An asteroid will not hit us on October 3rd 2024.
This and other predictions for the year and the rest of the decade.
In the past I have predicted certain things at the start of certain years. This is a selection of those which I recall, along with issues I am watching out for for the next year. They include a solar eclipse that will happen, and an asteroid that is not likely to impact us.
Don’t miss out on the solar eclipse on April 8th of this year. This will occur.
A prediction made in 2011 was that the German Economy would suffer in part due to the lack of nuclear power. (https://www.science20.com/quantum_gravity/blog/germany_abandoning_nuclear_power_2022_economy_collapse_2023-79536). This has happened but for reasons I did not predict. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/23/economy/germany-economy-recession-pmi/index.html The war in Ukraine and the collapse of the Russian gas strategy revealed a weakness in Germany’s non-nuclear power strategy. Even without the war the fact they were so dependent on natural gas proves the green energy strategy had failed. Green energy without nuclear cannot work. Not unless we are talking about an all up program to build solar power collection in orbit using resources mined in space.
An article full of predictions for the 2020’s . Lets see how they have done so far. https://www.science20.com/hontas_farmer/predictions_what_the_2020s_are_likely_to_bring_in_science_and_technology-244249 I did predict that SUSY string theory would be with us for decades even if evidence for it was not found. Instead it seems that SUSY string theory is fading. That said I would not be shocked if someone does try to reformulate SUSY string/ M theory in a way that does comply with available data. It is too tempting to model everything as being a “vibration” of a fundamental object of some kind.
I predicted that gravitational wave observations, and multi-messenger astronomy, will give us new clues on General Relativity. So far this has been the case.
The TMT being finally constructed remains to be seen. At this point if it is not constructed I think part of it will be due to the increase in light pollution due to satellites such as starlink.
Dark matter has so far not been directly detected. Quantum gravity theories other than string/M theory gaining more traction has come to pass. As have the advance of ideas similar to those of mine, but perhaps better executed, by better known names have also gained some traction. Namely the idea that we need to not so much quantize gravity. I called this idea relativization, gave APS talks and published in low impact places a set of axioms on how to do this using algebraic quantum field theory on a dynamically curved space time. I am just happy to see advancement.
LISA making great strides to be deployed. I don’t think I was personally invovled with LISA when I predicted this. I can say we are making steady progress to launch.
I have been WRONG so far about Boeing giving us access to space bur right about Space X. I am no longer confident that SpaceX will put humans in lunar orbit before NASA does this again.
I am also no longer confident that we will see desktop quantum computing by 2030. I’d love to be wrong about this.
I have been wrong that we would call this decade “the 20’s” by 2022. At some point in the 2020’s we will stop using the 20 before the decade in daily speech.
No Asteroid Impact.
In 2024 we will not be hit by asteroid 2007 FT3. For all the good reasons explained here. https://earthsky.org/space/asteroid-2007-ft3-wont-hit-earth-october-2019/ Newer calculations put the impact hazard higher now at 1 in 11.5 million comparable to winning the lottery. https://www.unilad.com/technology/nasa/nasa-lost-asteroid-could-hit-earth-064485-20231230 In other words don’t quit your day job because of this. If the odds of this come down MUCH more it might even be a good thing. Hopefully humanity would band together to deflect this relatively small asteroid. However, you will see sensational fearmongering stories about this in the lead up to the event. At worst it would be like preventing Y2K or taking measures against covid. One of those things we mange to handle but in doing so some people will think the whole event was made up or at least overblown.