2020s - Notable Predictions and Known Events

Notable Predictions and Known Events

  • The interaction of the three main decadal solar cycles suggests an upcoming reduction in solar activity, with a low-energy period centered around 2020. As suggested by John Maddox of Nature, this might mitigate the global warming (at least temporarily) in the 2010s and 2020s.
  • Assuming that the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation runs through a 70-year quasi-cycle (after peaks in ≈1880 and ≈1950), its current warm phase is likely to peak during this decade.
  • Each of ESA (Europe), CNSA (China), FKA (Russia), and ISRO (India) plan to send a manned mission to the Moon in this decade.
  • Voyager 2 is expected to stop transmitting back to Earth in the 2020s.
  • Futurist Ray Kurzweil puts 2029 as the year most likely for a breakthrough in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He expects that around this time, computers will reach human intelligence levels, and shortly thereafter surpass the capabilities of the human brain.
  • Intel predicts the performance of supercomputers to reach zettaflops scale by 2029.
  • Near-Earth Asteroid 99942 Apophis will pass Earth within the orbits of geosynchronous communication satellites on Friday, April 13, 2029,
  • By the end of the decade, world population is projected to surpass 8 billion people, half a billion more than 2020, representing a slowdown in growth from the '10s, which are expected to increase the population by 700 million.
  • The Mars-Grunt sample return mission is proposed to launch in mid-2020s.
  • Generation X will begin to reshape politics. Many countries will begin to relax their laws on private recreational drug use, gay marriage, prostitution, euthanasia and so on. Legalisation and taxation of cannabis adds significantly to government revenues whilst helping to lower crime rates. Scientific research and environmental protection are given higher priorities. These trends will emerge in any case, but will now be accelerated by the Gen-Xers.
  • Global Reserves of natural resources such as Silver and Indium will diminish to where demand vastly outpaces availability. Alternate materials coupled with recycling of these resources will begin to come into play but will fail to offset the demand.
  • China's coal production will peak and then rapidly decline in the year 2027.

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