2020s in science and technology

Energy

• QuantumScape revealed that it had created the first functioning prototype of a solid-state battery, promising to massively increase battery capacity.
• The Chinese Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak was turned on for the first time. The China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor is being planned for commissioning later in the decade.
• Group14 Technologies has patented SCC55, a silicon-carbon composite, leading to 50% more in fully lithiated volumetric energy density than graphite used in conventional lithium-ion battery anodes.

Environmental sciences

• The United Nations has designated the 2020s as the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

Space

Transport

Air

• In 2021, United Airlines revealed plans to purchase 15 supersonic Boom Overture aircraft by the end of the decade.

Land

• Waymo became the first company to offer self-driving car services to the general public without a human supervisor in Chandler, Arizona.
• Autonomous delivery vehicles began transporting food to customers in Texas in 2021.

Computing and artificial intelligence

• Artificial intelligence-assisted coding began to emerge in the early 2020s.
• El Salvador passed Bitcoin law to become the first country to give cryptocurrency and bitcoin the status of legal tender.

Robotics and machine learning

Physics

• In January 2020, Physicists discovered a unique metal with billions of quantum entangled electrons.
• The Large Hadron Collider will once again begin operation in early 2021; the collider was shut down in December 2018 "to enable major upgrade and renovation works."

Paleontology

Archaeology