The Tech Ranch
Space Debris, Despair Boxes and The 9 Tech Trends of 2022
MARLO
So it’s just so you’d understand. I mean, the Hubble is still running. The Hubble runs on image. It just has lenses, you know, so optical lenses go back because it must be 20 years old.
STEVE
Right? At least. Yeah. So think of the technology from then, which I remember when that went up and that was the best thing since sliced bread. Technology was cutting edge. Nothing like it. It was gonna be phenomenal and now fast forward 20 years. You can almost take good pictures with your cell phone.
MARLO
So the web telescope is an infrared telescope, right? So it’s not using optical lenses. It’s actually polling images using infrared and measure. But, they just pulled an image from a star 400 light years away and a planet around it. Iisn’t that something?
STEVE
It’s a big planet. Two and a half times the size of Jupiter. Uh, but it’s interestingly half times larger, but that’s not the question that you just, I mean, the aliens are bigger.
MARLO
Maybe they’re stronger because the gravity, gravity is different so when theycome to earth, they’re super beings. Just like Superman.
STEVE
Well, it’d be kinda like, uh, the locker room scene at the end of uh, Men in Black. Yes. Yeah. They’re in the little locker. The aliens are ginormous!
MARLO
You really believe in this. What happens in movies eventually comes true. Don’t you?
STEVE
It does though! It really does. There’s a lot of proof to it. There’s no doubt about it. I mean, just from the tech side, look at all the cool stuff that shows up
MARLO
And then some engineer is like, you know, Probably possible, you know, the next thing you know, we got cell phones and we have driverless or driverless cars and you know, all of this stuff, flat screens for televisions. I mean, you think about the early days of sci-fi, you know, and, and, uh, all of them were flat screens and of course they had to mock that stuff up they basically built these huge panels around these CRTs or whatever that had, you know, they’re huge, but they look like flat screens.
The next thing you know, we have flat screen televisions. And, and now of course, it’s almost all holographic. So if you ever watch, you know, like the new Star Trek TV shows or whatever, these images that you’re looking at are disappearing in the air, and that’s gonna be what’s next. You’re just gonna have a, a little device that will that’ll project an image into the air and somehow you’ll see it.
STEVE
it’s kinda like the, uh, holographic concerts they’ve been doing.
MARLO
Everyone Loves Raymond. They were showing that as a holographic image and I could go right up to it and put my hand right through Ray. Really. It was crazy, but yet it looked pretty real, you know, I, I wouldn’t say it’s like looking at you I’d say it was more like looking at Yoda in Star Wars, you know, when it pops up. It was interesting. And I was looking at that, thinking that, you know, sometime in the future, our televisions are not gonna be mounted on a wall. It’s just gonna be a coffee table that when you turn it on, an image will be projected above it – that type of thing. You don’t have to position all your furniture in a specific way around your television. You can just put it wherever and put the coffee table in the middle of the room and everybody can see it that way then.
STEVE
Wow. Well that changed the decorating industry. That will be amazing.
MARLO
It’s a whole new world. You should start on that. Now.
STEVE
What would I put on that wall though? That’s the question? Interesting.
So speaking of, uh, of the new telescope. The infrared telescope. Um, and that just went up a couple years ago, which is cutting edge on the infrared side of things. Um, what’s the lifespan of that because they didn’t expect Hubble to be lasting.
MARLO
No. And in, and in fact, um, if you remember right when Hubble went up, it had an issue right away and some, and somehow, or another, I think one of the lenses was misaligned after it went up and they were able to fix that remotely, which is pretty impressive.
STEVE
Yeah, because they were talking about doing a space shuttle launch just to fix it, just to try to fix it because I mean, you know, what was it 200? I don’t remember. But the cost of the Hubble telescope was huge. Just astronomical to put this thing up there and then it gets up there and because of something that went wrong one of these, one of these lenses off a little bit.
You know, on social media. One of my favorite places that I follow is the NASA page. The NASA page is amazing. Because they post all this stuff. So with the new web satellite, that’s up there now, he longevity of some of this technology that they’re putting up in space is far out living expectations.
MARLO
Yeah. I think, you know, I think NASA is really good about, you know, with what they come out. That’s like anything else, I guess, you know, if you wanna look like you’re a hero, say it’s gonna last two years and then it really lasts 10 and I think NASA is a master at that.
STEVE
Well, they figured out that’s how the funding keeps coming from Congress. Which NASA is the one government agency that generates revenue.
MARLO
I think we should put all of our money into. All of our taxes should go to NASA and then let them make, make money. They make money and then they can fund the rest of the government. That’s how I see it.
So, SpaceX is, is building a network, uh, for cellular service to space – Starlink. Yeah. And, uh, now there’s a brand new satellite and just to put it into perspective, satellites are usually fairly small because, and light, because you gotta get ’em up. They just launched 1 3300 pounds, which is huge.
STEVE
It’s a monster satellite.
MARLO
So scientists are already starting to complain about all the stuff we have in orbit now, because going back to the satellite, it’s making it very difficult to see into space from earth without all the clutter. There’s a lot of light pollution and clutter so like a lot of times they’ll take TimeLapse imagery, uh, of space. And the problem with that is when you’ve got all the satellites, those wind up as being light streaks on the photographs, right? So there’s this brand new 3,300 pound satellite, uh, called Blue Walker 3. And they think it’s gonna be the brightest thing in the sky other than the moon. So, if you’re out navigating the forest, there’ll be a new north star.
STEVE
That’s amazing. How frightening though. So how many pieces of space debris do we have floating around out there right now? That have not hit the earth yet?
MARLO
STEVE
Holy crap.
MARLO
So 200,000 pieces between one and 10 centimeters 0.4 to four inches. They don’t track those.
STEVE
Well, those they figure burn up and that’s correct when they hit the atmosphere. Anyway, that’s correct.
MARLO
Right. So they’ll eventually hit the atmosphere. The thing is that we keep adding more to it. Uh, as of 2021, the United States surveillance network was tracking more than 15,000 pieces of space debris larger than 10 centimeters. Well, when I sit on my deck and I look straight up, when I’m looking at the sky, I always see stuff. I always see, you know, like rocket bodies or, uh, the international space station, the Starling stuff is becoming quite a thing.
STEVE
Now we’re coming back from, uh, well, if you think with all these particles and all this small junk, um, We should see more shooting stars. And I just saw one on Friday night. Yeah. But was it an asteroid or was it right?
Jason sent us a little article this morning. He wanted your take on this. So, Amazon says sad workers can shut themselves in despair closets. So, apparently Amazon has had a bunch of suicides from depression and all sort of things. And, there’s actually a couple tech businesses in the region that have these. So DigiKey is based outta Minnesota, and Microsoft they have these rooms, they’re they’re despair rooms. You can go scream as loud as you want, and nobody’s gonna hear you. It got me thinking about sound quality rooms in the ergonomics that go into a room. Yeah. And the tech that’s involved with that.
MARLO
So like, you know, the Marvel movies and whatever, when you see, um, you know, people jumping up and then they have these scenes behind them. They’re getting away from the green screen. And they’re bringing in the stuff so that when you shoot the stuff, it’s actually appearing behind you and, and it’s, it’s just unbelievable. So I’ll have to show you some images of what I just looked at. And there’s one room that they have that the L E D screens shaped into a cone. And then when you get to a certain point, it’s like, you’re in a sound cone as well. And then you cross this line and. It’s just incredible. It’s like, everything is just amplified in this cone. So it’s very similar to what you’re talking about.
STEVE
If anybody was ever to build a theater again, you’d probably build it in the shape of a cone, uh, something similar like that.
MARLO
Have you ever been into some of these places like these outdoor amphitheater type of scenarios?
STEVE
Yeah. Really a lot of places, movie theaters, again, a great example. Haven’t optimized the natural acoustics that are out there.
MARLO
That’s, that’s always a thing, right? If you, if you fill the room with 200 bodies or 500 bodies, the acoustics change, right. A lot because now you’re absorbing sounds.
STEVE
That’s pretty cool. So acoustically, I mean, you talk about the tech side getting into some of these acoustically safe spaces. And now you start thinking about the acoustics and things like this that are dealing with mental health.
MARLO
So does it talk about the scenario of that? Because people can go into these despair rooms, blow off steam and then they’re, they’re feeling better. And is there some proof to the fact that this helps them or I’m, I’m trying to figure this out.
STEVE
Not in the article I read, but, it’s just an emotional release, which most people don’t do in public because it’s not right or proper, or you don’t wanna see your coworker while you melt down.
MARLO
I think they should have a bunch of letters. So you can, I could write the word, Steve, and I could just take my bat and blow off a little steam.
So I thought we’d wrap up the show today with the top nine technological trends of 2022.
So, nine on the list is cybersecurity, which makes sense. Surprised that it’s not higher. It’s surprising to me too, because I think most businesses need to take that pretty seriously. I would imagine it’s not higher because a lot of people just don’t take it seriously yet. So I think that’s probably why
Eight is 5G. Um, I’m also surprised that it is low on the list, but what, 6G is already, you know, announced and who knows what that’s gonna take to get set up for that.
Seven is the internet of things. Some of us are familiar with things. Yeah. Alexa. Your refrigerator, your, you know, smart things. Yeah. Your furnace, your light bulbs. Those are all internet of things. Attacks nowadays are a lot of them coming from the internet of things. Why did your website fail? Because I had a million light bulbs trying to talk to it. That’s why.
Six is blockchain. That’s interesting that that’s lower on the list as well. Uh, because of cryptocurrency.
Five is virtual reality and augmented reality. So, that makes sense. Four is quantum computing. We’ve talked about this a lot and that is starting to come to fruition, a quantum computer when you and I get our hands on it will be a million times faster than the computer we have now. Isn’t that something?
Three is edge computing and that’s, that’s a step beyond cloud computing. Two is robotic process automation. So RPA, so robotic process automation, you see more and more of this, like, like in fast foods, the robots that are flipping burgers and stuff.
And I think the first one is related to artificial intelligence and machine learning. It’s the same scenario. These are things that people, jobs that people don’t wanna do or whatever, and machines are starting to take over in those spaces. So, those are the top nine things.
The post Space Debris, Despair Boxes and The 9 Tech Trends of 2022 appeared first on The Tech Ranch.