Engineering at Scale – IEEE Spectrum

Engineers Masters of the scaleThey use energy from the sun, wind, rivers, atoms and ores. They manipulate ElectronsPhotons and crystals for calculating and communication. They develop tools that detect indignation in the fabric of space-timeThe field and they are faced with problems – in business or not – which are presented in terms of the scale of the problem that they are trying to solve.

The articles in this issue describe engineers who think, interact and create things in very accurate and often stunning scale. They took Point transistor and increased it for decades into a product produced in almost unimaginably large quantities (13 Sextillion, or 13,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, from 1947 to 2018 for one assessmentAnd involvement One of the most complex, but insanely effective work processes on the planetField They sequate 1.8 million species genomesThey model and soften the potential catastrophe – Cessler's syndrome – which threatens to decide Satellites V Low land orbit [p. 58]Wherever you look, engineering ingenuity is faced with scale limits.

This ingenuity applies to the creation of scale for what has yet to be measured. How do we know when AI has reached common intelligence at the human level? How can we accurately measure the lack of matter in vacuum? Then there are difficulties in the scaling of technology for mass implementation. Why, for example, some manufacturers of humanoid robots announced excessively optimistic deployment purposes and increased production capacities much to ahead of a specific humanoid Robot safety standards, high reliability, decent battery life or Demand for hordes of humanoids? And how can Wind turbines on the shore continue to scale if there is no proven way of transporting them?

“Infographics allowed readers at first glance to grab for the fact that she would have paragraphs about the explanation.” Eliza Strickland

In this issue, our editors and artists bend their ability to visualize data through convincing InfographicsTo help Readers value the scale of hundreds of carbon dioxide gigatons. And Huge interstellar distances We could cross the swarm of tiny laser cosmic air snakes.

“Although we wanted each article to include some visual element, several topics required special treatment. You can tell the story about Carbon capture or Interstellar journey In words, but real influence occurs when you see gaps, the scale, participating in the races, ”says the senior editor Eliza Strickland, Who oversee this problem. “Infographics allowed readers to immediately grab This is a thoughtful requirement for artificial intelligence or a long journey from Raw Quartz To complete computer chips. ” Some of these infographics, as well as the cover, were created by the famous graphic designer Karl de Torres, the owner Optics Laboratory

We also ordered the essay of the writer -the nature of Paul Bogard, who approached his topic from a human scale. Which of us did not look at the stars and admired how our eyes absorb the light, which passed thousands of years to get to us? Bogard took a chance Chile to see How the pollution of the light invades astronomy and changes our sense of space in the universePerhaps irrevocably.

We hope that this problem is surprised and conveys our gratitude to people who measure immeasurable, build unfulfilled and solve insoluble.