The big mover in the CSIRO’s GenCost report was the plunging cost of battery storage. One major battery project may already be doing much better.
Google’s new 105-qubit quantum processor has surpassed a key milestone first proposed in 1995.
The researchers produced new materials with perovskite crystal structures and compared them with existing materials at the cell level, concluding that high efficiencies can only be achieved with lead perovskites. They then fabricated highly efficient demonstrators, such as a perovskite silicon tandem solar cell of more than 100 sq cm with screen-printed metallization.
The project also included the development of a scalable perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell that achieved a 31.6% power conversion efficiency, first announced in September. The Fraunhofer researchers used a combination of vapor deposition and wet-chemical deposition to ensure an even deposition of the perovskite layer on the textured silicon surface. “Close industrial cooperation is the next step in establishing this future technology in Europe,” said Professor Andreas Bett, coordinator of the project.
Oil and gas giant bp spins offshore wind interests into JV with another fossil major, in what the CEO describes as a “capital-light” approach to “an electrifying world.”
Mosasaurs are extinct marine lizards, spectacular examples of which were first discovered in 1766 near Maastricht in the Netherlands, fueling the rise of the field of vertebrate paleontology. Paleontologist Michael Polcyn presented the most comprehensive study to date on the early evolution and ecology of these extinct marine reptiles.
On 16 December, Polcyn will receive his Ph.D. from Utrecht University for his research into the evolution of the mosasaurs. Mosasaurs are a textbook example of macroevolution, the emergence of new and distinct groups of animals, above the level of species. Although they have been studied for centuries, new discoveries, novel research approaches, and the application of technology, are still teaching us about their relationships and behaviors, some of which continue to surprise us.
For example, through the use of detailed comparative anatomy aided by micro-CT scanning technology, we have gained a much better understanding of what group of lizards mosasaurs likely evolved from.
Google has unveiled a new chip which it claims takes five minutes to solve a problem that would currently take the world’s fastest super computers ten septillion – or-1 years – to complete.
The chip is the latest development in a field known as quantum computing — which is attempting to use the principles of particle physics to create a new type of mind-bogglingly powerful computer.
Continue reading “Google unveils ‘mind-boggling’ quantum computing chip | BBC News” »
US space company Virgin Galactic announced Thursday it is exploring the possibility of opening a new base in Italy, potentially bringing suborbital flights to tourists in Europe for the first time.
Founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, the company is currently in a two-year hiatus to upgrade its fleet, following seven commercial flights to the edge of space from its US base at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Virgin Galactic said it had signed an agreement with Italy’s ENAC civil aviation authority to study the feasibility of operating missions from Grottaglie Spaceport, located in the Puglia region of southern Italy.
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Will AI ever surpass human intelligence, discover new laws of physics, and solve the greatest mysteries of our universe?
Continue reading “Max Tegmark: Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence?” »
Exploiting the promise of recent advances in imitation learning for mobile manipulation will require the collection of large numbers of human-guided demonstrations. This paper proposes an open-source design for an inexpensive, robust, and flexible mobile manipulator that can support arbitrary arms, enabling a wide range of real-world household mobile manipulation tasks. Crucially, our design uses powered casters to enable the mobile base to be fully holonomic, able to control all planar degrees of freedom independently and simultaneously. This feature makes the base more maneuverable and simplifies many mobile manipulation tasks, eliminating the kinematic constraints that create complex and time-consuming motions in nonholonomic bases. We equip our robot with an intuitive mobile phone teleoperation interface to enable easy data acquisition for imitation learning.
Technology has shaped our civilization as it grew down the centuries, and since the industrial revolution, each new generation seems defined by some new technological revolution… So what will the next revolution be?
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Continue reading “The Next Technological Revolution: What’s Coming?” »
