Elon Musk says the Tesla solar roof will actually cost less to manufacture and install than a traditional roof—even before savings from the power bill. “Electricity,” Musk said, “is just a bonus.” If Musk’s claims prove true, this could be a real turning point in the evolution of solar power. The rooftop shingles he unveiled …
Tern, a joint program between DARPA and the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR), seeks to greatly increase the effectiveness of forward-deployed small-deck ships such as destroyers and frigates by enabling them to serve as mobile launch and recovery sites for specially designed unmanned air systems (UASs). DARPA last year awarded Phase 3 of …
The outer regions of galaxies, like our own Milky Way, rotate much faster around the centre than can be accounted for by the quantity of ordinary matter like stars, planets and interstellar gasses. Something else has to produce the required amount of gravitational force, so physicists proposed the existence of dark matter. Dark matter seems …
A Global Times reporter Liu Jianxi (GT) talked with Yukon Huang (Huang), a senior associate in the Carnegie Asia Program, a leading economist in Asia and former World Bank country director for China, about China’s financial issues The Chinese-language version has been accused of having a strong pro-government slant, and of attracting a strongly nationalistic …
Harvard researchers have studied and observed solid hydrogen under pressure at low temperatures. With increasing pressure we observe changes in the sample, going from transparent, to black, to a reflective metal, the latter studied at a pressure of 495 GPa. They have measured the reflectance as a function of wavelength in the visible spectrum finding …
This September Tesla Motors began shipping version 2 of our Powerpack system. With a new energy module and power electronics, Powerpack 2 provides twice the energy density and a more seamless integration into multiple levels of the grid. Powerpack 2 is also now matched with a new inverter, designed by Tesla and manufactured at the …
A new dwarf planet has been found and it is 330 miles across and some 8.5 billion miles from the sun. It takes 1,100 years to complete one orbit. David Gerdes of the University of Michigan led the team that found the new dwarf planet. They used a special camera called the Dark Energy Camera …
Batch production of Long March 5 has begun, said Meng Fanxin, manager of the industrialized base for the carrier rocket in Tianjin. Known as the Long March 5, China’s most powerful heavy-lift launch vehicle is expected to make its first test flight from Hainan’s Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in November. In the meantime, its manufacturing …
Zen Expectations AMD showed off some of its new Zen-based silicon in San Francisco last month and talked up the new high-performance cores. The next-gen microarchitecture design, led by renowned chip architect Jim Keller, is said to enable a 40 percent improvement in instructions per clock over Zen’s predecessor, Excavator. The “Zen”-based “Summit Ridge” desktops …
Singularity University Grand Challenge in space end goal is Safe and Equitable use and stweardship of space resources and technologies for the benefit of humanity and our future as a multi-planetary species Made in Space has won the Singularity University Grand Challenge in space Made in Space is the only organization ever in history to …
Airbus wants to make flying taxis for city commuters.Rush-hour traffic is unbearable for many commuters today – and the problem is growing. By 2030, 60% of the world’s population will live in cities, which is 10% more than today. To address this rising concern, Airbus Group is harnessing its experience to make the dream of …