The Black Swan theory (in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s version) refers to a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. Taleb regards many scientific discoveries as “black swans” — undirected and unpredicted. He gives the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, and the September 11, 2001 attacks as …
President-elect Barack Obama has put forth a goal to reduce carbon emissions in the U.S. by 80% by 2050, using $150 billion over 10 years to create a “clean-energy” future. Cambridge Energy Research Associates has estimated that the potential for world-wide investment in clean energy, of which nuclear generation is the focal point, will reach …
The US state department reports Iraq oil production for second week of May, 2008 at 2.52 million bpd. (slide 22 of the 35 slide report) Iraq exporting 1.88-2.04 million bpd, since Sept 2007. The May, 2008 projection is for 2.04 million bpd. Vitol, Anadarko, and Dome oil companies have formed a consortium currently negotiating with …
engineers and physicists from Stanford and the University of California at Santa Barbara demonstrate a potential progenitor of an essential component of quantum computers, “a logic gate” that enables interaction between just two particles of light. “We have demonstrated a system composed of a single quantum dot in a cavity that can be used to …
Berkeley Lab has signed a collaboration agreement with Tensilica®, Inc. to explore the use of Tensilica’s Xtensa processor cores as the basic building blocks in a massively parallel system design. Tensilica’s Xtensa processor is about 400 times more efficient in floating point operations per watt than the conventional server processor chip shown here and is …
Scientists at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated an ultrafast laser that offers a record combination of high speed, short pulses and high average power. [about 100 times faster and more powerful] The same NIST group also has shown that this type of laser, …
At the end of this lengthy MSNBC article is some information about the Bussard fusion process where researchers are building a new demonstration system WB7 One interesting point is that the University of Wisconsin has 100 people and about 10 million in budget per year that is devoted inertial confinement fusion. They are obviously aware …