A self-driving car operated by Uber appears to have caused the first known death of a pedestrian struck by an autonomous vehicle on a public road. Uber has suspended testing of its self-driving cars in Tempe, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. A key metric for measuring the quality of a self-driving system is how long …
There were MIT presentations about getting into space and beyond the cradle of the Earth There were presentations by Blue Origin, SpaceX, StarLabs and Planetary Resources. Vision of Blue Origin is millions of people living and working in space. Planetary Resources sees a $6 billion per year market for fuel in space by 2032. SpaceX …
Decentralized gaming platform, BitGuild, announces successful funding of their ICO pre-sale. The funding totaled over $20 million and was raised from supporters like Justin Sun of TRON, as well as multiple other backers. “BitGuild is at the forefront of blockchain gaming technology, and they stand for everything I believe in. Happy to be part of …
CMB (cosmic microwave background) science goals require much improved CMB polarization and CMB-lensing: – Inflation: B-mode polarization and de-lensing – Neutrinos: Neff or “dark radiation” requires de-lensed polarization spectra; ∑mν requires CMB-lensing (and τe). – Dark Energy: CMB-lensing correlations with galaxy surveys; CMB-lensing cluster calibration for SZ cosmology and CMB-lensing requires much improved CMB polarization. …
Arxiv – A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation? (16 pages, March 4, 2018, Stephen Hawking, and Thomas Hertog) The usual theory of inflation breaks down in eternal inflation. They derive a dual description of eternal inflation in terms of a deformed CFT located at the threshold of eternal inflation. The partition function gives the amplitude …
South Korea is starting to commercialize 10-gigabit (Gb) transfer speeds for its online network systems, which is 10 times faster than Giga Internet, the fastest broadband service currently available, the ICT ministry said Sunday. The Ministry of Science and ICT said it will work closely with local IT firms to adopt 10 Gb service, considered …
TerraPower, chaired by Bill Gates, has a joint venture to build traveling-wave reactors with China National Nuclear Corp. TerraPower has been leading the charge in the development of cutting-edge nuclear energy technologies that offer scalable, sustainable, safe and cost-competitive energy options. Through the development of the traveling wave reactor (TWR) program and molten chloride fast …
Terrestrial Energy is developing a 190 megawatt small modular molten salt reactor that will cost less than $1 billion to build. This will result in kilowatt-per-hour costs of less than 5 cents, a price competitive with power from natural gas. Terrestrial Energy of Canada has signed a contract for technical services with the European Commission’s …
China’s gross domestic product is forecast to reach about $13.2 trillion in 2018, beating the $12.8 trillion combined total of the 19 countries that use the euro, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nextbigfuture calculates that China is already at $13.35 trillion and should end 2018 at $14.5 trillion. This would mean China would have …
China’s most recent nuclear energy plan calls for five new nuclear power reactors to be brought online in 2018 and construction to be started on a further six to eight units. In its Energy Work Guidance Opinion for 2018, the NEA (National Energy Administration) said China’s installed nuclear generating capacity would be boosted by a …
The military.com reports that U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Congress that with funding the US Army might be able to field operational hypersonic weapons by 2022. The Army has had two previous successful hypersonic tests and might field early operational land-based hypersonic weapons by 2022. Milley would not commit to 2022 …