Researchers from the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo led the development of a new extensible wiring technique capable of controlling superconducting quantum bits, representing a significant step towards to the realization of a scalable quantum computer. “The quantum socket is a wiring method that uses three-dimensional wires based on spring-loaded …
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and partner institutions conducted a systematic investigation into the properties of the newest family of unconventional superconducting materials, iron-based compounds. The study may help the scientific community discover new superconducting materials with unique properties. Researchers combined innovative crystal growth, highly sensitive magnetic measurements, and the controlled …
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has analyzed 2.5 million stars and is seeing very short light pulses along with normal light spectrums from their stars. The brief light pulses seen at 234 out of 2.5 million stars is consistent with a high power laser (which our current technology is capable of making) and shining in …
General Dynamics Land Systems, maker of the Abrams tank and the Stryker armored fighting vehicle, is teaming up with Kairos Autonomi, a company whose kits can turn virtually anything with wheels or tracks into a remote-controlled car. Kairos seat robot that works a car’s controls just as a human would, and can be installed in …
Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg sees a commercial space-travel market with dozens of destinations orbiting the Earth and hypersonic aircraft shuttling travelers between continents in two hours or less. And Boeing intends to be a key player in the initial push to send humans to Mars, maybe even beating Musk to his long-time goal. …
JP Aerospace has the goal of sending balloons-to-space. In 2002, a balloon named BU60-1 reached a record 53.0 km (32.9 mi; 173,900 ft). Japanese researchers developed a 3.4 µm polyethylene film. Using a highly active Ziegler catalyst in the inflation manufacturing method, it was impossible to fabricate a film of less than 5.6 µm thickness. …
Elon Musk tweeted that the first test firing of the new Spacex Raptor engines have been performed. Chamber pressure is almost 3X Merlin, so engine is about the same size for a given area ratio Production Raptor goal is specific impulse of 382 seconds and thrust of 3 MN (~310 metric tons) at 300 bar …
In the fall of 2015, hazardous levels of smoke from agricultural fires blanketed much of Equatorial Asia. Schools and businesses closed, planes were grounded and tens of thousands sought medical treatment for respiratory illness. In a new study, Harvard University researchers and their colleagues estimate that the 2015 smoke event caused upwards of 100,000 deaths …
Award-winning geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist and Harvard Medical School professor Dr. George M. Church discusses human genomics and compute technologies at the 2016 Bio-IT conference. Church predicts that de Novo sequencing and inSitu sequencing will be in use within 1-2 years. This will be full reads of millions of base pair sequences. It took 15 …
Devices called ultracapacitors have recently become attractive forms of energy storage: They recharge in seconds, have very long lifespans, work with close to 100 percent efficiency, and are much lighter and less volatile than batteries. But they suffer from low energy-storage capacity and other drawbacks, meaning they mostly serve as backup power sources for things …
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) had their 2016 symposium on August 23-25, 2016. First 20 minutes of this video is a Plasmonic propulsion concept. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many …