We are on our way to creating a second Earth in the digital realm, where we can do experiments and run simulations to better understand the real Earth. It's called a digital twin, and it happens in other sectors like medicine (where we can test new drugs in a simulation of your body) or industry (where we can monitor all the variables in the manufacture of a product to find the most efficient method).
Developments in persistent satellite surveillance, vision and other sensing technologies, and climate modeling and forecasting keep getting better, and with each advance in these areas, the digital Earth twin gets closer and closer to the real Earth.
Real-time space observations can now keep watch over 'super emitter' power plants
Oct 2022, phys.org
They use NASA's "Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2" (OCO-2; launched in 2014) and the OCO-3, attached since 2019 to the International Space Station (ISS).
"This future capacity will lead to improved CO2 emission information at the scale of countries, cities or individual facilities, enhancing transparency under the Paris Agreement and supporting efforts to reduce emissions causing climate change."
via Environment and Climate Change Canada: Tracking CO2 emission reductions from space: A case study at Europe's largest fossil fuel power plant, Frontiers in Remote Sensing (2022). DOI: 10.3389/frsen.2022.1028240
Climate simulation more realistic with artificial intelligence
Oct 2022, phys.org
A generative adversarial network made a simple climate model way better, so it can handle more complex data.
via Technical University Munich: Philipp Hess, Physically constrained generative adversarial networks for improving precipitation fields from Earth system models, Nature Machine Intelligence (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-022-00540-1
Google Earth on steroids' gives a boost to urban development
Dec 2022, phys.org
Uzufly's system uses drones to take aerial photographs, producing thousands of images that are transformed into 3D models through the creation of digital twins, or digital replicas of real-world objects. These objects could be buildings, for example, which are georeferenced down to the centimeter. The company's 3D models incorporate a wide range of urban-planning data and can accommodate any type of architectural design at full scale.
via Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne spin-off Uzufly
A silicon image sensor that computes
Aug 2022, phys.org
The computer is in the eyeballs of the camera, they are one and the same:
CMOS-integrated "in-sensor processing" and programmable pixels
via Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: Houk Jang et al, In-sensor optoelectronic computing using electrostatically doped silicon, Nature Electronics (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-022-00819-6
Atomic-level 3D models show us how gadgets work
Oct 2022, phys.org
This can create a digital twin at the atomic level:
"Atom probe tomography" can provide a three-dimensional representation of what a material looks like, right down to the atomic level.
via Norwegian University of Science and Technology: K. A. Hunnestad et al, Atomic-scale 3D imaging of individual dopant atoms in an oxide semiconductor, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32189-0
Wearable wristband captures entire body in 3D
Nov 2022, phys.org
The camera is on the wrist, facing the body, and with that limited information, it can infer what the entire body is doing.
"Our research shows that we don't need our body frames to be fully within camera view for body sensing," Lim said. "If we are able to capture just a part of our bodies, that is a lot of information to infer to reconstruct the full body."
via Cornell's SciFiLab: Hyunchul Lim et al, BodyTrak, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (2022). DOI: 10.1145/3552312
Worldwide dataset captures Earth in finest ever detail
Nov 2022, phys.org
Metabolism of the Anthroposphere is here:
WorldStrat - 10,000km² of free satellite images with resolutions as high as 1.5m per pixel (each pixel is a 1.5m by 1.5m area on the ground), using the SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 satellites from ESA, as well as using the lower resolution Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite.
via University College London and European Space Agency: Julien Cornebise et al, Open High-Resolution Satellite Imagery: The WorldStrat Dataset—With Application to Super-Resolution, arXiv (2022). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2207.06418
The Real Climate Change is Us Doing This:
Startup claims to offer stratospheric geoengineering as a service
Dec 2022, Ars Technica via MIT Tech Review
(The company is called Make Sunsets)
