Digital Twins: Why IoT Needs a Virtual Clone of Everything
In April 1970, an oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13, 330,000 kilometres from Earth. NASA's engineers had to figure out how to bring the crew home using only what was left on the spacecraft — without being able to touch it. They did it by building an exact physical replica of the command module in Houston and running scenarios until they found one that worked. That replica saved three lives. It was also, in concept, the world's first digital twin. The idea hasn't changed. What changed is that the copy became digital, live, and connected — updating itself in real time from sensor data streaming off the physical asset it mirrors. In 2026, digital twins are running in factories, hospitals, power grids, and entire cities. And the reason they exist at all is IoT. 🔧 The Short Version A digital twin is a living virtual model of a physical asset — not a CAD file, not a dashboard, but a continuously synchronised replica that reflects the real-world state of its counterpart in ...