Toggle light / dark theme

Additional insights on QSS planned efforts; and (as with any government program) there is more to this program than these insights.


While China’s quantum science satellite (QSS) project is part of the Strategic Priority Programme on Space Science, the country’s first space exploration programme intended purely for scientific research, its experiments have significant military implications.

By Michael Raska

On August 16, 2016 China launched the world’s first quantum communications experiment satellite into orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert. The small satellite, recently named Micius after an ancient Chinese philosopher, is tasked to establish a hack-proof communication line – a quantum key distribution network, while performing a series of quantum entanglement experiments in space for the first time.

Mercedes-Benz Vans and drone tech startup Matternet have created a concept car, or as they’re calling it a Vision Van, that could change the way small packages are delivered across short distances.

The Vision Van’s rooftop serves as a launch and landing pad for Matternet’s new, Matternet M2 drones.

The Matternet M2 drones, which are autonomous, can pick up and carry a package of 4.4 pounds across 12 miles of sky on a single battery charge in real world conditions.

Read more

Silicon Valley, or the Greater Bay Area, is the 18th largest economy in the world, more than half the size of Canada’s economy and bigger than Switzerland, Saudi Arabia or Turkey. This is because the region has become the world leader in research and development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, software and virtual reality.

“Software is eating the world,” said Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen famously in 2011. It was controversial but prescient.

Five years later, software-driven machines and drones perform surgery, write news stories, compose music, translate, analyze, wage war, guard, listen, speak and entertain. The world’s biggest box office hits — animated films such as “Frozen” or special effects in Hollywood blockbusters like “Star Wars” — are made using software.

Read more

In people with Alzheimer’s disease, a new investigational drug can dramatically reduce the amount of amyloid beta plaque, the tangled clumps of proteins that form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, according to a new early study of the drug.

The drug works by spurring the immune system to recognize and clear the plaques.

“We believe that’s a hint of efficacy,” study co-author Dr. Alfred Sandrock, a neurologist and an executive vice president at Biogen, said during a news briefing. “We believe that needs to be confirmed with further studies.” Biogen is the Cambridge, Massachusetts, company that funded the trial and applied to patent the drug. [10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Brain].

Read more

A new technique uses the curious physical laws of the nano-scale itself to “program” nanobots. Welcome to the future of nanotechnology.

Nanorobotics has long been touted as one of the most promising “miracle technologies” of the future. But one of the fundamental problems with such extreme miniaturization is how to “program” nanobots—after all, you can’t very well shrink computer circuitry to fit within nanometer-scale technology.

But now, two researchers, Joseph Wang of UC San Diego and Jennifer Balazs of the University of Pittsburgh, may have found an ingenious way to circumvent this problem. Forget computer controls and artificial intelligence programming—let the laws of physics at the nano-scale do all the programming for you.

Read more