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May 16, 2022

Artificial intelligence powered an autonomous cargo ship for an entire 500 miles

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

As transportation becomes autonomous, maritime navigation is also set for a major change. Systems like Orca AI will help in rapid transitions.

May 16, 2022

Zero-Carbon Flat Glass Made for the First Time

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

French manufacturer used 100% recycled material, green energy.

May 16, 2022

A greater world is possible! Adriano V. Autino presents his book

Posted by in categories: ethics, futurism

Adriano V. Autino presents his book “A greater world is possible!”

Mon, May 16 at 2 PM CDT.


Interested.

May 16, 2022

Nordic Unmanned to acquire Belgian drone-in-a-box company DroneMatrix

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI

With drone-in-a-box (DiaB) solutions emerging as a growth segment within the drone industry, Norway-based Nordic Unmanned has entered into an acquisition agreement with DiaB specialist DroneMatrix.

This partnership will enable both companies to scale their commercial offerings through new services and solutions.

May 16, 2022

Musk Considers Indonesia Trip to Explore Possible Investments

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel, sustainability

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is considering a visit to Indonesia to explore investment opportunities in the resource-rich Southeast Asia country.

The chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the rocket manufacturer’s site in Boca Chica, Texas, on Saturday, during which Widodo extended an invite. “Hopefully in November, thank you for the invitation,” Musk said, according to a statement released by Widodo’s office.

May 16, 2022

Our Reality May Only Be Half of a Pair of Interacting Worlds

Posted by in categories: mathematics, physics

Physicists sometimes come up with bizarre stories that sound like science fiction. Yet some turn out to be true, like how the curvature of space and time described by Einstein was eventually confirmed by astronomical measurements. Others linger on as mere possibilities or mathematical curiosities.

May 16, 2022

A Flip of Earth’s Magnetic Poles 42,000 Years Ago May Have Led to Mass Extinctions

Posted by in categories: climatology, existential risks

A new study is revealing that a reversal in the Earth’s magnetic poles 42,000 to 41,000 years ago may have led to environmental crises that resulted in mass extinctions. The period is called the Laschamps excursion and the research used precise carbon dating obtained from ancient tree fossils to study its effects.

The team details how they created a precise radiocarbon record around the time of the “Laschamps geomagnetic reversal about 41,000 years ago from the rings of New Zealand swamp kauri trees.”

“This record reveals a substantial increase in the carbon-14 content of the atmosphere culminating during the period of weakening magnetic field strength preceding the polarity switch.” The team concluded that the “geomagnetic field minimum caused substantial changes in atmospheric ozone concentration that drove synchronous global climate and environmental” with their model investigating the consequences of this event.

May 16, 2022

The UK’s First Autonomous Passenger Bus Started Road Tests This Week

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

The steering wheel, gas, and brakes that safety drivers will use if they need to take over are separate from the system the buses use to navigate autonomously. During the initial two-week testing period, buses will run without passengers, but the companies involved are aiming to have riders on board by summer.

The self-driving software made by Fusion Processing, called CAVstar for “connected and autonomous vehicles,” isn’t limited to radar, lidar, or cameras, but rather integrates all three. The buses are clearly marked as autonomous so nearby drivers are aware that a computer’s running the show. The question is, how much will this impact drivers’ behavior and relevant driving decisions? Would you feel less rude cutting off a driverless bus? More obliged to let it pass you? Or just sort of confused by the whole situation?

Each bus can carry 36 passengers, and the number of planned trips per day mean the autonomous buses could move up to 10,000 passengers a week. The project’s leaders anticipate the self-driving buses reducing average trip time and improving schedule reliability of the route. This sounds like it’ll mostly be a good thing, but what will happen when, say, an elderly or disabled passenger needs some extra time to get on or off the bus?

May 16, 2022

Canadian Telescope Delivers Deepest-Ever Radio View of Cosmic Web

Posted by in category: space

Data from the CHIME radio observatory are a milestone in the quest to discover the hidden origins of universal structure.

May 16, 2022

Laser Pulses for Ultrafast Signal Processing Could Make Computers a Million Times Faster

Posted by in categories: computing, mobile phones, particle physics

Simulating complex scientific models on the computer or processing large volumes of data such as editing video material takes considerable computing power and time. Researchers from the Chair of Laser Physics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and a team from the University of Rochester in New York have demonstrated how the speed of fundamental computing operations could be increased in the future to up to a million times faster using laser pulses. Their findings were published on May 11, 2022, in the journal Nature.

The computing speed of today’s computer and smartphone processors is given by field-effect transistors. In the competition to produce faster devices, the size of these transistors is constantly decreased to fit as many together as possible onto chips. Modern computers already operate at the breathtaking speed of several gigahertz, which translates to several billion computing operations per second. The latest transistors measure only 5 nanometers (0.000005 millimeters) in size, the equivalent of not much more than a few atoms. There are limits to how far chip manufacturers can go and at a certain point, it won’t be possible to make transistors any smaller.

Physicists are working hard to control electronics with light waves. The oscillation of a light wave takes approximately one femtosecond, which is one-millionth of one billionth of a second. Controlling electrical signals with light could make the computers of the future over a million times faster, which is the aim of petahertz signal processing or light wave electronics.