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Oct 23, 2021

The 7 coolest electric cars coming soon, from Aptera’s solar three-wheeler to Canoo’s pickup

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, sustainability, transportation

Aptera says you’ll never need to charge its solar-powered three-wheeler. Lucid’s Air Pure sedan aims straight at Tesla. And many more are on the way.


Facebook outlines ambitions for augmented reality glasses.

Oct 23, 2021

Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, and remember everything you do

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, robotics/AI

Facebook is pouring a lot of time and money into augmented reality, including building its own AR glasses with Ray-Ban. Right now, these gadgets can only record and share imagery, but what does the company think such devices will be used for in the future?

A new research project led by Facebook’s AI team suggests the scope of the company’s ambitions. It imagines AI systems that are constantly analyzing peoples’ lives using first-person video; recording what they see, do, and hear in order to help them with everyday tasks. Facebook’s researchers have outlined a series of skills it wants these systems to develop, including “episodic memory” (answering questions like “where did I leave my keys?”) and “audio-visual diarization” (remembering who said what when).

Oct 23, 2021

If you ever wanted to help find new planets, now’s your chance

Posted by in category: space

Scientists ask the public for help in figuring out which signals are real.

Oct 23, 2021

NASA Plans February Moon Launch With Giant Rocket

Posted by in category: space travel

A flight of the Space Launch System and Orion capsule without astronauts aboard is planned for early next year, a first, long-delayed step toward returning astronauts to the moon’s surface.

Oct 23, 2021

A Vast “Magnetic Tunnel” May Surround Earth and Our Entire Solar System

Posted by in categories: physics, space

A University of Toronto astronomer’s research suggests the solar system is surrounded by a magnetic tunnel that can be seen in radio waves.

Jennifer West, a research associate at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, is making a scientific case that two bright structures seen on opposite sides of the sky – previously considered to be separate – are actually connected and are made of rope-like filaments. The connection forms what looks like a tunnel around our solar system.

The data results of West’s research have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Oct 23, 2021

Something Really Wants our Attention. One Object Released 1,652 Fast Radio Bursts in 47 Days

Posted by in category: space

Researchers working with the 500-Meter FAST telescope in China reported 1,652 fast radio bursts in 47 days coming from a single source.


The energetic phenomena known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are one of the greatest cosmic mysteries today. These mysterious flashes of light are visible in the radio wave part of the spectrum and usually last only a few milliseconds before fading away forever. Since the first FRB was observed in 2,007 astronomers have looked forward to the day when instruments of sufficient sensitivity would be able to detect them regularly.

Continue reading “Something Really Wants our Attention. One Object Released 1,652 Fast Radio Bursts in 47 Days” »

Oct 23, 2021

NASA Completes Stacking of Next-Gen Rocket, Revealing an Absolute Beast

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

Earlier this month D-Wave Systems, the quantum computing pioneer that has long championed quantum annealing-based quantum computing (and sometimes taken.

Oct 23, 2021

D-Wave Embraces Gate-Based Quantum Computing; Charts Path Forward

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

Earlier this month D-Wave Systems, the quantum computing pioneer that has long championed quantum annealing-based quantum computing (and sometimes taken heat for that approach), announced it was expanding into gate-based quantum computing.

Surprised? Perhaps we shouldn’t be. Spun out of the University of British Columbia in 1,999 D-Wave initially targeted gate-based quantum computing and discovered how hard it would be to develop. The company strategy morphed early on.

“I joined in 2005 when the company was first transitioning from a gate-model focus to quantum annealing focus,” recalled Mark Johnson, now vice president of quantum technologies and systems products. “There was still this picture that we wanted to find the most direct path to providing valuable quantum applications and we felt that quantum annealing was the was the way to do that. We felt the gate model was maybe 20 years away.”

Oct 23, 2021

Physicists Created a Supernova Reaction on Earth Using a Radioactive Beam

Posted by in categories: cosmology, physics

For the first time, physicists have been able to directly measure one of the ways exploding stars forge the heaviest elements in the Universe.

By probing an accelerated beam of radioactive ions, a team led by physicist Gavin Lotay of the University of Surrey in the UK observed the proton-capture process thought to occur in core-collapse supernovae.

Not only have scientists now seen how this happens in detail, the measurements are allowing us to better understand the production and abundances of mysterious isotopes called p-nuclei.

Oct 23, 2021

Restaurants prep for long-term labor crunch by turning to robots to work the fryer, shuttle food to tables

Posted by in categories: business, food, robotics/AI

Ron Hetrick, a labor economist at EMSI and one of the report’s authors, said that as a whole the industry is not yet able to bring robotics in at a meaningful level. But future restaurant business models will continue to evolve as labor challenges remain. He expects business models could change so that the amount of service customers need drops.

“You will probably lose out on the amount of restaurants that you can go sit in,” Hetrick said.

Miso’s Bell said that software engineers are always in high demand, but the company is facing “normal challenges” in terms of worker availability. The current supply chain crunch is more of an immediate concern.