How cold can space get? What’s at the hottest extremes? Here on Earth are pretty comfortable. But the universe operates on a completely different scale, hotter than the cores of stars to colder cold enough to liquify air.

In this article we explore the hottest and coldest temperatures found in our universe. From the Cosmic Microwave Background and absolute zero, to neutron stars, quark-gluon plasma, and even the Planck temperature. By understanding the enormous temperature scale, we can learn more about our universe.

The Coldest Temperatures in the Universe

As the temperature gets lower, substances that would usually be gases at room temperature start to become liquids or even freeze. At about -78°C, carbon dioxide freezes to become dry ice. Even air becomes liquid at about -195°C, with it solidifying at about -213°C. Helium becomes a liquid at -269°C, and it exhibits a property called superfluidity, where it has zero viscosity. This means that it can flow forever without losing any kinetic energy.

These temperatures are so low that they can’t even be found on the coldest planets in our solar system. On Uranus, the coldest planet in our solar system, which orbits the Sun 20 times further out than Earth, the surface temperature ‘only’ drops to -224°C. Not even low enough to liquify helium.

But what about space itself? Permeating everything in the universe is the remnant of light from shortly after the Big Bang, the Cosmic Microwave Background. When the universe was just 390,000 years old, electrons and protons were finally able to form hydrogen, and without the opaque plasma that used to interact with light, the light of the universe was able to travel through space. Over the next billions of years, as space expanded, this light was redshifted, being stretched out, corresponding to a black body of -270°C, much colder than that it was released.

So what’s the coldest temperature ever reached? Well, there’s the fact that the universe has an absolute minimum temperature. Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the atoms and molecules, the lowest temperature would be when the particles stop moving, and you can’t go below that. This temperature is called absolute zero, and corresponds to about −273.15 °C. The Kelvin scale, measured in kelvin (K), uses absolute zero as its zero and has the same interval as the Celsius scale. Over the years, scientists have been trying to get closer and closer to absolute zero, and the current closest achieved in 2021, with a temperature of just 38 picokelvin, barely above absolute zero.

The Hottest Temperatures in the Universe

Now to the other end of the spectrum. Let’s look inwards towards Earth’s core, where the temperature at the surface of the inner core reaches 5,430 °C. This is hot, but in space it can get much hotter. The temperature at the Sun’s surface is roughly the same as that of Earth’s inner core, but in the corona, the outermost layer of atmosphere, temperatures can reach 5 million kelvin. Going inwards as well the temperatures rise, reaching over 15 million kelvin at the core. These temperatures are the result of nuclear fusion in the Sun releasing enormous amounts of energy.

Bigger stars burn even hotter than the Sun, and as they reach the end of their lives, they burn hotter until they exhaust their fuel and the core collapses. This then becomes a supernova and the star is ripped apart, leaving only the remnants of the core. In lower mass cores, a neutron star forms, stopping the collapse. These neutron stars can be incredibly hot, on the order of 100 billion kelvin.

But to get even hotter, we have to return to our own planet Earth. Temperatures even hotter than this have been achieved right here, albeit under very specific circumstances for only an instant. These man-made extreme temperatures come from some of the most advanced laboratories on the planet. To investigate a type of matter thought to exist right after the big bang, experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have created quark-gluon plasma at temperatures exceeding 5 trillion kelvin!

But like absolute zero, there’s analogously a theoretical maximum temperature. This is the Plank temperature, with a value of 1.416 x 10³² kelvin and it’s the temperature where our current understanding of physics through general relativity and quantum mechanics breaks down, and new theories need to be created.

Conclusion

So these are the hottest and coldest extremes of the universe. Although the wider universe is home to some unimaginable temperatures, it’s important to realise that the hottest and coldest extremes ever measured are thanks to the work of scientists right here on Earth. By examining these limits, we can gain a deeper understanding of how the universe works and hopefully use these in some way to improve our lives. Finally, here is an infographic showing the scale separating the coldest and hottest.

Sources

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BBC. “Infographic: Absolute zero to ‘absolute hot’”, 18 Dec 2013

What’s the Hottest and Coldest in the Universe? was originally published in Predict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fluids are everywhere. Every liquid and gas is a fluid, so the air you breathe and the water you drink are just two common examples. Because of their presence everywhere, the behaviour of fluids becomes an important concern. So how do people manage to understand the way they flow and turn their chaotic motion into something useful?

The Governing Equations

In simple terms, to properly describe the flow of fluid, we need to use some of the fundamental laws of nature. The most important of these are the conservation of mass, conservation of momentum, and conservation of energy. From these, we can create equations that state the laws in terms of values we are interested in, and this leads to the equations that govern the flow of fluids; the continuity equation, the Navier-Stokes equations, and the energy equation.

The first of these represents the conservation of mass and it ensures that mass is not created or destroyed in the fluid. The last does the same for the conservation of energy. The most interesting of the three however are the Navier-Stokes equations, which themselves are three equations representing the conservation of momentum. These equations were developed over several decades by Claude-Louis Navier and George Gabriel Stokes who both contributed considerably to developing these equations.

The key difference betweeen them and the closely related Euler equations is that the Navier-Stokes equations account for viscosity in the fluid. Both sets of equations have uses depending on the application and uses, but some phenomena like turbulence and skin friction drag rely are due to viscosity, so the Navier-Stokes equations need to be used in these cases.

These governing equations are useful because they describe the behaviour of many things of interest to scientists and engineers. These include weather, ocean currents, flow of water through pipes, airflow around wings, etc. Thus, engineers and scientists can design wings for planes or ventillation systems, or to study the movement of pollution through the air or the sea. And when coupled with other aspects of physics and engineering, such as structural mechanics or Maxwell’s equations, they enable the study of even more complicated phenomena.

How do we Use Them?

So now that we have the equations, how do we make use of them? Unfortunately it isn’t very easy. The governing equations of fluid flow in their most general form are a set of coupled partial differential equations. These are notoriously difficult to solve analytically. To do so you would have to make many assumptions and approximations, like incompressibility, single phase, 2D flow or constant viscosity. But, for instance, in the flow around a jet airliner, we can’t use these assumptions without getting inaccurate results.

This is where numerical solving comes into play. Instead of trying to solve the equations analytically continuously across space and time, we approximate the solution various numerical techniques that discretise the equations into something that computers can then solve at finite points. There are dozens of ways in which the equations can be discretised, with some like the Finite Volume Method being especially popular for commercial CFD solvers.

If we were to solve the fluid simulations while resolving every effect from things like turbulence, even for a simple object, the amount of computational time on powerful desktop computer would be unimaginable. There are a couple of ways to deal with these issues, with the first being to use a much more powerful computer. For commercial CFD, it’s not uncommon to see engineers use the power of supercomputers to run the simulations. With many, many times more system resources, these supercomputers can do many more calculations than a typical computer, bringing the time down.

Another way is to model parts of the flow instead of directly resolving them. Because turbulence extends to extremely small scales and varies with time, resolving all turbulent phenomena, a process called Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) is used, however, due to the complexity of the simulation, it takes a long time even for simple objects. Instead of resolving everything, you could set it up such that you resolve everything down to a limit beyond which you use a mathematical model to describe the behaviour of smaller features. This means you don’t have to have as high a resolution mesh. If you only care about the time-averaged behaviour of the flow, then you have methods like the Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS). With a technique like RANS, you then use a model to describe the turbulent behaviour, with some models being more accurate for certain cases.

How Has CFD Changed?

Over the years, CFD has been getting more and more advanced. With improvements to computer technology, particularly with GPUs, supercomputers have been getting so powerful that more complicated simulations can be done. More complicated geometries with more complicated models can be run to get better data. As computers get better and better, it may reach a point where DNS simulations can be done for commercial purposes. There is also the domain of multiphysics simulations, which involve solving multiple different types of physics and how they interact with each other. For example, you can have Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulations to model phenomena such as aeroelastic flutter, or you could model the Magnetohydrodynamics of the Sun’s plasma.

Conclusion

All in all, CFD is one of the most important tools in an engineer’s toolbox. By allowing someone to simulate the flow around their design, they can evaluate it without having to make a physical model. Despite this, CFD won’t remove the need for physical models and testing. It depends strictly on how well the simulation is set up, so if you mess something up, then your results will be garbage. And even if everything is set up correctly, fluid mechanics is an impossibly complex field, so physical testing will always be a valuable tool to make sure that things will happen as you expect they will.

Sources

Cangemi, K. Rescale, “Accelerate Aerospace Innovation with NASA CFD on Rescale”, 28 Mar 2024

Racecar Engineering, “TotalSim is Bringing CFD Testing to the Masses”, 1 Dec 2023

LEAP Australia, “Computational Fluid Dynamics”

NASA Ames Research Centre, “NASA Artemis II Rocket Supercomputer Simulation”, 19 Sept 2025

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Simscale, “What Are the Navier-Stokes Equations?”

IdealSimulations, “Turbulence models in CFD”

What is CFD? was originally published in Predict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Orbital rocket launches almost feel like a daily event. From companies like SpaceX and Rocket Lab, to national organizations, it seems like everyone has the ability to launch a rocket. Given this, it may come as a suprise why the upcoming launch by Gilmour Space is being lauded as a big deal for the Australian space industry. So why is Gilmour Space’s upcoming rocket launch so monumental?

Who Are Gilmour Space?

To understand why this launch is so important, we need to understand who Gilmour Space is. They are an Australian aerospace company founded in 2012 to provide space launch services to the Australian small-satellite market. To this end, they have developed their own hybrid propellant rocket engines and associated launch vehicles. And it is the first test launch of their first orbital rocket that is coming up soon.

The First Australian Orbital Rocket

Australia is home to many brilliant minds, working to improve humanity’s capabilities into the future. Given this, it might come as a shock that there has never been an orbital rocket designed, built, and launched from the land down under. This is the feat that Gilmour Space hope to achieve with their rocket, Eris-1, in a mission called TestFlight1. This will be the first test flight for their Eris-1 rocket, which will be able to deliver a 215kg payload into low Earth orbit using three stages and Gilmour Space’s own hybrid rocket engine, Sirius.

Eris-1 will be launched from Gilmour Space’s very own spaceport near Bowen in Far North Queensland. Equatorial regions like north Queensland are ideal for rocket launches as the rocket can take full advantage of Earth’s own rotational speed, meaning that the rocket has to do a bit less to reach orbit.

Now, this launch is not the first to take off from Australia into orbit. That happened in 1967, when the first Australian satellite, the WRESAT, was launched from the Woomera Test Range. This launch made Australia the seventh nation with a satellite in space and the third to launch one from its own soil.

The difference between that launch and this however is the rocket. The 1967 launch used a modified American Redstone rocket known as Sparta, which three stages; a surplus Redstone rocket as the first, a Thiokol Anteres-2 as the second, and an Australian developed solid propellant third stage. In contrast, the Eris-1 was completely designed and assembled in Australia, and its successful launch would make it the first Australian rocket to make it to orbit.

So How’s It Going?

Unfortunately, things have not been going perfectly for Gilmour Space. The launch was originally scheduled to take place on the 15th of May, but that had to be scrubbed due to technical issues. Then, the second attempt to launch it was also scrubbed because the payload fairing separated on the launch pad. So now, the launch is expected to happen within the next few weeks, so soon we will hopefully see some good news and the rocket takes off without issue.

TestFlight1 will mark a major development in the Australian space industry. As the first time an Australian rocket will launch into orbit, many people will be watching with bated breath, hoping that this launch will make its way into the history books. In the next few weeks, Gilmour Space will attempt to launch Eris-1 and hopefully third time’s a charm.

Sources

Gilmour Space, “Gilmour Space announces launch window for Australia’s first sovereign orbital rocket”

Dinner, J. Space.com, “Launch of Australia’s 1st orbital rocket, Gilmour Space’s Eris-1, delayed again”, 2 Jul 2025

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Wakefield, B. ABC News, “Gilmour Space Technologies set to launch Australia’s first home-grown orbital rocket”, 14 May 2025

Merritt, R. ABC News, “Gilmour Space’s Eris rocket to ignite crowds at Abbot Point’s new Bowen Orbital Spaceport launch pad”, 12 Apr 2025

McDullin, J. Australian Financial Review, “Blackbird shoots for the moon and Mars with Gilmour Space investment”, 29 May 2017

Why is Gilmour Space’s Rocket Launch a Big Deal? was originally published in Predict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

People have always been fascinated with making things go faster and getting the most performance possible. So the logical question from this is “What’s the fastest man-made object?” You might think that it would be a supersonic plane or something like that, but those are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of speed. In this article, we’ll go over an incomprehensive list of fast-moving objects, from F1 cars and bullet trains at the slowest end, to the fastest man-made object ever created.

The Slowest of the Lot

Starting off the list are the slowest of the fastest. But despite that, these are all still ridiculously fast. For instance, the top speed of a modern Formula 1 car can exceed 375 km/h, but because of the twists and turns in the tracks, the vehicles can rarely reach such a speed. Next is the Chuo Shinkansen; a Japanese maglev bullet train currently under construction. Once completed, it will carry passengers from Tokyo to Nagoya in just 40 minutes, travelling at a maximum speed of 505 km/h. Travelling at high speeds in the air is easier than on the ground due to much less friction, so next on the list is the Boeing 747–400 jumbo jet, which has a top speed of 1,056 km/h.

Getting Faster

This next set of three vehicles can get above the speed of sound. The first of these supersonic vehicles is the ThrustSSC, a jet car which broke the land speed record with a speed of 1,228 km/h in 1997, being the first ground vehicle to break the speed of sound. Next is the Concorde, the first and only supersonic airliner so far in history. The Concorde can travel over Mach 2, or over twice the speed of sound, with a max speed of 2,179 km/h. Lastly from this set of vehicles is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, which is the world’s fastest airbreathing jet engine aircraft. Even without the use of rockets, the Blackbird can travel at 3,530 km/h.

The Fastest

Finally are some of the fastest object that humanity has ever made. To get this fast, you need as little friction as possible, so all of these are spacecraft. Starting things off are the Space Shuttles, which can travel around Earth at speeds of over 27,000 km/h during their orbits. Next up is Voyager 1, which is now hurtling through the space outside of our Solar System at staggering speed of 62,000 km/h. Most of it’s speed didn’t come from rockets, instead, the Voyager spacecrafts received massive gravitational assists from Jupiter and Saturn to accelerate.

Finally is the fastest man-made object made so far. Travelling at a jaw-dropping 690,000 km/h, the Parker Solar Probe is without a doubt the fastest thing humanity has ever created. The goal of the spacecraft is to get so close to the Sun that it is essentially touching it to study what goes on in the star’s outer atmosphere. In fact, the probe recently got close enough to officially “touch” the Sun. Because it’s getting accelerated by gravity towards the Sun, it just keeps getting faster and faster. For reference, this speed is 0.064% of the speed of light, which may sound small, but just shows how fast light truly is.

Conclusion

Humanity has made incredible progress to create faster and faster objects. From more conventional means of transport like high speed cars, trains, and planes to record-breaking high-performance vehicles, nothing comes close to the speed that can be achieved through a fine grasp of orbital mechanics. But even at these speeds, it’s nothing compared to speed of light — the cosmic speed limit. Reaching a speed that’s even just a meaningful fraction of the speed of light would be a remarkable feat, and who knows, some day all space travel could happen at those speeds.

Sources

Racing News 365, “This is the top speed for an F1 car”

McCurry, J. The Guardian, “Japan’s maglev train breaks world speed record with 600km/h test run”, 21 Apr, 2015

Cutmore, J. BBC Science Focus, “Top 10 fastest planes in the world 2025”, 19 Dec, 2024

Coventry Transport Museum, “ThrustSSC”

Wells, S. Live Science, “How did the Concorde fly so fast?”, 10 Nov, 2024

NASA, “SR-71 Blackbird”

NASA, “The Space Shuttle”, 2 Jun, 2023

Allan, K. BBC Science Focus, “How fast are the Voyager spacecrafts travelling?”

Frazier, S. NASA Blogs, “NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Reports Successful Closest Approach to Sun”, 27 Dec, 2024

NASA, “Multimedia”

NASA, “STS-1 Launch Photo”, 12 Apr, 1981

What is the Fastest Man-Made Object? was originally published in Predict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When you think of ‘supersonic travel’ your first thought is probably a sonic boom, the deafening, glass-shattering soundwave that occurs once you pass the speed of sound. The boom’s disruptive potential is the reason that overland commercial supersonic flight has been banned in the US for the past 50 years. However, NASA and Lockheed Martin are aiming to change that with the X-59 and the Quesst mission, which aims to test ‘quiet’ supersonic travel.

What are Quesst and the X-59?

Quesst is the mission to demonstrate supersonic flight without generating the sonic boom that typically occurs. Instead, it’ll be more like a ‘sonic thump’ akin to closing a car door. The results from this mission will then go to regulators to potentially write a new set of rules around commercial supersonic travel, lifting the ban on flying over land.

The X-59 is the experimental aircraft that’s been developed between NASA and Lockheed Martin to accomplish this mission. This experimental plane has been developed with the express purpose of generating as quiet of a sonic boom as possible. All of this is made possible through its unique shape, design, and suite of technology.

What Makes the X-59 So Special?

The X-59 has been purpose-built for this mission, with every design decision made to minimise the shockwaves. Probably the most notable feature is the thin, tapered nose that will break up the shockwaves that cause the sonic boom. This nose takes up a third of the aircraft’s length. This leaves the cockpit halfway down the vehicle without a front window. This brings the next major feature of the aircraft — the eXternal Vision System — a set of high-resolution cameras and a 4k monitor to allow the pilot to see everything that’s going on as if there were windows.

The X-59 is an experimental aircraft and isn’t intended for commercial use itself. The knowledge and learning taken from developing and testing the aircraft are what’s most important here, as these will shape the development of future supersonic vehicles to ensure that they’re also just as quiet. Its success would encourage US regulators to consider changing the current rules about supersonic travel and open up more opportunities for companies to use these types of vehicles.

What’s Left to Come?

The X-59 has faced delays that have pushed the flight testing from 2021 to sometime this year. During these flights, the impact of the sonic thump will be assessed to see if it disturbs the people who hear it. If the tests are completed successfully, it’ll then be up to US regulators to judge whether they should create a new set of rules about overland supersonic travel, lifting the ban that’s been in place for 50 years. After that, it will be up to companies to use what’s been learned from the X-59 to develop their quiet supersonic aircraft that meet the regulations.

If all goes well, it might only be a matter of decades until we see supersonic aircraft traveling overhead without worrying about a sonic boom.

Sources:

NASA, “Quesst”

Donaldson. A, “NASA, Lockheed Martin Reveal X-59 Quiet Supersonic Aircraft,” NASA, 12 Jan 2024

Lockheed Martin, “X-59”

Tingley. B, “NASA will reveal the new X-59 ‘quiet’ supersonic jet today and you can watch live,” 12 Jan 2024

NASA, “NASA Supercomputers Visualize Quieter Supersonic Flight”

NASA, “X-59 Ready for Rollout”

NASA Video, “How NASA’s X-59 May Change the Future of High-Speed Flight,” Jan 10 2024

When you hear about missions to the Moon or Mars, you’ve probably thought “How on earth does any of this help us on Earth?” Missions to space go so far away from our daily lives, so why do we spend money on them when we could use them on our planet? Well, you might not realise it, but the technology we get from our research into space helps everyone’s lives here on Earth. With more and more missions to space, we’ll reap even more benefits from the work outside our atmosphere. So here are 5 ways that space exploration has improved our lives!

Improved Solar Cells

Solar power has become one of the biggest assets in the battle against climate change. Their flexibility and ease of use mean that they can be used almost anywhere where there’s sunlight. They may not be the most efficient source of power, but if it wasn’t for NASA, they wouldn't be anywhere close to what we have now.

Their work on this technology was driven out of necessity to power the International Space Station. Most forms of power just aren’t feasible for space, and since you need energy to keep the astronauts alive, you can see just how important improving this technology was to NASA. NASA even has an entire division dedicated to researching photovoltaics, sharing their knowledge with the private sector. So you can see how, if NASA wasn’t involved, solar power wouldn’t be anywhere near what we have now.

Earthquake Shock Absorption

Earthquakes can be devastating. This year there have already been several disastrous earthquakes around the world, with some of the worst hitting countries like Morocco, Turkey and Afghanistan. Although there probably won’t be a way to negate every bit of damage anytime soon, thanks to the work in the space sector, we have technology that can help dampen buildings from the quake. The reason we have these shock absorbers is because just like the buildings in an earthquake, a spacecraft will experience extreme stresses due to vibrations from the launch, and to ensure that everything remains functional, they needed shock absorption technology. Now this kind of shock absorber can be used to strengthen buildings and bridges in the most earthquake-prone regions of our world.

GPS

The Global Positioning System is probably one of the most important things that we have thanks to space exploration. We may take it for granted, but without this system, we would be stuck using physical maps to pinpoint our location on our planet. This network of satellites is already used around the globe to ease travel, and with a future of autonomous vehicles, it’ll only become more important to guide them to their destinations quickly and safely. Satellites just like these are also vital in tracking weather phenomena and wildfires. These help save lives, limit damage, and also study the effects of climate change on our planet.

Memory Foam

When you lay your head down on a memory foam pillow, you probably wouldn’t even consider that the technology that made it real was created by NASA. This humble material was created by engineer Charles Yost using his experience working on the Apollo Command Module. He created this foam to absorb the energy of plane crashes and increase survival rates, but it didn’t just save lives, it made sitting for hours in flight more comfortable. Now memory foam can be found everywhere. From sports players’ helmets and shoe insoles to mattresses and back into space. This technology has made a marked impact on people’s comfort.

Insulation

Insulation is used everywhere from houses to offices to limit the changes in temperature inside due to the outside. This is especially important in space, where you’re dealing with a freezing cold vacuum and an incredibly hot heatshield during reentry. Since you want to keep your astronauts insulated from these immense temperature changes, it makes sense that NASA developed a form of insulation to protect their crew. This technology, called Radiant Barrier, now lines the walls of homes around the world to insulate them from the harsh conditions outside.

Now NASA’s exploring how aerogels, some of the least dense and most insulating materials in the world, can be used. This material is made of 95% air, with the material having nano-sized pores that give it its insulative properties. Given these developments, it’s clear that without space research and NASA, we wouldn’t have insulation that’s anywhere near advanced.

Summary

From these 5 examples above, it’s clear as day that space exploration has been incredibly important in shaping our model world. It's hard to imagine what life would be like without these innovations, especially things like GPS. These aren’t all either; they’re only just a small serving of the kind of technology that we have thanks to space research. All-in-all we should all be supportive of continued exploration of the stars because who knows what other kinds of valuable technology we will develop.

Want to support me? Well, how about you become a Medium member here? If you found this fascinating and want to read more, consider following me on Medium here or any of my social media accounts here. Any support, comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated.\

Sources

JPL, “20 Inventions We Wouldn’t Have Without Space Travel”.

Canadian Space Agency, “Improving Our Day-to-Day Lives”.

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NASA, “Shock Absorbers for Buildings and Bridges”, 11 Feb 2016.

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Soleeva, “Why Do You Need to Cool Down Solar Panels?”.

Here are 5 Benefits of Space Travel in Our Lives! was originally published in Predict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Most computers, like your laptop or phone, use ones and zeros to send information through a circuit. The ones and zeros are called binary, and this whole system is known as digital computing. Analog computing processes information differently. It uses a continuously variable, analog signal to represent this data. Now, analog computers are all the rage because they could spark a revolution in computing. The thing is, analog computers aren’t new; in fact, they’re ancient, so why are they coming back right now?

What Is An Analog Computer?

The basic principle of an analog computer is that it can perform calculations using a continuous signal that represents (or is an analog for) something you want to measure. For example, you could represent the velocity of a ball using a voltage in such a machine. Analog computers have existed for millennia, using mechanical motion to drive their calculations. One example is the Antikythera Mechanism, a device created by the Ancient Greeks over two thousand years ago to track the motion of the planets. This machine was extraordinarily complex, so much so that nothing as complex would be created for another one thousand years.

In the past few centuries, analog computers have come in different forms like the slide rule to calculate logarithms to Lord Kelvin’s tide-predicting machine. These mechanical computers were even used to calculate when and where to fire naval cannons during the World Wars. But despite their uses, they gradually fell out of use as digital computers took the crown.

What Are the Benefits?

But now things are changing. Analog computers are making a comeback. The reason is that they have some specific advantages over digital systems. Analog computers can do some things easily that would take a digital computer much longer, with less accuracy. The big one is probably performing complex calculations involving large amounts of data, which might not sound too useful for your everyday life, but it’s essential for machine learning. Incorporating dedicated analog chips into digital computers could bridge both worlds and bring about faster, smarter AI technology.

Then there’s the fact that analog computers are more energy-efficient than their digital counterparts. Instead of using a lot of power to switch between the two binary states, analog computers can use small fluctuations in voltage and current, making processors that take fractions of the power that digital computers use.

Benefits of Analog Computers

- Lower Power Consumption

- Quicker Processing in Certain Applications

- Faster, Smarter AI Models

Potential Limitations

Despite the potential benefits that analog computing could bring to the table, there’s still plenty of work to be done before we start seeing these everywhere. At the moment, some of the main companies developing analog computers, like IBM or the startup, Mythic, are focusing only on how they could reduce the energy used by machine learning and not using the analog computer to perform the calculations.

And even if analog computing does take off, some fundamental things will affect how we use them. The main difficulty would be programming them. Because analog computers don’t use bits and logic like we’re used to, say goodbye to conventional staples of programming like if-statements and loops. Instead, you’ll have to learn how to connect some fundamental building blocks and how to measure voltage and current to perform your calculations.

Disadvantages of Analog Computers

- Only Suited to Some Specific Tasks

- Require Fundamentally Different Programming

- Still In Its Infancy

Summary

All in all, the resurgence of analog computing represents a new frontier in computer science and engineering. It demonstrates that there’s still value in old technologies. Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to look back at the past. As for the future, it remains to be seen how analog computing will evolve and what new applications it will yield. One thing is certain though: the analog revolution is just getting started!

Want to support me? Well, how about you become a Medium member here? If you found this fascinating and want to read more, consider following me on Medium or any of my social media accounts here. Any support, comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Sources

Platt, C. “The Unbelievable Zombie Comeback of Analog Computing”. Wired. 30 Mar 2023.

Ulmann, B. “Why Algorithms Suck and Analog Computers are the Future”. De Gruyter Concersation. 7 Jun 2017.

Rowntree, D. “Forget Digital Computing, You Need an Analog Computer”. Hackaday. 3 Oct 2021.

Praveen. “Analog Computers: A Brief History”. Quantum Zeitgeist. 19 Oct 2023.

Islam, A. “Use of Analog Computers in Artificial Intelligence (AI)”. MarkTechPost. 24 Jul 2023.

Zewe, A. “New hardware offers faster computation for artificial intelligence, with much less energy”. MIT News. 28 Jul 2022.

Takahashi, D. “Mythic raises $70M to disrupt AI chips with analog and flash components”. VentureBeat. 11 May 2021.

Trevor. “Antikythera Mechanism”. Atlas Obscura. 12 Feb 2010.

Forget Ones and Zeros, Analog Computers are the Future! was originally published in Predict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Energy. It’s the driving force behind our modern world. The comforts of contemporary life, such as phones, cars, telecommunications, and the internet, all depend on the power of electricity. Without it, everything would come crashing down. We’ve had one consistent, reliable way of generating energy for millennia — burning things. However, whilst coal and oil can give us a way to power our lives, they kill our planet and even if they didn’t, we’ll run out of oil and gas by the end of the century.

Suffice it to say, we need more ways to produce energy, but luckily there are a whole bunch. You’ve likely heard of solar and wind as the primary sources of renewable energy but there are plenty of others from geothermal to tides. But there’s one that’s of particular interest. Hailed as the “Holy Grail of Energy,” nuclear fusion could lead us to a future where we have all the energy we need — if scientists and engineers can figure out how. Before you can understand how good fusion will be, you should first know how it works.

The Power of the Atom

Nuclear fusion is spelt out by its name — “nuclear” refers to the centre of an atom, the “nucleus”, while “fusion” means that multiple nuclei combine into another one. Instead of splitting an atom like with nuclear fission, you’re fusing atoms.

Let’s say you have four hydrogen nuclei. They’ll have a certain amount of mass as you’d expect. If you were to fuse them into a helium nucleus, you would probably assume it has four times the mass of hydrogen right? Wrong. It’s slightly lighter. So now you might ask where this mass is going. It’s becoming energy. Thanks to Einstein’s equation E = mc², we can see how much energy is released, and suffice it to say, it’s quite a lot for something at the atomic scale.

So considering we get so much energy from fusion, why don’t we already have it everywhere? The main problem is that it’s incredibly difficult to get nuclei to fuse together. Nuclei are all positively charged, and just like with magnets, two like charges don’t want to get close together, and usually, the repulsion force between them is strong enough to stop fusion. If you want to fuse atoms, you need to get them going so fast that they can get close enough for the strong nuclear force to take over and bind them together.

Achieving nuclear fusion is a challenging task, requiring temperatures in the millions of degrees. While stars like our sun can achieve this feat naturally due to their immense mass and gravity, creating a star on Earth is just not feasible. Instead, scientists use specially designed reactors to heat the matter they want to fuse to tens of millions of degrees. However, no known material can withstand such high temperatures, which is why powerful electromagnets are used to prevent the superheated matter from touching the reactor walls.

The challenge of generating more energy than we consume has been a difficult task, requiring significant effort. Nonetheless, the National Ignition Facility accomplished a significant breakthrough in December when their test reactor produced a net energy output. This accomplishment demonstrates that it is indeed possible to generate more energy than we require. With numerous experimental reactors being constructed globally, we can anticipate more experiments and, hopefully, more achievements. As we continue to make progress in this area, what does the future hold for fusion?

The Age of Unlimited Power

One advantage of fusion technology is its fuel source. A fusion reactor merely requires deuterium, tritium (both hydrogen isotopes), and a small amount of energy to function. Deuterium can be extracted from water molecules, which are abundant in the oceans. Tritium, on the other hand, is more challenging to obtain as it is less common and radioactive. Nevertheless, scientists and engineers are exploring methods to produce tritium within the reactors themselves.

There are numerous experimental reactors being constructed worldwide to aid in achieving the goal of inexpensive and effortless nuclear fusion. The ITER reactor in France is a prominent example, as it is a colossal fusion reactor being constructed by numerous major nations. Upon completion in 2025, it will become the biggest fusion reactor across the globe.

It's not only governments that are striving to achieve these objectives; the private sector is also actively involved in this endeavour. An example of this is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a US-based company that is focused on developing the world's first commercial fusion power plant. Their SPARC reactor has demonstrated the feasibility of their concepts, and if everything goes according to plan, their ARC reactor could commence construction as soon as 2025.

The benefits of fusion aren’t just limited to our lives on Earth. Such technology would be game-changing for space exploration. Fusion could provide continuous power for colonies no matter the time of day, and the possible fuels are found in abundance in the universe. In particular, we could mine the helium-3 isotope from the Moon to use as an alternative fuel to deuterium and tritium. We could even use fusion to directly power the spacecraft of the future, but that’s a whole other topic to consider.

Conclusion

If we can finally achieve our goals with fusion, we will usher in a new age for humanity, unconstrained by a lack of energy. Nonetheless, right now, it’s still an “if”. With all the progress being made, however, we’re reaching a point where it’ll only be a matter of time before fusion becomes a reality. Once we achieve this breakthrough, the potential for human achievements will be limitless, and we can only imagine the heights we will reach.

Want to support me? Well, how about you become a Medium member here? If you found this fascinating and want to read more, consider following me on Medium here or any of my social media accounts here. Any support, comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Credits:

World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Fusion Power”

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, “Technology”

ITER, “Space Propulsion | Have Fusion, Will Travel”

Ball, P, “What Is the Future of Fusion Energy?”, Scientific American, 1 Jun 2023

Wier, B, “This lab achieved a stunning breakthrough on fusion energy”, CNN, 12 May 2023

Ball, P, “The big idea: will fusion power save us from the climate crisis?”, The Guardian, 3 Apr 2023

Smith, C, “World’s largest nuclear fusion reactor promises clean energy, but the challenges are huge”, ABC News, 19 Mar 2023

Unlock Fusion, the Holy Grail of Energy on Earth was originally published in Predict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When you think about space travel, what jumps into your mind? Is it massive columns of fire being thrown out from rockets? Well, if it is, I wouldn’t blame you because chemical rocket engines — powered by the combustion of various fuels — are by far the most common way of propelling things into and through outer space. And when it comes to leaving the atmosphere, it’ll probably stay that way for the foreseeable future. But when it comes to travelling THROUGH space, that’s where it’ll be different.

Introducing the Ion Engine: a completely electricity-powered engine that could redefine the very essence of space travel. Want to go to Mars? Instead of a six-month journey needing literal tons of fuel, you could go there in only one-sixth of the time! Join us on a journey into the world of ion engines, and let’s see what journeys they could take us on in the future!

What Makes an Ion Engine Tick?

As I said above, Ion Engines are powered purely by electricity, but how exactly do they work? The key is in the name. “Ion” is another word for charged particles, like electrons or atomic nuclei. In particular, the ions that ion engines typically use have a negatively charged electron stripped off to turn them into positively charged cations. To do this, the systems inside an ion engine accelerate other electrons to extremely high speeds with an electric field. They then collide with the neutral propellant atoms and turn them into ions in a process called “Electron Bombardment”. This turns the gas of propellant into a plasma — like a gas except it’s made up of ions.

This next part is pretty different depending on what type of Ion Engine you have. The main type, electrostatic thrusters, work as follows. The positively charged ions are what produce the thrust in an Ion Engine; they’re accelerated with a very strong electric field up to speeds exceeding 100,000 km/h — pretty fast! Due to the Law of Conservation of Momentum, if you push an object in one direction you’ll experience a change in momentum in the opposite direction, creating a thrust. If nothing else is done once the ions are thrown out, the engine would build a net negative charge and that can cause all sorts of problems, so an equal amount of electrons are also ejected to keep everything neutral.

There are two variants of the electrostatic engine, both of which have been used already on missions; one that uses charged grids to accelerate the ions, and the Hall Effect thruster. The latter uses its namesake principle to accelerate ions without needing charged grids, making last longer as the grids are the pieces that experience the most wear and tear.

So, the other main type of Ion Engine is the electromagnetic thruster. These use a magnetic field to push out all ions, not just positive ones, but they’re all still in the research and testing phase. They promise all sorts of improvements of electrostatic thrusters, like more thrust force and not needing electrodes or neutralizing the ion stream, but there are some caveats, namely they require a lot more power and produce a lot of waste heat.

Why Should We Use Them?

Ion engines sound good and all, but why should we use them over regular rockets? I’ll give you the answer in two words: Specific Impulse. Specific Impulse is basically a way to measure how efficient a rocket engine is. More specifically, it’s the ratio of thrust produced to the mass of propellant used and is measured in seconds. The higher it is, the faster you can go with less fuel.

For the solid fuel boosters for the Space Shuttle, it’s around 250 seconds. For more modern liquid rockets, you could see around 450 seconds. But with Ion Engines we typically see Specific Impulses of around 2000–3000 seconds, with some even going above 10,000! These are orders of magnitude higher than any conventional rocket, meaning that you travel incredibly fast with less propellant.

So you might be asking why we don’t use them for everything if they sound so good. Well, that brings us to the big problem with Ion Engines. They don’t produce much thrust. For Ion Engines in use now, the thrust is about 100 millinewtons, which is a tenth of a single newton. For reference, the average male weighing about 70 kg experiences a force due to gravity of about 700 Newtons! So there’s definitely a big difference.

Because of the low thrust, there’s no way we could use them to get from the Earth to space, but once we’re in space, that’s where they shine. It’ll take a long time to accelerate, but they’ll keep accelerating for days, weeks, and months, going faster and faster, reaching speeds that are impossible with combustion. And that there is the key benefit of Ion Engines. With the same amount of propellant, over days and weeks, we can get going so fast that anywhere in the solar system is within reach!

Where Will The Future Take Us?

Even though there’s so much about Ion Engines that seems so great, we’re still years away from reaching their full potential. Government Agencies like NASA and companies like Ad Astra Rocket Company are all powering towards the future of ion engines. With projects like NASA’s NEXT or Annular electrostatic engine, or Ad Astra’s experimental VASMIR electromagnetic thruster, there’s plenty of work being done to see Ion Engine-powered travel turn from science fiction to science fact.

And the benefits of all this work won’t just be in space either! A team of MIT engineers has created a silent model plane that works on the same principle of pushing ions out to make thrust. Who knows, you might be able to look at Ion-powered satellites out the window of an Ion-powered plane!

Every day we’re seeing development in this tech travel leaps and bounds. Records are being smashed and we’re getting close to the goal. One day we will see Ion Engines everywhere!

Want to support me? Well, how about you become a Medium member here? If you found this fascinating and want to read more, consider following me on Medium here or any of my social media accounts here. Any support, comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Credits:

NASA, “Ion Propulsion”, 12 Jan 2016

Day, L, “Ion Thrusters; Not Just for TIE Fighters Anymore”, Hackaday, 3 Mar 2022

Zyga, L, “Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days”, Phys.org, 6 Oct 2009

ESA, “The magic of ion engines”

Chu, J, “MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts”, MIT News, 21 Nov 2018

Chen, A, “Silent and Simple Ion Engine Powers a Plane with No Moving Parts”, Scientific American, 21 Nov 2018

Gough, E, “Ion propulsion — the key to deep space exploration”, Phys.org, 4 Nov 2015

Space.com, “New NASA Ion Thruster To Propel Spacecraft To 90,000 MPH | Video”, 11 Sept 2013

Bennett, J, “‘Mars Engine’ Shatters Records for Ion Propulsion”, 25 Oct 2017

NASA, “NASA gives solar ionic propulsion a monster boost”, 29 Apr 2016

Beyond Sci-Fi: Ion Engines Will Revolutionize Space Travel was originally published in Predict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dive into the future with orbiting manufacturing hubs constructing vehicles for space travel. Explore the limitless possibilities of celestial construction!

It’s a staple of modern science fiction: massive manufacturing hubs located in orbit around a planet or moon, constructing massive vehicles to venture into the farthest reaches of space. These examples of In Space Manufacturing seem too far out of this world to ever be possible, but in the coming decades, we may see a burst of manufacturing in space. From replacement parts to entire satellites and potentially even vehicles, this idea could open the door to a new world of possibilities that we all will benefit from.

Why Space?

You might be asking yourself why on Earth we’d want to fabricate things not on Earth, but the reason is simple. If we want to send anything to space — whether it be a satellite, spare parts, or a space station — rockets just can’t carry enough. The idea of the “Tyranny of the Rocket Equation” stems from the fact that if your payload is heavier, you need more fuel. Since the fuel also has mass, you’d need even more fuel to compensate for that until you reach a limit.

Because of this limit, if you want to construct something larger, you’d need many, many trips into orbit, like how the ISS was built. It took more than 30 individual launches over 10 years to fully construct the station. There’s also the problem with cost. Rocket launches are expensive, so any way to reduce the number of them needed is a good thing. If instead of having to send cargo missions carrying parts, they could be constructed in space where they’re needed instead, the costs of operating in space could come down drastically.

The last big reason for space-based manufacturing is that in space, you can construct things that aren’t even possible on Earth. The microgravity environment in orbit changes the ways materials behave in interesting, and potentially useful, ways. By taking advantage of this new realm of manufacturing, we could all reap the benefits in our own lives.

So What Plans Are There?

In the research and development space, we’ve got scientists in the ISS experimenting with new ways of manufacturing goods and exploring the benefits of microgravity. Having been using 3D printers since 2014, NASA’s planning on testing and using multi-material fabrication systems that could even print electronics into the parts, enabling the construction of much more complex things than currently possible.

Airbus is also taking the idea of in-space manufacturing head on, sending their Metal3D printer to the International Space Station to be the first of possibly many of its kind. Not only that, they’re planning to create a satellite factory in space: an assembly line of autonomous robotics that can assemble and repair the satellites of the future. Such a system wouldn’t be limited to the size constraints we have now and could create much larger structures than anything we could have now.

But not everything that will be constructed in space will be destined to stay there. Because of the benefits of Space-based fabrication, we could see higher-quality components sent back down to us here on Earth. For instance, the microgravity environment allows for semiconductors — the cornerstone of all modern electronics — to be created that are smaller, faster, and more efficient than those made on Earth. That’s just one example of many that can allow advancements in this area to create new technologies.

Final Thoughts

There’s no doubt about it, space-based manufacturing is coming and it's here to stay. There are just too many fascinating possibilities that could create the technology of the future, paving the way for even more advancements. One day, the visions of orbital factories we have in media now could eventually become reality. If you’re reading this article in the future, think of the space-based silicon running your phone with everything connected by a network of satellites build and recycles up there above the atmosphere.

Want to support me? Well, how about you become a Medium member here? If you found this fascinating and want to read more, consider following me on Medium here or any of my social media accounts here. Any support, comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Credits:

Airbus, “In space manufacturing and assembly”, Airbus, 31 May 2022

Swinbourne University of Technology, “Space Manufacturing”

ISS National Laboratory, “IN-SPACE PRODUCTION APPLICATIONS: ADVANCED MANUFACTURING AND MATERIALS”

ISS National Laboratory, “RESEARCH ON THE ISS”

ISS National Laboratory, “IN-SPACE PRODUCTION APPLICATIONS:
THIN-LAYER DEPOSITION”

Gamota, D, “Manufacturing In Outer Space: Not Such A Far-Out Idea”, Forbes, 6 May 2021

Young, C, “MIT’s new in-space manufacturing method requires only a silicone skin and resin”, Interesting Engineering, 4 Jan 2023

Pride Industries, “Manufacturing in Space: What to Expect”, 7 Mar 2023

NASA, “In-Space Manufacturing”

O’Connell, C, “The future of in-space manufacturing,” Cosmos Magazine, 31 Jan 2019

Zander, F, “The International Space Station is set to come home in a fiery blaze — and Australia will likely have a front row seat”, The Conversation, 15 Feb 2022