$200,000 kickstarter for antimatter propulsion tests

Dreams of antimatter space propulsion are closer to reality than most rocket scientists could ever imagine, says former Fermilab physicist Gerald Jackson. In fact, if money were no object, he says an antimatter-driven spacecraft prototype could be tested within a decade. To that end, next month, Jackson and his Chicago-based Hbar Technologies firm are launching …

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Yes China probably has total debt of 220% of GDP but do not lie about other countries the US total debt is in the 280-360% range depending upon what you count

Various sources have claimed that China’s total debt has increased from 125% of GDP in 2008 to 198-230% of GDP in 2013. They erroneously say that US total debt is 72%. US federal government debt was at that level but US total debt is up around 250-400%. This is not a “China is great” article. …

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Reasons to go beyond biological life extension

A talk by Randal Koene covers the motivation for human technological augmentation and reasons to go beyond biological life extension * Life-extension in biology may increase the fragility of our species & civilization… More people? – Resources. Less births? – Fewer novel perspectives. Expansion? – Environmental limitation. * Biological life-extension within the same evolutionary niche …

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New Theory of superconductors predicts room temperature superconductors

Arxiv – Physical Mechanism of Superconductivity (54 pages) The possibility to achieve the room temperatures superconductivity has been argued for decades in the superconductivity research field. Because the real mechanism of superconductivity has never been revealed, so the estimates about the upper bound on the superconducting transition temperature are all empirical. Based on the superconductivity …

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DNA construction kit for nanoengines

Ad Support : Nano Technology   Netbook    Technology News    Computer Software There is fresh buzz in nanomechanics. Scientists at the University of Bonn have succeeded for the first time in making, out of DNA double stands, an interlocked molecule (rotaxane) with freely moveable components. As the researchers wrote in the latest edition of the science journal “Nature …

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Florida Bitter technology increase the magnetic field 10-15% without increasing stress on the coils

Resistive magnets are built in-house at the magnet lab using so-called Florida Bitter technology pioneered by researchers there. Circular plates of copper sheet metal are stamped with cooling holes; insulators with the same pattern are placed between the plates and stacked to make a coil. Voltage is then run across the coil and current flows …

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Orbital Gun Launch Systems, Light Gas Guns, Ram Accelerators and My Nuclear Cannon

New Scientist reports that John Hunter and two other ex-LLNL scientists have set up a company called Quicklaunch to make a light gas launch gun. The gun is larger than the Super High Altitude Research Project (SHARP) of the 1990’s, but is smaller and cheaper than what was proposed for the Jules Verne Launcher Company. …

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