To recap, Frey stated that much of our time and resources are taken up dealing with the existing problems of the day. We are continually responding to the problems and conditions we’ve created in the past and by doing so, we trap ourselves there. So why not establish a group of competitive challenges for the purpose of advancing humanity in the future?
Because of the scale of the challenges and the financial and physical resources needed, the competition would be limited to countries. The prize would be national prestige along with the creation of entirely new industries and markets. While the possible applications of the resulting technologies was considered very open-ended, the challenges themselves had set parameters. The challenges are:
- Race to the Core: First team to build a probe that makes it all the way to the center of the earth with a communication system capable of sending real-time sensory data to the surface.
- Viewing the Past: Create a technology capable of replaying an unrecorded event that happened no less than 20 years earlier in actual-size, in holographic form.
- Disassembling Matter: First team to reduce a solid block of granite (2’ cube) to particles no larger than molecules in less than 10 seconds, using less than 500 watts of power without causing an explosion or physical damage to objects more than 10′ away.
- The Gravity Challenge: Demonstrate gravitational control over an object weighing no less than 2,000 lbs. by doubling the force of gravity to 4,000 lbs., reducing the force of gravity by 50% to 1,000 lbs., and creating negative gravity by lifting the object 1,000 ft and returning it back to the original position with no explosions and in less than 10 minutes.
- The Ultimate Small Storage Particle: Create an electron-based data storage system no larger than 10 millimeters cubed that can be manufactured for less than $1 per 100 terabytes and is capable of uploading, storing, and retrieving a volume of information equal to the U.S. Library of Congress in less than 10 minutes using less than 1 watt per TB/month.
- Travel at the Speed of Light: Create a scientific probe capable of traveling at the speed of light for a distance no less than the Earth to Saturn with information sensors to capture stresses, impacts, and details along the way.
- Swarm-Bots: Create a swarm of 10,000 synchronized micro drones no larger than 10 millimeters across (height, width, and depth) capable of lifting a 250-pound person to a height of 100 feet and gently returning him/her to the ground.
- The 10-Second Interface: Create a direct-to-the-mind interface that will allow 25 average people to answer a series of questions within 10 seconds with no harmful side effects to the user.
Some attendees took issue with several of the challenges, noting that they violated established laws of physics. Now, I’m only an armchair-physicist (that is, I’m as much a physicist as most football fans are professional quarterbacks), but I’m of the opinion we need to be open to these ideas. At first glance, some of the challenges do appear to violate relativity and the First Law of Thermodynamics, but I think they’re actually open-ended enough to have some potential work-arounds.
For instance, disassembling matter would essentially involve breaking the covalent bonding between atoms. Though the limitation of 500 watts seems impossibly low, could a kind of cascade effect be initiated that would do the work without violating the law of conservation of energy?
Special relativity tells us that a massless particle can travel at light speed, but anything having mass can not. As an initial thought experiment: Would it ever be possible to isolate a chargeless particle, such as a neutron, in such a way that its mass wouldn’t be affected by acceleration? Using current technology, no, but I’m not sure this will always be the case.
Certain experiments with quantum entanglement – Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’ – suggest that information may be able to travel backward in time. This is far from proven, but offers potential worth exploring.
Many cosmologists believe that dark energy and repulsive gravity may drive the expansion of the universe. Could advances in our understanding of these forces one day give us the means of controlling gravity?
The impossible is always impossible until it’s not. This doesn’t mean we can expect to violate primary laws of physics, but we need to be open to the possibility of what can be achieved.
For me, the bigger issue is one of motivation. Some of these challenges could take a century or more to be realized. National prestige and the dream of potential markets and industries are all very good, but is this sufficient to sustain participants for the long haul? Could they weather the political and ideological swings that will occur during even a fraction of this timeframe?
Two of the largest, long-term, technically advanced projects ever undertaken were the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program. Both of these marshaled enormous physical and intellectual resources over many years. However, they weren’t launched to create new markets, but as a response to a perceived existential threat. For me, therein may lie the answer.
The world faces any number of known and unknown existential threats in the coming century and beyond. British Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees has put the probability of human extinction sometime during the 21st century at 50%. The risks are considerable. Some we can influence; others we have absolutely no control over. Bio-terrorism. Nanotechnology run amok. Nuclear war. Extreme climate change. Asteroid collisions. Radiation from a nearby supernova. Any one of these could destroy millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilization.
The possible uses for technologies arising from the Eight Grand Challenges are vast. But within them I see the necessary ingredients for finally expanding humanity beyond this one small planet. Moving into space, both within and beyond this solar system is our best chance of continuation as a species.
As physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking observed, “The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet.”
So my interpretation of the Eight Grand Challenges is this: We need to treat humanity the same way we treat any other irreplaceable, highly valued, absolutely critical system.
Let’s make a backup.