Sander Olson provided this report from the Space Transportation conference. Last week (Feb 5-6, 2009), I [Sander Olson] attended the 12th annual FAA Space Transportation Conference in Virginia, which is dedicated to promoting commercial space flight. It was a fascinating conference, and I wanted to share what I gleaned from the conference. Here is some …
In October 2008, Complete Genomics of Mountain View, California, said it would sell whole human genomes in 2009 for $5,000, but it released no supporting data. At the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting in Marco Island, Florida, 2009 conference, the company revealed a human genome it said it had sequenced using nine machines …
200 million megaton of explosions will not kill the biosphere. The current nuclear arsenal will not kill all humans and the pattern of nuclear explosions for a nuclear war between the largest nuclear powers will not destroy civilization, let alone kill all people or even half of all people. The greatest risks from a total …
“Single-wall carbon nanotubes are already known to carry current densities up to 100 times higher than the best metals like copper,” said Eric Pop, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the U. of I. “We now show that semiconducting nanotubes can carry nearly twice as much current as previously thought.” “We found that …
Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Rice University, United States, have successfully created a microchip that uses 30 times less electricity while running seven times faster than today’s best technology. The Rice-NTU team plans to follow its proof-of-concept work on encryption with proof-of-concept tests on microchips for cell phones, graphics cards and medical implants. The microchip …
Dwave System reports that three Rainier (128 qubit) 1st silicon chips are on their way to 10mK. On two of them we are doing device-level testing, the third has a full 8-qubit unit cell with all the programmable control circuitry bells and whistles. From the last coverage on Dwave D-Wave plans to have a 1,000-qubit …
MIT Technology Review provides details on how the robotic cars for Masdar City in the UAE will work. At both Heathrow and Masdar City, the vehicles will be battery-powered, driverless cars. The system at Heathrow–built by Advanced Transport Systems, based in Bristol, UK–uses cars powered by lead-acid batteries along a concrete track and guided by …
Startup 4DS Inc. has emerged from stealth mode and claims to have made a major breakthrough in resistive random access memory (RRAM) technology. FRAM, MRAM, phase-change, RRAM and other technologies are vying for dominance in the ”universal memory” race. 4DS’s website and technology details are at this link. The companies chart and the announcement are …
This is an analysis from a discussion of scenarios prompted by some events in Battlestar Galactica. This is a follow up to my previous article about problems with the usage of technology in Battlestar Galactica This article will not discuss specific spoilers in Battlestar Galactica, but one could be indirectly spoiled for the last season. …
The 89th Carnival of Space is hosted by the Moon Society, an organization dedicated to motivating the masses to reclaim our lunar heritage. This site provided details on progress to the Skylon spaceplane. Centauri Dreams re-examines the Drake Equation Paul Anderson (from Merid iani Journal) notes an exo-planet has been discovered that is only two …
Jovion Corporation of Menlo Park, Caifornia in partnership with the University of Colorado in Boulder aims to develop and commercialize a device for producing energy from the electromagnetic quantum vacuum. If successful, this could lead to a practical zero point energy device that would work just as well anywhere in the universe due to the …