British media selects the most watched technology news in 2022, including nuclear energy, health, space and other fields
[Global Times Special Correspondent Chen Shan] Near the end of the year, the British "New Scientist" magazine recently selected the most concerned technology news in 2022, including nuclear energy, health, space, artificial intelligence and many other fields.
In terms of nuclear energy, the Russia-Ukraine conflict that broke out in February this year has continued to this day, resulting in large-scale energy supply problems around the world, and many countries have restarted nuclear reactor power generation plans.
At the same time, the contention between the two conflicting parties over the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant has aroused widespread anxiety about the safety of nuclear power plants.
But the good news in nuclear energy is that a major breakthrough has finally been made in controlled fusion.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced on December 13 that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used the high-power laser of the National Ignition Facility to heat a tiny hydrogen fuel core and generate a nuclear fusion reaction. net energy gain".
But there is still a lot of work to be done to make fusion operational commercially.
In the field of health, the new crown virus remains a major health problem in countries around the world.
There are other dangerous viruses that plague many countries, such as the sudden outbreak of the monkeypox virus (now renamed mpox) in many countries, which led the World Health Organization to declare it the highest level of global health emergency in July.
Meanwhile, Uganda is dealing with the spread of Ebola, and the UK is concerned about the level of transmission of influenza, RSV and Streptococcus A.
The good news is that there has been significant progress in the field of xenotransplantation.
On January 7, the University of Maryland School of Medicine successfully transplanted a gene-edited pig heart into a living human after obtaining emergency authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration. This is the first related operation in the world.
"As with any world-first transplant, this operation has brought valuable insights that will hopefully inform transplant surgeons to improve outcomes and potentially save patients' lives in the future." David Bennett died two months later, but the successful life-sustaining transplant of a pig heart into a human showed promise for the technology, showing it could increase organ supply.
In the field of space, after the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in the United States at the end of 2021, it sent back the first batch of photos in July this year, showing the amazing cosmic landscape, including finding a possible habitable planet about 39.13 light-years away from the earth. of the 7 planets.
On the environmental front, the world continues to be impacted by climate change, with extreme weather across the globe.
From India to the UK, extreme heat has been a frequent occurrence, with the two-month heat wave the most extreme in human history.
The devastating floods in Pakistan have been classified as a climate disaster by the United Nations.
Even in the Arctic and Antarctic, high temperatures have resulted in record low sea ice levels.
The environmental problems that humanity will face in 2022 will not only include the weather.
On January 15, a subsea volcano in Tonga erupted violently, sending millions of tons of water vapor into space.
It was the largest single volcanic eruption of the century, and its impact on the atmosphere was felt around the world.
In the field of artificial intelligence, generative artificial intelligence has developed rapidly in recent years and will become mainstream in 2022.
With the wide spread of tools at the public's disposal, all kinds of bizarre pictures synthesized by artificial intelligence have appeared on the Internet, and their authenticity is getting higher and higher.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence tool, is capable of conducting conversations by learning and understanding human language, and responding appropriately to interlocutors.
Its launch captured people's imaginations, but at the same time raised public concerns about the misuse of artificial intelligence technology.
As businesses flock to take advantage of these AI systems, the debate surrounding the use of these technologies will only continue.
Finally, in the field of particle physics, Fermilab in the United States made a shocking announcement in April that the elementary particle W boson has a mass that is very different from that predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.
After repeated calculations, the result has not been overturned, which means that the standard model of particle physics has a large deviation for the first time.
Regarding this discovery, the physicists believe: "This may mean the birth of a new physics. If we are to fully understand the cornerstone of the universe, we must solve this major problem."
(Source: Global Times)