25 AMAZING YEARS

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image courtesy of NASA

I just can’t let this go without recognition and celebration.

25 years of the International Space Station!!

25 years as of Nov. 1st 2025.What an incredible achievement that is. And although that stepping stone to space should have led to much more of a human presence beyond Earth, we know the blame doesn’t lie with the brave, committed, and dedicated astronauts and staff who keep it happening day after day.

Bravo! Don’t stop now.

https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/space-station-25th-anniversary-science-images/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=ISS_25th

A CURE FOR POTHOLES? YES, PLEASE!

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Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash

I live in Northern Ontario, Canada. Because of frost heaving and the insidious penetration of water and ice in our hot-then-cold climate, road conditions are often horrible. Our potholes are legendary. Current paving recipes clearly don’t cut it. But combining graphene with asphalt mix? Brilliant!

Reading about this new discovery made me think, “Why didn’t this occur to anyone sooner?” Maybe it did but raising the capital for a test took some time. Budgeting enough money to repave our roads this way, well … maybe my grandkids will get to enjoy it. https://www.popsci.com/technology/potholes-asphalt-graphene/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

A GOLDEN AGE OF STUPIDITY?

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Photo by Tara Winstead of pexels.com

Smartphones clamouring for our attention; social media engineered to keep us distracted; Google answering every question faster than we can retrieve it from our memory; and now generative AI doing students’ homework for them. Are we letting our technology turn our brains to mush? New study results are the canary in the coal mine, and we’d better take them seriously. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology

CHINA BUILDS A BRAIN-COMPUTER INTERFACE INDUSTRY

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Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) as commercial devices that replace our smartphones is the premise of my science fiction thriller novel Augment Nation. I set the novel 20 years from now, and it looks as if that development is on track. Wired magazine reports that China is now building a major industry around BCIs, not only to help people with brain and spinal cord injuries, but also as a commercial product. According to Wired: “China’s policy document, meanwhile, is promoting the mass production of non-implantable devices in various forms—forehead-mounted, head-mounted, ear-mounted, ear buds, and helmets, glasses, and headphones.”

Sure, there’s a huge potential for great things, but also great risk of abuse. Augment Nation explores both.

THE BIGGEST CAMERA EVER BUILT

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Vera C. Rubin Observatory

If you thrilled to the amazing images from the Hubble Space Telescope and have been blown away by the intergalactic views from the newer James Webb Space Telescope, brace yourself. The new Vera C. Rubin Observatory on a mountaintop in Chile will open up vistas never seen before, thanks to the largest camera ever built: 3200 megapixels worth of image captured in 30-second exposures about a thousand times every night. The plan is to photograph the entire sky of the Southern Hemisphere every few days to create a ten-year long high-definition digital record. So much information only extremely sophisticated software will be able to analyse it.

It's hard to even imagine the number of never-before-seen features the Rubin will be able to find, but you can read more here. Prepare to be amazed.