The most anticipated scientific experiments of the next decade.

It is incredibly difficult to choose the best scientific achievements even in one year. The Nobel Prize will not help us either - after all, it cannot be handed over to really all outstanding scientists (physicist Freeman Dyson, for example, clearly deserved his prize, but was forced to cede it to Schwinger, Feynman and Tomonage).

As for the various collections of "TOP 10", formed by respected publications, then there can not do without subjectivity. The list of revolutionary technologies of the coming years, compiled by the editors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology magazine MIT Technology Review, includes self-driving trucks, face recognition technology and even quantum computers, but no discoveries from the aerospace industry. Not everyone can agree with such a choice, watching the fate of the "impossible" EmDrive engine.

How to choose the most expected experiments from hundreds of planned? Let's try to focus on the scale (most likely, ahead of us in the mass, only costly experiences) and value for all of humanity. In early 2018, we decided to bring together promising technologies that will change our future.

ITER

The main hope of mankind for cheap available energy is the ITER fusion reactor. It has been ten years since the start of construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), although the theoretical foundations of its work were laid by Soviet scientists in the mid-20th century (with the use of tokamaks ). A project involving 35 countries should demonstrate the potential for commercial use of a fusion reactor.

The cost of the project at the moment is 18 billion euros. In early December 2017, ITER officials announced that 50% of all construction work required to produce the first plasma was completed. The first stage of the experiments, in which hydrogen will be converted into a hot, electrically charged gas, is currently scheduled to take place in 2025.

Experimental installations for the magnetic confinement of plasma in order to achieve the conditions necessary for the flow of controlled thermonuclear fusion have been generating energy for decades. But so far they demanded more energy to work than they generated themselves. In the ITER experiment, they expect to overcome this limitation due to the colossal dimensions of the installation: the tokamak for plasma confinement weighs 23 tons and takes 840 cubic meters - 10 times the capacity of any previous similar device.

If everything goes well, ITER will reach its full capacity by 2035 and will enable humanity to stop using fossil fuels. The reactor will use 50 megawatts of energy to generate 500 megawatts of energy. In the future, ITER-like power plants will be comparable in cost to conventional nuclear power plants. But, unlike nuclear power plants, thermonuclear installations will not produce radioactive waste or pollute the atmosphere in any way.

Gene supertherapy

Thousands of diseases occur due to an error in a human gene. Gene therapy already exists and helps doctors treat some hereditary diseases. Until recently, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS - Stephen Hawking struggles with this disease) was considered incurable, but in 2017, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley proved that gene therapy can defeat ALS.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved gene therapy for the treatment of congenital blindness with a gene that "turns on" light-sensitive cells in the eye.

Tests of a new method of gene therapy of hemophilia were also successful. Chinese researchers were able to successfully correct the mutation in the gene of human embryos, leading to the development of anemia. There were other achievements - all this in just one year!

But what will happen next? In all of the above cases, scientists have used CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) Cas9 technology, which for several years now allows DNA editing in living cells. Cas9 endonucleases cut DNA in the right places, complementary to the “template” of the RNA guide, after which the cell's own repair systems sew the ends of the DNA, fixing the changes.

However, the method was unreliable. Researchers at Columbia University in New York found that the CRISPR / Cas9 genome editing technology leads to a much larger number of side (non-target) mutations than previously thought.

Already a few months later, a revolutionary solution was proposed that could bring gene therapy to a new level. Scientists have taken in place of the active Cas9 protein its inactive form, which can be aimed at specific places in the genome, but does not cut DNA. This decision can be considered one of the most significant breakthroughs in the history of genetics.

The new method was tested on mice with acute renal failure - scientists were able to successfully activate damaged or silenced genes, restoring the normal functioning of the kidneys. Further, the method helped to cure mice from type 1 diabetes and even muscular dystrophy. However, there were no dangerous side effects.

The most difficult thing remains: scientists must conduct experiments, tracking the effects of “genetic programming” on long-lived mice and their offspring. Then, if everything goes well, the technology can be tested on people and adapted for the treatment of human diseases. Results should be expected in 5-10 years.

Tests of the "impossible" engine

EmDrive evokes polar opinions. Let us briefly recall that we are talking about an engine consisting of a magnetron and a resonator, the intended performance of which is not consistent with modern scientific ideas about the world order. Experimental data do not give an unambiguous confirmation or denial of the performance of such a facility.

This engine does not use fuel, which apparently violates the law of conservation of momentum. In this case, the author of the development, engineer Roger Scheuer, can not give a logical explanation of the principle of the installation. Fortunately, EmDrive drawings are open to researchers.

In November 2016, a study by NASA Eagleworks Laboratory was published, which concluded that EmDrive was working. However, not everyone in the scientific community agreed with this research. The thrust of 1.2 ± 0.1 mN / kW, which gives the engine, can be explained by experimental errors.

The engine is very interested in China. Representatives of the Chinese Academy of Space Technology said that China not only successfully tested EmDrive technology in its laboratories, but also began testing the engine at the Tiangong-2 space station. The work of the space laboratory will last until September 2018, after which one should expect publications on the results of the experiment. If all the research will not be classified (and will not be tricky PR-campaign of the Chinese space industry).

In the future, EmDrive can open the way for cheap space flights, as well as faster space travel. But most importantly, the engine by the very fact of its existence will lead to changes in a significant part of physics. And this will give an incredible impetus for new research and discoveries.

Expanding the boundaries of physics

After the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were to be created in equal proportion. Matter and antimatter annihilate each other, but the Universe, as we see, continues to exist. Physicists suggest that for every billion pairs of matter-antimatter particles, one extra particle of matter was created.

However, the violation of the “universal symmetry” is just an assumption that still needs to be confirmed. At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), experiments are conducted to detect errors in the principle of charge, parity, and time symmetry (CPT invariance). According to this principle, the “mirror” Universe filled with antimatter should have the same laws of physics as we do, only in mirror image.

While in our ideas antimatter remains identical to matter. At the LHC, a gap in the pair particles is sought, which would explain the anti-matter paradox. In the coming years, experiments will be focused on the search for SUSY particles — supersymmetric particles, the proof of whose existence would also violate the fundamental principle of symmetry.

The ATLAS experiment, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2017, was stopped along with the CMS experiment until the spring of 2018 for technical modernization. However, this is only the beginning. At the peak power of the LHC will be released only in 2026. In addition, by this time it is planned to start the Future Circular Collider project (“successor” of the LHC), as well as to launch the International Linear Collider (ILC) in Japan.

Definition of the Universe Simulation

Is our world real or are we all living inside a computer program? From the point of view of an ordinary person, the answer to this question does not matter (unless, of course, the idea of ​​the existence of observers from the authors of the simulation is allowed), however, for physics, the question may turn out to be fundamental. Rather, an attempt to find an answer may be crucial for the whole world.

Theoretical theorists Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhi suggested that it is impossible to model the manifestation of anomalies of quantum systems, such as the quantum Hall effect studied by them. This quantum effect, observed in low-dimensional solid-state structures, is a macroscopic manifestation of the quantum properties of a substance, and is important as a method for accurately measuring universal physical constants.

Ringel and Kovrizhi calculated that the storage of information about several hundred electrons characteristic of this effect will require more computer memory than the amount that “could be created using all the atoms existing in the Universe”.

However, this method is based on the operating action of classical mechanics of the Feynman integral . Feynman's interpretation may not be the only one. Perhaps there is some other method that allows you to simulate a quantum system with a Hall effect.

In the coming years we will be able to conduct more experiments with quantum computers - this will give us the opportunity at a new level to check whether the Universe is a simulation or not. Scientists from the University of Maryland College Park and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology have created a quantum system model consisting of 53 qubits. So far this is not enough to solve useful problems, but according to Cisco forecasts , the first commercial quantum computer capable of solving a wide range of problems will appear by mid-2020.

Human brain project

The European project “ The Human Brain Project ” (HBP) began in 2013 and is designed for 10 years. The project involves hundreds of scientists from 26 countries and 135 partner institutions. HBP has to create the world's first computer model of the brain of humans and rodents. The project is unprecedented in scale and the largest experiment in the history of studying the human brain with a budget of $ 1.6 billion.

Scientists plan to create a functional atlas of the neural activity of the human brain, which contains 85 billion individual cells. As a result, we will be able to better understand brain diseases and monitor the effects of certain drugs, which will allow us to develop advanced diagnostics and treatment methods.

In addition, detailed brain modeling requires significant computational power, which will give impetus to improved performance of supercomputers, improved telecommunications and data mining methods.

Dark matter research

What is dark matter? We do not have an exact answer yet, but its gravitational effects can be seen on the paths of motion of galaxies. Understanding the nature of dark matter will help us better understand the nature of the Universe, but numerous experiments in which we had to find evidence of the existence of dark matter showed completely different results. There is no one method, no exact data.

The first observations of the Chinese orbital observatory DAMPE, designed to search for dark matter, speak in favor of the fact that dark matter can really disintegrate in the vicinity of the Earth's orbit and in the center of our Galaxy. DAMPE (Dark Matter Particle Explorer) has received the energy spectrum of high-energy electrons and positrons of cosmic rays with high resolution and low noise.

In the region of 0.9 TeV, a “failure” is observed in the number of registered electrons and positrons, which indirectly confirms the existence of dark matter. Researchers want more accurate data, but DAMPE is only for one year of work. We don’t have more accurate detectors today, which means the station’s work will most likely continue.