Year End Blues? Here’s Some ‘Good News’ 2019 Gave Us

It’s the end of the year and most of us are already expecting so much out of 2020. An entire decade has come to an end and it can get very overwhelming when thinking about the things we did in retrospect. Some of us might be experiencing a gloom just thinking of the year ending and mostly attributing it to the chilly weather. 

2019 may have been a year of quite some failures and bad decisions for the world. Nevertheless, here are some news stories that started out difficult but ended up victorious! 

A little relief to your year end blues which hopefully convinces you that things fall into place with the right amount of effort and dedication. 

6 ‘Good News’ 2019 Gave Us: 

• Making the impossible, possible: First ever image of black hole captured

Much to space lovers delight, the second week of April brought us the first ever image of a Black Hole. The National Science Foundation captured against all statements that suggested it would be impossible to get. A total of 8 telescopes were set up across the world by Event Horizon telescope to make this picture a reality. 

Black holes have a strong gravitational pull that let nothing in their vicinity escape it, including light. It seems like an empty space but it is the result of matter packed in one area. 

• Persistence is the way ahead : Indian space enthusiast finds Vikram Lander, credited by NASA

In what happens to be one of the biggest milestones for ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), Chandrayaan 2 met with a disheartening end. The space organisation lost contact with its lander just minutes before landing. The lander named Vikram after Dr Vikram A Sarabhai, the Father of the Indian Space Programme. 

However, despite this heartbreaking result, an engineer based out of Chennai, Shanmuga Subramanian, traced the remains of Vikram Lander. American Space Agency – NASA- applauded him for it and this information would be of great help to ISRO in their future projects. 

The whole takeaway from this would be- They made it that far and should stay motivated to make it further because technology only grows. 

• Once you reach the top, you stay on the top : Google Announces Quantum Supremacy with Sycamore

Technology giant Google announced Quantum Supremacy during the year which indicates that they developed a 54 qubit-processor- ‘Sycamore’ that could perform complex calculations in 200 seconds! Currently, the world’s most powerful is a supercomputer that takes 10,000 years to perform complex calculations. 

This is great news for IT giants and technology space as it creates a whole new horizon for technology development. What’s your takeaway? Google has been ruling the business world for a while but it never stopped there. They work with the same determination to attain unachievable tasks. 

• Aim for the stars, women! : NASA sends an all women space crew to spacewalk

Shattering all stereotypes and opening its arms wide to women participation in space, NASA facilitated an all women spacewalk of 6.5 hours! Christina Koch and Jessica Meir were the two astronauts that went together to spacewalk without a male counterpart. 

This comes as a surprise and opens a wide array of opportunities for women in science and technology fields. As per statistics and biased opinions, STEM fields are dominated by men. This incident will be a benchmark for aspiring women astronauts and scientists and also makes us wonder of how far technology advancement has reached. 2019 has been a great push for women empowerment one can say!

• An automobile marvel- Emergence of internet enabled cars

The year saw big companies such a MG Hector, Kia Seltos, Hyundai, etc announce a new market of automobiles- connected cars. By 2020, this connected car sector is expected to reach 381 million cars on road. Toyota, Tesla, and BMW are already eyeing this sector and may soon come up with connected cars segment of their own. 

Connected cars have the ability to communicate with devices outside the car which means inside house devices as well. This is a whole new facet for IoT technology. 

Also Read: How Can Enterprises Survive In Internet Shutdowns?

• A new dawn for mobile data: Huawei’s 5G trials in India

After a blatant refusal from the US government of Huawei’s 5G devices, it still manages to win a 5G trial in India! Just as the year comes to an end, Indian Telecom Ministry takes its own stand on 5G trials despite being caught between the power tussle between the US and China. Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that these trails will be done with all vendors and suppliers. 

5G is fifth-generation wireless technology that is going to have an amazing speed of 50 Mb/s to over a gigabyte as compared to current speeds of 100& 400 Mb/s. 

2019 already saw the deployment of 5G in some regions. How exciting is that for the coming year?

Read more: Huawei Gets Approval To Take Part In 5G Trials In India

Concluding…

The decade of 2010-2019 has been riveting owing to so many new technologies and developments coming into existence. It has been a great year for AI, ML, Data Centres and IoT which is great news for IT. The next decade will have a lot of existing data and hopefully the same level of motivation to create profound levels of surprises!