3 . It’s 6 A.M., and the alarm clock is ringing earlier than usual. It’s not a malfunction (故障): the smart clock scanned your schedule and adjusted because you’ve got that big presentation first thing in the morning. The electric car is ready to go, charged by the solar panels on your roof. When you get home later, there’s an unexpected package waiting. You open it to find cold medicine. Turns out, health sensors embedded (嵌入) in your bathroom detected signs of an upcoming illness and placed an order automatically.

That, at least, is the ideal design of the smart home that exists 10 years out. But a decade from now, we’ll dip into the Internet of Things (IoT) totally.

A range of technological developments will drive smart—home technology well beyond what’s available on store shelves today. Innovations in AI stand to change almost everything in our lives. You might already be using some kind of AI—powered voice—assistant device to get the latest news or weather forecast every morning. IoT company Crestron, for example, is working on software that follows a person’s habits, like which music they want to hear in the morning or which lights they want to be on at a certain time of day. Then, once it gets the hang of a user’s preferences, it automatically plays just the right playlists or makes the lights less bright before bedtime.

All this learning that the smart home of the future will be doing may raise privacy concerns. In 2016, hackers took over hundreds of thousands of secure IoT devices, then used them to send fake Internet traffic, the incident broke Internet connections for a moment throughout parts of North America and Europe. A bill put forth by Virginia Senator Mark Warner would push the government to set up minimum security requirements for smart devices used by federal agencies; such requirements could eventually become standard for the industry at large.

You’re more likely than not to end up in a connected home one day, whether you mean to or not. Ultimately, people will come to see smart—home technology as essential as electricity, refrigeration or air-conditioning. People will rely on it.

4 . Technologically, the 20-year jump from 2015 to 2035 will be huge. Back in 1995 we were in the early days of the Internet, we worked in small rooms and our computers were heavy and powered by Windows 95. There were no touch screen phones or flat screen TVs; people laughed at the idea of reading electronic books.

So, what will our world really be like in 2035? What will the future jobs and technology be like? The world in 2035 will probably be much like it is today, but smarter and more automatic. We can see the future of our work first.

Taxi drivers will be replaced by self-driving Uber cars and receptionists will be replaced by robots. Doctors can use vast medical databases and travel agents will be wiped out by trip-planning, flight-booking web services. Even writers are threatened by companies such as Narrative Science, which currently uses AI to create sports reports and financial updates.

Obviously, there will also be new jobs created: the computer engineer who fixes the self-driving Uber taxis, programmers, space tour guides and vertical (垂直的) farmers. Technology will continue to disrupt (扰乱) businesses and get rid of jobs, creating new professions we can’t yet envisage now.

Those of us who work probably won’t do so in a traditional office either. We’re already seeing a shift in the definition of work. It’s now a task you perform, not a place you go to. Productivity is no longer measured by sitting at a desk. There’s no nine to five. No job for life.

The biggest advantage of working from home is that you save a lot of time commuting back and forth to work. You can spend extra time with your children or spouse and read the newspaper instead of sitting in traffic. Of course, advanced technology will ensure that most of us can work from home.

5 . Everything is going to change more in the next ten years than it has in the last hundred, so it’s difficult to think about 100 years in the future. I can only guess what it might be like.     1    

After 100 years, I think that borders will disappear through the development of science and technology.     2     Advances in transportation will mean people will be able to move to other places easily, so dividing up the land would be meaningless. People will move not only to other regions of the Earth but also to other planets in space because the Earth will be already full.

    3     The future car will have a device on seats and it will be safely computer-controlled. All drivers will have to do is tell the car their destination and the computer will do the rest.

Food from Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter will become popular.     4     It will be easy to buy everything at the supermarket.

My family will live in Mangshi, but I’ll take the super airplane daily to my work office. It’ll take 30 minutes from Mangshi to New York. My wife will go to her office in London.     5     I’m looking forward to that happening someday.

6 . 2050 seems a long way away, but it is not impossible to predict the future though. With the speed we are moving now so many amazing things are going to happen in the future.

    1     Let's start our predictions.

·The Internet will be free for everyone.

The Internet is really a key driver these days.     2     There have already been attempts like Facebook's Free Basics. Though it hasn't happened yet, there is a very strong possibility that the Internet will be free for everyone in the future.

·    3    

With the increasing population, it is not very hard to predict that common methods of transportation will not be enough. There will be much heavier traffic on the road. So in this case personal airplanes will be a handy method of transportation for common people.

Of course, there will be proper air traffic control for these personal airplanes.

·Most cancers will be treated successfully.

    4     It will be a huge achievement in the history of medical science. Many studies are already showing a trend (趋势) towards this.

·Humans will live on other planets.

There will be great achievements in space research.     5     

We will receive more intelligent signals from space. Chances are we will be able to find the next Earth-like planet.

7 . For years, planet-hunters have been searching for a planet other than Earth that can support life. They may have found one.

The planet is the sixth found orbiting a star called Gliese 581. Steven Vogt, one of the scientists involved, expects the new planet to have water. On Earth, when we find water, we find life.     1    

A planet that can support life has to be just the right size for its system and just the right distance from its star. Some planets orbit so close to their stars that they’re much too hot for liquid water—or for life as we know it.     2    

But a right-sized planet that's neither too close nor too far might be just right for water. Gliese 581 is probably just right. It is about three times as huge as Earth.     3     Because it’s so close, one side of it always faces its star, and the other side is always dark.

The new planet is 20 light years away, which is as far as 250 million trips to the Moon and back.     4     Only light can go that fast. So even at the fastest speed we could manage, it would take a spaceship from Earth more than 200 years to go that far.     5     But that doesn’t mean we can’t study it. Thanks to powerful new telescopes and new techniques for searching the skies, scientists can learn a lot about distant planets without even leaving Earth.

Gliese 581 is an exciting discovery—and astronomers are likely to find more soon, thanks to new, powerful telescopes specifically designed to look for planets.

8 . In May this year, as part of our 150th anniversary, we asked readers aged between 18 and 25 to enter an essay competition. The task was to tell us, in no more than 1,000 words, what scientific advance they would most like to see in their lifetimes, and why it mattered to them.

The response was phenomenal: we received 661 entries. Some entrants hoped that science would make their lifetimes much longer than they can currently expect. Many looked forward to work that will end climate change. Others wanted to see advances in our understanding of human history, crop growth, space exploration, and medical technologies. The ideas were inspiring.

The winner is a compelling essay by Yasmin Ali, a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, UK. Ali submitted a piece on Beethoven, her brother’s hearing loss and the science which she hoped would one day cure it. It stood out to the judges as a reminder of why many scientists do research: to make the world better tomorrow than it is today.

All essays were judged by a group of Nature editors. The top ten submissions were then ranked by three members of a separate judging group: Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature; Faith Osier, a researcher; and Jess Wade, a physicist. All submissions were kept anonymous throughout the process.

We also selected two runners-up(非冠军的获奖者).Physicist Robert Schittko at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, proposes that nuclear fusion(核聚变) could offer a solution to the climate crisis, in a piece that effortlessly mixes grand ambition with gentle humour. And chemist Matthew Zajac at the University of Chicago in Illinois wrote a powerful personal account of why he wants to see advances in the field of same-sex reproduction.

The results show that today’s young scientists have a wealth of ideas, talent and conviction that research can transform their world. We look forward to seeing what they do next.

9 . “The past is a different country; they do things differently there," L.P. Hartley wrote in one of his best-known novels, The Go-Between. To the British novelist, the past was irrelevant. And one of my Chinese students once told me "I have no interest in the past. I'm only interested in the present and the future." I have to disagree. The "past" is a very interesting country, and the more we know about it, the more we will be able to understand the present and thus, prepare ourselves for the future.

An ideal place, as I see it, that can allow us to look back on the past is the museum. I prefer to visit museums as if you are sitting in the same room with some of the greatest men in history. While no museums can claim to offer a complete picture of human history, the lessons we can learn from the events and wonders of the past are of great value.

Thanks to modern technology, museums are being transformed from places of looking and learning to spaces of participation and interaction. A large number of immersive (沉浸式) multi-media displays, which allow visitors to engage with its exhibits during their visit, play a big part at the Shanghai Natural History Museum.

The rise in technology has also made museums more accessible than ever. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, traditional museums have started to think outside of the box in order to create new ways for visitors to experience their collections online. It is definitely good news for those who are fascinated by museums but are struggling to actually go there. However, you shouldn't expect to get the same experience that an in-person visit would provide, at least, that is, for now.

International Museum Day is observed on May 18 every year. This is a quick reminder that you should always spare some time to visit museums and appreciate the "must-see 'em" things that are an important part of the cultural heritage of humankind.

10 . By mid-century there will likely be 9 billion people on the planet, using ever more resources and leading ever more technologically complex lives. What will our cities be like? How much will artificial intelligence (AI) advance? Will global warming cause disastrous changes, or will we be able to engineer our way out of the climate change issues? Recently, the magazine Big Think asked top minds from a variety of fields to weigh in on what the future holds 40 years from now. The result is as follows.

It's likely that by 2050 the majority of the people in the world will live in urban areas and will have a much higher average age than people today. Cities theorist Richard thinks urbanization will transform the education system of, making our economy less houses driven and removing the divisions between home and work.

And rapidly advancing technology will continue ever more rapidly. Cities of the future won't look like “some sort of science-fiction fantasy”, but it's likely that technological advances and information overlays (VR and AR) will greatly change how we live. Self- driving cars will make the roads safer and provide faster transports. A larger version of driverless cars-driverless trucks — may make long-distance drivers out of date.

Some long view predictions are completely dire. Environmentalist Bill says that if we don't make great progress in fighting global warming, it's likely we could see out-of- control rises in sea levels, huge crop shortfalls and wars over limited freshwater resources.

In terms of how we will eat, green markets founder and “real food" supporter Nina believes that there will be more small milk processing plants and more regional food operations and we'll be healthier as a result. New York Times writer Mark thinks that people will eat fewer processed foods and eat foods grown closer to where they live. And more people will be aware of the ethical responsibility" to grow foods.