Currently the world economy is $82 trillion on a purchasing power parity basis (2012. The IMF is forecasting economic growth through 2016 for a world economy of $103 trillion. A world economy ten times larger will be a quadrillion dollar economy. Inflation and using future dollars will accelerate that milestone. Increasing growth every 20 years …
Adam Crowl describes a Dyson bubble at 0.1 AU. Wrapping the Sun in “statites” – optically levitated structures – is perfectly reasonable and avoids the issues of the science-fictional Shell Habitat. Such structures, however, have a vulnerability, from in-falling meteoroids and comets. For a perfect absorber the ratio between the outward force of sunlight to …
VR Zone – Intel is releaseing the first Many Integrated Core, chips, aka the ‘Knights’ line. The first MIC to be offered to the discerning public, in a limited quantity for a sort of pilot introduction, is ‘Knights Corner’, basically a GPU-like PCIe accelerator card with a 22-nm process MIC chip that integrates some 50 …
An integrated approach to cause-of-death analysis: cause-deleted life tables and decompositions of life expectancy This article integrates two methods that analyze the implications of various causes of death for life expectancy. One of the methods attributes changes in life expectancy to various causes of death; the other method examines the effect of removing deaths from …
Guardian UK – It’s day one at the Singularity University: the opening address has just been delivered by a hologram. Craig Venter, who was one of the first scientists to sequence the human genome and created the first synthetic life form, is up next. And later, we will see two people, paralysed from the waist …
UPDATE – At Idaho samizdat, Dan Yurman asks whether TVA can handle construction of a third reactor? The development of a third nuclear reactor by 2020 at a TVA site, albeit a 180 MW SMR, is potentially headed for a squeeze play between two of its larger brethren. TVA’s board is already on record saying …
Reaction Engines has begun testing of the Pre-cooler for the Skylon spaceplane. It is now fully integrated into the B9 test stand with the Viper jet engine, has finally begun this month after a number of delays shaking down the system. The initial tests have gone very well and represent a good start to the …
Toronto Star- Ontario Power Generation, the owner of the Darlington nuclear plant, is looking to build up to four new reactors for an additional 4,800 MW of capacity. It will be more than a year before a decision is made on which design to choose. The two designs reportedly in the running are the enhanced …
The Focus Center Research Program (“FCRP”), a consortium of industrial participants and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”), (the “Consortium”)solicits white papers from U.S. universities for collaborative, multidisciplinary, multi-university research in selected areas of principal interest. The goal of this collaborative effort between the Department of Defense and the industrial participants is to increase …
Carnival of Space #246 is up at Links Through Space The puzzle of dark matter has been perplexing astronomers for years, but a new study finds that the local region of space around the Sun seems to be completely devoid of it. What could this mean for astronomy…? A group of Chilean astronomers made an …
WSJ – Chongqing is at the center of experiments in a more inclusive approach to development. Chongqing is piloting innovations in property rights for farmers, and allowing rural migrants to access the urban pension, education, and health-care system. If successful, these experiments could catalyze a shift to more consumption-led growth, analysts say, because creating a …