An interesting concept for solar power appears to be on track for testing in Palau by 2012. The Space Island Group is also proposing low earth orbit solar power beamed to multiple locations. Space Island Group hopes to have its first system up by 2010. Space Island group is targeting 10 cents per kilowatt hour …
NASA hypersonics expert Dr Isaiah Blankson believes that MHD energy-conversion in the intakes can take 30-40% of the energy, letting a turbine engine run at up to Mach 7. Past the MHD the air would slow from Mach 7 to Mach 3. This was the speed of the air going into engines of the Blackbird …
Dwave systems CTO Geordie Rose has published his slides from the SC07 conference, where he demonstrated there latest 28 qubit system. Dwave system is a web services QUBO solver Dwave to a computer scientist. QUBO is NP-hard. the decision version is NP complete Real physical systems dwave device schematic: nobium cjj rs-squid flux qubit Dwave …
Planetary.org has the latest carnival of Space. My contribution is about the overall lessons that should be taken from the recent Technology prize competitions (robotic cars, space elevators and lunar landers). The carnival had a response to a Guardian op-ed. The carnival article indicated that there is no need to keep the moon pristine. I …
A tiny sensor that can detect magnetic field changes as small as 70 femtoteslas-equivalent to the brain waves of a person daydreaming-has been demonstrated at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The sensor could be battery-operated and could reduce the costs of non-invasive biomagnetic measurements such as fetal heart monitoring. The device also …
Here is a blog post from the xprize organization with pictures UPDATE: There appears to be no winner in the lunar lander competition for 2007 as Armadillo’s entry failed and burned in its fourth attempt Wired magazine is blogging the lunar lander xprize cup competition as well The Armadillo Aerospace had one of two good …
TG Daily has Darpa urban grand challenge coverage (pictures, video and articles). There is official coverage at the DARPA site Links to all of the teams is here UPDATE:There have been some crashes in the semi-final competitions Wired magazine is also covering the Darpa urban challenge UPDATE Monday October 29:slow start the competition in this …
Australia has tested a hypersonic scramjet that exceeded mach 10. They went at about 6850 mph. Scramjet principles are described here at wikipedia Scramjet programs are listed and described here The fastest US test was the the third X-43 flight. It set a then speed record of 6,600 mph (10,620 km/h), [about mach 9] on …
A combination of stem cells derived from patients’ blood and immunosuppression to eliminate a faulty immune system can help keep newly diagnosed diabetics off insulin, according to a preliminary study. In the study, carried out by researchers at the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil, and Northwestern University, in Chicago, patients newly diagnosed with Type …
The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel. Most are in poor countries. One study says 7-20% of cancers are attributable to poor air and pollution in homes and workplaces. Wikipedia discusses air …
Fast flexible electronics created that can operate at 7.8Ghz and could reach 20Ghz. This is fast enough for large flexible wireless antennas for wifi or radar that could wrap a plane or blimp. It would ideally be double for flexible microprocessors as good as our current CPUs. It could help make the city wide surveillance …