New Scientist reports of a new solution to increasing the numbers of entangled qubits for quantum computers. It will be a revolutionary advance for photonic quantum computing. Raising the number of qubits has proven tricky because of the difficulty of reliably producing entangled particles. Now a team has designed a system that should fire out …
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer zips through JavaScript nearly 10 times faster than usual when Google’s new Chrome Frame plug-in is partnered with the browser, benchmark tests show. According to tests run by Computerworld, Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) with the plug-in was 9.6 times faster than IE8 on its own. Computerworld ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite …
Dwave Systems researchers have written a paper describing a novel rf-SQUID flux qubit. It is robust against fabrication variations in Josephson junction critical currents and device inductance has been implemented. Experimental results were shown to be in agreement withpredictions of a quantum mechanical Hamiltonian whose parameters were independently calibrated, thus justifying the identification of this …
An IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) report on Uranium until 2050 has the above chart. Market Based Demand Cases (Tons per year neededLow demand case 1 917 990Middle demand case 4 158 280High demand case 6 406 190 The conclusions of a World Nuclear Association report,The Global Nuclear Fuel Market Supply and Demand 2009-2030 are …
1. New Scientist reports that the codebreaking quantum computer algorithm (shors algorithm for factoring) has been run on a silicon chip. Journal Science abstract: Shor’s Quantum Factoring Algorithm on a Photonic Chip Shor’s quantum factoring algorithm finds the prime factors of a large number exponentially faster than any other known method, a task that lies …
Recent nuclear power cost estimates – separating fact from myth at Brave New Climate by Barry Brook David Walters at Daily Kos What do we know for sure? We know, for sure, that the costs of the material for an AP-1000 is is less than 1.4 billion dollars. How do we know that? Because this …
More than 2,000 dams near population centers are in need of repair, according to statistics released this month by the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. [High hazard potential repairs are needed.] The National Inventory of Dams (NID), which is maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), shows that the number of dams …
Nuclear fuel burnup is measured in gigawatt-days per tonne and its potential is proportional to the level of enrichment. Hitherto a limiting factor has been the physical robustness of fuel assemblies, and hence burn-up levels of about 40 GWd/t have required only around 4% enrichment. But with better equipment and fuel assemblies, 55 GWd/t is …
From a research paper: “Probing Cold Dense Nuclear Matter”: The protons and neutrons in a nucleus can form strongly correlated nucleon pairs. Scattering experiments, where a proton is knocked-out of the nucleus with high momentum transfer and high missing momentum, show that in 12C the neutron-proton pairs are nearly twenty times as prevalent as proton-proton …
Here is an interview with Ross Tierney. Mr. Tierney is a representative of the of the Direct Launcher organization, which has a proposal to get to the moon using NASA shuttle components and other existing technology. This Jupiter rocket system could also be used to go to near-earth objects and possibly even Phobos and Mars. …
The fourth annual Singularity Summit, a conference devoted to the better understanding of increasing intelligence and accelerating change, will be held in New York on October 3-4 in Kaufmann Hall at the historic 92nd St Y. David Chalmers will be there talking about uploading. The Summit is branching out into topics like biotechnology and decision …