Top 5 Stories of 2022: A Retrospective Look

At the end of 2022, we have prepared a list of the most significant news for this year in the tech world. With each passing year, inventions, discoveries, and technological advancements push the boundaries of what is possible. A brief review of news: powerful capabilities of high-performance computing, Metaverse impact, nuclear fusion, space flights, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency. So that we don’t keep you waiting, we start our journey with some interesting news.

High-Performance Computing

Last year, we saw HPC being utilized to develop vaccines against COVID-19. The usage of HPC in healthcare research and monitoring will remain, but in 2022 it will also expand into even more emerging businesses. For everything from drug discovery to cancer research to space exploration, high-performance computing will be more important than ever, and quantum computing technology must keep up with consumer demand.

Many companies, including Google, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alibaba, have made significant advances in quantum computing. Startups with technology and growth beyond industry standards include Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Systems, ColdQuanta, 1QBit, Zapata Computing, and QC Ware.

The capabilities of HPC will be expanded by technologies like AI, edge computing, 5G, and Wi-Fi 6, resulting in new chip/system designs that will provide powerful processing and analytical capabilities to a variety of industries.

Metaverse

A digital environment that combines social networking, online gaming, augmented reality, virtual reality, and cryptocurrency to enable virtual user engagement is known as the metaverse. All AR products are included under “metaverse”, which may refer to anything online. The metaverse will make services easier to access, consume, and use without difficulty.

A lot of different technological fields’ futures were directly impacted by the metaverse environment in 2022. With Facebook’s transformation into Meta, the launch of Horizon Worlds, and the development of its Meta Quest VR gear options, Meta has joined the hundreds of companies that are constructing the metaverse. All of the business’s goods and services, including the Facebook platform, Instagram, and WhatsApp, are marketed under the Meta name. Apple’s wearables and the impending release of AR glasses both allude to the metaverse.

In Horizon Worlds, games, and applications, Meta presently provides users with avatars to use with their Meta QuestVR headsets. Following the business name change in 2021, Meta acquired Oculus in 2014 and started rebranding Oculus Quest products as Meta Quest in 2022. Meta also wants to give customers the option to turn into holograms so they may meet up with friends and family virtually.

Nuclear Fusion – A Step Closer To Reality?

Nuclear fusion, the same mechanism that drives the sun, is a source of energy that physicists have long predicted humanity will be able to harness. The National Ignition Facility scientists issued a report in 2022 that detailed their successful attempts to create “self-heating burning plasma,” which marked a significant step forward. It is believed that this development will result in fusion reactors that are economically feasible and offer us endless, low-cost, and clean source of energy.

With the help of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the company Commonwealth Fusion Systems is now developing plans to construct a plant that will be able to mass-produce parts for the first commercial fusion reactors. The initial phase will be to build prototype machines that will be the first fusion-powered devices to produce net energy. After that, it is planned that full-scale fusion generator manufacturing would start, producing electricity that will be injected into national networks early in the next decade.

Space Tourism

Space tourism had been the main focus of recent advances in space travel prior to 2022, with Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, both founded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, successfully transporting paying people into space in 2021. As the first privately sponsored crewed mission to dock with the International Space Station, Axiom-1 achieved a possibly more important achievement this year (ISS).

Three astronauts successfully launched from Kennedy Space Center in April on a SpaceX-designed vehicle, and they stayed 16 days docked with the Harmony hub of the International Space Station. The Axiom-1 mission is seen as being of utmost significance for the future of space travel since it is intended to be the first step toward constructing a privately funded and run space station, which commercial enterprises would use as their base of operations.

The World’s Second-Largest Cryptocurrency Successfully Moves to Proof-Of-Stake

The well-known Ethereum blockchain, which serves as a distributed computing platform and a cryptocurrency, successfully made the conversion from a proof-of-work (PoW) model to a proof-of-stake model in 2022 (PoS).

The network’s overall energy consumption was lowered by 99.9% as a result, according to the Ethereum Foundation. This is important because the high energy consumption of blockchain networks has often been seen as a barrier that must be overcome before the technology can realize its full potential. PoS and PoW are two distinct ways of verifying transactions on a blockchain, which is a distributed, decentralized database that uses encryption to keep various copies of the database synced and, thus, tamper-proof.

Blockchains and cryptocurrencies that use PoS algorithms are quicker, meaning transactions will be completed more rapidly. They also use less energy, which is better for the environment. The creation of new monetary systems, the establishment of new digital communities, and the development of decentralized autonomous organizations are only a few of the issues that blockchain is suggested as a solution for (DAOs). One step toward demonstrating the viability of the underlying technology is to successfully manage the transition of a blockchain that is utilized by millions of people.

On a Final Note

You now know which technologies are going to make the greatest impact in the years to come. While some believe that technology will completely replace humans, others feel that it will only complement human skills. Regardless, it’s obvious that life in the future will change greatly from what it is today since the revolution has already begun.

At this point in our thrilling journey, the article is finished. But don’t worry, we will continue our rubric in the new year 2023, so stay tuned and don’t forget to follow us on social media.

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