/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.9847616]

Why does it take so long for discoveries to be commercialized nowadays?

We've had reports of cheap fusion power being just around the corner for many years now. Same goes for graphene and carbon nanotubes. Every year I read articles about how some miracle drug extended the lifespan of rats or cured cancer in a petri dish but every year goes by and we're still stuck with the same old crap.

The transistor was invented in 1947 and went into commercial production in 1951. Penicillin was first tested on mice in 1940 and was being produced on an industrial scale by the early 1940s. X-rays were discovered in 1895 and were already in use by hospitals all around the world in 1900. So it's not like going from the lab to mass production necessarily has to be a slow process.

[Anonymous No.9847646]

they are being deliberately delayed to avoid social destabilization

[Anonymous No.9847658]

>>9847616
>We've had reports of cheap fusion power being just around the corner for many years now.
All of these were either scams or just researchers trying to get funding.

>Same goes for graphene and carbon nanotubes.
Graphene has never proven to be useful on a macroscopic scale. Graphene is used in conductors including touch screens of modern smart phones. Nanotubes have been used for decades as polymer additives, there is not much else they can be used for.
>Every year I read articles about how some miracle drug extended the lifespan of rats or cured cancer in a petri dish but every year goes by and we're still stuck with the same old crap.
Mostly scams and the result of the medical sciences lacking rigour. They simply don't work. Killing bacteria is a far simpler problem than life extension and cancer.

[Anonymous No.9847667]

>>9847616
Because the conventional wisdom among economic circles is that research and development is a waste of time and money. Several economists have told me that no company should spend more than 5% on R&D

[Anonymous No.9848830]

>>9847616
Governments decided that the best way to achieve fusion was to pool ressources for one massive project, then sit around that project for 50 years holding hands and singing songs of friendship instead of doing any actual project management.
So it's all horribly inefficient. We're still getting fusion though. But at the current pace it's probably gonna be 2050 or something until the first commercial reactor goes live.
There are some private start ups that aren't complete memes that might do it faster now, but even with a more agile approach, they still have a lot of stuff to figure out, which might also take a bunch of time.

[Anonymous No.9848841]

>>9848830
>2050
nothing big like fusion or intrastellar travel is going to happen for another 50 years at least. we haven't even bottomed out on current computational technology yet. moores law still has another 20 years to go.

[Anonymous No.9848869]

>>9848830
>project management.
>with a more agile approach
Shit like agile is a meme.

[Anonymous No.9848870]

>>9848830
>ITER
fuck you for mentioning that
the entire fucking project was designed from the ground up to be as fucking worthless as possible
Most of the fucking design was outdated and obsolete before they even started pouring concrete for fucks sake
they could have given the money to literally ANYONE ELSE and it would have been done faster and have actually fucking achieved something

[Anonymous No.9848878]

>>9848869
i guarantee you everyone working on ITER would tell you "agile is a meme" while defending spending 50 years and billions of dollaroos on a failed meme project

[Anonymous No.9848879]

>>9847667
That's because companies would go bankrupt if things don't work out. Most R&D spending (not counting things like biotech) spends most of the money on reworking existing products. It is often just cheaper to buy a company to get new tech. These companies are spun out of a university partnership, like often done at MIT. Buy those and you get your cake with zero R&D spending.

[Anonymous No.9848902]

China will get fusion first.
Likely Artificial Intelligence first.At least will go public with it.
I suspect NSA has some discoveries in this field it keeps secret.

[Anonymous No.9848903]

>>9848902
hyperkek

[Anonymous No.9848906]

>>9848841
this is false, moores law already ended several years ago. We do still have considerable amounts of progress to make but they will be in smaller and smaller increments until we can discover the next big breakthrough in computing.

[Anonymous No.9848910]

>>9848903
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-43792655
On Science Island in Eastern China's Anhui Province, there is a large gleaming metal doughnut encased in an enormous shiny, round box about as big as a two-storey apartment. This is the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (or EAST).

Inside, hydrogen atoms fuse and become helium which can generate heat at several times the temperature of the sun's core.

Powerful magnets then control the reaction, which could one day produce vast amounts of electricity if maintained.

Around the globe, they are trying to master nuclear fusion - in the United States, Japan, Korea, Brazil and European Union - but none can hold it steady for as long as the team in Anhui.

Right now that's 100 seconds and it gets longer every year. Here they're already talking about goals which are 10 times as long, at temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius.

[Anonymous No.9848917]

>>9847616
all the easy inventions have been discovered. Expect technology to plateau for the next 100 years.

Sorry, but this is unironically true.

[Anonymous No.9848924]

>>9847658
Graphene has so many uses

[Anonymous No.9848928]

>>9847616
The solutions to all our problems exist, but a picture of chaos is better, for now..
I'm sure the knowledge of successful fusion exists. It is not time..

[Anonymous No.9848931]

>>9848906
The answer is virtualisation

[Anonymous No.9848935]

>>9848917
medicine still has a bit of low hanging fruit. biotech is going to be the next big boom. cyberpunk dystopia soon.

[Anonymous No.9849163]

>>9848910
>Chinese
>science
100 dollars says they're lying through their fucking teeth about everything

[Anonymous No.9849172]

>>9847616
capitalism
i presented an idea at a storage technologies conference recently and found out that my idea had actually been explored and shelved by major industry players over a decade ago.
the reason they were shelved? because they were already making so much money on the old technology. they coudln't justify destroying their own cash cow after investing so much into it.

[Anonymous No.9849174]

>>9849163
this attitude is why china is going to own fucking everything 15 years from now

[Anonymous No.9849179]

>>9849174
the only thing they'll own are their escalators that mulch people that use them

[Anonymous No.9849240]

>>9847616
You really fail to grasp just out complicated any prospective design of fusion reactor is. Add in bureaucratic inertia and the fact they will always carry a massive safety risk and you get your answer.

[Anonymous No.9849292]

>>9848879
>That's because companies would go bankrupt if things don't work out
But it's no problem to give all of the senior executives seven figure bonuses.

>It is often just cheaper to buy a company to get new tech
This is basically the crux of the issue. Innovation is done by idealists on the cheap and then their company is aquired as soon as they create something potentially profitable

[Anonymous No.9849334]

>>9849172
My only dream is that technology advances to the point where fully automated luxury gay space communism takes over.

[Anonymous No.9849793]

>>9849172
Yeah Nokia and Kodak are still around as profitable giants because they ignored innovations and that made them successful

[Anonymous No.9849811]

>>9848910
EAST is still crap and it is almost carbon copy of k-star.

Japanese JT-60SA will be real deal. Overall trend is asia focused though.

[Anonymous No.9849842]

>>9847616
You fucking pieces of shit, we were still riding horses to school a hundred years ago.

[Anonymous No.9849844]

>Why isn't knowledge immediately obtained the moment we desire it? wtf man? *rips bong while watching anime and contributes nothing to the field*

i will unironically trace all your ips and fucking delete your PCs from reality and force you to read a book on plasma physics, then isolate you in a cabin to work together and make a magnetic trap that produces positive net output. screencap this as the first post of Chief Anon of Memereactor Industries.

[Anonymous No.9849855]

>>9849844
neither iter or memereactor industries would significantly alter our understanding of how to make a successful fusion reactor but at least the latter would take a comparative rounding error's worth of the time and monetary investment to reach that conclusion

[Anonymous No.9849858]

>>9849793
That actually worked for Kodak for about 30 years.

[Anonymous No.9849865]

>>9847616
It's really frustrating, like there is this guy at Columbia who can use a 3d printer and stem cells to regrow teeth and knee meniscus. He's done it successfully in large animal tests multiple times, yet it never proceeds to human trials.
People even made a petition on change.org because no one understands why it never goes forward. I hate to say conspiracy but what else is there?

[Anonymous No.9849883]

>>9849865
Bureaucracy and ethics committees? Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

[Anonymous No.9849887]

>>9848902
Bro are you slow, Google's had ai done for a while now

[Anonymous No.9849895]

>>9847616
There is only one reason technological development doesn't go public. And that's government regulation of business. Look at civil engineering for example in America, no progress for 70 years since the highways we're built.

The same guys who built the Hoover dam, a dam stronger than the mountains around it have been stuck in regulation. It takes 10 years to have a vote done to build a road which people often reject wasting all that time.

Roman concrete is stronger than our concrete, you'd think somebody would be tryna make it cheaper or something. But no, it has to be done a particular way because some man in power said so.

Removing all regulation would come with loss of life, but compared to the life improvement/gain I think it would work out. I'm no ancapistani, but at least that would work out better than the communism kids crave nowadays.

[Anonymous No.9849942]

>>9849883
It's true, I contacted an offshoot company and the guy in charge sent me a very angry email about VC managing partners and the Chief Medical Officer. Also he said researchers are not adept at product development.
Still, if something is shown to work so well and have such a large demand you'd think after 10 years they'd at least be starting clinical trials in humans

[Anonymous No.9850092]

>>9847616
Cost of discovery has increased, ethics, trials, scaling production

[Anonymous No.9850111]

>>9849334
Yyyyeaaaahhhhh... About that

[Anonymous No.9850116]

>>9849895
Concrete is the second most consumed material in the world after water.
You can make it out of hemp, which is better. It is also one of the most CO2 intensive things. Saves an ice age i guess lol

[Anonymous No.9850142]

>>9850116
There's not much of a reason to switch from concrete desu, switching costs would be huge and concrete is one of the most recycled materials.

[Anonymous No.9850309]

>>9847616
Destroying the environment will always be cheaper than producing safe clean energy.

[Anonymous No.9850318]

>>9850309
>he says as coal plants are being abandoned faster than they're being built pretty much everywhere

[Anonymous No.9850503]

>>9847616
The photoelectric effect was discovered in the 1830's and there was talk about generating electricity from it before the 20th century. And how many centuries has wind power been around?

[Anonymous No.9850530]

>>9850318
they aren't mutually exclusive
killing the environment IS cheaper, but those that do it get bad PR for it and will lose sales and contracts as a result

[Anonymous No.9850542]

because the people who report on scientific discoveries or new inventions don't care to represent the story honestly or are incapable of understanding the science or engineering or economics involved.

what story gets you to keep your job.

>"Breakthrough invention may solve global warming crisis!"


>"Carbon sequestration could reduce harmful fossil fuel emissions by 15% over the next 200 years"

[Anonymous No.9851750]

>>9848870
SPARC will sparc up faster than ITER ever will. I feel it

[Anonymous No.9851770]

>>9849292
>But it's no problem to give all of the senior executives seven figure bonuses.
You have no sense of scale. 7 figures is a drop in the bucket.

[Anonymous No.9851777]

>>9849895
>Removing all regulation would come with loss of life, but compared to the life improvement/gain I think it would work out.
Are *you* willing to lay down your life so that the guys making your home/car/road/power infrastructure can make a quicker buck?

[Anonymous No.9852029]

>>9847616
Because society is winding down, ambition is lost and now begins the degenercy and ignorance, followed finally by total collapse.

It happened with the Roman empire now it will happen with ours, brace yourself for the next dark ages, though without the abundant and easy to aquire fossil fuels expect this one to be more brutal and longer lasting.

[Anonymous No.9852076]

>>9850530
>companies can't lobby or brand themselves

[Anonymous No.9852204]

>>9851770
That's what I told the economists about spending less than 5% on R&D

[Anonymous No.9852880]

>>9851750
It's not that unlikely. After all, while ITER's supposed to go into action in 2025, they won't actually do any fucking fusion with it till 2035.
That's a lot of fucking time for someone else to come along and steal that magical headline of "First Fusion to Achieve Net Energy Gain!"

[Anonymous No.9852882]

>>9852029
Rome collapsed due to barbarian invasion. We're gonna try assimilating them this time.

[Anonymous No.9852928]

>>9852880
>an ENTIRE FUCKING DECADE OF DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
WHY THE FUCK
WHAT THE FUCK
HOW THE FUCK
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Anonymous No.9854372]

>>9848870
I take it you have not heard about LBNF/DUNE?

[Anonymous No.9854633]

>>9848830
Why not use Thorium instead at this point, or invest in other reactors?

[Anonymous No.9855160]

>>9854633
Because fusion fuel is the cheapest and most abundant thing in the universe
it is also considerably more potent than fission, and produces very little radioactive contamination, even less if we crack helium3 fusion

[Anonymous No.9855297]

>>9851750
It's hilarious how you have all these governments investing billions in a single gargantuan old-tech project that takes literal decades to set up and begin operating, and a bunch of MIT grads just make it redundant before it even got finished.

[Anonymous No.9855301]

>>9848902
>>9848910
No number of hype popsci articles will change the fact that China is a meme when it comes to science and even tech.
I just don't see them ever overcoming the West, US in particular.

[Anonymous No.9855312]

>>9848917
>What are feedback loops
>What is computational science
Not only is your claim false, in reality I bet the opposite will happen - a new revolution in science is just around the corner, and will be made possible by better computing power (think exascale computers) and better software / computing tools (AI, Quantum computing).
The next couple of decades will be pretty exciting.

[Anonymous No.9855317]

>>9848928

[Anonymous No.9855337]

>>9852029
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.9855508]

>>9852882
Yeah no, romans tried to assimilate them too.

[Anonymous No.9855553]

People with no clue in plasma physics talk about fusion. Take a look at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stability#List_of_plasma_instabilities
think again why fusion is hard.
Wendelstein 7-X is currently the best bet for a continuous fusion reactor. Not that tokamak shit everyone and their mom does.

[Anonymous No.9855716]

>>9855317
more accurate image

[Anonymous No.9855877]

>>9854633
Because at this point, Fusion is about as close to commercial applications as Thorium is.
If you think Thorium can be rolled out tomorrow into wide-spread use without any further research, you are delusional. It'd also take decades spent with test reactors.

And ultimately Thorium is just an inferior energy source to fusion. A fusion reactor needs grams worth of abundant material that are easy and safe to transport.
Also some of the claims of Thorium are a bit in contention from what I found when I looked into the topic a while back. I remember finding a lot of differing oppinions on things like the claimed reactor safety and even the supposed impossibility of nuclear proliferation.
Fusion is a lot more clear cut, where there really are no downsides outside of maybe the large capital investment (which is the same for fission shares) and activation of reactor materials throughout a reactor's lifecycle.

[Anonymous No.9855889]

>>9855553
Tokamaks aren't that bad and might be fixable. No reason to just drop them and leave them for dead. Especially since tokamaks are easier to build than optimized stellerators.
Also a lot of the research into reactor materials for example is applicable to any shape of plasma vessel anyway, so it's not like they're pigeonholing stellerators by continuing with tokamaks. Also we're only just learning that Stellerators can be viable at all through W7X and they're barely half through with their research over there. Dropping everything to run after the new hotness seems to be a bit premature just yet.