Toggle light / dark theme

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

What came before the Big Bang? Supercomputers may hold the answer

Scientists are rethinking the universe’s deepest mysteries using numerical relativity, complex computer simulations of Einstein’s equations in extreme conditions. This method could help explore what happened before the Big Bang, test theories of cosmic inflation, investigate multiverse collisions, and even model cyclic universes that endlessly bounce through creation and destruction.

In our lab we developed a novel nano-thermometer based on a superconducting quantum interference device (tSOT: SQUID on Tip thermometer) with a diameter of less than 50 nanometres that resides at the apex of a sharp pipette

This tool provides scanning cryogenic thermal sensing that is 4 orders of magnitude more sensitive than previous devices allowing the detection of a sub 1 μK temperature difference. Furthermore, it is non-contact and non-invasive and allows thermal imaging of very low intensity, nanoscale energy dissipation down to the fundamental Landauer limit of 40 femtowatts for continuous readout of a single qubit at one gigahertz at 4.2 kelvin.

Meta signs $10bn+ cloud deal with Google

Meta has signed a major cloud deal with Google, worth more than $10 billion.

First reported by The Information, the deal will see Meta using Google’s cloud computing services and spans a six-year period.

Sources told The Information that the deal is mostly for AI infrastructure. Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Meta and Google have long been rivals in online ads. This is not the first time in recent months that Google has signed a cloud contract with a company that is partially in competition with it.

Google Cloud signed a contract with OpenAI in June of this year, enabling the AI company to use its compute resources, including Google’s TPUs. Some of this is outsourced to CoreWeave.


Set to last six years, sources say.

New quantum navigation device uses atoms to measure acceleration in 3D

In a new study, physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have used a cloud of atoms chilled down to incredibly cold temperatures to simultaneously measure acceleration in three dimensions—a feat that many scientists didn’t think was possible.

The device, a new type of atom “interferometer,” could one day help people navigate submarines, spacecraft, cars and other vehicles more precisely.

“Traditional atom interferometers can only measure acceleration in a single dimension, but we live within a three-dimensional world,” said Kendall Mehling, a co-author of the new study and a graduate student in the Department of Physics at CU Boulder. “To know where I’m going, and to know where I’ve been, I need to track my acceleration in all three dimensions.”

The researchers published their paper, titled “Vector atom accelerometry in an optical lattice,” this month in the journal Science Advances. The team included Mehling; Catie LeDesma, a postdoctoral researcher in physics; and Murray Holland, professor of physics and fellow of JILA, a joint research institutebetween CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (More information about the new quantum GPS)


A new quantum device could one day help spacecraft travel beyond Earth’s orbit or aid submarines as they navigate deep under the ocean with more precision than.

HUGE: Elon’s “Macrohard” AI — His CRAZIEST Idea Ever

Questions to inspire discussion.

Industry Disruption.

🏢 Q: How might traditional companies be affected by AI simulations? A: Traditional firms like Microsoft could see their valuation drop by 50% if undercut by AI clones, while the tech industry may experience millions of jobs vanishing, potentially leading to recessions or increased inequality.

🤖 Q: What is the potential scale of AI company simulations? A: AI-simulated companies like “Macrohard” could become real entities, operating at a fraction of the cost of traditional companies and disrupting markets 10 times faster and bigger than the internet’s impact on retail.

Regulatory Landscape.

📊 Q: How might governments respond to AI-simulated companies? A: Governments may implement regulations on AI companies to slow innovation, potentially creating monopolies that regulators would later need to break up, further disrupting markets.

Modelling the Complexity of Human Skin In Vitro

The skin serves as an important barrier protecting the body from physical, chemical and pathogenic hazards as well as regulating the bi-directional transport of water, ions and nutrients. In order to improve the knowledge on skin structure and function as well as on skin diseases, animal experiments are often employed, but anatomical as well as physiological interspecies differences may result in poor translatability of animal-based data to the clinical situation. In vitro models, such as human reconstructed epidermis or full skin equivalents, are valuable alternatives to animal experiments. Enormous advances have been achieved in establishing skin models of increasing complexity in the past. In this review, human skin structures are described as well as the fast evolving technologies developed to reconstruct the complexity of human skin structures in vitro.

Hemoglobin’s antioxidant role in brain cells points to new therapeutic avenue

Hemoglobin, long celebrated for ferrying oxygen in red blood cells, has now been revealed to play an overlooked—and potentially game-changing—antioxidant role in the brain.

In such as (ALS), Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and aging, brain cells endure relentless damage from the aberrant (or excessive) (ROS). For decades, scientists have tried to neutralize ROS with antioxidant drugs, but most failed: they couldn’t penetrate the brain effectively, were unstable, or indiscriminately damaged healthy cells.

This new study, led by Director C. Justin Lee of the Center for Cognition and Sociality within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Daejeon, South Korea, set out to identify the brain’s own defenses against a particularly harmful form of ROS—hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The study has been published in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy.

/* */