| abstract
| - The 21st century was the period between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2100, inclusive. It was the first century of the 3rd millennium. It is distinct from the century known as the 2000, which began on January 1, 2000 and ended December 31, 2099. The century had the end of total war in World War III and the Second Mexican-American War. American dominance became a major political issue in the world in the 21st century that was acknowledged in international law with the acknowledgement of exclusive American rights to militarize space, colonization of the Solar System, and exclusive rights to diplomatic relations with extraterrestrials. The century saw a major shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of changes in politics, ideology, economics, society, culture, science, technology, and medicine. It has been theorized that the 21st century saw more technological and scientific progress than all the other centuries combined since the dawn of civilization. Terms like colonial, terrorism, non-human, and space war entered common usage. Scientific discoveries, such as the Quantum Force and warp field physics, drastically changed the worldview of scientists, causing them to realize that the universe was fantastically more complex than previously believed, and dashing the strong hopes at the end of the 20th century that the last few details of String theory were about to be achieved. Accelerating scientific understanding, more efficient communications, and faster transportation transformed the world in those hundred years more rapidly and widely than in any previous century. It was a century that started with human controlled cars, simple spacecraft, and freighters but ended with drones, mag-lev rail, commercial interplanetary travel and the warp drive. Cars, Western society's basic form of personal transportation for thousands of years, were replaced by Autos and mag-lev rail within the span of a few decades. These developments were made possible by the large-scale exploitation of space based resources, primarily Helium-3, which offered large amounts of energy with minimal environmental impact, while advances in energy storage made portability more widespread than ever. Humans explored outer space at a greater pace than ever before, taking their first footsteps on and eventually colonizing Mars, the Jovians, Titan, Triton, the Asteroids, Venus, and dozens of other worlds in and out of the Sol system. Space-based resources came to outpace those of Earth by the end of the century, and Space-based energy came to be the largest single source of energy on Earth. Personalized media, telecommunications, and information technology (especially computers, neural interfaces, individualized education, and the Internet) made knowledge more widely available. Many people's view of the universe changed significantly as they became much more aware of the struggles of others and, as such, became increasingly concerned with human rights. Advancements in medical technology also improved the welfare of many people: the global life expectancy increased from 65 years to 150 years. Rapid technological advancements, however, also allowed warfare to reach unprecedented levels of precision. World War III only saw the death of 110,000 people, while space weapons gave humankind the means to counter threats in a very short period of time. The world also became more culturally homogenized than ever with developments in transportation and communications technology, popular music and other influences of American culture, international corporations, and an interplanetary economy by the end of the 20th century.
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