Transportation – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Jun 4
2019

Mini antimatter accelerator could rival the likes of the Large Hadron Collider

Researchers have found a way to accelerate antimatter in a 1000x smaller space than current accelerators, boosting the science of exotic particles.

The new method could be used to probe more mysteries of physics, like the properties of the Higgs boson and the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and provide more sensitive testing of aircraft and computer chips.

The method has been modelled using the properties of existing lasers, with experiments planned soon. If proven, the technology could allow many more labs around the world to conduct antimatter acceleration experiments.

Jun 3
2019

KLM to help fund Flying-V plane, where passengers fly in the wings

Dutch national carrier KLM will help fund the development of the Flying-V, a plane that would carry passengers in the wings and increase efficiency.

Jun 3
2019

Los Angeles transit to install body scanners that will screen for weapons and explosives

“While we are on watch, we will not have a repeat of 9/11 or any terrorist incident inside our transportation system in the United States,” said the TSA’s administrator.

Jun 1
2019

Chinese Tesla Model 3 Price Crushes BMW 3 Series & Mercedes C-Class Prices

Tesla has just launched pricing and ordering for the Tesla Model 3 that will be made in the Shanghai Gigafactory. The 328,000 RMB ($47,475) price for the Standard Range Plus is before local incentives, and crushes fossil rivals in the same class and without somewhat similar specs, the BMW 3 Series and Mercedes C-Class (also both locally made in China).

Tesla Model 3 order page in China (text is auto-translated and may include errors) — Click to Zoom.

May 31
2019

Carmageddon Sinks Tesla’s Bonds

Tesla is like Cholesterol 😂…

Tesla has been steeped in chaos – and chaos is absolutely the opposite of what a complex manufacturing, distribution, and retail operation needs. Musk himself has sowed that chaos. And he relentlessly continues to sow it.

One of his recent antics was that he told employees in this email last week that the company would embark on a cost-cutting drive that would entail that “all expenses of any kind anywhere in the world, including parts, salary, travel expenses, rent, literally every payment that leaves our bank account must (be) reviewed” by the CFO, and that Musk himself would sign off on every 10th page of expenses.

The CFO and Musk will be busy reviewing and signing off on janitorial department purchases of cleaning materials and toilet paper. The hope is that this amount of work will keep Musk off Twitter, but those hopes too will be dashed.

May 31
2019

ADIFO: The hyper-agile, omnidirectional, supersonic flying saucer

At low speed, it operates like a quadcopter, at high speed, it’s a jet-propelled, highly efficient supersonic aircraft whose entire body acts as a low-drag wing. Those are the claims of the Romanian creators of this flying saucer that’s designed to offer unprecedented aerial agility across a broad range of speeds.

May 30
2019

NASA and MIT Debut Shape-Shifting Airplane Wing

A team from NASA and MIT has created a new type of airplane wing — and it could make air travel far more efficient.

In a paper published in the journal Smart Materials and Structures on Monday, the researchers describe how they built an airplane wing from hundreds of identical, lightweight cube-like structures, all bolted together and then covered with a thin polymer material.

The design allows the wing to change shape automatically, adjusting itself to whatever configuration is optimal for the current phase of flight — with one configuration for take-off, for example, and another for landing.

May 29
2019

The ‘Godfathers of AI’ win Turing Award

Self-driving cars, voice assistants, and facial recognition technology are just a few of the advancements made possible by Hinton, LeCun, and Bengio’s work.

The award, named after British mathematician Alan Turing, carries a $1 million prize, which the trio will split. Previous Turing Award winners include Tim Berners-Lee, best known for inventing the World Wide Web.

Hinton is currently a top AI researcher at Google. LeCun is now at Facebook, working as the company’s chief AI scientist. Bengio has remained in academia but has worked with companies such as AT&T, Microsoft, and IBM.

May 24
2019

See China’s Newly Unveiled Maglev Train

A 4.5-hour plane trip would reportedly take just 3.5 hours by maglev.

May 23
2019

Electromagnetic Propulsion Elevated Transportation System

The Create the Future Design Contest was launched in 2002 by the publishers of NASA Tech Briefs magazine to help stimulate and reward engineering innovation. The annual event has attracted more than 8,000 product design ideas from engineers, entrepreneurs, and students worldwide.