Physicists Lev Levitin and Tommaso Toffoli at Boston University in Massachusetts, have calculated a quantum speed limit on computing. In a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Levitin and Toffoli present an equation for the minimum sliver of time it takes for an elementary quantum operation to occur. This establishes the speed limit …
Friedwardt Winterberg has an update on this microfusion rocket. There is a lot of interesting material in his advanced deuterium rocket, but this will focus on the Appendix where he considers the possibility of replacing the nuclear fission trigger of a nuclear fusion bomb with an alternative. It is the nuclear fission bomb part of …
Muon-catalyzed nuclear fusion. (1) A beam of negatively charged muons is produced and injected into a mixed fuel of deuterium and tritium, (2) resulting in the creation of many muonic tritium atoms (tµ). As muons are 207 times heavier than electrons, the muon orbits the nucleus at a much closer distance to the nucleus than …
This is a follow up to the Mach Effect introduction article and interview article that Nextbigfuture had with Paul March. Reminder: Mach Effect is based on a theory of inertia that is consistent with General Relavity that is about one hundred years old where inertia is the gravititional effect of all gravity from all matter …
What if Nuclear Fusion Power became cheap and abundant ? Note: several technologies that could work out for providing commercial nuclear fusion would not lead to cheap and abundant nuclear fusion. They would have power that is about the same price as current 3rd generation nuclear fission. The regular ITER project is such a system. …
We don’t know the composition of the asteroids or the objects in the Oort comet cloud or the Kuiper belt in great detail. One theory of solar system formation is that there are more metals in the inner solar system. That would mean most of the uranium is Mars, Mercury, Earth Venus and asteroid belt. …
New Scientist reports that the NASA panel appears strongly in favor of orbital fuel depots to lower the cost of space exploration. This site has covered fuel depots before and also is strongly if favor of using orbital fuel depots. Fuel depots would allow NASA to mount moon missions without spending billions of dollars developing …
Illustration by D. Balcan, B. Goncalves, H. Hu and A. Vespignani, Credit: Indiana University This epidemic invasion tree identifies 3,200 separate population nodes worldwide linked to the H5N1 avian flu pandemic of 2003-04 that originated in Hanoi. Time ordering of the epidemic’s movement is displayed from the earliests paths in dark red, moving to light …
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predictions from February 2009 on Iran. The above is a 20 minute TED presentation. – Prediction based on self-interest – Need to look at all of the influencers on the key decision maker – 5 people is 120 interactions, 10 people is 3.6 million interactions – CIA notes that the computer …
Here is an interview with Ben Goertzel. The interview is by Sander Olson, who has also interviewed Dr. Richard Nebel. This link is to all Sander Olson interviews on this site). Dr. Goertzel has a PhD in mathematics and is currently one of the world’s top Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) researchers. In this interview, Dr. …
Helion Energy has built a one third scale fusion system and believes a full scale prototype can be buit for $20 million a commercial system for $100 million. One of the reasons that they believe their costs can be lower is because smaller generators in general cost less. Torulf has created graphic animations and images …