A massive new discovery of lithium, the stuff so important to the new, power storing batteries for vehicles and power tools, was just made in the bottom of a lake in California, adding to the other huge discoveries that have already been made in the USA.
Even as lithium mining and refining develops here, vehicle manufacturing is returning along with advanced microchip and AI development. All this is in the news. What isn’t in the news so much is the research into new forms of energy production.
Technological knowledge is steadily expanding and now it has AI to move it along faster. Scientists in all fields are steadily expanding human knowledge. For example, cures for most cancers have been found, it’s only their application that’s been lagging. It takes time to put new knowledge into practical use.
Net-gain energy from fusion has finally been achieved. Practical application eventually will be, but what if there was a major breakthrough in energy production? There was in batteries, and more are coming. Carbon is extremely cheap and massively abundant, and look what scientists are doing with it now.
A new, cheaper source of power is not just inevitable, it has to happen and soon. Everything is switching over to battery power and those batteries have to be repeatedly charged back up by a currently inadequate infrastructure. Not enough power is being generated now to handle all our current needs.
A new, cheap form of safe and abundant power would eventually end lithium mining because every technology becomes both more compact and more efficient over time. Why carry batteries that weigh as much as the rest of the vehicle when a small power plant needing no external fuel source does the job? No charging stations would be needed. No power plants, power lines, coal mines, hydroelectric dams. Science fiction now but it’s a possible future.
While all the international power jockeying goes on, while nations and religions threaten and assault each other and internal politics keeps making headlines, you can bet that the number one issue among a certain set of scientists is achieving, with the increasing help of AI, the sort of power source I described, and they’ll create it. There has to be a lot more ways to get energy from atoms and their particles than by smashing them together or heating them into fusing, and they’ll find those ways, or different sources of energy entirely.
It may not be much longer before this happens. Advances are piling up one atop the other.
If I were China, I’d be asking, what do I want more, to see humanity move on to the next evolutionary stage in technology, or world domination while I can still grab it, that I can only achieve at this stage of the game by initiating a major war? And work at the advanced tech later.
China just announced their Big New Super Duper indomitable, undefeatable fighter jet, so a week later the USA announces their better, more undefeatable fighter jet. China threatens, everyone else threatens back, but China just keeps right on threatening and building more war machines for the use of their 1.5 billion or so citizens.
We should take a step back and look at the broad picture. Yes, technology is taking humanity to undreamed of new heights, but at the same time, there’s growing competition between East and West over who wins the governorship of Earth and the same technology is being used by both sides to achieve their goal.
The problem with even writing a post like this is that it’s impossible to be conclusive. I always end them lately with the reader and myself being left hanging and the next one, concerning our current government VS the Leftist judges, will be no different. Fortunately, no one has to read it because I haven’t written it yet. But beware, it’s coming.