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Limitless Space Institute gave out nine interstellar space-related grants for about $1 million to 2 million each. Phil Lubin’s direct laser propulsion group received a grant and they will use to prove out their directed laser propulsion system at the 10–20 watt level. They are also working on components at the kilowatt to tens of kilowatt level. The plan would be to scale to tens of kilowatts and work towards power beaming to the moon for experiments. In 5–10 years, they hope to reach megawatt levels.

If they reach 500 megawatts then direct laser propulsion could be used for 30 day transit times to Mars. When the system scales to the gigawatt or tens of gigawatt level with a matching deceleration and launching system on Mars this would enable 2.5 day transit times between Earth and Mars. Increasing or decreasing mass by 10,000 times changes the speed by 10 times. A 100-gram package could sent ten times faster than a 1,000 kilogram package using the same size laser array and power system. You could send a 1,000 kilogram mission to Mars in 30 days or rapidly deliver an urgent package of 100 grams to Mars in about 3 days.

This system for urgent delivery of tiny packages with 1G acceleration and deceleration would be feasible in the 10–20 year time frame.

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There’s even talk in some quarters that solar could one day fulfil the unrealised promise of nuclear power to generate electricity so abundant that it would be “too cheap to meter”.

So how cheap can solar get? And will you — the energy consumer — still have a power bill?

This future of cheap power is already here — at least sometimes.

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Abstract: Here we show that precise Gaia EDR3 proper motions have provided robust estimates of 3D velocities, angular momentum and total energy for 40 Milky Way dwarfs. The results are statistically robust and are independent of the Milky Way mass profile. Dwarfs do not behave like long-lived satellites of the Milky Way because of their excessively large velocities, angular momenta, and total energies. Comparing them to other MW halo population, we find that many are at first passage, $\le$2 Gyr ago, i.e., more recently than the passage of Sagittarius, $\sim$4–5 Gyr ago. We suggest that this is in agreement with the stellar populations of all dwarfs, for which we find that a small fraction of young stars cannot be excluded. We also find that dwarf radial velocities contribute too little to their kinetic energy when compared to satellite systems with motions only regulated by gravity, and some other mechanism must be at work such as ram pressure. The latter may have preferentially reduced radial velocities when dwarf progenitors entered the halo until they lost their gas. It could also explain why most dwarfs lie near their pericenter. We also discover a novel large scale structure perpendicular to the Milky Way disk, which is made by 20% of dwarfs orbiting or counter orbiting with the Sagittarius dwarf.

From: Francois Hammer [view email].

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“The Earth was very water-rich compared to other rocky planets in the Solar System, with oceans covering more than 70% of its surface, and scientists had long puzzled over the exact source of it all,” said Professor Phil Bland, director of the Space Science and Technology Centre at Curtin University.

“An existing theory is that water was carried to Earth in the final stages of its formation on C-type asteroids, however previous testing of the isotopic ‘fingerprint’ of these asteroids found they, on average, didn’t match with the water found on Earth meaning there was at least one other unaccounted for source.”

“Our research suggests the solar wind created water on the surface of tiny dust grains and this isotopically lighter water likely provided the remainder of the Earth’s water.”

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First theorized in 1973 by physicist Philip W. Anderson, quantum spin liquids are exotic phases of matter with topological order. They feature long-range quantum entanglement that can potentially be exploited to realize robust quantum computation. But the problem about this exotic state of matter has been its very existence: no one had ever seen it — at least, that had been the case for almost five decades.

“Instead, it’s all about magnets that never freeze and the way electrons in them spin.”

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No such fully realised metaverse yet exists but that has not stopped US tech companies from falling over themselves in recent months to announce their own forays into the space. The flurry of interest has shown few signs of abating and Asia is not immune to the trend, as around the world investors and companies scramble to latch onto what many see as the next big thing.

Investors and companies are scrambling to carve out a piece of an internet revolution that promises to forever change how people interact online – but some question whether Big Tech should be allowed to dominate its development.

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