The World Needs This Right Now
There are currently scientists working from home using virtual reality and Nanome to discover new molecules to fight Covid-19. They do this by simply putting on their VR headsets and launching the Nanome application to shrink down to the virtual nanoscale where they can build and tinker with molecules.
It would have been hard to imagine a world where scientists perform collaborative drug discovery from home using virtual reality back in 2012 when the Oculus Kickstarter first launched. Little did the creators of Oculus know that the next 8 years of events would all come together in a critical moment for humanity involving their early proof of concept virtual reality device. Over the past 8 years, we have seen virtual reality go from “90s cyberpunk stuff that’s never gonna happen” to a new normal for gamers, schools, and businesses. Unfortunately, we have also seen worse and worse wildfires and hurricanes every year, and to top it all off, our current global pandemic.
Today as we face these existential challenges, how can we help save the world?
Let’s try to approach the problem from the bottom up and break the world down to its smallest components, which we can still engineer. Humanity has been able to successfully build with these small components, known as atoms, since they make up the world around us. We are able to design molecules to atomic precision and manufacture computers to tolerances that are only several atoms wide. Although there are smaller components such as quarks, we’re not really at that scale of engineering yet, so let’s look at the world from the atom up and start to engineer solutions that start at the nanoscale.
In the 90s, we might have thought someday scientists could zoom down to the molecular level via “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” type of technology. Unfortunately, it seems pretty impossible to physically shrink people down to that level and get hands-on with molecules. Luckily we have some pretty sophisticated virtual reality headsets, which helps us make the impossible possible. Thanks to modern technology, virtual reality headsets transport us into a simulated nanoscale workspace where we can engineer and design with the molecular building blocks of life.
The nanoscale is a great place to ground yourself in the cosmos as it represents a half-way point between the smallest length in the universe and the entire observable universe. This is the scale where we all can see the world the same way. Even our differences fade away into small molecular changes in a sea of seemingly infinite strands of molecules. This is the scale where we can truly work together across the world since languages, culture, and politics do not dictate what happens at the nanoscale. It is the pure nature of the universe that governs the nanoscale.
Nanome was built to help us all work together and develop more creative solutions to our global problems. Whether you are a scientist or enthusiast, we are all human and we all live on this planet, so we must all work together on the existential challenges we’re facing if we’d like to live on and thrive as a species. There are currently scientists working from home using virtual reality and Nanome to discover new molecules to fight Covid-19. They do this by simply putting on their VR headsets and launching the Nanome application to shrink down to the virtual nanoscale where they can build and tinker with molecules. The fight against Covid-19 is only a fraction of the scientific work going on to help cure humanity’s diseases including cancer, HIV, and even aging. Scientists communicate in the language of atoms and molecules across the globe.
Beyond the fight against humanity’s biological threats are the environmental threats that will wipe us out if left unaltered. Unfortunately, as a species we are altering the environment in the wrong direction and need to reverse the direction of carbon flow. A major transition to reversing the carbon flow from the environment back to stored forms is the energy consumption required to do that. Plants use specialized molecules to use the energy of sunlight to sequester carbon molecule by molecule, so we in principle should have the ability to do the same. We should do more to reduce our carbon footprint now. Clean energy and sustainable transportation offer a present day choice, but if we want to reduce our carbon footprint to near zero we need to make sure clean technology is cheap and globally accessible. Energy storage and conversion materials which make up solar cells and batteries are crucial for this goal. In the near future, material scientists will also be able to virtually shrink down to the nanoscale to engineer more efficient solar cells and batteries from the atom up.
First, let’s finish the fight against this global pandemic and speed up the time it takes humanity to eradicate all diseases. We have the technology to work on humanity’s biggest problems from the comfort of our own living room. Let’s use this technology now so we can make a better tomorrow for everyone.
“Scientists are doing collaborative drug discovery from home. We definitely need that right now.” — Facebook Connect Virtual Event on September 2020
Shout out to the Oculus team for the recognition that we definitely need this right now. See the video here.
