Toggle light / dark theme

The list of uniquely human achievements has just become shorter: Google’s AI has defeated the reigning 3-time European Go champion.


DeepMind’s program AlphaGo, masters the ancient game of Go. First ever program to defeat a human professional player!

Read more

In a paper published in Nature on 28th January 2016, we describe a new approach to computer Go. This is the first time ever that a computer program “AlphaGo” has defeated a human professional player.

The game of Go is widely viewed as an unsolved “grand challenge” for artificial intelligence. Games are a great testing ground for inventing smarter, more flexible algorithms that have the ability to tackle problems in ways similar to humans. The first classic game mastered by a computer was noughts and crosses (also known as tic-tac-toe) in 1952. But until now, one game has thwarted A.I. researchers: the ancient game of Go.

Despite decades of work, the strongest computer Go programs only played at the level of human amateurs. AlphaGo has won over 99% of games against the strongest other computer Go programs. It also defeated the human European champion by 5–0 in tournament games, a feat previously believed to be at least a decade away. In March 2016, AlphaGo will face its ultimate challenge: a 5-game challenge match in Seoul against the legendary Lee Sedol—the top Go player in the world over the past decade.

This video tells the story so far…

Truly beautiful stuff! How far we’ve come from going to a dimly lit, coin op arcade filled with venerable games like PAC-Man and Afterburner! The Singularity accelerates every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day,. Being alive in this era of progress is truly a gift.


This is “Animation/FX Reel” by blurstudioinc on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who lovethem.

Read more

The Antipode is the second hypersonic jet by Canadian inventor and engineer, Charles Bombardier. The Antipode design is a 10-seat private jet that uses rocket boosters to take off, detaches the rockets at altitude of 12km, fires its hypersonic engines to hit speeds of Mach 24 (20,000 km/h), and gets you from New York to London in 11 minutes.

To cool the jet from the heat of hypersonic travel.

It would channel some of the air, flowing at supersonic speed, through a nozzle located on the nose of the aircraft, producing a counterflowing jet of air that would induce LPM (a novel aerodynamic phenomenon called ‘long penetration mode), which would in turn lead to a drop in surface temperature due to aeroheating and a reduction of the shockwave and noise caused by breaking the sound barrier.

Read more

Another Quantum Breakthrough through ultra- low temp nanoelectronics- Sub-millikelvin nanoelectronic circuits and is another step on the way to develop new quantum technologies including quantum computers and sensors.


The first ever measurement of the temperature of electrons in a nanoelectronic device a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero was demonstrated in a joint research project performed by Lancaster University, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, and Aivon Ltd.

The team managed to make the electrons in a circuit on a silicon chip colder than had previously been achieved.

Dr Rich Haley, Head of Ultra Low Temperature Physics at Lancaster, said: “This is a notable achievement in that the team has finally broken through the 4 millikelvin barrier, which has been the record in such structures for over 15 years.”

And, another breakthrough for Quantum by Russian Scientists. Russian scientists have developed a new way to solve a key problem with cooling plasmonic components, which makes optical chips and super-fast light-based computers a definite possibility. https://lnkd.in/b9kuiSa


Russian scientists discover how to cool plasmonic components to make light-based transistors possible.

Read more