What future technology will have the biggest impact on human civilization in the future? Here we explain how lasers will have an impact on human civilization in the future, especially on computer chips.
Telecommunications and electronics are two great inventions that distinguish modern civilization from the Enlightenment era. Both of these inventions have sparked other great inventions that have a significant impact on daily life and make human work easier.
From regulating room temperature, smartphones, the internet, to industrial machines. Thanks to these two things, many people can escape poverty. For example, in the top 500 companies in the world, most of their value comes from the technology sector, which also employs people with decent salaries.
However, our current technology has not yet reached its peak. There is still much to be developed, such as improving connectivity efficiency, connectivity speed, and survivability in changing conditions.
Copper For Electronic and Telecomunication
Copper is one of the important materials today. This is because copper has excellent properties for conducting electrons compared to other materials and is cheaper than gold. However, future technologies such as highly advanced computer chips require better performance with new innovations.
Copper has been used as an electronic connector since 1820 and has also been used for telecommunications. Copper's properties, in addition to easy electron conduction, are also strong when cables are hit by wind, especially in countries with extreme weather.
However, copper as a material for electronic and telecommunications connectivity is a technology of the past. The challenges of the modern era require new technology to solve modern problems.
One of the weaknesses of copper is having a bottleneck when used as a supercomputer connector and the technologies being developed by scientists. One reason is that the data transfer speed is still too slow for densely packed data, and if the cable is enlarged, it will cause other problems. It is such problems that make copper a technology of the past.
Laser to Replace Copper
Laser is increasingly being sought after by scientists who are developing new tools for the 21st century to make human work easier. One of these is called Silicon Photonics. This future technology is very promising because of its performance, especially for computer chips.
One of the advantages of lasers is that they can transmit data very quickly with a small size. Unlike copper, which cannot handle congestion with small paths, lasers can work at high speeds on small paths, so they can be placed in any technology that requires high-speed data transfer.
In addition, the basic material for making lasers, silica, is one of the most abundant materials on earth. However, other scientists claim to have found lasers made from germanium, which can operate at a lower cost.
Could Travel Electricity Up To 30 Meter
South Korean scientists recently claimed that they can transmit electricity up to 30 meters using infrared lasers. This is one of the requirements for future technology.
If applied in areas with extreme environmental conditions, it can facilitate powering electronic devices that are difficult to do with copper cables.
However, in the experiment, only 400 milliwatts of electricity were used. But this is an important discovery that electricity transfer via laser is not impossible.
If 30 meters is possible, then it is not impossible for lasers to be used for closer distances, such as in inner-hardware or computer chips, which is a technology that scientists want to develop where copper cables are impossible to perform their tasks.
Researching Super-Computer
Supercomputer is an electronic device designed to solve more complex problems than a regular computer. Supercomputers are commonly used for research purposes to obtain the best, fastest, and most cost-effective products. Tasks such as designing an airplane with specific features or discovering a cure for a specific disease can be accomplished by a supercomputer. Of course, the chip technology for these supercomputers requires future technologies such as lasers.
Various limitations to develop a supercomputer are data transfer and power transfer, which are limited by copper cables. Even using gold cables still has problems, besides being more expensive. That's why lasers are positioned as a solution to these problems. Laser technology is very fast, efficient, and inexpensive.
So, in the future, we hope that various problems in this world can be solved more easily and quickly with the help of lasers.
