WHEN CAN WE EXPECT CRISPR, FUSION, HYDROGEN AND ALL THOSE PANGLOSSIAN DESTINIES???

  From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9    1093     4732        1185        246       82

July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120      572

Aug    12     1504     6556        1242       835      130

Sept     9     1208      6222       1136      1168       82

Oct     21     1225      6849         571       703       85

Nov    25     2304    12025        620         518      118

Dec    30      3880    14748      1224        299      465

Jan     14       4142     15512       1151         189      712              

Feb      3       4005   14265       1209       107      398

          25       2414    10578        1582        119      144

Mar     2        1989    9490        1726        110      194

          30         873   10854        3668        355      78

April   6          906   11787         4211         631       37

         14          921   13550         3462       1037      75

         20         883  13905         3481       2020     130

Summary:  

• The U.S, seems to be mired at just under 1000 new deaths/day and 60,000 new cases/day.
• But India is in real trouble:
• The new deaths/day rate is double their previous waves.
• Yesterday, there were 294,290 new cases.
• As their mortality rate is just over 1%, this means that in a week or two, their new deaths/day will reach 3500, and join Brazil at that high level.
• When will those vaccinations begin to make an impact?

From the New York Times this morning:

• There have been only seven murder convictions of officers for fatal police shootings since 2005, according to Philip Stinson of Bowling Green State University. That suggests the chances of a killing by the police leading to a murder conviction are about one in 2,000.
• Yet a jury in Minneapolis yesterday convicted Derek Chauvin of second-degree murder (as well as two other charges) for killing George Floyd last May. A typical sentence for that felony in Minneapolis is 12½ years in prison, although prosecutors have asked for more and the maximum is 40 years. A judge will sentence Chauvin in about eight weeks.

• People who sleep six hours or less a night in their 50s and 60s may have a higher chance of dementia when they are older, a study found.

When I finally got my PhD in biochemical engineering, that degree provided a ticket to an academic appointment, then a full professorship, followed by directorship of a research institute.  I thus had the freedom to explore the full range of my technology fantasies for my job description was whatever I wanted it to be.

My dissertation topic dealt with DNA/RNA bonds and tunable lasers, which opened the door to Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, more popularly known as CRISPR, and two assignments with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on LASER fusion.  This Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation background led to working with Nobel Laureate Charles Townes on developing a cheaper, easier and more effective technique for detecting extrasolar planets, entering me into the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence with the NASA Ames Research Center.

The second base for gaining credibility in future technologies was the U.S. Senate.  I helped draft the original bills for hydrogen and ocean thermal energy conversion 40 years ago, which thrust me into a leadership role for the Hydrogen Economy and the Blue Revolution.  The Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, for example, became one of the Department of Energy's Hydrogen R&D and Training Centers.  Then a National Science Foundation National Marine Bioproducts Engineering Center.

I add a non-technological prediction, World Peace, because my first Huffington Post article 13 years ago was a simple 10% solution for this ultimate destiny.  Publications like the U.S. News and World Report subsequently sought my input on subjects like cutting back defense spending to make the world safer.  The possible conclusion will surprise you.

So when will Humanity attain these Panglossian Destinies?  The term derives from Dr. Pangloss, the philosopher and tutor in Voltaire's Candide, way back in 1759:  All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

So when can Humanity expect the actual coming of these potential futures?  While this will appear to be in chronological order, maybe not.

• 
  2025:  CRISPR/Cas9 (the second term is an enzyme) will be widely commercialized.
• Could well start this year in some agricultural field.
• Societies are cautious about this genetic engineering capability being applied to humans.
• Potential areas:

• Using CRISPR for genome editing
• Using CRISPR libraries for screening
• CRISPR/Cas9-mediated chromatin immunoprecipitation
• Transcriptional activation and repression
• Epigenetic editing with CRISPR/Cas9
• Live imaging of DNA/mRNA
• Therapeutic Applications

• 
  Without a doubt, though, someday, and this might be in the next century or later, this technology will be used to insure for a super baby, leading to a world someday of super humans.
• Before that, it is possible that mosquitos, cockroaches and certain kinds of bacteria/viruses will be eliminated.  The safety factor is that the process can be reversed if necessary.
• 
  2050:  The first Blue Revolution city
• The Pacific Ocean will host that year the World Expo on a floating platform designed for a self-sufficient city of a million people.
• The year would be especially appropriate, for in 1851, The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, hosted the first World's Fair.

• 
  The next World Expo will begin in October of this year into March of next year in Dubai.  Dubai is part of the United Arab Emirates, and is handicapped by not having much oil reserves.  Instead, this city has used intellectually progressive measures to attain success.  For example, they have a Dubai Happiness Agenda with 82 projects aimed to make Dubai the happiest place to be on Planet Earth.

• 
  2075:  Fusion energy will be commercialized.
• Probably magnetic confinement as being developed by ITER in Provence, France.
• But inertial confinement, with the flagship experimental device at the National Ignition Facility at Livermore, linked to various other centers conducting advanced research, shows potential for leap-frogging the ITER effort with just one major breakthrough.

• 
  2100:  The Hydrogen Society is similar to fusion energy, for they're both always 30 years away.
• 15 years ago, at the annual luncheon of the National Hydrogen Association, I proposed a particularly innovative scheme to spur the use of this fuel by making it free.

• 
  Four years ago, there was the aura of Toyota's Mirai vs Honda's Clarity,  hydrogen cars using a fuel cell.
• Last month Forbes reported that hydrogen is showing high promise for ground transport. 
• Much depends on the seriousness of global warming.

• 
  Of course, if fusion becomes commercialized, that will be the second door-opener.
• When air transport turns to hydrogen fuel, the Hydrogen Economy will be in full bloom.  That could be around the turn of the century.
• 
  So which will come first, World Peace or reception of a signal from outer space intelligence?
• SETI is unpredictable, and might never happen, for we could well be the only intelligence in the Universe.
• But there is an estimated 6 billion Earth-like planets just in our Milky Way Galaxy.
• And, there is an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the Universe.
• Considering that Earth has only been around for 4.5 billion years, and the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, you would think that life would have sprung up somewhere else, with some of them a lot more advanced than we are.
• 
  World Peace?  Start by reading this BBC publication:
• Humanity survived the Cold War and the possible nuclear winter.  
• We still need to contend with global warming, supervolcanism, asteroid impacts and gamma ray bursts to be in position for this ultimate state of human relations.
• There have been mass extinctions, every 100 million years.  Is that enough time?

• 
  The asteroid crash 66 million years ago (we were not here yet) killed off the dinosaurs, and there was a larger one 450 million years ago.
• The Earth core will freeze over in 3-4 billion years.

• 
  There is a binary star called WR 104 that might produce a gamma-ray burst within half a billion years, but that one might not come our way.  There possibly was one 440 million years ago, so bacteria certainly survived.
• For sure, the Sun will get hotter and hotter, while expanding.  This process could begin in a billion years, but maybe not until 7.5 billion years from now.
• 
  Thus, Humanity has a lot of time to find World Peace or communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence.  I have no idea which might come first and when.  The exciting thing about SETI is that this could happen at any moment.  Or never at all.  

• 
  Then, of course, what really is World Peace?  In many ways, with the end of the Cold War 30 years ago we reached a level of peace that has largely continued.  There is no world war on the horizon.  Thus, rather than waiting until the Year 3000 or One billion AD, perhaps we attained World Peace in 1991!

If you stare long enough at this graphic, you will see something:

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