In 2008, Scott Aaronson said Even if D-Wave managed to build (say) a coherent 1,024-qubit machine satisfying all of its design specs, it’s not obvious it would outperform a classical computer on any problem of practical interest. This is true both because of the inherent limitations of the adiabatic algorithm, and because of specific concerns …
Makani Power is being acquired by Google. The Makani Airborne Wind Turbine is a tethered wing that generates power by flying in large circles where the wind is stronger and more consistent. It eliminates 90% of the material used in conventional wind turbines, and can access winds both at higher altitudes and above deep waters …
Researchers have found that the beam of a scanning electron microscope can turn a thin coating that occurs naturally on the larvae of some insects into a sort of miniature spacesuit that can keep the animals alive in a vacuum for up to an hour. The researchers made their discovery while testing how long various …
U.S. troops operating on the African continent are now using the recently-launched Chinese Apstar-7 satellite to keep in touch and share information. Every new drone feed and every new soldier with a satellite radio creates more appetite for bandwidth — an appetite the military can’t hope to fill with military spacecraft alone. To try to …
Money is critical in technology development and technology adoption. The new or improved technology that is adopted in the future will become the technology of the future. People adopt the products of the future by choosing to buy it in large numbers. Wealthier people can buy more expensive and better products. Initial wealthier people are …
Researchers at the Center for Turbulence Research set a new record in supercomputing, harnessing a million computing cores to model supersonic jet noise. Work was performed on the newly installed Sequoia IBM Bluegene/Q system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Stanford Engineering’s Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) has set a new record in computational science by …
A discovery that promises transistors – the fundamental part of all modern electronics – controlled by laser pulses that will be 10,000 faster than today’s fastest transistors has been made by a Georgia State University professor and international researchers. There are three basic types of solids: metals, semiconductors, used in today’s transistors, and insulators – …
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology – A new etching method produces three-dimensional microstructures in silicon for the processing of light signals in telecommunications. In modern telecommunications, light carries digital information over kilometers within seconds. Adapted optical materials con-trol the light signals. In the AFM journal, researchers from Ber-lin, Louvain, and from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology present …
Wired has coverage of Broad Group of China and their CEO Zhang. Broad has built 16 structures in China, plus another in Cancun. They are fabricated in sections at two factories in Hunan, roughly an hour’s drive from Broad Town. From there the modules—complete with preinstalled ducts and plumbing for electricity, water, and other infrastructure—are …
A team of experts in mechanics, materials science, and tissue engineering at Harvard have created an extremely stretchy and tough gel that may pave the way to replacing damaged cartilage in human joints. Called a hydrogel, because its main ingredient is water, the new material is a hybrid of two weak gels that combine to …
The Carnival of Space 265 is up at Vintage Space. Weird warp – The Mars science lab (nicknamed curiosity) has a laser! It is not for self defense but for analyzing rocks. It has fired nearly 500 shots so far and it has produced strong clear data about the Mars surface. There were many articles …