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Jul 29, 2021

Rocket Lab will launch a US Space Force experimental satellite Thursday: Watch live

Posted by in category: space

A two-hour launch window opens 2 a.m. ET (0600 GMT; 6 p.m. local New Zealand time)


Rocket Lab will launch an experimental research and development satellite to low Earth orbit tomorrow (July 29) for the U.S. Space Force. The mission will demonstrate the feasibility of large deployable sensors.

Jul 29, 2021

Qualcomm, Amazon boost Intel plan to leapfrog chipmaking rivals by 2025

Posted by in categories: futurism, innovation

New CEO Pat Gelsinger says a “torrid” pace of innovation helped convince Amazon and Qualcomm to pay Intel to build future processors.

Jul 29, 2021

200 MPH Autonomous Cars Will Make History in World’s First High-Speed Robo-Race

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Only a few years ago, this might have sounded crazy, but it’s here now – the first head-to-head, high-speed race without the actual racing drivers. Autonomous vehicles will soon be competing against each other at the Indy Autonomous Challenge, an event that will probably be remembered for years to come.

Jul 29, 2021

New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Quarks are the fundamental building blocks from which matter is constructed. They combine to form hadrons, namely baryons, such as the proton and the neutron, which consist of three quarks, and mesons, which are formed as quark-antiquark pairs. In recent years a number of so-called exotic hadrons—particles with four or five quarks, instead of the conventional two or three—have been found. Today’s discovery is of a particularly unique exotic hadron, an exotic exotic hadron if you like.

The contains two and an up and a down antiquark. Several tetraquarks have been discovered in recent years (including one with two quarks and two charm antiquarks), but this is the first one that contains two charm quarks, without charm antiquarks to balance them. Physicists call this “open charm” (in this case, “double open charm”). Particles containing a charm quark and a charm antiquark have “hidden charm”—the charm quantum number for the whole particle adds up to zero, just like a positive and a negative electrical charge would do. Here the charm quantum number adds up to two, so it has twice the charm!

The content of Tcc+, has other interesting features besides being open charm. It is the first particle to be found that belongs to a class of tetraquarks with two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks. Such particles decay by transforming into a pair of mesons, each formed by one of the and one of the light antiquarks. According to some theoretical predictions, the mass of tetraquarks of this type should be very close to the sum of masses of the two mesons. Such proximity in mass makes the decay “difficult,” resulting in a longer lifetime of the particle, and indeed Tcc+, is the longest-lived exotic hadron found to date.

Jul 29, 2021

It’s Big and Long-Lived, and It Won’t Catch Fire: The Vanadium Redox-⁠Flow Battery

Posted by in category: energy

Move over, lithium ion: Vanadium flow batteries finally become competitive for grid-scale energy storage.

Jul 29, 2021

Scientists capture most-detailed radio image of Andromeda galaxy to date

Posted by in categories: physics, space

Scientists have published a new, detailed radio image of the Andromeda galaxy—the Milky Way’s sister galaxy—which will allow them to identify and study the regions of Andromeda where new stars are born.

The study—which is the first to create a radio image of Andromeda at the of 6.6 GHz—was led by University of British Columbia physicist Sofia Fatigoni, with colleagues at Sapienza University of Rome and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics. It was published online in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“This image will allow us to study the structure of Andromeda and its content in more detail than has ever been possible,” said Fatigoni, a Ph.D. student in the department of physics and astronomy at UBC. “Understanding the nature of physical processes that take place inside Andromeda allows us to understand what happens in our own galaxy more clearly—as if we were looking at ourselves from the outside.”

Jul 29, 2021

TSMC 2nm chip plans announced, a day after Intel said it could catch up

Posted by in categories: computing, mobile phones

TSMC 2nm production is likely to begin sometime in 2023, after the company got the green light for its most advanced chipmaking process yet.

The news comes just one day after Intel said it believed it could catch, and overtake, TSMC’s chipmaking capabilities within four years…

A large part of the secret to creating ever more powerful chips is shrinking the die process: getting more transistors into the same size of chip. The A14 chip used in the iPhone 12, designed by Apple and fabricated by TSMC, contains 11.8 billion transistors.

Jul 29, 2021

Pet food shortages leave owners on the hunt for kibble and cat treats

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, space

Black short-haired kitty Astra, one of millions of pets acquired during the COVID-19 pandemic last year, had to go without salmon-flavored Whiskas treats that were sold out at stores in New Orleans this month.

Jul 29, 2021

Sarcoma Awareness Month: 2021 Immunotherapy Research Updates

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A variety of new and promising cancer immunotherapy treatments are only available to patients in clinical trials. Help speed the development of potentially lifesaving drugs. Discover trials for which you or a loved one may be eligible with the CRI Immunotherapy Clinical Trial Finder.

FIND A cancer clinical TRIAL.

Jul 29, 2021

X-ray echoes behind black holes provide “extreme” proof Einstein was right

Posted by in category: cosmology

The massive gravity of a black hole actually bent X-ray echoes from around its back.


Researchers have shown that the massive gravity of a black hole actually bent X-ray echoes from around its back, providing more evidence for general relativity.