Every September when we plan January technical forecast problem, IEEE Spectrum editors explore their fields and look for promising projects that can solve seemingly intractable problems or transform entire industries.
Often these projects fly under the radar of the popular tech press, which these days seems more interested in the personalities leading Big Tech companies than in the technology itself. Here we go our own way, taking to the field to bring you news of the hidden gems that are truly—as IEEE's motto says—advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.
Looking back at January issues over the past 20 years, we see that while we've certainly covered our share of huge tech projects such as James Webb Space TelescopeMany of the stories touch on topics that most people would otherwise miss.
Last January, senior associate editor Emily Waltz reported on startups who pilot ocean carbon sequestration. She's back with another CO in this episode.2-centric story, this time focusing on a network-attached storage device that is about to explode—literally. Waltz traveled to Sardinia to check out the Milan-based club. Bubble Battery Energy Dome which can store up to 200 megawatt hours by compressing and decompressing pure carbon dioxide inside an inflatable dome.
So modular, easy to deploy energy storage may be especially useful for AI data centers– says senior editor Samuel K. Moorewho curated this issue and wrote about gravitational energy storage back in January 2021.
Large bubbles can help with network-scale data storage; tiny bubbles may liquefy Cancer tumor.
“When we think about energy storage, we usually think about grid-scale batteries,” Moore says. “However, these bubbles, which are in many ways more effective than batterieswill sprout everywhere, often in conjunction with computing infrastructure.”
In his article in this issue, Moore detailed the competition between two startups developing radio cables to replace conventional copper cables and fiber optics in data centers. These radio systems can be connected processors 10 to 20 meters apart, using a third of the power of fiber optic cables and a third of the cost. The next step is to integrate radio connections directly with GPUsto ease the cooling load and help data centers and artificial intelligence models work for them continues to expand.
Large bubbles can help with network-scale data storage; Tiny bubbles can liquefy cancerous tumors, as Greg Uyeno discovered in a report on Ultrasound treatment HistoSonics. Concerned for its aggressive nature and extremely low survival rate, pancreatic cancer kills almost half a million people per year worldwide. HistoSonics uses non-invasive, focused ultrasound create cavitation bubbles that destroy tumors without dangerously heating surrounding tissues. The company is completing kidney research this year and is also beginning pancreatic cancer research.
Over the past two decades, Spectrum regularly covered growth drones. For example, in 2018 we reported that the startup Zipline will use autonomous drones to deliver blood and medicine to rural areas Rwanda. Today, Zipline has a market capitalization of approximately US$4 billion and operates in several African countries, JapanAnd United Stateshaving completed nearly 2 million drone deliveries. In this episode, journalist Robb Mandelbaum takes us inside Wildfire XPrize Competitionaimed at providing another vital service: dousing forest fires before they get out of control. Zipline succeeded because they could deliver to remote locations much faster than land vehicles. This year XPrize teams plan to detect and extinguish fires faster than traditional firefighting methods.
In addition to these new technologieswe packaged this issue along with a dozen others, including Porsche Wireless Home Charger for Electric Vehicles, world's first electric air taxi service, quantum computers on neutral atoms, compatible mesh networksAnd robot umpires in baseball. Let's see which of this year's players make it to the big leagues.
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