Comparing deaths/TWh for all energy sources Energy Source Death Rate (deaths per TWh) Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity) Coal – China 278 Coal – USA 15 Oil 36 (36% of world energy) Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy) Biofuel/Biomass 12 Peat 12 Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than …
Dwave Systems closed a $17M financing round as of the end of January 2008. These funds will be used primarily to push the level of integration of our chips into the low thousands of qubits by the end of the year. In parallel with this central effort we will be working on running experiments on …
The technological singularity is a hypothesized point in the future variously characterized by the technological creation of self-improving intelligence, unprecedentedly rapid technological progress, or some combination of the two. I would want to focus on the aspect of “unprecendentedly rapid technological progress“. I feel that a proxy for measuring “technological progress” can be the rate …
From EEtimes, Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) scientists will next month describe a technique that would allow spintronics to be inserted into the standard silicon CMOS processes using ferromagnetic materials similar to those already used for magnetic random access memory. Our demonstration showed a 30 percent polarization of the injected electrons, which is not bad considering …
Centauri Dreams discusses how applying Devon Crowe space bubble ideas with nanotechnology could fully enable the ideas of Robert Forward for interstellar solar sails. The prior article about Devon Crowe’s space bubble concepts. Prior article on the state of solar sails Prior article on putting the brakes on laser mirror solar sails Article on laser …
Springer and the Nano Research Society have announced a new partnership to publish Nanoscale Research Letters (NRL), which will be the first nanotechnology journal from a major commercial publisher to publish articles with open access. Look for it at springerlink July 2006 Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger …