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Dec 13, 2022

Plasma Propulsion Discovery Could Herald a ‘New Era of Space Exploration’

Posted by in category: space travel

Researchers say they may have discovered the solution to a problem that has long hindered progress with a novel form of plasma propulsion that could one day carry humans to distant planets, and potentially launch a new era of space exploration.

The helicon double-layer thruster (HDLT) is a prototype plasma thruster propulsion system that works by injecting gas into an open-ended source tube, where radio frequency AC power produced by an antenna surrounding it electromagnetically ionizes the gas. Within this highly charged plasma, a low-frequency electromagnetic helicon wave is excited by the antenna’s electromagnetic field, further heating the plasma.

Such “magnetic nozzle” thrusters accelerate the plasma they produce to generate thrust for spacecraft, representing a form of electric propulsion with several potential applications in spacecraft design. However, while plasma flows that occur naturally within magnetic fields are often released or “detached”—like when coronal ejections erupt from the Sun—getting plasmas to behave in the same way in the laboratory is more challenging.

Dec 13, 2022

Game Journalists Might Lose Their Job to AI

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

This is the greatest AI writer of All Time.

Merch https://moistglobal.com/

Continue reading “Game Journalists Might Lose Their Job to AI” »

Dec 13, 2022

Australian artists accuse popular AI imaging app of stealing content, call for stricter copyright laws

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Australian artists say Lensa, the app that uses artificial intelligence to generate self-portraits, is stealing their content and are calling for stricter copyright laws that keep up with AI-generated art.

But the parent company behind the app has defended its use of images, saying Lensa learns to create portraits just as a human would – by learning different artistic styles.

Dec 13, 2022

The Odds of Life and Intelligence

Posted by in categories: alien life, evolution

Click on photo to start video.

If we re-ran Earth’s clock, would life arise again? Would another civilization eventually evolve? Astrobiology is faced with trying to contextualize our place in the Universe using just a single data point. But even a single data point contains information. The key to unlocking it is a careful understanding of the selection biases at play and intricacies of Bayesian statistics. Today, we’re thrilled to present to you our explainer video of a new research paper led by Prof David Kipping that provides a direct quantification of the odds of life and intelligence on Earth-like worlds, based on our own chronology. Presented & Written by Prof. David Kipping.

This video is based on research conducted at the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, New York. You can now support our research program directly here: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support.

Previous episodes to catch up on:
► “Watching the End of the World”: https://youtu.be/p9e8qNNe3L0
► “Why We Could Be Alone”: https://youtu.be/PqEmYU8Y_rI

Continue reading “The Odds of Life and Intelligence” »

Dec 13, 2022

Net gain in fusion energy reported

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has today confirmed the achievement of “fusion ignition” at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) – a major scientific breakthrough, many decades in the making, which could pave the way to near-limitless clean power.

On 5th December, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted the first controlled experiment in history to reach this milestone, also known as scientific energy breakeven, meaning it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it. This first-of-its-kind feat will provide invaluable insights into the fusion energy process, which scientists have been attempting to develop for nearly a century.

Inside the target chamber of LLNL’s National Ignition Facility, 192 laser beams delivered more than 2 million joules of ultraviolet energy to a tiny fuel pellet to create the fusion ignition. These lasers heated the capsule to 100,000,000°C – more than six times hotter than the Sun’s core, and compressed it to more than 100 billion times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere. Under these unimaginable forces, the capsule would have imploded on itself, forcing its hydrogen atoms to fuse and release energy.

Dec 13, 2022

Chemists create quantum dots at room temperature using lab-designed protein

Posted by in categories: biological, quantum physics

Nature uses 20 canonical amino acids as building blocks to make proteins, combining their sequences to create complex molecules that perform biological functions.

But what happens with the sequences not selected by nature? And what possibilities lie in constructing entirely new sequences to make novel (de novo) proteins bearing little resemblance to anything in nature?

Continue reading “Chemists create quantum dots at room temperature using lab-designed protein” »

Dec 13, 2022

Experimental skin cancer vaccine shows promising early results

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The effort is the first to show that a cancer vaccine using messenger RNA may be effective.

Dec 13, 2022

Theory claims to offer the first ‘evidence’ our Universe is a hologram

Posted by in categories: holograms, quantum physics, space

Year 2017 face_with_colon_three


While theories of holographic universes have been around since the 1990s, the latest study, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, contains the first proof, the researchers say.

To find the ‘evidence’, the researchers developed models of the holographic Universe that can be tested by peering back in time as far as 13 billion years, at the furthest reaches of the observable Universe. These models depend on the theory of quantum gravity, a theory that challenges the accepted version of classical gravity. The holographic principle says gravity comes from thin, vibrating strings which are all holograms of a flat, 2D Universe.

Continue reading “Theory claims to offer the first ‘evidence’ our Universe is a hologram” »

Dec 13, 2022

Europe’s fastest supercomputer is now connected to a quantum computer

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, supercomputing

A quantum computer has been connected to Europe’s fastest supercomputer. It may be a step towards a new type of computing that combines traditional and quantum computers to quickly solve complex problems.

The promise of quantum computers is that they will eventually complete calculations that are impossible for the most powerful conventional computers. Though many researchers are working on perfecting quantum computers, many are also suggesting that existing, imperfect quantum computers could be more useful if connected to traditional supercomputers.

Dec 13, 2022

Physicists Say New Breakthrough Proves Fusion Power Is Possible

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, physics

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory claim to have achieved the seemingly impossible: generate more energy with a fusion reaction than they put into it, potentially paving the way for a truly environmentally friendly and safe source of power.

Their experiment, which involved using the “world’s largest and highest energy laser system” at Livermore’s National Ignition Facility to blast light at small capsules of deuterium-tritium fuel, generated 20 percent more energy than the amount required to power the system.

Despite the modest energy output — the system generated enough power to boil around two to three kettles — the researchers are boldly predicting that it could represent a major turning point in the quest to turn fusion energy into a reality.