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Jul 14, 2016

The code that took America to the moon was just published to GitHub, and it’s like a 1960s time capsule — By Keith Collins| Quartz

Posted by in categories: software, space

nasa2

“When programmers at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory set out to develop the flight software for the Apollo 11 space program in the mid-1960s, the necessary technology did not exist. They had to invent it.”

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Jul 14, 2016

Sirens of Titan: Flying Aerobot Drone Could Soar Over Saturn Moon — By Elizabeth Howell | Space.com

Posted by in categories: drones, space

winged-vehicle-titan-conception

“As the long-running Cassini mission enters its last year at Saturn, NASA is moving forward with an early-stage technology study to send a drone to its moon Titan.”

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Jul 14, 2016

Pokemon GO Wireless Headset

Posted by in category: augmented reality

Pokémon GO on HoloLens. Yes please.

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Jul 14, 2016

Synopsis: Making Hard Problems for Quantum Computers

Posted by in categories: computing, information science, quantum physics

Researchers have developed a computer algorithm that doesn’t solve problems but instead creates them for the purpose of evaluating quantum computers.

The desire for quantum computers stems from their potential to solve certain hard problems faster than classical computers. But those bragging rights haven’t actually been earned yet, as no experiment has shown this presumed speedup. Researchers from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, have devised an algorithm that generates extra hard problems that could offer quantum computers the chance to prove their worth.

The problems that the team focused on belong to the general class of optimization problems. The main example is the Ising model, which describes the interaction of a large number of spins within a lattice. The goal is to find the ground state, which is the orientation of spins that minimizes the interaction energy. The problem is computationally hard because there are many local minima (pseudo-ground-states) that can fool a search algorithm.

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Jul 14, 2016

New light harvesting potentials uncovered

Posted by in categories: materials, quantum physics

New options in harvesting light.


Significant new potentials for light harvesting through narrowing the bandgap of titania and graphene quantum dots have been uncovered by scientists.

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Jul 14, 2016

Navy to explore the next wave of RF: cyrogenic and quantum tech

Posted by in category: quantum physics

Very nice.


Out of the Fog and Hypres win contracts to develop cryogenic radio frequency systems and quantum memory technologies.

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Jul 14, 2016

The Noise at the Bottom of the Universe

Posted by in categories: information science, particle physics, quantum physics, space

Is search of the sound of silence.


To a physicist, perfect quiet is the ultimate noise. Silence your cellphone, still your thoughts, and muffle every kind of vibration, and you would still be left with quantum noise. It represents an indeterminacy deep within nature, bursts of static and inexplicable motions that cannot be gotten rid of, or made sense of. It seems devoid of meaning.

Considering how pervasive this noise is, you might presume that physicists would have a good explanation for it. But it remains one of the great unsolved problems in science. Quantum theory is silent not just on where the noise comes from, but on how exactly it enters the world. The theory’s defining equation, the Schrödinger equation, is completely deterministic. There is no noise in it at all. To explain why we observe quantum particles to be noisy, we need some additional principle.

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Jul 14, 2016

Elon Musk Warns that DARPA A.I. Hacking Challenge Will Lead to Skynet

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, Elon Musk, robotics/AI

He may or may not be joking.

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Jul 14, 2016

Terahertz amplifiers could open new frontiers in RF communications

Posted by in category: futurism

Very nice.


Researchers from Northrop Grumman, working with DARPA, have developed two different amplifiers capable of using the THz range of the spectrum, which could lead to a new range of high-speed, secure communications.

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Jul 14, 2016

You say you want a revolution: DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

DARPA’s self-repairing security system’s challenge.


In a few weeks, a town better known for events like the World Series of Poker will host the World Series of Hacking.

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