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Jun 2, 2020

Artificial Atoms Create Stable Qubits for Quantum Computing

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics

Quantum engineers from UNSW Sydney have created artificial atoms in silicon chips that offer improved stability for quantum computing, according to a news release.

In a paper published today in Nature Communications, UNSW researchers describe how they created artificial atoms in a silicon ‘quantum dot’, a tiny space in a quantum circuit where electrons are used as qubits (or quantum bits), the basic units of quantum information.

Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak explains that unlike a real atom, an artificial atom has no nucleus, but it still has shells of electrons whizzing around the centre of the device, rather than around the atom’s nucleus.

Jun 2, 2020

OpenAI’s gigantic GPT-3 hints at the limits of language models for AI

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The California research outfit OpenAI is back with another gigantic deep learning model, GPT-3. While it shows that bigger can be better in natural language processing, it also points to a potential absolute limit on the whole practice of language modeling.

Tiernan Ray

Jun 2, 2020

USAF RQ-4 Global Hawks return to Yokota AFB, Japan

Posted by in category: military

The US Air Force’s (USAF) RQ-4 Global Hawks have returned to Yokota Air Force Base (AFB) in Japan from Andersen AFB in Guam.

To support the US Indo-Pacific Command reconnaissance requirements, the Pacific Air Forces conducted a rotation of the air vehicle, ensuring continuous operations.

Owned by the USAF 319th Reconnaissance Wing Det 1, the rotation provides a stable location to the aircraft.

Jun 2, 2020

Houses built from fungi such as mushrooms could be the future in space and on Earth

Posted by in category: space

NASA began exploring this idea in 2018. At the heart of this technology is a structure that gives mushrooms its shape — mycelium. These structures, which grow into mushrooms, are sturdy and flexible.

Jun 2, 2020

Can we drill into Yellowstone to stop it from erupting?

Posted by in category: climatology

In some cases, limited scientific drilling for research can help us understand magmatic and hydrothermal (hot water) systems; however, drilling to mitigate a volcanic threat is a much different subject with unknown consequences, high costs, and severe environmental impacts. In addition to the enormous expense and technological difficulties in drilling through hot, mushy rock, drilling is unlikely to have much effect on whatever magma is stored beneath Yellowstone. At near-magmatic temperatures and pressures, any hole would rapidly become sealed by minerals crystallizing from the natural fluids that are present at those depths.

Additionally, Yellowstone National Park is protected from geothermal resource development. World-famous features like Old Faithful Geyser and Grand Prismatic Spring depend on heat provided by the magma chamber deep below Yellowstone’s surface. Any allowed geothermal extraction would lower the pressure on the existing geysers and hot springs, altering their behavior and, in many cases, causing them to disappear.

Concerns about volcanic eruptions at Yellowstone typically involve a cataclysmic, caldera-forming event, but it’s unknown whether any such eruption will ever occur there again. Current seismic imaging of the magma reservoir reveals a system that is too crystalline to erupt on a grand scale.

Jun 2, 2020

U.S. Army’s New Drone Swarm May Be A Weapon Of Mass Destruction

Posted by in categories: drones, military

Like Terminators, such drones may look like science fiction. But the U.S. Army has been working on a Cluster UAS Smart Munition for Missile Deployment which looks like a real-world embodiment of AFADS.

The Cluster Swarm project is developing a missile warhead to dispense a swarm of small drones that fan out to locate and destroy vehicles with explosively formed penetrators or EFPs. (An EFP spits a high-speed slug of armor-piercing metal some tens or hundreds of meters). This is similar in concept to the existing CBU-105 bomb, a 1000-pound munition which scatters forty ‘Skeet’ submunitions each over the target area, each of which parachutes down, scanning the ground with a seeker until it finds a tank and fires an EFP at it; the picture above shows one test. CBU-105’s dropped by B-52 bombers successfully knocked out entire Iraqi tank columns in 2003, leading them to be termed ‘Cans of whup-ass.’ The Cluster Swarm would be vastly more powerful.

The Cluster Swarm involved drones packed into the Army’s existing GMLRS rockets, which carry a 180-pound payload and have a range of over 70 kilometers, or ATACMS missiles that carry a 350-pound payload over 270 kilometers. The original idea was that the missile payload would be quadcopter drones encased in an aerodynamic shell that would disperse them over the target area. However, the challenges of unfolding quadcopters mid-air may have been too great, as the Phase II development, recently completed, went to AVID LLC, who have a slightly different approach.

Jun 2, 2020

Killing coronavirus with handheld ultraviolet light device may be feasible

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry

A personal, handheld device emitting high-intensity ultraviolet light to disinfect areas by killing the novel coronavirus is now feasible, according to researchers at Penn State, the University of Minnesota and two Japanese universities.

There are two commonly employed methods to sanitize and disinfect areas from bacteria and viruses—chemicals or ultraviolet radiation exposure. The UV radiation is in the 200 to 300 nanometer range and known to destroy the virus, making the virus incapable of reproducing and infecting. Widespread adoption of this efficient UV approach is much in demand during the current pandemic, but it requires UV radiation sources that emit sufficiently high doses of UV light. While devices with these high doses currently exist, the UV radiation source is typically an expensive mercury-containing gas discharge lamp, which requires high power, has a relatively short lifetime, and is bulky.

The solution is to develop high-performance, UV light emitting diodes, which would be far more portable, long-lasting, energy efficient and environmentally benign. While these LEDs exist, applying a current to them for light emission is complicated by the fact that the also has to be transparent to UV light.

Jun 2, 2020

Researchers discover a new type of matter inside neutron stars

Posted by in categories: particle physics, space

A Finnish research group has found strong evidence for the presence of exotic quark matter inside the cores of the largest neutron stars in existence. They reached this conclusion by combining recent results from theoretical particle and nuclear physics to measurements of gravitational waves from neutron star collisions.

Jun 2, 2020

Racism in science: the taint that lingers

Posted by in category: science

Angela Saini’s book indicts a destructive bias in research, writes Robin G. Nelson.

Jun 2, 2020

Elon Musk’s Starlink growing bigger and bigger

Posted by in categories: disruptive technology, Elon Musk, space

SpaceX launching again this week, if all goes as planned.

Starlink deployment in orbit.

SpaceX is at it again. Love it or hate it, Starlink is growing again. The company is getting ready to launch the next batch of 60 satellites into orbit in just a few days. The original launch was postponed until after the successful launch of the crew dragon Demo-2 mission for NASA.

Now that the astronauts successfully docked with the International Space Station, SpaceX turns its focus back on Starlink. This launch, originally planned to launch before the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission, now looks promising for a launch this week.


The constellation consists of thousands of mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit adds up quickly. Each Falcon 9 launch gets packed full of sixty Starlink satellites. 60 satellites neatly fit in both size and mass limitations of the Falcon 9’s reusable configuration. Elon’s company delivered more than 420 satellites into orbit to date.
SpaceX now plans to loft the next batch into space Wednesday around 9:25 p.m. EDT. Visitors at the Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad should be able to witness the launch so long as the weather holds out… and the weather is looking promising.


A one-hour launch window for the Starlink mission opening at 8:55 p.m. EDT (0055 GMT). If the launch gets scrubbed, SpaceX will cycle again for another attempt. The prior attempt at launch got scrubbed because of Tropical Storm Arthur and the associated high winds. As an additional complication for SpaceX launches, the rough seas in the recovery area where SpaceX’s drone ship waits made a landing of the Falcon 9 risky.

Worries from Astronomers: Starlink changes the night sky

November 11 at 9:56 a.m. EST, 14:56 UTC, SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Credit SpaceX.

This mission debuts a novel Starlink satellite not seen before. SpaceX, in response to concerned astronomers, includes additional features to reduce reflectivity. A new sunshade visor should help reduce the reflection of light and spoiling the night sky for astronomers.