Water, water everywhere, but…

The recent drought in India that has resulted in one of the major cities, Chennai, effectively running out of water just as Cape Town did last year, is a cause for concern. The proposed solutions appear to focus on water availability and they are likely misguided. The blue planet has plenty of water, but it is brine. So, it is not lack of water that humans should focus on but rather how to remove salt and other impurities from this abundantly available resource on Earth.

Just like many other contemporary problems, this could also be solved by cheap energy. With an efficient Hydrogen furnace in close proximity, an advanced civilization would have reached technology that can emit zero cost energy. Unfortunately, humans are still clinging on to the concept of unearthing and burning highly toxic Carbon for their tactical needs. For humanity to advance, it has to set a goal on close to zero cost energy production as that will solve many problems threatening their very existence, including rising temperatures.

However, policy-makers and politicians are not sufficiently schooled on how the complex habitat react in non-linear ways and why feel-good actions are ineffective. For example, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the current levels will have no measurable effect on outcomes. That window has been closed a long time ago. So, all the noise around policies and accords world over is just that, noise. Of course, it makes many feel good that they are doing “something.”

The more important thing to focus on is technology – how to terraform Earth back to its original condition. There are plenty of ideas available but it will take resources and a focus on research and development. And, R&D should move into exotic and untried options, not conventional ones to simply suck the bad stuff out and sequester it underneath. On a planet suffering from plate tectonics and idiotic human actions, it is unlikely that the bad stuff will stay down for long.

Advanced R&D is sorely needed not only to mend a broken planet but also to assure its inhabitants have life-giving fresh water forever.

Quantum pipe-dream

Quantum computing (1), possibly the only leap humans could take to reach many of their overblown expectations in Artificial Intelligence and elsewhere, is a pipe-dream. Humans are likely to find extra-terrestrial life before they will be able to parade sufficient number of q-bits to make practical computing. And, the ETs have been hiding so effectively from the space agency that they are unlikely to show up for many decades.

To make quantum computing possible, educational institutions need to redesign their curricula bottoms up. Spending years of learning Newtonian and even relativistic Physics does not lead to insights in the quantum world. The fact that most gravitate toward the "knowable," perhaps because of the ease of achieving doctoral degrees and tenures, does not mean that it is the right way to go. Meanwhile, they are building bigger and longer tunnels all around the world, smashing particles against each other to find new ones, listening to gravity waves by hanging mirrors and in their spare time, shooting robots at nearby planets and satellites to find the ever-elusive ETs. All of these activities are misguided. The latest theory postulates complete ignorance of humans and it is just that most do not want to think about it.

Humility could help humans reach the next stage. Backfilling darker matter and energy to hang onto to the contemporary faulty theories is symptomatic of the deterministic era. As the particle zoo grows faster than popping corn kernels in a popcorn maker and the water bodies way below the Earth's surface sit waiting for the particles that are unlikely to show up, humans have to admit ignorance.

It is time to wipe the slate clean and start-over. Initial conditions set a century ago may provide useful guidance.


(1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-problem-with-quantum-computers/