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In 1942 The Manhattan Project was established by the United States as part of a top-secret research and development (R&D) program to produce the first nuclear weapons. The project involved thousands of scientists, engineers, and other personnel who worked on different aspects of the project, including the development of nuclear reactors, the enrichment of uranium, and the design and construction of the bomb. The goal: to develop an atomic bomb before Germany did.

The Manhattan Project set a precedent for large-scale government-funded R&D programs. It also marked the beginning of the nuclear age and ushered in a new era of technological and military competition between the world’s superpowers.

Today we’re entering the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)—an era arguably just as important, if not more important, than the age of nuclear war. While the last few months might have been the first you’ve heard about it, many in the field would argue we’ve been headed in this direction for at least the last decade, if not longer. For those new to the topic: welcome to the future, you’re late.

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Several asteroids are set to dash past Earth in the coming days, according to a list released by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, close encounters that are almost certain to pass harmlessly and come days after the White House announced new plans to defend the planet against threats from space.

Two asteroids, one bus-sized and the other the size of a house, will make relatively close approaches to Earth on Wednesday, according to NASA’s Asteroid Watch Dashboard.

Three more, all approximately airplane-sized, are also set to whizz past Earth on Thursday, the agency said.

Three plane-sized asteroids—and one the size of a house—are set to pass close by Earth on Wednesday and Thursday, NASA said.

Continue reading “4 Large Asteroids Are Whizzing Towards Earth. Here’s What You Need To Know” | >

NASA’s plan to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon during the first crewed lunar flyby of the 21st century took one giant leap this week with the unveiling of four astronauts for the Artemis II mission.

In a news conference Monday at Ellington Field near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston the space agency announced the first black man, the first woman and the first Canadian on any crewed Moon mission—the agency’s first since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The Apollo 8-style Artemis 2 mission will see NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glove and Christina Hammock Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, embark on a 10-day trip around the Moon.

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After almost two years of waiting for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket to fly again, things are really starting to move quickly now, it seems.

The Super Heavy first stage booster section of Starship was moved to the launch site over the weekend and now the Federal Aviation Administration lists Monday, April 10 as the target launch date for Starship in its current Operations Plan Advisory for air traffic controllers.

The advisory also lists next Tuesday and Wednesday as potential backup launch dates.

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Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit has filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. after an eleventh-hour scramble to secure further funding failed, the satellite company announced on Tuesday, marking the end of a sudden spiral that followed a botched high-profile launch attempt out of Britain in January.

Virgin Orbit has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, documents show.

Virgin Orbit said it had failed to secure sufficient funding to stay in business and the decision comes less than a week after it laid off most of its staff and ceased operations.

Virgin Orbit, which laid off most of its staff last week, struggled to secure funding after a failed satellite launch from the U.K. in January.

Continue reading “Billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit Files For Bankruptcy After Failed Satellite Launch” | >

The off-world chopper flew to its highest altitude and speed on its 49th mission on the Red Planet.

NASA’s record-breaking Mars Ingenuity helicopter has soared to new heights and flown faster. The off-world helicopter has flown for almost two years, massively exceeding its original mission parameters.

On its latest flight, Sunday, April 2, Ingenuity flew to its highest altitude yet and faster than on any of its previous missions. The latest flight.

Ingenuity soars to new heights.

Continue reading “NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter breaks records once again” | >

The team was able to produce blur-free, high-resolution images of the universe by incorporating this AI algorithm.

Before reaching ground-based telescopes, cosmic light interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere. That’s why, the majority of advanced ground-based telescopes are located at high altitudes on Earth, where the atmosphere is thinner. The Earth’s changing atmosphere often obscures the view of the universe.

The atmosphere obstructs certain wavelengths as well as distorts the light coming from great distances. This interference may interfere with the accurate construction of space images, which is critical for unraveling the mysteries of the universe. The produced blurry images may obscure the shapes of astronomical objects and cause measurement errors.

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Researchers at MIT created Codon, which dramatically increases the speed of Python code by allowing users to run it as effectively as C or C++.

Python is one of the most popular computer languages, but it has a severe Achilles heel; it can be cumbersome compared to lower-level languages like C or C++. To rectify this, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) set out to change this through the development of Codon. This Python-based compiler allows users to write Python code that runs as efficiently as a program in C or C++.

Arsenii Palivoda/iStock.

Continue reading “MIT’s Codon compiler allows Python to ‘speak’ natively with computers” | >

It also says that it has a healthy pipeline for chips in the future.

Search engine giant Google has claimed that the supercomputers it uses to develop its artificial intelligence (AI) models are faster and more energy efficient than Nvidia Corporation’s. While processing power for most companies delving into the AI space comes from Nvidia’s chips, Google uses a custom chip called Tensor Processing Unit (TPU).

Google announced its Tensor chips during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when businesses from electronics to automotive faced the pinch of chip shortage.

AI-designed chips to further AI development

Continue reading “AI chip race: Google says its Tensor chips compute faster than Nvidia’s A100” | >

The resulting materials could be used for capturing greenhouse gases.

MIT researchers have used a computational model to identify about 10,000 possible metal-organic framework MOF structures that they classify as “ultrastable.” These states make them good candidates for applications such as converting methane gas to methanol.

“When people come up with hypothetical MOF materials, they don’t necessarily know beforehand how stable that material is,” said in a statement published on Tuesday Heather Kulik, an MIT associate professor of chemistry and chemical engineering and the senior author of the study.

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