The second was from driveorigo.com. This blog does not claim ownership of these images. Nicholas Shah does not claim ownership to the ideas put forth here. However, he does claim ownership to the writing  and authorship of the learningmorethanliving blog. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank You. 

Solar On the Rise

When we flick on the lights, turn on the AC, or charge our phone, we don’t usually think about where the electricity comes from. It might be a surprise to some that nearly 45% of comes from coal, followed by natural gas and then nuclear.  But with global warming effects increasing, and a slow growing economy, we have to ask: Is there a cheaper, cleaner solution?

Energy Sources in 2009. Image Credit: Solarenergyfactsblog.com

Most people know about the renewables: wind, hydro, and solar. And while we all want to be friendly to the environment, coal is usually used instead because it's cheaper. Or is it? Due to advancing technology, solar is surpassing coal in price performance.

Let me say that again, solar is cheaper than coal. And the best part? It’s getting even cheaper. This is why New Mexico, Texas, and India are all going solar. And finally, this is why the world's biggest coal company is now switching to solar. 

We need to backtrack a little bit to understand how technology can do this. For the longest time, we used fossil fuels for power plants because of the extraordinary amount of energy stored in chemical bonds between carbon atoms. 

But the problem now is that we are reaching the peak of our coal supply.  Even if all fossil fuels were clean, we simply would not be able to sustain our economy with them because they are running out. Lower supply leads to higher pricing.

Solar on the other hand is seemingly limitless. The world right now receives over 20,000 times the power from the sun than we produce with our power plants. The difficulty has not been the supply, but rather the collection process.

Solar Panels being installed by robots to reduce installation costs. Image Credit: Kurzweilai.com & Gehrlicher Solar AG

Solar panels use transistors to collect energy. Transistors are switches that are used in computer chips, and as a result, the computer industry has been intensively innovating methods to shrink them and lower their cost. This is why the cost of solar has dropped so quickly and it is also why it will continue to do so.

Cost of Solar dramatically decreasing. Image Credit: Granitegrok.com

If you look at this trend, the cost of clean solar is projected to be 10 times cheaper than coal in 2021. By 2031, it will be 100 times. Imagine your electric bill going from $70 to $0.70. This powerful solar technology will surely brighten our future world.

© Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living, 2013. Please note that the material included this was not written by a licensed medical professional. Therefore, please consult your physician before trying anything suggested in this article. Please note that there were several images in this article. The first as from solarenergyfactsblog.com. The second was from Kurzweilai.com & Gehrlicher Solar Ag. The third was from granitegrok.com. This blog does not claim ownership of these images. Nicholas Shah does not claim ownership to the ideas put forth here. However, he does claim ownership to the writing  and authorship of the learningmorethanliving blog. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank You. 

Farming's Future

When we buy our fruits and veggies, we rarely think of how many resources were poured into our purchased product. So it may come as a surprise to learn that it takes ~17.5 gallons of water per apple and an astonishing ~15,000 gallons for a 2.2lb slab of meat. To top it off, it is estimated that 50% of all food is wasted. With over 1 billion hungry, we clearly need to change something.

Demographics of Undernourished. Image Credit: Oxfam.org

To solve this pleading question, many point out that we need to change government structure, alter food distribution, or donate more to charities. While these may be valid approaches, there is one more strategy that may be more promising: Vertical Farming.

Concept Drawing of Vertical Farm. Image Credit: HowStuffWorks.com 

Vertical Farming is the method of growing food products within a building. As crazy as this may sound, there are many advantages with this technology that may replace the horizontal farms we see lining our highways today.

1. Food Efficiency -- With a vertical farm, you don't grow the whole plant. Instead of the traditional tomato plant, you grow just the tomato. Not only does this save a tremendous amount of space, but also the resources used to grow the fruit.

2. Water Efficiency -- Instead of relying on rain, all foods are fed via aeroponics. This mist generating water feeding reduces water usage by a jaw-dropping 98% compared to normal farming methods.

3. Controlled Environment -- With everything being indoors, there is no need for pesticides to ward off insects. Furthermore, we can enhance the fruits with additional nutritional factors. In fact, the vertical farm built in Singapore is about 5 to 10 times more efficient than regular farms.

4. Right Next Door -- Because the products are grown in a skyscraper that can be placed in the middle of a city, there are virtually no transportation costs, eliminating 3.4% of costs.

5. The Auto Farm -- The indoors create an ideal environment for robot hands. This back-breaking work can be replaced by more efficient, and significantly cheaper automation tools. As a result, costs are driven down.

Vertical farming has the potential to solve the starving billion because it makes food very efficiently. With efficiency comes substantial price drops. Imagine lowering food costs by a factor of 10 or even 100. What if your weekly grocery bill was $10? How about $1? In the coming years, vertical farming has more than just the potential to grow. It will flourish.

© Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living, 2013. Please note that the material included this was not written by a licensed medical professional. Therefore, please consult your physician before trying anything suggested in this article. Please note that there was an image used from Oxfam.org. This blog does not claim ownership of that image. Furthermore, there was a second image from Howstuffworks.com. Note that this blog does not claim ownership of that image.  Nicholas Shah does not claim ownership to the ideas put forth here. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank You. 

The Complexity Remedy: The Quantum Computer

In a previous post, we talked about how computers could change our world. And while those circuit boards may be powerful, there is now a new player in town with even more potential: The Quantum Computer.

The Latest Quantum Computer -- Image Credit: The New York Times

Science background first. Normal computers are built using an element called a transistor which is made up of many atoms. The transistor is a switch that can either let electricity flow (symbolized by "1") or stop/impede flow (or "0"). This is where the 0101001 code comes from and each number in the sequence is called a "bit." As a result, a regular computer is restricted to either answering with yes or no, 1 or 0.

A quantum computer, on the other hand, computes on individual atoms, which is mind-blowingly impressive. In fact, all of these atoms are synced together so that they spin together in unison. This phenomenon known as entanglement.

Here is the crazy part. When you affect one of these specially synced atoms, all the other atoms react too even though the atoms are not physically connected to each other! In other words, imagine you have ten tables and a spinning top on each one. If you were to stop one top, and spin it the other direction, the other tops would stop and reverse spin too.

Each top spins at a certain speed and direction, and that exact speed or direction correlates into a number between 0 and 1. Its not a complete yes nor a complete no. As a result, a quantum computer uses "qubits" which are those numbers in between 0 and 1. Because of this, quantum computers can compute exponentially more than regular computers.

If you ask a normal computer to solve a maze, it will try out each route one by one until it finds the solution. By comparison, a quantum computer can try all of the routes at the same time. That is why they are so much faster at complex problems.

The graph below summarizes the race between regular and quantum computers. Even though regular computers have at least 40 years of a head start, the quantum computer is surpassing them rapidly. This is why Google and NASA recently purchased a 512 qubit one.

Quantum Computers Overcoming Regular Computers in 2014 -- Image Credit: 33rdsquare.com

Why does this matter? If price performance of quantum computing grows even faster than regular computers, we can discover and design much more:

Drug Discovery -- Imagine a computer that can simulate potential medications and their complex interactions in the body without having to test it in rats or humans. We could "test" drugs without even going the expensive process of creating them.

Predicting Weather -- There are too many variables that affect the weather, which is exactly where quantum computers excel. Imagine predicting hurricanes and tornados a week in advance.

Emotional Intelligence -- Love, hate, and everything in between is outright complicated. But what if you could simulate all the complexities of the human brain? We could understand what depression actually is on a physical level and develop more effective cures.

© Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living, 2013. Please note that the material included this was not written by a licensed medical professional. Therefore, please consult your physician before trying anything suggested in this article. Please note that there was an image used from 33rdsquare.com. Nicholas Shah does not claim ownership to the ideas put forth here. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank You. 

The Next Industrial Revolution -- 3D Printing

Cheaper products usually means less quality. But what if there was a way to produce high quality, personalized products at one hundredth of the cost today? Shoppers, I introduce your best deal: the 3D printer.

A model made simply by mouse clicks. Image Credit: Engadget and Kickstarter

The majority of the products today are made in bulk by assembling lines at a factory hundreds of miles away. The 3D printing revolution challenges this model by bringing the assembling line into your home. This is the ultimate DIY tool.

The 3D printing process uses sequential additive manufacturing. In English, that means a computer interprets a design and prints one "layer" of the desired object. It then goes returns to its starting point and reprints on the initial layer, allowing the next layer to take shape. This process continues until you have thousands of layers stacked upon each other, creating your desired object. How can one machine change the world?

Shapeways shows how much 3D printer has grown in just one year. Image credit: Shapeways

Return of Manufacturing to the US -- Now that you can produce objects at home for such a low cost, there is no need for cheaper labor overseas.

Less Expensive Housing -- With larger 3D printers, you can design your own house and print it. Pipes and electric wires can be embedded into walls. How many people does it take to build? Two. How many days of construction? One.

Regrow Your Organs -- Organ transplants simply can not keep up with demand. With 3D printers, you can take a patient's stem cells and print them into a organ like a kidney. You can even integrate electronics in tissue, like this radio-receiving ear. Best part? No rejection occurs because it is made out of your own cells.

Cheaper Food -- Imagine removing the preparation costs from food. What if you didn't have to pay for kitchens or cooks? 3D printers can take beginning ingredients and produce the most eloquent meals in the right proportions that you want.

Fashion Show Stopper -- 3D printers can make the most intricate designs for a very cheap price. How will this affect the latest trends? Lets start with shoes.

Print More Printers -- As the abilities of 3D printers progress, they will be able to print the parts needed to make more of themselves. Imagine giving each country just one 3D printer. In no time, you would have millions of these printers making even more printers. They would print food, tools, and even clothing.

One final thought -- 3D printing calls into question the true value of an object. In the past, it was who crafted an object with elegant workmanship. But now, printers clearly outskill the human hand.

An object's value now lies in its design, and that has economic implications. If 3D printers can make products without aid, where will the money be? The answer: the designers, the brains who thought of the object in the first place.

© Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living, 2013. Please note that the material included this was not written by a licensed medical professional. Therefore, please consult your physician before trying anything suggested in this article. Please note that there was an image used from Engadget and Kickstarter. This blog does not claim ownership of that image. Furthermore, there was a second image from Shapeways. Note that this blog does not claim ownership of that image.  Nicholas Shah does not claim ownership to the ideas put forth here. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas Shah and Learning More Than Living with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank You.