The Carnival of Space 584 is up at the Chandra Xray Space Telescope Blog. Universe Today – How Science Journalism Helped Me Become a Better Sci-Fi Writer Matt Williams writing for Universe Today helped make him a better hard science fiction writer. Hard sci-fi refers to stories where scientific accuracy is emphasized. This essentially means …
Mayer Hillman is a climate doomer. His April 26, 2018 article in the Guardian UK is titled ‘We’re doomed’: Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention. Hillman is an 86-year-old social scientist. He is a British architect and town planner. An old architect has no ideas for how to address …
The Trump administration has said America should return to the Moon and build permanent bases. Robert Zubrin points out (in an article at New Atlantis) that this stated goal has not received any meaningful funding. The New Atlantis article by Robert Zubrin has an updated write up of his Moon Direct program proposal. The Lunar …
Marvel Avengers and characters who are below solo-movie popularity will get Disney streaming TV series. Loki, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Falcon and Winters Soldier are headed to streaming TV shows. Marvel and Disney are preparing multiple limited series centered on characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Characters like Loki and Scarlet Witch will have their own …
Dr. James Peyer of ApolloVC discussed tactical paths to bring longevity promoting therapeutics to market as quickly as possible. The cost of developing a drug is $2.6 billion. Pharma companies need to have each successful drug approved has to pay for ten failed drugs. Each drug from discovery through clinical trials averages out to a …
An Australian study notes that China’s army has sent 2500 scientists to foreign universities over the last ten years. * China’s military sent 2500 scientists to study in western universities * Australia has nearly 50% foreign born scientists * The US is dependent upon foreign born scientists and engineers including those from China * China …
SpaceX is targeting the launch of the first production batch of Starlink Internet satellites by the middle of 2019. Elon Musk fired at least seven members of the Starlink senior management team who had a later schedule. SpaceX’s Starlink program will compete with OneWeb and Canada’s Telesat to market with new satellite-based global Internet services. …
Mixing magnetic nanoparticles into battery electrode materials and applying a light magnetic field doubles the discharge rate of batteries. 24M is making prototype batteries using this magnetic approach. Zunum will use the batteries for electric planes. The batteries must be able to deliver a massive amount of power at takeoff. They must have energy density …
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) has cleared the last legal hurdle to resume construction on Hawaii’s Big Island. Hawaii’s Board of Land and Natural Resources issued a fresh construction permit in September 2017, which opponents appealed. The latest ruling upholds that permit. This is one of three new giant telescopes for a new era of …
Mark Mobius, partner and co-founder of Mobius Capital Partners, says China markets are very weak. The yuan weakness and tradewar are killing China shares. This can only be solved by China making big concessions to Trump on trade. If and when the yuan breaks through 7 to the US dollar, then 7.5 is nothing and …
Cray is building new Shasta Supercomputers. The first will be built for $146 million at Berkeley National Labs. It will use AMD Epyc processor and the next-generation Einstein Nvidia Tesla GPU accelerator. The “Perlmutter” NERSC-9 supercomputer will be installed in late 2020. Cray has built a new interconnect, called “Slingshot”. The current Cori NERSC-8 machine …