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But a team of physicists is proposing a radical idea: Instead of forming black holes through the usual death-of-a-massive-start route, giant dark matter halos directly collapsed, forming the seeds of the first great black holes.

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) appear early in the history of the universe, as little as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. That rapid appearance poses a challenge to conventional models of SMBH birth and growth because it doesn’t look like there can be enough time for them to grow so massive so quickly.

Continue reading “The bonkers connection between massive black holes and dark matter” »

Researchers in Singapore and at CalTech have developed a 3D printed fabric with an interesting property: it is generally flexible but can stiffen on demand. You can see a video about the new fabric, below.

The material consists of nylon octahedrons interlocked. The cloth is enclosed in a plastic envelope and vacuum-packed. Once in a vacuum, the sheet becomes much stiffer and can hold many times its own weight.

Continue reading “3D Printed Fabric Stiffens On Demand” »

A new study by scientists has demonstrated how researchers may be able to create an accelerating jet of antimatter from light.

A team of physicists has shown that high-intensity lasers can be used to generate colliding gamma photons – the most energetic wavelengths of light – to produce electron-positron pairs. This, they say, could help us understand the environments around some of the Universe’s most extreme objects: neutron stars.

The process of creating a matter-antimatter pair of particles – an electron and a positron – from photons is called the Breit-Wheeler process, and it’s extremely difficult to achieve experimentally.

Bionic arms used to cost $80,000. Now, a young engineer has lowered the cost by over 90%.

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Continue reading “3D printed, mind-controlled prosthetics are here | Challengers” »

This is interesting. 😃

A new discovery in rats shows that the brain responds differently in immersive virtual reality environments versus the real world. The finding could help scientists understand how the brain brings together sensory information from different sources to create a cohesive picture of the world around us. It could also pave the way for “virtual reality therapy” for learning and memory-related disorders ranging including ADHD, Autism, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and depression.

Continue reading “Virtual reality boosts brain rhythms crucial for neuroplasticity, learning and memory” »

This looks like a really big breakthrough.

A decades-old problem about how to reliably control millions of qubits in a silicon quantum computer chip has now been solved.

Continue reading “‘Missing jigsaw piece’: engineers make critical advance in quantum computer design” »

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University of Advancing Technology’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) degree explores the theory and practice of engineering tools that simulate thinking, patterning, and advanced decision behaviors by software systems. With inspiration derived from biology to design, UAT’s Artificial Intelligence program teaches students to build software systems that solve complex problems. Students will work with technologies including voice recognition, simulation agents, machine learning (ML), and the internet of things (IoT).

Students pursuing this specialized computer programming degree develop applications using evolutionary and genetic algorithms, cellular automata, artificial neural networks, agent-based models, and other artificial intelligence methodologies. UAT’s degree in AI covers the fundamentals of general and applied artificial intelligence including core programming languages and platforms used in computer science.

Continue reading “UAT Virtual Let’s Talk Tech Open House” »

Solar Orbiter zipped by Venus earlier this week, just one day ahead of the Mercury-bound probe BepiColombo.

The sun-exploring spacecraft Solar Orbiter has captured this video of a glowing crescent of Venus as it flew past the planet during an orbit adjustment maneuver on Monday (Aug 9).

The video was taken by Solar Orbiter’s Heliospheric Imager, or SoloHI, as the joint European Space Agency (ESA)/NASA satellite zipped by the hot and cloudy planet at a distance of 4,967 miles (7,995 kilometers).

NASA has edged one step closer to building Moon and Mars colonies using the celestial bodies’ soil. Universe Today notes that NASA’s latest International Space Station resupply mission included a machine meant to demonstrate 3D printing regolith (that is, loose soil or rock) on the Moon and similar extraterrestrial surfaces.

The Redwire Regolith Print (RRP) project will work in tandem with an existing printer system (ManD) to try 3D printing simulated regolith. If that succeeds, the ISS crew will gauge the strength of the resulting material to see if it can handle the harsh conditions beyond Earth.

If all goes well, RRP could lead to colonists printing at least some of their habitats on-demand. That, in turn, could reduce the volume of construction supplies NASA brings to the Moon and Mars. Scientists have envisioned soil-based habitats for years, but this test is relatively realistic — it’s an attempt at 3D printing soil in lower gravity. While there will still be much work to do, the long-term goals for Artemis and future Mars missions may be that much more achievable.