INNOVATIONS
U.S. Wind Farms
Bringing offshore wind to the U.S. hasn’t exactly been a breeze, but this year wind energy could finally have its moment: The energy company .
Its Vineyard Wind 1 project, which sits over 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, will offer a capacity of 800 megawatts. Plenty of other wind farms are in the works, including potential projects off the coasts of California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia.
We can also expect a huge win for nuclear energy. The nuclear waste company Posiva will begin operating the world’s first storage facility for nuclear fuel in Olkiluoto, an island off of Finland. The facility will hold up to around 7,000 tons of radioactive uranium, which will be put into copper canisters and buried over 1,300 feet underground. Fortunately for the people living above, the waste will sit guarded for millennia.
Virtual Reality
If 2022 was the year of Metaverse fails, 2023 could herald its comeback — and improvements in VR and AR tech as a whole.
“I believe we will see virtual reality technology’s continued refinement,” Christopher Ball, an assistant professor of augmented and virtual reality at the University of Illinois at Urbana-champaign.
The Meta Quest 3 headset will be announced later this year, and it will likely be more affordable than the Meta Quest Pro. But the new Quest could pack some advanced features now found exclusively in the Meta Quest Pro, according to Ball.
He also predicts that virtual reality companies may focus less on gaming and ramp up promotion of other uses to consumers, like working from home, exercising and socializing. For example, the recent partnership between Meta and Microsoft will bring Office 365 apps to VR. And Meta is currently trying to buy Within, a VR company with a popular exercise app called Supernatural — against the wishes of the FTC.
This fall, Tim Cook announced that Apple will offer augmented reality products. In the coming year, Ball hopes that Cook will divulge more details.
“Hopefully, we will also learn more about Apple’s long-gestating mixed-reality headset. Apple has a strong record of refining consumer technologies with improved software integration,” Ball says. “Therefore, many observers are eagerly anticipating Apple’s entrance into the mixed-reality space, as they may become the trendsetters for extended reality technology and software over the next decade.
Biotech Breakthroughs
After the miraculous success of the Covid-19 MRNA vaccines from Biontech and other pharmaceutical giants, scientists have doubled down on developing more MRNA jabs to protect against a range of potentially deadly diseases. In 2023, Biontech plans to begin human trials for shots against tuberculosis, malaria and genital herpes, as reported by Nature.
Another buzzy technology could make inroads this year. The Swiss-american biotechnology company CRISPR Therapeutics could make history by receiving the first-ever regulatory approval for a CRISPR gene-editing therapy in the U.S. and
Europe. CRISPR Therapeutics is seeking FDA approval for a treatment for two genetic blood diseases — sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia. If all goes well, it could even hit the market in the coming months.
Of course, there’s no telling how exactly 2023 will play out. But if recent years are any indication, developments that have been decades in the making could finally start to take off. After all, scientists did just manage to bombard hydrogen with lasers long enough to create some mystical fusion energy.