Some bold predictions for 2030

Hello all!

I’m back!

Just in time to see the year (and decade) out! 😊

I’ve been working on a series on electric vehicles, which I’ll start to publish in the new year. Today though, I’m going to look into the future and make some predictions on what the world will look like 10 years from now.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten” ― Bill Gates

In 2019, 2030 may seem really far away, but today, we’re closer to 2030 than we are to 2009.

Here are three bold predictions I believe stand a very real chance of coming true over the next decade.

95% of Global New Car Sales Will Be Electric

A decade ago, there weren’t any serious electric cars available on the market. If you played golf or delivered milk, you might use a short-range electric vehicle, but if you wanted to drive 400 miles at 70mph, it just wasn’t possible.

In 2012 the Tesla Model S arrived, as did the Supercharger network, which meant you could drive for 250 miles, stop for forty-five minutes on a 72kW charger and then drive another 150 miles, powered 100% by electricity!

This seemed like a breakthrough at the time, although today cars are available with almost 400 miles of range, and charging takes a fraction of the time, with some networks offering speeds of 350kW – juicing up at well over a thousand miles per hour!

Range has been creeping up, charging speeds rapidly improving and prices have dropped significantly. It’s now possible to pick up a second-hand 100-mile range Renault Zoe or Nissan Leaf for less than £7,000! Alternatively, the 2020 Renault Zoe will have a 200-mile range and cost around £25,000.

EVs require less maintenance than petrol and diesel-powered cars, and are significantly more efficient and cheaper to run – reducing the total-cost-of-ownership. It’s this, coupled with the push for cleaner air and global climate concerns that lead me to believe that the tipping point for electric cars is coming very soon. By 2025 I believe more than 50% of new car sold in Europe, North America and China will be powered solely by electricity. 🔋⚡🔌🚗

Humans Will Set Foot On Mars

In the 1960s there was a great race for space – with Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon in 1969. Since then, the dash for extraterrestrial exploration has slowed somewhat, which fewer advances and less drive from governments to get into space.

A notable exception is the ISS, which is celebrating 20 years in orbit – having been permanently manned since November 2000.

NASA has plans for a sustained lunar presence from 2028, something that’ll be much easier thanks to booming interest from the private sector. Rocket Lab, SpaceX and Blue Origin all have ambitious space plans, and a proven track-record of success.

Arguably the most iconic moment of the decade for space travel came as private enterprise SpaceX launched of its Falcon Heavy, simultaneously landing two Falcon 9 boosters.

Mars and Earth are close (in space terms!) every 26 months, meaning roughly every two years, there is an optimal launch window open for a trip to the red planet. The 13th of October 2020 is when the two planets will next be closest, although it’s highly unlikely a manned mission will be launched by then.

The last window of the next decade will the March 2029, which is when I’m guessing the first human will set foot on the red planet – 60 years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

While the first human to set foot on Mars will probably go straight from Earth, I believe a permanent lunar base will mean that most missions to Mars post-2040 will launch from the Moon, not Earth. This is because it’s likely to be far cheaper to conduct smaller launches from Earth and bigger ones from the Moon – due to the lower gravity.

If the moon has the resources needed for rocket fuel (ice at the poles which can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen) and to make materials – via 3D printing – in future it could become the springboard to space! 🚀

10 Countries Will Be Cashless

More and more transactions are moving online. When you check-out your virtual basket of goods on the internet, you don’t have the option to pay with cash – one example of how notes and coins are less useful than they once were.

Sweden is expected to go cashless in 2023 and in many developed nations, the use of cash as a means of paying for things is dropping. In the UK, cash was king, accounting for 60% of all payments in 2008 and remaining the single most popular way to pay until 2017 – since then debit cards have been the most popular way to pay.

By 2028, UK Finance believes debit cards, direct debits and credit cards will all be more common ways to pay than cash, with cash accounting for only 9% of payments. The drop from 60% to 9% in two decades shows the scale of the decline.

Singapore bus with a contactless payment reader

On a recent visit to Singapore, it struck me just how far ahead it is in terms of payment methods. Everywhere I visited supported some form of virtual payments; from contactless on the MRT and in-app payments for taxis, to online payments for the hotel and card payments at a 7 Eleven.

Mobile banking, cryptocurrencies, online shopping and contactless technology all offer convenience and are alternatives to support a cashless future.

Naturally, in many parts of the world, lack of development and technological literacy, as well as nostalgia, habits and cultural preferences, mean cash will remain on the global stage for a while yet.

I do think around 5% of the world (10 countries) will become cashless in the next decade though – with Singapore and Sweden both likely candidates. 💷💳

Happy New Year! 🎆🎇✨🎉🎊

Thanks for reading and taking an interest in Technology Bloggers, we really do appreciate it 😊

Let me know your thoughts on my predictions and if you’ve got any of your own!

Happy New Year! 😄

The Importance of the Moon

Earth's natural satellite - the moonThe Moon is something many of us take for granted. It doesn’t really do that much, it just sits up their in space.

When someone talks about the Moon what springs to mind? Werewolves? Cheese? Wallace and Gromit?

Maybe you think of Apollo 11 in 1969 and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin setting foot on the Moon.

I watched a very interesting BBC documentary recently called Do We Really Need the Moon? It explored how important the Moon has been to the development of life on Earth, and how important it may become in the future of space travel.

The Moon is likely to have been critical to the creation of life on Earth. It is believed that the Moon was formed when another planet crashed into Earth. At this point, the Earth was an uninhabitable, unstable lava wasteland. The collision created millions of pieces of molten rock which were sent into orbit. The biggest of these chunks of liquid rock grouped together (thanks to our old friend gravity) to form a new structure. Eventually all the pieces either became a part of the Moon, joined onto the Earth, or were flung off into space.

This massive collision reset Earth’s chemistry. Over the next 7 million years, it is thought that the Earth cooled, and water vapour condensed to form oceans. Oceans which the Moon controlled. The water nearest the Moon is affected by its gravitational pull more. This means that water recedes in other areas, amassing in the part of the ocean that is closest to the Moon. This is what creates the tides we know today, the same tides that are thought to have helped to create life – around 4 billion years ago.

Moon's gravity pulling the Earth

A picture from the BBC documentary Do We Really Need the Moon? showing how the Moon’s gravity pulls the oceans of the world towards it – creating tides.

So the Moon helped to create life, but that’s not all, it also helps to maintain it. The distance the Moon is away from the Earth, means that the tides are not too extreme. If the Moon were 20 times close than it is today then the Moon’s gravity would be 400 times stronger than it is today. This would create a huge tidal surge that would completely submerge all major cities around the world. At night, London would be underwater, and then a few hours later the waters would recede and flood New York. Evolution would not be able to adapt to changes that happened this quickly, and life on Earth would not exist.

The Moon also protects us in another way. Here is an image of the nearside of the Moon – the side we always see.

The nearside of the MoonNow here is an image of the farside, also known as the dark side of the Moon.

The farside of the MoonNotice a difference?

The farside is covered in a mass of craters, whilst the nearside is largely unscathed. Every crater on the farside of the Moon is a potential impact that the Moon has prevented for the Earth. Imagine that all meteoroids in space are chunks of iron, and the Moon is a giant magnet. The Moon pulls a lot of this space debris towards it.

Inevitably some meteoroids will collide with Earth, however the Moon does a pretty good job of shielding our planet from a lot of dangerous impacts.

We are pretty lucky really, if the Moon were much closer, or bigger, we wouldn’t be able to survive. Likewise, if it didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.

So next time you see the Moon, spare a thought for how integral it is to life on Earth.

That’s Not It!

Enjoyed this article? Feeling like you want a bit more Moon stuff? Next week I continue to look at the Moon, this time from the perspective of space travel!

The Size of Space

I’m starting with a fact today; two actually.

FACT

According to astronomer Dr Peter Edwards, if our solar system was a grain of sand, then The Milky Way (our Galaxy) would be 1,000 times the size of Durham Cathedral.

Durham Cathedral from the South

Durham Cathedral

FACT

According to NASA there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in our universe.

Need a more visual representation of that? Well luckily for you, the American Museum of Natural History have spent quite a long time developing a digital universe.

Somewhat mind boggling, isn’t it. Dr Edwards doesn’t think the human mind is really built to understand the enormity of the universe. I think I probably agree with him.

In 2012 the Hubble Space Telescope zoomed in on a seemingly empty area of space. This area of space could be covered up with just a single grain of sand if you were looking at it from Earth. Astronomers didn’t think they would discover much, but if you have a super duper space telescope, why not see what it can find?

This is what that seemingly empty bit of space actually looked like when Hubble zoomed in.

A Hubble Space Telescope picture of millions of galaxy clustersEvery single speck of light you can see is a galaxy. Yes the 100 or so huge ones in the foreground, but also the millions in the background.

Each of those galaxies contains billions of stars. Yes many of them look insignificantly small, but they are very very far away. So the well used fact that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth is actually true. In fact there are many billions more stars in space than there are grains of sand on the Earth. Each star is in solar systems filled with matter – from specs of dust to moons and planets.

The title of this article suggests that I will try to quantify the size of space. This isn’t really possible, so all we can currently do is describe its size relative to other things. If I had to use one word to describe space, I think it would have to be enormous.

A key question surrounding space is: is it infinite?

That is an existential question which I doubt we will ever know the answer to, but never the less it is still an interesting question, which is worth considering.

The theory that the universe is a sphere – like the Earth – is a popular one, and I can understand the logic in this, if you keep going, eventually the universe will loop you back around to where you started. But then my problem with this theory is we can go beyond the Earth. We can travel around the Earth, but space travel proves that we can move in 3 dimensions, straight and sideways on Earth and then upwards into space. If you got to the very edge of the universe, what would happen if you went upwards? If there isn’t an upwards, what is there?

New Scientist states that from all current data, it seems that the known universe has a diameter of about 93 billion light years. That’s pretty big, but by no means infinite. So if this estimate is correct – which is ridiculously unlikely – what comes after that? A big wall with a no entry sign? Just empty space? Another universe? Who knows…

That’s Your Lot

See you next week for the next in the series.