Next Generation Space Telescope mirrors and optical components are complete and telescope will launch October 2018 and determine whether nearest exoplanets have water and much more

April 7, 2017November 4, 2016 by Brian Wang

The telescope element of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest space telescope ever constructed, stands completed in an enormous clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. JWST will now go through a series of rigorous tests, including shaking and noise tests to simulate launch conditions, and cryogenic tests to make sure it …

Mark Skilton of Warwick Business School provides answers to Nextbigfuture on the Microsoft purchase of Linkedin

April 7, 2017June 13, 2016 by Brian Wang

Mark Skilton, of Warwick Business School, is a Professor of Practice in the Information Systems and Management Group and researches technology ecosystems around defining value and monetization. He is the author of Building digital ecosystem architectures and Building the digital enterprise. Mark provides expert commentary on the Microsoft purchase of Linkedin. Professor Mark Skilton said: …

New breakthrough steel with high strength and high formability

April 7, 2017June 10, 2016 by Brian Wang

NanoSteel®, a leader in nanostructured steel materials, and the company’s joint development launch partner, AK Steel Corporation, have won the Platts Global Metals “Breakthrough Solution of the Year” Award. The Platts Global Metals Award recognizes the product’s groundbreaking properties, which offer the combination of both high strength (1200 MPa) and high formability (50% elongation), exceeding …

US Army will shoot down drones and mortars

April 7, 2017May 20, 2016 by Brian Wang

The US Army is currently testing High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck (HELMTT) with a 10 kilowatt laser. They are destroying drones and other targets in field tests. They will upgrade the 10 kilowatt laser to a 60 kilowatt laser for more range and ability to operate in fog, rain and other conditions. High Energy …

Google Custom Machine Learning Chip has ten times better performance per watt for machine learning for a seven year advantage

April 7, 2017May 19, 2016 by Brian Wang

Google began a stealth project several years ago to see what they could accomplish with their own custom accelerators for machine learning applications. The result is called a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), a custom ASIC they built specifically for machine learning — and tailored for TensorFlow. They have been running TPUs inside their data centers …

Google planning a ‘watershed’ quantum computing announcement for December 8

April 7, 2017November 14, 2015 by Brian Wang

According to Steve Jurvetson, venture capitalist and board member at pioneer quantum computing company D-WAVE, Google has what may be a “watershed” quantum computing announcement scheduled for early next month. This comes as D-WAVE, which notably also holds the Mountain View company as a customer, has just sold a 1000+ Qubit 2X quantum computer to …

Two radio jamming antidrone systems

April 7, 2017October 24, 2015 by Brian Wang

Battelle’s revolutionary DroneDefenderTM, is a portable, accurate, rapid-to-use counter-weapon to stop suspicious or hostile drones in flight, providing critical security protection at home and abroad. The Battelle DroneDefender uses radio control frequency disruption technologies to safely stop drones in the air, before they can pose a threat to military or civilian safety. The growing use …

Oversupply of oil through at least 2016

April 7, 2017October 13, 2015 by Brian Wang

Oil prices rose on Tuesday with technical support for U.S. crude and despite a weaker demand outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA) which is expected to keep the world oil market oversupplied for at least another year. Brent futures for November delivery rose 38 cents to $50.24 a barrel, a 0.8 percent gain, by …

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 281

April 7, 2017October 5, 2015 by Brian Wang

The Carnival of Nuclear Enery 281 is up at Neutron Bytes Forbes – Jim Conca – Bill Gates Forges Nuclear Deal With China Bill Gates and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Seattle to sign an agreement between his nuclear power company, TerraPower, and the China National Nuclear Corporation that will allow the two countries …

Russia Su-25 Frogfoot is their equivalent to the US A-10 Warthog

April 7, 2017October 3, 2015 by Brian Wang

The Frogfoot (SU-25) is an armored beast of an aircraft with an armored cockpit and multiple redundant systems. The Russian air force has upgraded dozens of Su-25s to the latest SM standard, which includes a glass cockpit, a GLONASS satellite navigation system and modern avionics that would allow for the use of precision-guided munitions. Eventually, …

European Union 5G-Xhaul program to develop 10 gigabit per second cellular data by 2018

April 7, 2017September 18, 2015 by Brian Wang

Xhaul aims at developing an adaptive, sharable,cost-efficient 5G transport network solution integrating the front haul and backhaul segments of the network. This transport network will flexibly interconnect distributed 5G radio access and core network functions, hosted on in-network cloud nodes,through the implementation of two novel building blocks: i) A control infrastructure using a unified, abstract …