Beyond Infinity

On 31st August 2020, a group of thirteen senior Melbourne doctors signed an open letter to Victorian Premier Dan Andrews expressing deep concern with the government's handling of the corona virus pandemic. Five days later, 491 other medical practitioners, mainly from Melbourne, had added their signatures to the letter, which describes the government policy of stage 4 lockdown as “ill-focussed, heavy-handed and unjustifiable”. It calls for a more pragmatic, common sense approach.

We talk with Geoff Wells, an honorary consultant urologist at Melbourne’s Box Hill Hospital, who organised the letter. Geoff reckons the effects of prolonged isolation - depression, neglected pre-existing illnesses, increased rates of suicide and devastating financial hardship, could be worse than the corona virus itself.

(Correction: Geoff Wells of The Covid Doctors Network advises that “based on overseas studies, if you’re healthy and under 60 you have about a 1 in 150,000 chance of dying if you get Covid”. In the interview, Geoff stated under 70.)

A look back over 5 years of beyondinfinity.com.au coverage of artificial intelligence. While there are legitimate fears about misuse and abuse of the technology, there are also benefits for all humanity. This compilation includes: discussion of inceptionism and the strange art produced by artificial neural networks; quantum computing and Kurzweil's Singularity; how AI is harnessed for mass surveillance by authoritarian states; how AI "joins the dots" between scientific research papers, making connections humans have missed.

NASA's Europa Clipper mission, set to launch to Jupiter in 2024, will carry 352kg of science instruments to study the moon Europa. Under its icy surface, it's believed to have a salt water ocean containing 2-3 times all the liquid water of Earth. The rocky ocean floor could have hydrothermal vents teeming with life. Europa Clipper will use radar to peer down 30km through the ice, while other instruments 'taste' particles erupting from surface plumes. It's the first mission dedicated to learning more about this enigmatic world - long held to be one of the best places to find extraterrestrial life in our solar system.

Our resident techie John Young finally gets his hands on the top of the range Oppo smart phone. He's impressed by its large and beautiful OLED screen, underscreen fingerprint scanner, unobtrusive face unlock, 48MP Sony wide angle camera and super-fast charging. In fact, John reckons it's the best phone on the market. At the moment.

Ancestry.com, a global network with 20 billion family history records and the largest seller of home DNA testing kits, with an extensive database of DNA information, has been sold to Blackstone, one of the world's biggest private equity investment firms. But there are lingering questions over the security of private genetic data and exactly what Blackstone plans to do with the company's assets.

The world's most visionary and ambitious entrepreneur continues to exceed expectations, with the recent successful launch of astronauts to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's state-of-the-art Crew Dragon capsule and Tesla's share price up 500%. We review the past 5 years as reported on the Beyond Infinity science and technology radio show.

Included is an early Musk 10-year master plan; Mars colony ambitions; Starlink broadband internet from orbit; boring under LA's traffic; recycling rockets; building the world's biggest battery in South Australia and pitching his Hyperloop transit system for Australia's East Coast.

Beyond Infinity's resident tech head John Young gives us the lowdown on Google's mesh router system. It's solved his wifi coverage issues and allows voice control throughout his house, garden and shed. He says while the Nest isn't cheap, it's an integral part of his home office set up.

Despite serious challenges on Earth, NASA has succeeded in launching the most sophisticated rover ever sent to Mars. We look at the mission's heritage of past landers, its design, radical landing system and amazing suite of new instruments. Its sample caching tools will gather and store Martian material for eventual return to Earth, paving the way for people to set foot on the Red Planet.

Piers chats with technology expert Michael Simonetti about Australia's COVIDSafe contact tracing app. How does it compare with overseas equivalents? Why has it only garnered limited public support? And why, after the initial hype, have authorities gone quiet about it? Michael reckons that perhaps they're getting the data they want from other, far more useful sources... (Part 1 of a 2 part interview)

Dr. Ian Storey, lecturer at Australia's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, outlines the evolution of battery technology over the past 250 years. He describes how modern lithium ion batteries are getting more efficient and how solid state batteries offer an exciting future of long-range electric cars, better smart phones and pacemakers that never need changing.