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Apr 13, 2021

DARPA awards 3 companies contracts for nuclear spacecraft by 2025

Posted by in category: space travel

The Department of Defense’s research and development agency awarded contracts to three companies to build a nuclear spacecraft by 2025.

Apr 13, 2021

Arman Kashkinbekov — Honorary CEO, Renewable Energy of Kazakhstan — Making Kazakhstan Green Again

Posted by in categories: economics, education, energy, sustainability

Making Kazakhstan Green Again — Mr. Arman Kashkinbekov, Honorary CEO and Board Member, Association of Renewable Energy of Kazakhstan — Director, International Snow Leopard Foundation.


Mr. Arman Kashkinbekov, is the honorary CEO and board member, Association of Renewable Energy of Kazakhstan and Deputy Chairman of the Board, International Centre for Green Technologies and Investment Projects (Kazakhstan).

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Apr 13, 2021

Physics without time

Posted by in categories: information science, quantum physics

Place one clock at the top of a mountain. Place another on the beach. Eventually, you’ll see that each clock tells a different time. Why?


In his book “The Order of Time,” Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli suggests that our perception of time — our sense that time is forever flowing forward — could be a highly subjective projection. After all, when you look at reality on the smallest scale (using equations of quantum gravity, at least), time vanishes.

“If I observe the microscopic state of things,” writes Rovelli, “then the difference between past and future vanishes … in the elementary grammar of things, there is no distinction between ‘cause’ and ‘effect.’”

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Apr 13, 2021

Hearing AIDS for the Masses

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government, policy

Imagine Apple, Bose or other consumer electronics companies making hearing aids more stylish and relatively affordable — with people having confidence that the devices had been vetted by the F.D.A. Bose told me that it’s working on over-the-counter hearing aid technology.


This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.

On Tech is back from a spring break, and the magnolia trees are blooming outside On Tech headquarters (a.k.a., my New York apartment).

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Apr 13, 2021

First GMO Mosquitoes to Be Released In the Florida Keys

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

This spring, the biotechnology company Oxitec plans to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Oxitec says its technology will combat dengue fever, a potentially life-threatening disease, and other mosquito-borne viruses — such as Zika — mainly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

While there have been more than 7300 dengue cases reported in the United States between 2010 and 2020, a majority are contracted in Asia and the Caribbean, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, however, there were 41 travel-related cases in 2020, compared with 71 cases that were transmitted locally.

Apr 13, 2021

Counting single photons at unprecedented rates

Posted by in category: quantum physics

In high-end 21st century communications, information travels in the form of a stream of light pulses typically traveling through fiber optic cables. Each pulse can be as faint as a single photon, the smallest possible unit (quantum) of light. The speed at which such systems can operate depends critically on how fast and how accurately detectors on the receiving end can discriminate and process those photons.

Now scientists at the National institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devised a method that can detect individual photons at a rate 10 times faster than the best existing technology, with lower error rates, higher detection efficiency, and less noise.

“While classical communication and detection can operate at blazing speeds, , which need that ultimate sensitivity for those faintest of pulses, are limited to much lower speeds,” said group leader Alan Migdall. “Combining that ultimate sensitivity with the ability to achieve the counting of photons at has been a long-standing challenge. Here we are pushing both performance limits all in the same device.”

Apr 13, 2021

The French armed forces are planning for high-intensity war

Posted by in category: futurism

What do you think Chris Smedley.


After a decade of counter-insurgency, plans are changing | Europe.

Apr 12, 2021

Famed Neurobiologist Slams Neuralink’s Monkey Demo

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Inverse spoke to Andrew Schwartz, a University of Pittsburgh neurobiologist who helped pioneer BCI technology — and he says that Neuralink seems to be bragging about things that scientists, himself included, could do decades ago.


Neuralink made a huge production out of something researchers have been able to do for decades.

Apr 12, 2021

Indestructible Light Beam: Special Light Waves Created That Can Penetrate Even Opaque Materials

Posted by in category: materials

Researchers at Utrecht University and at TU Wien (Vienna) create special light waves that can penetrate even opaque materials as if the material was not even there.

Why is sugar not transparent? Because light that penetrates a piece of sugar is scattered, altered and deflected in a highly complicated way. However, as a research team from TU Wien (Vienna) and Utrecht University (Netherlands) has now been able to show, there is a class of very special light waves for which this does not apply: for any specific disordered medium – such as the sugar cube you may just have put in your coffee – tailor-made light beams can be constructed that are practically not changed by this medium, but only attenuated. The light beam penetrates the medium, and a light pattern arrives on the other side that has the same shape as if the medium were not there at all.

This idea of “scattering-invariant modes of light” can also be used to specifically examine the interior of objects. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Apr 12, 2021

Yamaha develops 496-horsepower motor for electric hypercars

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Yamaha reveals a 496-horsepower prototype electric motor. It’s willing and able to develop it for a car company, and do development work on the car itself.