Astronomers announced today that they have found eight new planets in the “Goldilocks” zone of their stars, orbiting at a distance where liquid water can exist on the planet’s surface. This doubles the number of small planets (less than twice the diameter of Earth) believed to be in the habitable zone of their parent stars. …
An Australian team unveils the fundamental building block of a scalable quantum computer that could be embedded in today’s silicon chips. Kane Quantum Computer Proposal – Phosphorus atoms embedded in silicon would be the ideal way to store and manipulate quantum information.Phosphorus atom could store a single qubit for long periods of time in the …
Light fantastic: This prototype pico projector produces a sharp image without needing a bulky lens thanks to an ultra-thin array of micro-lenses. Credit: Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering MIT Technology Review reports that researchers in Germany have developed the world’s thinnest “pico” video projector. The prototype device contains an array of carefully …
GM licenses technology that could also make the batteries much cheaper GM has licensed battery-electrode materials developed at Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy Lab. These materials, called mixed-metal oxides, could improve the safety and durability of car batteries and help double their energy-storage capacity, potentially leading to substantial costs savings by allowing …
Ad Support : Nano Technology Netbook Technology News Computer Software Recently we looked at metamaterials for modelling warp drive and the Icarus project to develop detailed plans for achieving interstellar missions. I now read the paper as indicating that advanced metamaterials provides an accurate simulation of the warp drive in the lab but does not actually …
“Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee,” also known as the “Augustine Committee,” declared a new overarching purpose for America’s national space enterprise: “the underlying reason why we do human spaceflight is the extension of human civilization beyond Earth“ The official Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee webpage is here. This is …
Many futurists and marketers have predicted that new technology ABC or some new process XYZ will radically change the world. There are several reasons why change does not get created, change is incremental instead of radical, change is developed but turns out not to be low impact and people can often be poor judges of …
China wants to have 100 of Westinghouse Electric Co.’s nuclear reactors in operation or under construction by 2020 — more than double what was anticipated. The Westinghouse AP1000 are being scaled up to 1700 MW and some of the ones already being built for China are 1250MW designs, which will be followed by 1400MW designs …
More teraflop chips are being introduced by AMD and Nvidia. AMD FireStream 9250 will be available at the end of Sept 2008 for $1999. The FireStream chips can perform “double precision” floating-point calculations at 1 teraflop of performance. A 4x Crossfire X configuration is good for almost 5 TFlops, which means 1.2 TFlops per RV770 …
Carnival of space 30 is up at bad astronomy The latests methods to find extrasolar planets, fusion rockets if bussard fusion works, more astronomy of planets and comets, new space finance and Obama’s position on space. Obama would cut space programs and use the funds for education. My contribution was the view of space travel …
One of my readers (Joseph) correctly pointed out that the energy from wind goes up by the cube of wind speed. This means being able to consistently access winds that were five times faster than current winds would make enable 125 times more power to be accessed. Kitegen system I also have been emailing with …