Supertechnology Will Define the 21st Century and Not Status Quo Trends

There are many forecasts of the world out to 2100. There is the IPCC climate change report or UN population projections. The projections assume that all current trends continue for the next 80 years. The assumptions are that there will not be any major technological or social developments that are big enough to alter global …

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Improved Artificial Intelligence will allow pilots to control drone wingmen

F-35s, F-22s and other fighter jets will soon use improved “artificial intelligence” to control nearby drone “wingmen” able to carry weapons, test enemy air defenses or perform intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance missions in high risk areas, senior Air Force officials said. Air Force Chief Scientist Gregory Zacharias said that technology was progressing quickly at the …

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Google could replace some passwords with a ‘trust score” by the end of the year

Conventional passwords might soon be a thing of the past, or at least on devices running Android. Google announced at I / O last week that it’s pushing ahead with plans to replace passwords with “trust scores” that incorporate various data points about users to determine whether or not they’re legitimate. Its Trust API is …

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Harvard creates three-dimensional actuated scalable snapology-origami-inspired transformable metamaterial

Imagine a house that could fit in a backpack or a wall that could become a window with the flick of a switch. Harvard researchers have designed a new type of foldable material that is versatile, tunable and self actuated. It can change size, volume and shape; it can fold flat to withstand the weight …

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Fiber Reinforced plastic that is 20% lighter than aluminum

Efforts to produce lighter vehicles necessarily include engine parts, such as the cylinder casing, which could shed up to 20 percent of its weight if it were made of fiber-reinforced plastic rather than aluminum – without added costs. Such injection-molded parts are even suitable for mass production. Until now, carmakers have relied on aluminum to …

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Moon Express tests its MTV-1X flying donut lunar lander

The criteria for winning the grand $20 million Google Lunar XPrize seems fairly straightforward: land on the moon, cross a distance of 500 meters and send back high-definition footage to Earth along the way. The natural solution to the problem, indeed the one that most of the GLXP competitors have envisioned, is to gently deposit …

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EMC2 Park Presented on Polywell Fusion

Talk Polywell has the slides for Jaeyoung Park talk on Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2) research results Bussard developed this EMC2 fusion design before his death. • Time resolved hard x-ray measurement provide the first ever direct and definitive confirmation of enhanced plasma confinement in high β cusp, a theoretical conjecture made by Grad and …

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Neutral Particle Beam Magsails for fast interplanetary delivery of small cargos

At Centauri Dreams, James Benford looks more closely at particle beam driven magsails. He has found a problem for interstellar missions but promise for interplanetary missions and an interplanetary infrastructure. The first column shows a fast interplanetary probe, with high interplanetary-scale velocity, acceleration 100 m/sec2, 10 gees, which a nonhuman cargo can sustain. Time required …

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Open thread

In the discussion, provide links and suggestions and politely discuss topics of interest If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science …

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China’s Economy in a report Summarized for the US Congress

There is a congressional report on China’s economy. China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the U.S. (43 pages). China’s economic rise has significant implications for the United States and hence is of major interest to Congress. On the one hand, China is a large (and potentially huge) export market for the United …

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IEC Bussard Fusion Project gets two more years of funding

The Navy is funding EMC2 an additional $5.3 million over next 2 years to work on the problem of pumping electrons into the Polywell. Big new pulsed power supply to support the electron guns (100+A, 10kV). WB-8 has been operating at 0.8 Tesla (8 times stronger magnetic field than any previous version). There was a …

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