Lifeboat Foundation

Reaction Engines is firming up plans to build a fighter engine-size ground demonstrator of its reusable hypersonic propulsion system.

SABRE is at heart a rocket engine designed to power aircraft directly into space (single-stage to orbit) to allow reliable, responsive and cost effective space access, and in a different configuration to allow aircraft to cruise at high speeds (five times the speed of sound) within the atmosphere.

If the rocket for space is not used then the US air force could use Skylon and SABRE engine technology to develop a 4000 mph hypersonic fighter plane or spy plane.

Continue reading “Fighter engine-size hypersonic ground demonstrator construction plans moving ahead” »

Lockheed Martin has received a $147.3 million cost-sharing contract from the DARPA to conduct research as part of a prototype agreement for the Tactical Boost Glide program.

The Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) program is a joint DARPA/U.S. Air Force (USAF) effort that aims to develop and demonstrate technologies to enable future air-launched, tactical-range hypersonic boost glide systems. In a boost glide system, a rocket accelerates its payload to high speeds. The payload then separates from the rocket and glides unpowered to its destination.

Continue reading “DARPA gives Lockheed $147.3 million to research Hypersonic Tactical Boost Glide Missiles” »

Berkeley engineers have built the first dust-sized, wireless sensors that can be implanted in the body, bringing closer the day when a Fitbit-like device could monitor internal nerves, muscles or organs in real time.

Neural dust researchers have already shrunk them to a 1 millimeter cube – about the size of a large grain of sand – contain a piezoelectric crystal that converts ultrasound vibrations from outside the body into electricity to power a tiny, on-board transistor that is in contact with a nerve or muscle fiber. A voltage spike in the fiber alters the circuit and the vibration of the crystal, which changes the echo detected by the ultrasound receiver, typically the same device that generates the vibrations. The slight change, called backscatter, allows them to determine the voltage.

Continue reading “In vivo work with neural dust using a wireless and scalable ultrasonic backscatter system for powering and communicating the implanted bioelectronics” »

The team’s article in Nature Photonics says the demonstration ‘constitutes a milestone towards a global quantum internet,’ as it is one of the longest distances over which quantum teleportation has been achieved using a fibre-optic network in this way.

In a “major step” toward practical quantum networking, researchers at the University of Calgary have successfully demonstrated the teleportation of a light particle’s properties between their lab and the city’s downtown area, six kilometres away.

“What is remarkable about this is that this information transfer happens in what we call a disembodied manner,” said physics professor Wolfgang Tittel, whose team’s work was published this week in the journal Nature Photonics.

Continue reading “Calgary researchers teleport light particle 6.2 kilometres, raising hopes for ‘quantum internet’” »

3D print circuits with Electrifi Conductive 3D Printer filament. With a resitivity of 0.006 Ω cm, Electrifi is the only 3D printer filament on the market that can truly be called conductive. The filament extrudes at a temperatures between 140–160 ºC, with a recommended printing speed of 15–45 mm/s. Electrifi is currently available with a diameter of 1.75 mm. Please see our website for detailed tutorials on how to use Electrifi in a 3D printed electronics project. Due to the high conductivity of the filament, it can be used to produce many different types of circuits, including LED signs, LED matrix display, Bluetooth lamps, interfacing different types sensors with Arduino, electronic games, gaming controllers, and digital music devices to name just a few examples. If the circuit can be run with resistor of 10 ohm or greater, it can likely be made with Electrifi. Electrifi can also be used to make EMI/RF shielding, RF antennas, RF Filters, and other custom RF components. Electrifi is shipped in a vacuum-sealed package with a desiccant packet. The filament should be stored in a cool, dry environment, and exposure to moisture should be minimized.

Definitely many benefits to 4D including manufacturing, tech devices, and energy.

A team of researchers has uncovered the key to what they call 4D printing – and solar energy may be one of the top 2 fields to benefit from the great invention.

Continue reading “4D Printing: Shaping The Future of Solar Cells” »

QC will need to be on any IT, Security, and/ or tech connected product future state roadmap that spans a 5 + year period because the planning, funding, change management (retooling of resources), etc. will take time to plan & prepare not to mention all those internal & external dependencies and their own efforts around QC in the future because it truly would stink to see an AT&T, or HomeDepot, etc. that invested in their own QC compliant infrastructure suddenly attacked because an external source that they pull from is not QC.

The encryption we take for granted as being uncrackable would have a limited shelf-life in the quantum age, says a security expert.

My suggestion; don’t be one of those companies and governments in the next 5yrs that waits until the 9th hour meanwhile others planned, invested, and executed properly so they’re not exposed like you are.

The race to create new cryptographic standards before super-fast quantum computers are built that can rip apart data protected by existing encryption methods isn’t going fast enough, two senior Canadian officials have warned a security conference.

“I think we are already behind,” Scott Jones, deputy chief of IT security at the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), responsible for securing federal information systems, told the fourth annual international workshop on quantum-safe cryptography in Toronto on Monday.

Continue reading “Prepare for threat of quantum computing to encrypted data, Canadian conference told” »

Random numbers have become important in daily life, given how they are at the heart of e-commerce and secure communications and also form the basis of statistical methods of solving problems in engineering and economics. And yet, truly random numbers are difficult to generate. A series of seemingly random numbers can still show patterns, and this can lead to frauds in e-commerce or errors in computations. Carlos Abellani, Waldimar Amaya, David Domenech, Pascual Munoz, Jose Capmany, Stefano Longhi, Morgan W Michell and Valerio Pruneri from the Institutes of Science and Technology and the Institute of Research and Advanced Studies at Barcelona, Polytechnic University and the firm, VLC Photonica, at Valencia and the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology at Milan, describe in the Optical Society’s journal, Optica, a method of using quantum effects to generate truly random numbers with the help of a miniature device that can be embedded in a mobile phone. The operative quality of random numbers is that those in a series cannot be predicted from the preceding ones, nor even any of the digits that appear in them.

Once a random number has been exchanged by a pair of correspondents, they can base a code on this number and keep their exchanges confidential. Devices like computers, which handle e-commerce transactions, thus routinely generate hundreds of large random numbers. The numbers generated by a complex formula are based on a “seed” number to get started, and do pass many statistical tests of randomness. The numbers, however, are not truly random and if a third party should guess the “seed” that was used, he/she could work out the numbers and impersonate others in transactions. Real random numbers are created not by a formula but by physical processes, like the last digits of the number of grains in a handful of sand, the throw of honest dice or even the last digit of the daily stock market index.