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Latest Inventions in Science - Recent Breakthroughs

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Slog Reference: Recent SciTech Breakthroughs you might have missed

Description

In this video, we explore the most significant scientific and technological breakthroughs of the recent times. From the James Webb Space telescope and artificial intelligence to vaccines and asteroid deflection we delve into the incredible discoveries and innovations that have pushed the boundaries of what we thought was possible.

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We highlight the groundbreaking achievements that are changing our lives in unprecedented ways. Discover how researchers are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to tackle complex problems and how the development of newer technologies and exploring new dimensions.

We also examine how advances in medicine and biotechnology are enabling us to cure diseases once thought incurable, while new materials and manufacturing techniques are revolutionizing the way we build and construct. Finally, we look to the future and the exciting developments on the horizon, that promise to shape our world in unimaginable ways.

Join us on a journey through the most significant scientific and technological breakthroughs of the 21st century and witness the incredible advancements that are shaping our world today and tomorrow.

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen to The FutureIQ Podcast on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

References from the video:
The first flight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Flyer

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:38 8 Astrophysics
02:36 7 Medicine
04:50 6 Nuclear Fusion
08:00 5 Biology/surgery
10:49 4 Farming
12:57 3 Obesity medications
15:55 2 Astrophysics
20:40 1 Artificial Intelligence

#futureIQ #science

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Recent SciTech Breakthroughs you might have missed

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Transcript

so srikant in today's episode I want to talk about some of the top scientific breakthroughs uh in the last year or so there have been some amazing things like chat GPT that you might have heard of of course and uh that we sent Bruce Willis to an asteroid so I didn't know about that uh and I have picked eight of them that I would like to talk about okay I know you love to talk about these things and you can talk and talk and talk and talk about these things but I'm going to put a condition on it uh I have with me a kitchen timer here and I'm going to give you one minute okay
let's do it all right all right ready yes ready here we go start number eight we successfully deflected an asteroid okay so there are about a million and half asteroids in the solar system and if any one of them even a teeny tiny one comes and hits Earth we will all die yes that's what happened to the dinosaurs so what can we do about it well if you've watched any Hollywood movie you know what can we can do about it so um this year we actually did it we sent a 500 kg spacecraft uh so imagine size of a nano right and we crashed it into an asteroid which is roughly 150 meters so imagine size of a cricket
stadium and this resulted in an absteroid getting deflected which we measured later so now if there is a real asteroid hitting Earth in someday in the future huh we know what to do time up actually time up that was great timing but that means there are going to be no more Bruce Willis movies well for many other reasons but uh no then there might be documentaries so Bruce Willis's previous movie actually became a documentary now yes wow that is what science is right science following art this is life imitating art and all of that so it was this asteroid that we deflected was this a threat no no no we just we wanted to know if we can do it
so we just picked a random asteroid it got unlucky and we saw if we could deflect oh like we call in Gully Cricket trial ball this way yes so uh this was you said about the size of a cricket stadium 150 meters you said right yeah so if it's a bigger asteroid then we'll definitely need a bigger car like not a nano but maybe yeah so we'll get there we'll get there at least we know that this approach works ah so we were basically testing the physics of yes nice number eight uh we deflected an asteroid using a nano car well not a nano car but something the size or weight of a nano car
roughly are you ready with the second one yes I am ready with this one on the count of three two one go number seven new vaccines so we have invented mRNA vaccines right those are the vaccines that were used by moderna and Spicer for covet yes that technique is new this was the first time it was done successfully but it's a very good technique which can be used to create vaccines very quickly and we can create like new versions of vaccines like software releases right so we have already started using it okay um there is a new malaria vaccine out which is supposed to be much more effective than the existing malaria vaccines and malaria still kills a lot of so that is promising
and flu which kills three times more people every year than traffic accidents right we have a flu vaccine also which is going to be against all flues not just like one or two this is amazing and well in time as well uh really no more flu well we don't know I mean right now it has been tested only in rats and months will come later but let's hope so I thought we already had the flu vaccine I remember also there are 20 different types of flu viruses and they change every year as a result we have to create so many different vaccines and plus you can't how many vaccines are you going to give one person right you give them
two vaccines the other 18 can still infect you and you have to keep repeating it every year so from all of these points of view having a single Universal vaccine which just handles all of them huh would be a huge Improvement so this is just the fluid not the common cold unfortunately or is there no common cold is a symptom it's not a so there is a promising vaccine for that also okay and so in general it has been a good year for vaccine it definitely has been a good year for vaccines good couple of years for vaccines as a matter of fact but uh what are the odds that viruses will evolve to evade these vaccines it's
an answer is so we'll see we'll see interesting breakthrough number seven we have vaccines for malaria and the flu like one base vaccine nice so time for breakthrough number six are you ready yes let me reset this and are you ready yes go so progress towards nuclear fusion okay so we use way too much fossil fuels and uh that is the cause of climate change which is also probably going to kill us all so the nuclear fusion is a very clean energy source it is infinite energy source because what it does is it takes a bunch of hydrogens atoms together smoosh them to create helium and give out energy pretty much the same thing that happens in the Sun and we
have no shortage of hydrogen the universe is full of it yeah right that's true but until now nuclear fusion used to be bad because the amount of energy we put in was more than the amount of energy we got out which is useless yeah last year for the first time we got a little bit more energy out than we put in right so like a business that makes a teeny tiny profit for the first time this is a big milestone a very long way to go but you know finally first time we're in the positive just above a minute but I'm going to let him enjoy that little movement because it was nice but uh multiple thoughts coming to
my mind yeah suddenly there are going to be so many balloons floating all around because of the helium generated bad joke I know I'm sorry but also be uh didn't we already have nuclear power nuclear fission is what we have and that is the part which gives you radiation and Chernobyl and so on well in fact reality is that nuclear fission is also pretty safe but once in a while there is some sort of an accident because of which it gets a very bad reputation and most countries the janta will not allow them to use nuclear uh fission plus that is a limited Source I mean much better than fossil fuel but still foreign Fusion would be so
much more excellent okay the skeptic in me says ruko there is it's only a tiny energy profit no need to jump but no need to call it a breakthrough well it is a breakthrough going from negative to positive is a breakthrough but yes there is a long time before uh it can actually be useful you're right but you're also right that uh great things have Small Beginnings so tiny profit is always a good profit yeah and yeah number yes the first flight was 13 seconds yeah so or something like that something like that we figure it out and post a correction on the screen for you or in the show notes for you check it out uh but I thought
we already had good renewable energy options available like solar like wind so solar and wind power are huge improvements in the last 10 years but they have a problem and it will always be a problem you cannot generate solar 24 hours a day that's right so which means Battery Technology will be needed which has its own problems cars Fusion would not have that issue you can do Fusion at any time of the day that makes sense uh yeah that's number six progress with nuclear fusion okay Naveen ready with the next breakthrough that you want to talk about yes on the count of three two one go number five we successfully revived the dead heart of a pig okay so what scientists at
TL have done is that they managed to come up with a technique by which the heart kidneys liver and other organs of dead pigs which have been dead for one hour were revived okay the pigs did not come back to life we are not there yet okay but the organs came back to life and the Heart started beating and you know there was circulation so great it is because this is a big deal because it we hope that this technology will allow us to improve human organ transplants right currently organ transplants are very limited because you can only transplant an organ if you know it was taken out of a live person or at least
the heart has to be beating so usually only brain dead people or people whose heart is going to stop this technology will allow us to take organs from many more kinds of people ah this is okay uh three seconds over time about four seconds over time but still again uh fascinating bit of uh breakthrough news and I'm I'm floored because uh so tell me what is the difference between organs coming back to life and people coming back to life if you manage to revive all organs doesn't the person come so an organ is I mean compared to an entire living organism which is a very very very complex system by contrast an organ is much
simpler right so an ocean coming back to life is not the same as software but if you manage to bring all organs back to life does that mean the dead person can also come back to life no no you know not happening because if that happened then immortality would certainly be on the table and that is something I'm very interested in to be very honest that is not what we should primarily be interested in okay we should be more interested in simpler things that affect more people like uh transplants of course but also during a heart attack when blood is not reaching the body or during a stroke when blood is not reaching a brain correct now we might be able to help those
people survive better yeah that's true I had I had such fancy thoughts about people coming back to life and then my brain went into areas of if they don't really come back to life do they come back to life as zombies and what not I love such a brilliant breakthrough and not so many sci-fi opportunities you need to watch less movies okay I mean that's number four so I mean ready to tell us about the next breakthrough sure on the count of three two one go number four perennial rice farming the top crops food crops of the world like rice wheat corn we need to plant them every year yes whenever you harvest them the
plant dies and you have to create a new plant for the next year this is very wasteful both in terms of time taken the cost to the farmer and the impact on the soil so scientists in China have come up with something called perennial rice which is your rice you plant just once and it keeps giving you rice every year from the same plant right they've been working on it for a while but last year they managed to get it working they planted it it gave the same quality quantity of rice in the same cost as regular rice and then the year after that it gave again the same quantity and quality of rice but at much lower cost because they didn't
have to plant it the all everything yeah farming plowing plantings in one okay in general if uh you know we reduce the cost of making food that money can be used for a lot of good things like reducing poverty and improving health and so on Way Beyond time but again wow we have rice again and again coming and it is eventually going to decrease the cost of rice so many things cup to mind this is going to screw up sorry this is going to screw up a lot of people's diets for sure but love if you get rice for cheap then everybody's suddenly going to eat a lot of rice and then you know what
happens when you eat lots of rice then the good thing is breakthrough number three oh I can't wait to get to breakthrough number three but before that what is the nutritional value of this rice let's get to breakthrough number three but uh can this also be done with other crops using like hopefully I think similar techniques should work yeah and Naveen seems to be quite excited to get to breakthrough number three so we'll get to break through number three okay so let's get to breakthrough number three Navina are you ready yes so am I on the count of three two one go number three obesity medication uh increasing number of people in the world suffer from obesity and that
causes serious health problems yes and you know it's not a simple matter of telling them eat less and exercise more okay some of them have genetic issues and they are not able to reduce the weight okay I mean for the longest time sci-fi has been talking about you know what if there was a pill and scientists have gone and done just that there is a pill there is a pin you eat the pill and your weight reduces uh I mean it works in some cases up to 30 percent on an average 10 to 15 percent uh weight reduction doesn't work for everybody but it works for about 60 70 percent of the people who uh
take the medication and no significant I mean the side effects are not too bad so that seems very interesting within a minute and what a fascinating thought I am actually going to start a business where you give people the rice that we discussed about in the previous breakthrough and the Obesity pill as a buy one get one free kind of a deal imagine the amount of money I'm going to make I am going to pay attention nobody steal it from me I know I said it out loud I should have said it out loud but uh this there have been these pills before and most of them have been scams exactly I mean this is not a scam this is like FDA approved
this is you know a randomized control trials have been done these These are the real deal where can I get this pill uh you can't afford them they're extremely expensive right now but you know what happens after some years these things have a tendency to reduce in cost any idea where they are being stored right now or made I might take a trip to that country and go visit well the festival expected us so yeah looks like I might have to figure out they got their medicines very very very they have a lot of guns no I'm not going to do um I'll wait for the sale to happen like there there is of course going to be an Amazon uh big
billion or a Flipkart big billion kind of a sale I'm pretty sure and I'll I'll get a good deal on them someday but won't this cause a reverse effect where people will uh will have bad eating habits eventually I don't know I mean that that effect is already happening right people have bad effects eating habits already so what are you going to do even the words I was wondering but yeah I see the I see the point so yeah that's an interesting breakthrough that you may have missed a pill to reduce your obesity actually I should say appeal to reduce my obesity okay uh so next breakthrough ready yes on the count of three two one go
number two the James Webb Space Telescope right I love this one we launched a Space Telescope which is 100 times more powerful than the last one we had the Hubble uh telescope it is so sensitive that it could detect the heat of a bumblebee at a distance from here to the Moon okay wow it is so sensitive that uh you know at a distance of about 25 miles it would be able to see the details on a little coin right it is that uh good and now it is up there and it is looking at I mean you know almost the farthest ends of the universe for us but not just that it is also looking back
in time the back 13 billion years ago so it is able to show us formations of galaxies just after the big bang this is going to revolutionize our understanding of the universe in particular and physics basic physics in general yeah and this is an optical telescope which means it is actually looking at things and not just taking in radio waves and which is another tricky part there right because um there is a sun up there and the sun can just blind anything how is it going to look with the Sun so what it has done is it is gone it is sitting Million Miles Away From Earth but it is sitting in Earth's Shadow so the sun
doesn't blind it and plus it has a shield uh sort of you know sunglasses uh the size of a basketball field which it unfurled after reaching there so that it is protected from the sun and it can look into the universe in darkness the size of the basketball field is something that always throws people up because in pictures it doesn't really look that big but it is actually that big and we've gone way past the one minute Mark I stopped counting this is a topic that I absolutely love astrophysics is my love so uh yeah I'm gonna let Naveen get away with this one but so one more thing you would know is that this has
been the most complex yes space Endeavor we have ever had I mean there were so many things so many complicated things going on at the time there were 100 plus single points of failure means that if that one thing had failed the entire project would be canceled yeah and they all went right basically if you want like a very uh basic understanding of this we got a camera but we can't take selfies with it we can take distant photographs with it okay that's a bad one but why didn't we do this earlier what was stopping us from doing this earlier extremely complicated we just didn't have the technology or the money or the money yeah
yeah the money is definitely a factor but uh there are uh there are meter Wave radio telescopes there are other telescopes on Earth which also do a fairly good job so you know our atmosphere which keeps Us Alive is also a villain right it just blocks way too many things plus there is just too much disturbance uh being in space away from the atmosphere is a huge huge huge benefit you can see much farther because of that and if you want to get an experience of this yourself at night just look up at the sky and try and count the visible stars and say a pocket of space and then go to a dark sky Spot close to you and then look up at the
same patch of sky and then look at how many stars you can see that is basically the atmospheric and light pollution affecting your visual um perception of the night sky fascinating spoiler alert there are no Dark Night spots near you right the nearest one is probably 200 kilometers from your city so I'm sorry that's the problem you will have to solve you have to make like a night Camp plan of it but if you can please do it it is a surreal experience to look up at the sky and see the Milky Way with your own eyes it's beautiful it's just hmm yes so here is an example of the difference between our previous photographs using
the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope just look at how much more we are able to see how much more detail there is yeah that is one of the most beautiful images of deep sky that you will ever get to see uh these are called pillars of heaven right yes yeah these are pillars of Elementary I remember my astrophysics academic background I still remember them ready for the next one the final breakthrough that you want to talk about the final breakthrough that people may have missed I don't know how about him yeah and this is the big one this is what this is the one that I think everybody is waiting for
and the one that Naveen is the most excited to talk about so you know what I'm gonna start but then I'm going to ignore this completely because I know he's going to talk and talk and talk and talk about it I mean three two one go number one generative AI okay AI has just taken over right five years ago the top experts are experts in the world when they predicted things that would happen you know 20 years later most of that has happened last year okay so the two examples I want to take are one is uh image generation AI so you just give a piece of text and the AI will generate a lovely
photo or an animated image of it or something like that right so somebody asked for uh Snoop Doggy Dog which is Snoop Dogg combined with Dobby of Harry Potter Universe of Harry Potter and the image is lovely to see there is another example uh Jason M Allen created a piece of art with the help of this AI uh it's beautiful you should see it right but the one that I like much more is called chat GPT right which is an AI which can have conversations with us right an English text engine sort of like a text based Siri or Alexa but far more intelligent right okay it understands everything you say it is not dumb and it is better
than Google in some cases right it does High Praise it can give you summaries of an entire book or an entire field of study uh or a sub field of it or a Sub sub field of it you can ask it to explain any topic you can ask it to explain your homework you can ask it follow-up questions all of this it can do but there are many other users also right like automatically replying to emails it could do there is one example of a person a service provider whose English is bad but he uses it to write some broken English and check GPT converts it into good sophisticated English which he then emails to his clients right okay um
people I mean software Engineers are using it to autocomplete software you can give it a one line description of a function and it writes the entire software for you in a language of your choice right wow it can do your homework for you and you know even the teacher can use it to generate homework for you I expect this to really really take over a lot of tasks I am actually imagining a scammer using chat DPT to write a very convincing scam email and I'm imagining the person receiving that scam email using chat DPT to scan the scammer back no actually no uh scammers are actually quite intelligent and they are quite capable of writing good emails they intentionally write bad
emails because you know the people who don't mind the Bad Emails are the only ones who get scammed so that's intentional and you should look it up that's a very interesting one you should definitely look it up we'll post a link uh to it in in the description in the show notes also but uh to me it sounds like uh cat GPT and this generative AI that you spoke about uh image generation is going to cause a lot of lots of jobs people are going to lose jobs actually no we have an entire episode on this AI usually doesn't take away jobs if what it will do is it will allow the same uh I mean the same
number of people to do provide much more services right so uh I mean it's a this is a complex topic watch the other episode yes link is there in the notes yeah yes Link in the notes and also somewhere here we'll try and put an annotation up in case you switched on annotations but yeah uh me and Naveen we are on opposite sides of that discussion so it's definitely a fun episode for you to catch do catch it and uh yeah this is this has been the top breakthroughs uh since the uh since the past few years that Naveen wanted bring to us thank you so much yes hopefully we'll do an entire episode on chat GPT the very
different ways it can be used you know like you have an intern who is very very knowledgeable and very very cheap or a brainstorming partner and engine to generate ideas a sounding board to help clarify your thoughts you know imagine Alexa Siri but 10 times more intelligent so I told you you could talk and talk and talk and talk yes yes chat GPT has been administered various exams and it has passed them right uh average score on Sat it has passed the USMLE it has passed an MBA exam in I think so it is amazing I think it was what and I'm not sure we have to look it up but talk and talk and talk
thank you