A Special Place for Blog Lovers with a Touch of Science!

1. "For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened that unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking."

The old joke is that nuclear fusion is always 30 years away. Yet the dream of abundant clean energy is no laughing matter as we meet an ITER researcher to catch up on progress at the reactor facility.

The Sun has fuelled life on Earth for billions of years, creating light and heat through nuclear fusion. Given that incredible power and longevity, it seems there can hardly be a better way to generate energy than by harnessing the same nuclear processes that occur in our own and other stars.

Nuclear fusion reactors aim to replicate this process by fusing hydrogen atoms to create helium, releasing energy in the form of heat. Sustaining this at scale has the potential to produce a safe, clean, almost inexhaustible power source.

The quest began decades ago, but could a long-running joke that nuclear fusion is always 30 years away soon start to look old?

This year the SGEM GeoConference is proud to present the captivating new workshop of prof. Tulbure Ildiko - Living in Nüwa - Humanity Provocation (?). It will drive our imagination to the surface of planet Mars and will elaborate upon the possibilities, challenges, and future perspectives that may bring humanity to Nüwa – the first extraterrestrial city on Mars.

Nüwa is still a concept, a development model for a self-sustained city on Mars. Prof. Tulbure Ildiko is to carry out an analysis and debate with regards to available, and emerging technologies and methodologies. Living in Nüwa - Humanity Provocation (?) is going to analyze, assess, and dispute the required technological, economic, environmental, educational, and socio-political infrastructure in order to succeed someday in the future to live on planet Mars.

Ukrainian Knowledge Exchange for initiating new projects

As everyone now knows, the war in Ukraine is changing our world. In 2022, several joint case studies that illustrate the conceptual modeling tools for project development were chosen in cooperation with Ukrainian research at several universities in Ukraine. Of course, this includes Ukrainian researchers, both within Ukraine and those displaced. Despite everything, a group of these researchers has been looking forward and working with project ideas. The workshop "Ukrainian Knowledge Exchange for initiating new projects" will be a hybrid workshop with online and on-site participation on 5 July (10.00 EEST) at the SGEM 2022 GeoConference.

The most significant changes can be sudden, not gradual, if the circumstances are right. Horizon Magazine listened in on a recent discussion between leading climate change scientists on the role of 'tipping points' in the climate transition.

A tipping point is defined as a small intervention that leads to major long-term consequences which are hard to reverse.

Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5 °C will be impossible, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in April. That means global emissions must peak before 2025, and be reduced 43% by 2030, the UN body said.