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It just goes to show that one of the most potent weapons in science is the ability to keep an open, critical mind.

Two recent studies have confirmed that the “spooky action at a distance” that so upset Albert Einstein — the notion that two entangled particles separated by long distances can instantly affect each other — has been proven to work in a stunning array of different experimental setups.

One experiment closed two of the three loopholes in proofs of spooky action at a distance. Another found that quantum entanglement works over astonishingly large distances. And future tests are focused on making the final loophole as small as possible. [8 Ways You Can See Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in Real Life]

Overall, the new series of tests is simply confirming what physicists have long suspected.

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SpaceX received orders Friday from the US space agency to send astronauts to the International Space Station in the coming years, helping restore US access to space, NASA said.

The announcement was a formal step in a process that began earlier this year when Boeing was given the nod by NASA to send crew to the orbiting outpost by late 2017.

Both Boeing and SpaceX have received billions in seed money from NASA to restore American access to the ISS, after the US was retired in 2011.

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Chinese technology company Huawei has announced that its latest prototype battery fills up with power 10 times quicker than the ones in current smartphones. Huawei has been showing off the technology at the 56th Battery Symposium in Japan this week, where a 3,000mAh pack reached a 48 percent charge in just 5 minutes.

The lithium-ion batteries inside smartphones, tablets, and other similar gadgets have two main sections: an anode and a cathode. Electrons move from one section to the other while our devices are in use, and then back in the opposite direction as they are recharged.

Huawei says it has managed to bond special heteroatoms to the graphite molecules in the anode section of the battery to get this process moving faster, without decreasing energy density or battery life.

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Old post,but interesting…

If the holographic principle does indeed describe our universe, it could help resolve many inconsistencies between relativistic physics and quantum physics, including the black hole information paradox. It would also offer researchers a way to solve some very tough quantum problems using relatively simple gravitational equations. But before we can be sure that we’re living in the Matrix, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“We did this calculation using 3D gravitational theory and 2D quantum field theory, but the universe actually has three spatial dimensions plus time,” Grumiller said. “A next step is to generalize these considerations to include one higher dimension. There are also many other quantities that should correspond between gravitational theory and quantum field theory, and examining these correspondences is ongoing work.”

Beyond the theoretical considerations, there’s the entirely different matter of pulling back the illusion and experimentally observing the holographic nature of reality. As it happens, physicists at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab are now trying to do just that.

Continue reading “There Is Growing Evidence that Our Universe Is a Giant Hologram” | >

For some people the idea of being operated on by a robot might sound horrifying, particularly if there isn’t even a doctor in the room to check that everything is running smoothly. Surgery is in any case a risky business that few would undertake willingly if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, and it seems unlikely that the spectacle of an enormous machine with mechanical arms attached to surgical scalpels would reassure anyone about having to undergo an operation. However, the use of robotic surgery has spread rapidly in recent years and for some types of operations it is becoming the standard. While there is a lot of controversy surrounding the topic, many doctors see surgical robots as a vital tool to provide better medical care and lower the risks associated with surgery.

History of robotic surgery

The roots of robotic surgery go back to the mid-1980s, when a robotic surgical arm was first used to perform a neurosurgical biopsy. Two years later, the first robot-assisted laparoscopic (i.e. keyhole) operation was conducted, a cholecystectomy. The following years saw continued advances in the area of robotic surgery, which was used for a growing range of surgical procedures. One of the earliest robotic surgical systems to enter into general use was the ROBODOC system, which came on the market in the early 1990s and allowed surgeons conducting hip replacements to mill the femur with more precision that would have been conventionally possible.

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