Engineers are masters of scale. They harness power from the solar, wind, rivers, atoms, and ores. They manipulate electrons, photons, and crystals to compute and talk. They devise devices that detect perturbations in the fabric of space-time. And so they grapple with challenges—anticipated or not—which are introduced by the size of the issue they’re making an attempt to unravel.
The articles on this situation describe engineers who take into consideration, work together with, and create issues at very exact and sometimes mind-boggling scales. They took the point-contact transistor and scaled it over the course of a long time right into a product manufactured in virtually unimaginably massive portions (13 sextillion, or 13,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, between 1947 and 2018, by one estimate) and involving one of the most complex, yet crazily efficient workflows on the planet. They’re sequencing the genomes of 1.8 million species. They’re modeling and mitigating a possible disaster—the Kessler syndrome—that threatens to decimate satellites in low Earth orbit [p. 58]. In every single place you look, engineering ingenuity is pushing in opposition to the bounds of scale.
That ingenuity extends to creating scales for what has but to be measured. How will we know when AI has achieved human-level general intelligence? How do we precisely measure the absence of matter in a vacuum? Then there are the complexities of scaling a know-how for mass adoption. Why, for instance, have some humanoid robotic makers introduced overly optimistic deployment targets and boosted manufacturing capability effectively forward of particular humanoid robot safety requirements, excessive reliability, respectable battery life, or demand for hordes of humanoids? And the way can onshore wind turbines continue to scale up unless there’s a proven way to transport them?
“Infographics let readers grasp at a look what would take paragraphs of clarification.” —Eliza Strickland
On this situation, our editors and artists flex their data-visualization powers by way of compelling infographics, to assist readers appreciate the scale of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide and the immense interstellar distances we may traverse with a swarm of tiny, laser-powered area kites.
“Whereas we needed each article to incorporate some visible component, just a few subjects known as for particular remedy. You could possibly inform the story of carbon capture or interstellar travel in phrases, however the true impression comes whenever you see the gaps, the scales, the leaps concerned,” says Senior Editor Eliza Strickland, who curated this situation. “Infographics let readers grasp at a look what would take paragraphs of clarification, whether or not it’s the ballooning demand for AI or the lengthy journey from uncooked quartz to completed pc chips.” A number of of those infographics, in addition to the quilt, had been created by famend graphic designer Carl De Torres, proprietor of Optics Lab.
We additionally commissioned an essay by the character author Paul Bogard, who approached his matter from the human scale. Who amongst us has not gazed on the stars and marveled at how our eyes are absorbing mild that traveled 1000’s of years to succeed in us? Bogard ventured to Chile to see how light pollution is encroaching on astronomy and changing our sense of place in the universe, maybe irrevocably.
We hope this situation sparks surprise, and conveys our appreciation for the individuals who measure the unmeasurable, construct the unbuildable, and remedy the unsolvable.
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