The New Scientist looks at the future of particle colliders beyond the Large Hadron Collider Regardless of what is found particle wise (Higgs or no Higgs Boson) there will be new physics to investigate or models of the universe to refine (standard model or something else, supersymmetry or string theory). Super Large Hadron Collider (sLHC) …
Mark Jacobson has responded to Barry Brooks criticism of Mark’s proposed 2030 plan for complete powering of civilization with solar, wind and hydro power. Mark Jacobson is the Stanford professor who adds the CO2 from burning cities into his calculation of CO2 generated by nuclear power and the deaths from nuclear war from his calculation …
Day 3 also appears to be done with no change in the standings or prizes won. Lasermotive has won the level 1 prize of $900,000. No other prizes were won and no other team qualified for a prize. LaserMotive retained their lead, and inched closer to the 5 m/s benchmark – they removed some payload, …
In a pilot study of two patients monitored for two years, an international team of researchers slowed the onset of the debilitating brain disease X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) using a lentiviral vector to introduce a therapeutic gene into patient’s blood cells. Although studies with larger cohorts of patients are needed, these results suggest that gene therapy …
A recent presentation (73 page pdf) by a Google engineer shows that the company is preparing to manage as many as 10 million servers in the future. (H/T Sander Olson) Google’s Jeff Dean discussed a new storage and computation system called Spanner, which will seek to automate management of Google services across multiple data centers. …
Carnival of space 125 is up at orbiting frog. Superconducting magnets are reaching 30-35 tesla now and appear on track to reach 60-70 tesla. This will enable the superconducting magnets to test a possible superpropulsion theory where the magnets are used to shunt into hyperdrive. The basic concept is this: according to the paper’s authors …
Inventor Larry Fullerton applies signal correlation methods and coding theory to magnetism to precisely control magnetic fields. Coded magnetic structures correlate to produce stronger bonding force, programmable precision alignment, and deterministic magnetic field interaction that promise to accelerate product performance and innovation. Coded magnetic structures can be designed to deliver precise holding strength characteristics, customized …
Recently there has been discussion of the near term future of a space rated VASIMR plasma rocket which can be scaled up to several megawatts to enable 39 day (one way) trips to Mars. This site has looked at combining a small nuclear reactor that has a commercialization target of 2013 with the VASIMR which …
In a paper appearing today in Physical Review Letters, however, MIT researchers present a new algorithm that could exponential speed solutions of systems of linear equations — whose solution is crucial to image processing, video processing, signal processing, robot control, weather modeling, genetic analysis and population analysis, to name just a few applications. Researchers at …
Test of relativistic gravity for propulsion at the Large Hadron Collider, 13 page pdf A design is presented of a laboratory experiment that could test the suitability of relativistic gravity for propulsion of spacecraft to relativistic speeds. The first exact time-dependent solutions of Einstein’s gravitational field equation confirm that even the weak field of a …
Shown in the image are depictions of (top) a conventionally calcined c-oriented silicalite-1 zeolite membrane and (bottom) an identically oriented membrane that has undergone rapid thermal processing (RTP). Red and green regions in the 3D schematics are indicative of zeolite crystal grains and defects/grain boundaries, respectively. A scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of the membrane …