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And it looks a little creepy.

Roboticists at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) strapped a fully functioning jetpack onto their humanoid robot, called iRonCub, a report from IEEE Spectrum reveals.

While several outlets have unsurprisingly drawn comparisons to Iron Man, the truth looks far scarier, and like something out of an as-yet unmade horror movie.

In the same configuration as Gravity Industries’ famous Iron Man-like jetpack design, the iRonCub robot was equipped with four jet engines, giving it the ability to fly. Tests are ongoing, but let’s just say, the team at IIT have struggled at times to keep their robot from igniting, and even exploding, due to the exhaust from the engines.

Continue reading “A Synthetic Humanoid Robot Might Soon Fly Thanks to Iron-Man Jetpacks” | >

And it can go faster than five times the speed of sound.

A team of researchers in China has built and tested a prototype hypersonic flight engine based on a design that was scrapped by NASA over 20 years ago, according to a report from the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

The prototype itself might not lead to a production version of hypersonic aircraft. Still, in a paper in the Journal of Propulsion Technology, the team behind the machine said “understanding its work mechanism can provide important guidance to hypersonic plane and engine development.”

NASA’s scrapped X-47C program is revived The original design was proposed by Ming Han Tang, a former chief engineer of NASA’s hypersonic program in the late 1990s. Tang’s Two-Stage Vehicle (TSV) X-plane design was at the center of the Boeing Manta X-47C program. However, before the program could verify the viability of the design, it was terminated by the U.S. government due to its high costs as well as a series of technical issues.

Continue reading “China’s New Hypersonic Aircraft Is Based on a Rejected NASA Design” | >

And the company is still building prototypes.

As we patiently wait for the Cybertruck to be rolled out, a Recreational Vehicle (RV) attachment designed to convert Tesla’s electric pickup into a camper vehicle has caught the attention of the public. Unveiled earlier this year, the RV attachment called Cyberlandr has gathered over 2,000 pre-orders worth $100 million, its makers Stream It Inc., claim.

Earlier in May, we had reported that the Cyberlandr had bagged over 1,000 pre-orders in the initial 15 days of its launch. These were still early days and excitement about the new product was high. However, like the Cybertruck, this unofficial accompaniment has also continued to retain customer interest and managed to double its orders before the end of the year.

This might still be a small step since the company has a conservative demand estimate of 10,000 units in 2022. According to the details provided on the crowdfunding website, Start Engine, Stream It’s pre-orders deposits vary from $100 to $5,000. However, the company is looking to shake up the RV industry that is using outdated technology and offers poorly constructed options.

Full Story:

Continue reading “The RV Attachment for Cybertruck Now Has 0 Million Worth in Pre-Orders” | >

And it can be used on any aircraft that uses electric propulsion.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded a company called Electric Sky to build a prototype for a wireless charger for its drone swarms.

The concept of wireless power has been around for many years now, and innovators have used different techniques such as lasers and microwaves, to name a few. The most common complaint of these techniques, however, is that the charging gets weaker as the distance between the transmitter and the receiver increases. Seattle-based Electric Sky has proposed a solution that addresses this issue.

A brand new wireless charging technology The company calls its technology, Whisper Beam, the electromagnetic equivalent of a whispering gallery. As the company’s CEO Robert Millman explains in the press release, “In a whispering gallery a single listener across the room can hear the speaker but no one else can, not even people standing directly between the speaker and listener. The sound is too weak for them to hear.”

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Continue reading “DARPA Is Working on A New Wireless Tech to Charge Drone Swarms Seamlessly” | >

I was recently interviewed by Magda Gacyk, San Francisco-based correspondent for Wyborcza, the most prestigious daily newspaper in Poland (akin to New York Times in the U.S.) and her article, that can be loosely translated “Prophecies of the Tech Spirituality: A New Gospel of Silicon Valley,” appeared in the last Saturday issue of November. Here’s our conversation…

#CyberSpirituality #SiliconValley #Singularity #Metaverse #Theogenesis #Cybergods #Cybertheism

“I do believe we are in the midst of a transition — intimated by the Internet — towards a more collective thinking, where the individual…

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How did NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover pick its exact landing spot? Believe it or not, the Mars rover decided precisely where to land just moments before it touched down. It’s thanks to the work of engineers like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Swati Mohan and new technology called Terrain…

Mars rover pick its exact landing spot? Believe it or not, the Mars rover decided precisely where to land just moments before it touched down. It’s thanks to the work of engineers like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Swati Mohan and new technology called Terrain Relative Navigation.

When NASA decides to send a rover to Mars, a whole group of experts gets together to figure out where it needs to go for the best science for that mission. Perseverance’s mission was to find the signs of past life on Mars. So, all the experts got together and picked Jezero crater.

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It’s long been known that exposure to radiation damages DNA, but a new study has found an additional risk for astronauts: DNA replication is more prone to errors in microgravity.

Scientists tested whether enzymes accurately copy DNA in cells during microgravity — the weightlessness produced during the freefall of a jet on a parabolic flight pattern. When the so-called “vomit comet” descends more than 2 miles in 20 seconds, the near-weightlessness replicates conditions in space. Accurate DNA replication in space is crucial for astronauts and the future of space travel.

“So-called DNA polymerases are essential enzymes that copy and repair DNA. Inevitably, they aren’t perfect: even under optimal conditions, they sometimes make mistakes. Here, we show that DNA polymerases derived from the bacterium E. coli are considerably more prone to errors under microgravity, such as occurs in space,” said Aaron Rosenstein of the University of Toronto, corresponding author of the study published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.

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What the discovery of alien life means for our human society. For more info, see.

Ready or not, this discovery is likely to happen soon. In anticipation of discovering alien life, conferences have been held on what such a discovery would mean for humanity. But how would we as humans react to this discovery? That reaction would depend on how advanced the alien life is and whether it would be considered a danger to us. Let´s start with the possibility that we find microbial life on another planet. In a seminal paper published in Frontiers of Psychology, a team of scientists led by Jung Kwon from Arizona State University reported that people would react more positively than negatively to discovering alien life. They partially based their findings on how people reacted to the announcement of fossil life in the Martian meteorite ALH84001, which created excitement in the scientific community (the discovery itself, however, has remained controversial till today and it is unclear whether it is evidence for the existence of past life on Mars).

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